My mother always loved to help everyone in any way possible. If she met a family that was down on their luck, she would help them, even though we were just slightly better off than them.
Once when I came home after school, I went to my room to read my comic books and–they were all gone! I asked my mother where they were, and she said she had given them away. She said, “I didn’t think you wanted them.” Of course, I wanted them, but my mother had helped a family and their boys needed something to read! But why my comic books?
When we went to Mexico one winter, we had our fun there for two months. But then, as we were leaving, my mother, with great ceremony, made us give all our clothes that we had brought with us to our cousins.
We went back to Chicago with little more than the clothes we were wearing. I had to give my favorite boots to my cousin. You know the kind: yellow leather high-top construction boots. I argued with my mother the day before we left about this, and I refused to give away my favorite boots. As we were putting our luggage in the car to go to the train station, my mother told me to give my boots to my cousin. Since all the family was standing there giving us a warm sendoff, I didn’t argue. I gave my boots to her, and I hugged her warmly and we kissed each other before we left.
When I went to Mexico last December, she reminded me about the boots that I had all but forgotten. She told me how much she enjoyed wearing them and how she always thought of us because she wore my boots. Only then, did I feel happy about giving my boots to her.
From youngest to oldest: Dick Martin, Diego Gerardo, Daniel, and David Diego Rodríguez.
D, as in my first initial, because I was David Diego, then came my brother Daniel, then came my brother Diego Gerardo, and then my mother needed another name that began with D when she was pregnant for the fourth time. My father Diego had little influence over my mother when it came to naming us.
My mother Maria del Carmen was always the boss in our family. She only let on that my father ruled when we were in public, but not always. My mother had already decided that her fourth baby would be born in our apartment at 4545 S. Hermitage Avenue, and no one could talk her out of it.
Of course, my mother was still hoping for the daughter that I should have been. I would have been Debbie if my mother had her way. Even then she wanted names that began with D. So she thought of many names that began with D while pregnant. All of them girl names! No one could convince her of the possibility that she might be carrying a son. Everyone asked her if she had any boy names in mind, but she was so sure that this time she would have the daughter that she always wanted.
The morning of my brother’s birth arrived and a doctor I had never seen before woke us up in our bedroom. He told us to hurry up and get ready for school. There was another doctor with him who would assist in the birth. My father was there, too, but he was too weak from the labor pains to help us get ready for school. My mother claims that my father had morning sickness when she was pregnant with me. Knowing my father, I have a feeling that my mother couldn’t make up such a story.
Anyway, when we came home from school for lunch to watch Bozo’s Circus that May 14, 1962, I had a new little brother, much to my mother’s disappointment. Can you guess his name? That’s right! It began with a D! However, no one was ready for the name my mother had chosen: Dick Martin Rodriguez. Martin was fine because it can be pronounced in Englsih and Spanish. But Dick? Back then, as now, Dick was a nickname derived from Richard, but more importantly, it also referred to the male anatomy more often than not. Even Mexicans knew that.
Everyone questioned my mother’s judgment in her choice of names. Well, she was disappointed not to have the daughter that she wanted, so she didn’t actually have any boy’s names picked. Just by chance, the doctor who delivered my brother was named Dick Martin. And that’s how my brother got his name. I was already feeling embarrassed when I imagined how I would announce that I had a new little brother named Dick Martin in school the next day.
Since he was the youngest brother, he was called Dicky, which made the name a little easier to swallow. I mean, a little more palatable. From then on, everyone called him Dicky. That’s how he printed his name on his school papers.
When we went to Mexico, everyone called him Dicky. After a while, the name Dicky just referred to my brother and no one thought of any body parts. When I went to Mexico last December, everyone asked me about Dicky, as they affectionately remembered him. Well, as he grew older and traveled outside the neighborhood, his name became problematic, for the obvious reasons. He started calling himself Richard or Rick. Most family members had a hard time not calling him Dicky because we had grown so used to calling him Dicky.
Eventually, he legally changed his name to something else. I didn’t know it until one day I saw a hole in the hallway wall of our house at 2509 W. Marquette Road. I asked my mother how the hole got there. She told me that she had pushed and kicked Dicky down the stairs because he had legally changed his name and she was very angry with him because of that. Somehow, as he fell down the stairs, he made a hole in the wall. I couldn’t believe my mother could get that upset because of the name change. Well, Dicky had changed his name to Richard Martin. He was no longer a Rodriguez. I was surprised by my mother’s reaction because, during and after her divorce, she hated my father and everyone in his family. She even hated the Rodriguez surname, even though after her divorce she remained Carmen M. Rodriguez.
I, too, was shocked that Dicky was no longer a Rodriguez. We were always the Rodriguez family no matter what. Nobody in the neighborhood wanted to start any trouble with the Rodriguez brothers. I asked him why he changed his last name and he said he did it because he was a musician, and it was a better stage name. Plus, he got tired of all the insults he received for having a Spanish last name. Well, I had gone through the same situations, but I never even thought of changing my name just for that. In fact, I would toss out my surname like an in-your-face challenge to people whom I knew would be bothered by Mexicans and say my full name: David Diego Rodríguez.
Anyway, he changed his name to Richard Martin and we began calling him Rick slowly but surely. That is, when we didn’t slip into old habits and call him Dicky. As far as his musical career, the name didn’t exactly work out for him because soon there was another certain famous Ricky Martin of Latino pop music who upstaged my brother!
Speaking of airplanes, I don’t really like to fly.
The past few years or so–going on about twenty-five years now, if you want to know the truth–I have gone on driving vacations. I really have no desire to fly if I don’t have to. I would fly if the right opportunity came along. All I have to do is forget my last flight from Palm Springs, California, to Chicago back in 1979. Whew! What a flight!
I remember waiting in line to board the plane and just by chance I was standing behind the two flight attendants for our flight. I expressed some of my concerns about flying, such as looking out the windows and watching the wings flex up and down during the flight. I also mentioned how I didn’t like when an airplane would hit an air pocket it lose altitude suddenly. The flight attendants reassured me that that was normal during a lot of flights. When we boarded the plane I sat directly behind the flight attendants. I jokingly asked them to hold my hand if we hit an air pocket. They just laughed, but I was serious. They told me not to worry about a thing.
Anyway, we were flying what seemed a normal, uneventful flight, except when I looked out and saw the wings flexing up and down over the Grand Canyon. The flight attendants smiled at me and reassured me that the wings were designed to flex during flight. They probably thought I was a big baby. Later, we hit an air pocket and the plane fell a little. I tried to show the flight attendants that I wasn’t scared even a little bit during that slight loss of altitude. They just smiled at me again.
Suddenly, the plane started bouncing and the pilot announced that we should all put on our seatbelts. The flight attendants sat down in front of me, put on their seatbelts, and told me not to worry about a thing. Wow, did we ever hit some turbulence! The plane shook like the Millenium Falcon when it reached warp speed. Everyone on the plane remained calm, including me.
Then we hit a major air pocket. The plane started falling and it felt like a roller coaster descending the first big drop. But it kept falling for much longer than a roller coaster. I wanted to show the flight attendants how calm I could be during this air pocket drop. Suddenly, both flight attendants started screaming. That’s when I began to worry and I looked out the window to see if the wings were still attached to the plane. I thought, if these two seasoned flight attendants are screaming like this, surely we will crash. I tapped one of them on the shoulder and asked her, “Does that mean you won’t hold my hand?” They were so embarrassed when they remembered that I was sitting behind them.
Well, needless to say, we landed safely in Chicago, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. And that was the last time I flew. But I’m not afraid to fly. Not really.
That’s the thing about Mexicans. They have a different standard for measuring success. For as long as I can remember, Mexicans take great pride in being hard workers. Nothing else matters to them. And that’s why they’re destined to remain in the ranks of the middle class. Pobre, pero honrado means poor but honorable. So as long as a Mexican works hard, he or she is respected and nothing else matters. Through hard work, a Mexican will never starve to death. He or she may never get ahead in life, but at least these Mexicans are honorable. If they have two or three jobs just to feed and house la familia, so much the better. Whenever I met a Mexican girlfriend’s parents, they would be impressed by the fact that I had a good-paying factory job. They liked the fact that I was hard worker. However, I learned early in life that if my girlfriend’s parents liked me, that was the kiss of death for our relationship.
The greatest compliment you could pay to my father was: You’re such a great worker! Every time someone told him that at work, he would be sure to tell us as soon as he got home. My mother was also proud to be called a hard worker. In fact, she never rested. She worked a full-time job in a factory and then she would come home and work around the house. When my father came home, he would rest because he already did his work for the day. My mother would then call my father lazy and he would feel insulted. Saturday mornings, no one slept in. My mother believed that Saturday mornings were meant for everyone to sleep in until seven in the morning and then wake up to work around the house. Something always needed cleaning or fixing around the house. We couldn’t see our friends until every last chore my mother assigned us was done. She didn’t want anyone talking about how she had raised lazy children.
Growing up, I loved to read. I could read for hours everyday. This really bothered my mother because I would just be lying around the house “doing nothing.” What would her friends say if they came over now and saw me “doing nothing”? She was so embarrassed to have such a lazy son! All through high school, she insisted that I find a job after school. But no one would hire me because I looked like I was about twelve years old. My mother wanted to take me to different stores to find me a job. I told her that no one would hire me if I applied for a job with my mother. So she left me alone for a while.
When I was seventeen she found me a job in a peanut butter factory. You had to be eighteen to work in a factory according to federal labor laws, but the company made an exception for me. You should have seen my mother’s face glow whenever she told someone that I had a full-time factory job. She was so proud of me! Especially, since I earned more money than her. Unfortunately, I was still a junior in high school at the time and I had to work the midnight shift. I’d come home from work and immediately change clothes so I could go to school. I often fell asleep in my classes.
Finally, I told my mother that I couldn’t do both–work full time and go to school full time. She was so disappointed in me! I told her I wanted to quit my job so I could graduate from high school. She told me that if I quit my job, I couldn’t live with her anymore. I tried to do both for as long as I could, but I eventually dropped out of school. My mother was happy that I decided to keep my job. I would be pobre, pero honrado the rest of my life and that suited her just fine.
She couldn’t understand why I would want to go to school. If I graduated high school, I would probably want to go to college. I couldn’t understand my mother’s point of view: Why pay to go to college when the factory will pay me to work for them? It was as simple as that, but I just didn’t get it back then. I still don’t.
Looking back on all this after so many years, I’m actually not at all bitter about having to work in the factory for twelve years and not going to college until much later in life. When I compare myself to some of my friends, I find that we’re all in about the same place in life. I now fully understand the value of working hard and being pobre, pero honrado. Actually, I’m quite happy with my life now. 🙂
My father is a very unique person who has his own way of doing things. He was a factory mechanic who could work wonders with duct tape. No matter where we were, he always had some tools in his pocket. He was proud of being mechanic. If someone had some sort of mechanical problem, my father would volunteer to fix whatever needed fixing. No problem was too small for him. A squeaky door? He carried a little oil can with him. Door knob keeps falling off? My father would attach it with his tools and extra screws that he always carried with him just in case.
I should write a novel about him: My Father, the Super Fix-It Handyman. Or maybe make him into a comic book superhero who can fix any problem no matter how small. My father was always fixing bicycles, skates, skateboards, and automobiles for everyone on the block. He had just enough mechanical aptitude, talent, and expertise to keep him trapped in the middle class the rest of his life. And, it turns out that I’m not much different than him, although I’ll never be able to make repairs just like my father.
When I was a boy, my father often embarrassed me. He always liked to attract attention to himself by telling jokes in his broken English. I was afraid to bring home friends when my father was home because then he would want to get in on the conversation with them and he didn’t speak English very well. So most of the conversation would involve a lot of repetition because he didn’t understand everything that was said, but he wanted to show that he was eager to learn English. It’s now forty years later and he still does this. He has never stopped trying to learn English. If I talk to him in Spanish, he still insists that I speak to him in English so he can learn English. In fact, if I talk to him in Spanish, he doesn’t understand a word I say.
Another thing about my father was that he was always so Mexican. He could just stand there silently and everyone would know that he was Mexican because he always stood there looking so Mexican. He was about 5’6″, thin, with black hair slicked back with vaselina, brown eyes, and a Cantinflas mustache. Plus, you could see the tools bulging from his pants pockets, along with a small jar of salsa or peppers, just in case.
Whenever we did something together, he would always preface it by saying that he used to do that activity in Mexico when he was a boy. When we played basketball in our backyard at 4405 S. Wood Street in Back of the yards, he told us that he always played basketball with his brothers in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico. When I was eight, I actually thought that basketball was a Mexican sport. While playing, my father told me that once I stopped dribbling the ball, I couldn’t dribble it again. I had never heard of such a rule. I told him, “I don’t want to play the Mexican way.” Of course, I didn’t know any better at the time even though there is a rule against double dribbling.
For breakfast, my father would prepare this concoction that he learned to make from his father in, you guessed it, Mexico. He would pour some Mogen David grape wine into a glass, put in a raw egg, and mix it up together. He would drink the first glass to show me how it was done. Then, he would hand me a glass and I would force myself to drink it. At first I didn’t like it and I told him that I didn’t want a Mexican breakfast, but I eventually learned to like it. I also learned to eat raw eggs right out of the eggshell by poking to holes at either end of the egg. I learned this from my father because this is how he ate breakfast in Mexico. This was long before I had ever heard of salmonella. I guess God does protect children and idiotas. 🙂
Chicago USA 