Vignettes In A Chicano Octogenarian's Journey

Vignettes In An Octogenarian Chicano’s Journey to Today

Michael Sedano, a man who one morning woke to find himself transformed into an eighty-years-old Veteran, reformed academic, and family man who found life after Alzheimer's.

1945, Leipzig, Germany

WWII in Europe ends when the first U.S. tank, after an 18-hour battle, rolls up to the front door of Leipzig city hall. My Dad is the machine gunner on that tank, the C’est La Guerre. Since the gunner sits forward in the tank, the first GI to reach Leipzig city hall is a Chicano. My Dad won WWII.

Bivouacked in Europe awaiting orders to Japan as occupation troops, word arrives that I am born on August 31. The birth gives my Dad enough points to rotate home instead of the Pacific. 

My Dad always bragged how his son got him out of the Army.

Circa 1949, Boy Caught With His Pants Down

The right field wall of Lynch Field borders my family’s property line. The green 8 foot wooden fence looms high overhead for a small boy, whose sense of adventure and challenge lead him to scale the wall. It is I.

I find a way to get to the top rail where I inch my way, belly against the wall, holding the tops of the planks balancing sideways on the 2X4 top rail. I get to the neighbor’s chicken yard and I look down noticing my predicament. The ground is a long way down.  Where am I going? How am I going to get down?

My hand-me-down Levi’s have no trouble getting down. All guangos, they settle around my knees, my nalgas to the breeze. Danged if I'm releasing hold on those planks to pull up my pants. I scream. I cry. My Mom hears me, calls my Dad. Dad scales the fence to rescue me. Mom takes a foto of the rescue. It becomes family legend, the day the boy lost his trousers and got stuck on the fence.

1956, Incident On Lugonia School Playground

No one I know likes Miss Goertler, an unpleasant  woman stuck with my gaggle of fifth grade Chicanos and a couple of Okies. We get along OK.

This day, Miss Goertler leads us across the street next to the monkey bars that made my first day of school misery—I climbed them against Mom’s orders and promptly fell from the top to the sand like an Homeric hero—I tasted sand. High places and I become a lifelong theme.

Miss Goertler has planned a game and explains the rules. We aren’t listening, jostling one another, having a good time ignoring that unpleasant person. Frustrated, she says “If you don’t pay attention and cooperate, we’ll  all just go back to the room!”

I don’t take to threats and blurt out, “Well, why don’t we all just go back then?”

The enraged Miss Goertler dashes across the sand, grabs me, bends me over and swats my ass. I’m sentenced to sit on the bench while my now-cooperative classmates play the game. 

I’m kicked out of fourth grade for weeks, sentenced to lying all day on the nurse’s couch behind the Principal’s office. When I’m permitted back into that woman’s classroom, they’re doing the times tables. Fudu and I team up and get to the 11s and 12s ahead of everyone in the class.

Mid-year, the familia moves to the other side of town where I’m one of two Chicanos. Another theme of my career, the only one.

1963, the Only Chicano At UCSB 

“There’s a Joint between Anacapa Hall and Santa Rosa Hall,” my Sequoia Hall dormmates exclaim. A Joint is not a pot party, it’s a record hop.

The girls from Santa Rosa Hall line up at one side of the cement patio, the guys opposite. Records play surf music, Beatles, Baby I’m Yours, We’ll Sing in the Sunshine, Do You Want to Dance? Oldies now, hits of the day then.

My eyes sweep the women’s side—blondes and blondes and auprés de my blonde it would be good to meet one and ask her for a dance. My history of being brutally shot down my Anglo girls ("My Dad doesn't let me go out with Mexicans") sensitizes me to the perils of unknown white girls. My eyes land on a tall, willowy girl whose brown skin screams “she’s the one!” The only brown girl in a sea of blondes. She is beautiful and I have hopes. My heart pounds as I move around the darkened patio.

“Would you like to dance?” She looks away mumbling negation. I fade back into the shadows to my side. It’s a slow song and maybe she doesn’t want to break the ice on a waltz.

“Would you like to dance?” It’s a fast one, we could really bust a move. “No.” Punto final. I skulk away.

I stand on the guy side staring longingly at the brown girl who hasn’t danced yet. Maybe the white guys prefer blondes? A short blonde appears at my side, taps my shoulder. A dance partner, I wonder?

“Hi, I’m Sancha’s roommate and she wants you to know, she’s Portugese and she doesn’t dance with Mexicans.”

I know now it’s going to be a long four years of no dates no romance for the only Chicano at UCSB. The Beach Boys sing, “and we’ve never missed yet with the gir-ls we meet…”

1968, Romance, Alice’s Restaurant, World’s Highest Missile Site

1967 arrives and by now I’ve met women who like me and we form a Platonic clique. My best friend and study partner introduces me to Barbara. When the gang graduates and heads out to their careers, I remain at UCSB, the Debate TA. A pretty good job. I teach public speaking and get to travel around the country as the Debate Coach.

Barbara is the only one from the old days and we find ourselves in Love. We marry on my birthday in 1968 and move into a ramshackle house on Ortega Street, the heart of Santa Barbara’s raza section.

A month and a half later, my Uncle Sam he says a’knock knock, here I am. Richard Nixon orders me to report just before Thanksgiving. I manage to postpone the dreadful day until January.

That Thanksgiving, the oven catches fire and I heroically douse the flames, wash off the first turkey Barbara's ever cooked. 

We roast the singed bird with friends in Isla Vista, laughing bitterly at Arlo Guthrie’s tale of draft resistance. Its absurdity is a slap in the face. Barbara fears this will be the only Thanksgiving she spends with her husband, if he’s killed in Vietnam. We are miserable that holiday season, counting the days to 18Jan69. My heels leave deep gouges in the cement when they drag me onto the bus taking us to the Induction Center where no one sings a chorus of Alice's Restaurant Masacree.

Every Thanksgiving thereafter, we put Alice’s Restaurant on the turntable, and play it over and over on repeat. Guests have no idea why we do this weird thing. We explain, they still have no idea. I'm glad for them. I am one of two Veterans in our circle.

At Ft Ord and throughout my service, I’m no longer the only Chicano. Lots of us Mexicans, lots of Puerto Ricans and other American Spanish speakers in the Army. It’s the first time in my experience, since 4th grade, to be surrounded by raza. 

"This is the highest toughest and most rugged missile site in the world. Be proud to be here. We are."

The Army doesn’t send me to the hot war, I get orders for Korea and no particular place to go. The replacement depot orders me to the edge of the DMZ where the 7th of the 5th Air Defense Artillery battalion maintains HAWK—homing all the way killers—missiles against commie hordes from the north. A few infiltrators, a MiG flyby, the mountain and a helicopter try to kill me, but I'm invincible.

We laugh, eat well, and grow strong. Koreans eat chile but it’s inspid, no fire. We get no semblance of our food in the mess hall. Care packages from “the world” sustain us. Barbara mails Hormel canned tamales, jalapeños en escabeche, and canned flour tortillas! Those tamales are the best tamales I’ve ever eaten, but then, you had to be there. I’m glad you weren’t.

My duty station is Bravo Battery. We occupy the highest missile site in the world, Mile High Mae Bong. There’s that theme again, me and heights. I totally dig the adventure, get a lot of reading done, doing three days and two nights on top of the mountain where fierce monsoon rains compete with raging blizzards to make life interesting. Down in the Admin Area base camp there are hot showers, hot food, and wondrous solitude for me. I'm not a Ville Rat and hang out at an isolated spot near the river.

I return from Korea and arrive in Temple City on August 28. I hear there’s a big antiwar march in East LA. Barbara doesn’t know where that is, and I have no idea how to find Belvedere Park. Ignorance saves my life. Had I been in Laguna Park when the police riot began, a week out of the Army, seasoned by the mountain, and a "rough tough fighting machine", I would have attacked the first cop to swing a club at me. I would have been beaten to death only one day after getting back home.

Happy Birthday, Happy 57th Anniversary

My Barbara dies with Alzheimer’s in 2023. Alzheimer’s kicked my ass, bad, and only now has mourning taken a turn for the future. I find a new life—there is life after Alzheimer’s. I celebrate in Claremont along with my daughter and granddaughter. We’re survivors of the Eaton Fire, moving on. Joining us is Thelma Reyna, who’s instrumental in my finding depth and emotion in life, after those years of defeat, living moment to moment, numb against feelings, guarding Barbara’s health and wellbeing.

We’re in Claremont because here is where Charlotte lives now, at Scripps College. We tour her dorm. I don’t ask if there are Joints between the dorms. Scripps is a women's school.

Note: that fire destroys everything we ever owned, but not quite. I escape with three portable drives, backups to the hard drives melted in the flames. All my archives ashes. I’m relieved to find fotos like these displayed here. I recognize all that is lost is only stuff, prosthetics for memory. I have memories, and over 80 years, there are a lot of them.