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| Broadway Streetcar in Lincoln Heights in the 50's (similar one ran on Main Street) |
Our family rented homes in
Lincoln Heights through all of the 1950’s. One of those homes was on Workman
Ave near the corner of Main Street where Files Garage was located. In and
around Files’s, Jack and his buddy Johnny, a couple of winos hung out, it being
next door to Dan’s liquor store where they were able to buy 25 cents bottles of
Tokay wine. They both were a marvel to see but more so Jack who was able to
lean back seemingly in defiance of the laws of gravity and anyone seeing him would think that he was about to
topple backwards but at the critical moment he would right himself and begin
the drama again a little later.
My Stepfather Jesus Parral and my sister Maria circa 1956
We labored daily for over a month that spring, my stepfather working after work in the evenings and on weekends and Ruly and I doing what we could when he wasn’t around. We all used the shovel and we all took turns loading and carting the wheelbarrow. It was backbreaking work but everyday showed progress and one day the mound of dirt had disappeared. My stepfather then beginning using his carpentry skills, putting stakes here and there, stretching string from one to the other, using a level to determine low or high spots and we helping him to fill in or take off as needed. Finally it was done, a court that measured about 60 by 20 feet, level and packed down and at either end a ten foot tall 8”x 8” timber imbedded in the dirt, with a metal basketball hoop at the top.
When my grandmother joined us
in Los Angeles, she having stayed in El Paso, when my stepfather moved us to
Los Angeles, unbeknownst to us she had hooked up with my nina Concha’s brother,
Moises, who we soon learned was also a wino. Moi, as he was known to his
friends, was a super mechanic and File lost no time in exploiting his talents
and paying him in 25 cent bottles of Tokay. The three of them Jack, Johnny and
Moi became a fixture in the area but especially at Files garage.
Our home was a small one
bedroom rear bungalow at the end of the driveway of the home of the Quevedos,
mother, dad and three children Bobby, Freddie and Jimmy. I was 12, about
Bobby’s age, but far behind him in his flights of imagination involving
fornication with girls that he liked to tell me. And which I enjoyed hearing,
thinking at the time that they were real experiences.
Current photo of our former house on Workman Street. On the right the Quevedo's home
That first summer Dan, who belonged to one of the local merchants club, asked if I wanted to go to a summer camp and I not knowing what a summer camp was, said yes. A week later I was on a bus with other underprivileged Black and Chicano boys headed for Ernie Pyle Camp in the California Redwoods. I had never been away from home and I was miserable with homesickness for most of the two weeks. Was I glad to return home! The summer went quickly and soon classed started as did football season.
That first summer Dan, who belonged to one of the local merchants club, asked if I wanted to go to a summer camp and I not knowing what a summer camp was, said yes. A week later I was on a bus with other underprivileged Black and Chicano boys headed for Ernie Pyle Camp in the California Redwoods. I had never been away from home and I was miserable with homesickness for most of the two weeks. Was I glad to return home! The summer went quickly and soon classed started as did football season.
Next door to Dan’s Liquor store
was a tortilleria run by a middle aged Mexican couple who were the parents of
Louie, a twenty something over weight son with a baby face that matched his
immaturity. He didn’t seem to have any friends his own age and he would often
be playing football with us at the Safeway Parking lot across from Files
Garage. He continually raided the cash register of his parents, using the money
for nice shoes, clothing, and to buy tickets for the Rams football games, and he
would invite one of neighborhood boys that lived nearby, including my brother
Ruly or me. It was the first time any of us had been to see the Rams and we all
looked forward to take our turn.
My stepfather Jesus, a World
War II veteran, was a carpenter and sort of knew his way around construction. In the Spring he rented the single family
three bedroom house next door to where we were living, tripling our living
space. It also came with a huge backyard and my older brother Ruly and I
proposed to him that we make a basketball court. He surprised us by saying yes.
Ordinarily he was not a person that went out of his way to accommodate us in
any fashion, it being the era when adults and children were separated by a
marked division of interests and activities. More surprising was that the dirt
yard was very uneven with several low spots and in the middle a mound of dirt
four foot tall and leveling the yard would require a great expenditure of physical
effort. I say he surprised us because he was an individual that preferred to
let us do the work whenever possible, whether it was going to the store to buy
him a pack of cigarettes, getting him a tool from his tool box, or a beer from
the frig etc. We were always his grunts and goffers and in this endeavor he
would have to get out con pico y pala, right
alongside Ruly and me.
My brother Ruly holding our basketball, my nina Concha and I, in front of the Workman Street house.
We labored daily for over a month that spring, my stepfather working after work in the evenings and on weekends and Ruly and I doing what we could when he wasn’t around. We all used the shovel and we all took turns loading and carting the wheelbarrow. It was backbreaking work but everyday showed progress and one day the mound of dirt had disappeared. My stepfather then beginning using his carpentry skills, putting stakes here and there, stretching string from one to the other, using a level to determine low or high spots and we helping him to fill in or take off as needed. Finally it was done, a court that measured about 60 by 20 feet, level and packed down and at either end a ten foot tall 8”x 8” timber imbedded in the dirt, with a metal basketball hoop at the top.
Ruly and I began shooting hoops
the next day and two neighbor boys David and Frankie joined us. Our backyard
was higher than their home and separated by a retaining wall that they had to
climb to reach our basketball court. Their home was at the rear of a couple of two
story quadplexes, each having four dwellings and whose front doors faced Main
Street. The Quevedo boys from next door, Bobby and Freddie, also joined us.
When my stepfather came from work he joined in too. We were playing a version
of Horse, not really having enough players for an actual game until other
neighbor men from the quadplexes, getting home from work, came over and asked
to play. Soon we did have ten players and the game started until the sun began
casting a closing shadow and we could no longer see the ball.
The summer wore on, with
immediate neighbors coming over for a game as well as passerby’s that could see
us playing from the street. One of our regular players was Louie from the
tortilleria. Another regular player was Mercedes, a man who had a vintage two
hand set shot that he learned when he played a little college ball in New
Mexico. Yet another player who saw us playing while on a walk was an Anglo medical
student at the Osteopath Medical School on Mission Road, that I see in
retrospect, was an arrogant young man who was convinced that he spoke better
Spanish than we did.
It was a popular spot all
summer, so much so that my stepfather had to wire two light bulbs above the
rims in order to have some night basketball.
