Rudy was the consummate pitchman. The last time I met him was at his mother’s funeral when we were both adults. He was telling about his job as a brake pad salesman, and I was thoroughly impressed by his knowledge of brake pads.
However, I shall always remember how he tried out as pitcher for the Chicago White Sox every spring. He was a Southsider, after all. The coaches always told him to keep working out. In the traditional Chicago fashion, Rudy always reassured us with the words, “Wait till next year!” One of the main reasons he never made the team was because he focused more on spending time with his drinking buddies.
He was a great storyteller who always attracted the attention of everyone within hearing range. He was a very likeable guy who was fun to have around. We spent much more time in bars than on the baseball field. Although he lost interest in his workout plan for much of the year, he never lost the hope of making the team. Come springtime, he would get all worked up again for the open tryouts. After a few years we lost touch, but I always kept watching baseball with the hope that I would see him on the mound someday.
When I saw him again at his mother’s funeral. He still had not lost the hope of playing in the pros even though he was well past the age of a rookie pitcher. He had planned to try out with one of the Texas teams where he was now living. He was a great brake shoe salesman due to his outgoing personality and doing quite well working on commission. After explaining the virtues of his brake shoes in comparison to the competition, I was sold on his. Then I recalled why I always believed he would one day become a Major League Baseball pitcher. He could make you believe in whatever he was pitching.
He sure plays a mean guitar. Guitar Hero, that is!
When I lived in Back of the Yards, I met a wide variety of Mexicans. Rubén Martínez was an unusual acquaintance of mine in that he was more the friend of a friend rather than a direct friend. He always seemed so full of energy for someone who was always high. He looked like your typical drug burnout with shoulder length hair that he parted down the middle.
In the seventies, no one wanted to part their hair in the middle lest anyone think that they smoked pot. Rubén, however, always parted his hair down the middle to flaunt the fact that he was a burnout and smoked pot. And he wore a miniature coke spoon around his neck just in case the occasion to get high on cocaine presented itself. Because of the thousands of people like Rubén, McDonald’s had to change their coffee stirrer from a little spoon on a long stem because people like Rubén used it to snort coke, to a flat paddle and later a small straw. Needless to say, he was always high and always looking to get higher. Sometimes he wouldn’t even respond to his own name. I once had to explain to him that he was Rubén and that’s why people who wanted to talk to him called his name. He was too high to understand me, though.
Anyway, thanks to Rubén, I attended my first rock concert. Led Zeppelin came to Chicago in January of 1975 and word was out that all the tickets would sell out immediately. We went to old Chicago Stadium box office about two hours before it opened at 10:00 a.m. We didn’t want to oversleep the time of the first ticket sales, so we stayed up all night drinking wine. We also contemplated doing immoral and illegal deeds, but we decided against that in order to buy the Led Zeppelin tickets without incident.
When we arrived at the ticket office at 8:00 a.m., we were tired, but determined to obtain tickets. I drove my 1975 Pontiac Firebird as close to the box office as the police permitted me. Rubén collected our ticket money and ran toward the Stadium like a deranged lunatic. Several policemen tried to stop him, but he dodged them, jumped onto the hood of their unmarked police car, then to the car roof, before leaping to the front of the ticket line. When he dissolved into the crowd, the police stop chasing him. We waited patiently for him in my Firebird that was parked a block away, but within view of the ticket office. An elderly woman, perhaps the grandmother of one of the expectant concertgoers, passed out hot chocolate from a thermos into Styrofoam cups. About four hours later, Rubén emerged from the ticket office with six concert tickets! We were going to see Led Zeppelin in concert!
When we went to the concert, I was shocked that everyone was smoking pot. I had never smoked pot in my life, but I got high just breathing in the concert air. I’ll never forget my first concert!
The last time I saw Rubén was at that Led Zeppelin concert, partying, getting high, and bouncing his head to the music. Years later, I heard that he was arrested several times for drug sales. He finally made the big time and was arrested for a million dollar drug bust. For me, he just vanished into the crowd of drug dealers and addicts, never to emerge again.
I finally went to Hooters for the first time in my life. Why? Would you believe I went for the chicken wings? All my friends who went to Hooters always say that they only go because they have the best chicken wing. We went to the one at 8225 W. Higgins Road in Chicago. Well, my high school friends wanted to get together for a little reunion. But we didn’t go to just any high school. We went to a Roman Catholic seminary! Divine Heart Seminary in Donaldson, Indiana. And there we were sitting in Hooters! By the way, the chicken wings did live up to their famous reputation. I even have a picture of me with a Hooters waitress. And that was before I started drinking. Now that I think of it, anyone who attended a seminary had to have considered becoming a priest at one time or another. It felt great to see everyone again. However, I’m not sure if I’ll ever go to Hooters again. Next time, we’re meeting at Chi Chi’s!
When I was at Holy Cross, Adam Mendez was my best friend in the first and second grades. Despite having a Spanish last name, he didn’t speak Spanish. I really don’t remember him when we were in kindergarten together, but I remember being happy to see him on the first day of the first grade. Then he failed the second grade, but I still saw him a lot at lunch and after school. We were classmates again when I failed the fourth grade because my mother took my brothers and me to Mexico for three months during the school year.
He was always funny and could make just about anybody laugh. He was the class clown and I always got in trouble for laughing at him. But he was so much fun that I didn’t mind. No matter what subject we were taught, Adam always found somethng funny to joke about and make the class laugh. In geography, he asked a lot of questions about Lake Titicaca, and in science, he purposely mispronounced the name of the planet Uranus.
We spent a lot of time together because we lived on the same block. Sometimes we would go to his house after school, but I would have to leave before his mother came home from work so she wouldn’t know I was there. One day, we were wrestling on his back porch and I accidentally broke the screendoor window as I was falling backwards. Adam told me I had to stay until his mother came home so I could tell her what had happened. He didn’t want to get in trouble for the broken window.
When I finally met his mother, I was surprised that she wasn’t Mexican. That explained why he didn’t speak Spanish. Anyway, she asked why I was there and I told her that I had accidentally broke the screendoor window. Since it was an accident, she told me to be more careful next time and go home.
One day, we must have been in the fourth grade, Adam tells me that he can sing a whole song in Spanish. Of course, I didn’t believe him since he couldn’t speak Spanish. He said, “I can prove it. Come to my house and I’ll show you.” So we go to his house and he pulls out an LP with some Mexican singer on the album cover. He smiles mischievously as he puts the record on the phonograph. He strikes a pose of the Mexican singer on the album cover before the music begins. Then he begins singing along with the record. He sings, “Te quiero, te quiero, te quiero, te quiero …” And that’s all he sang. The whole song consisted of only the words “Te quiero” and nothing else. But true to his word, had sung a whole song in Spanish. I had to laugh because he had tricked me again.
I don’t even remember his first name. But I always think of him whenever I play chess and/or drink a beer.
I met Alva when we were in the Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton, California. He was your typical Mexican from Texas. A true Texican. His first name was Rodolfo, but everyone called him by his surname. Alva was short and stocky, what would be called husky in the boy’s department. He was particularly handsome. In fact, he had one eye a little bigger than the other, his teeth were crooked, and he always had a bad haircut. What he lacked in looks, he made up for in personality. He was always the joker and he always had everyone in the shop laughing.
He retained the rank of private because he was always getting into trouble and so he would never get promoted. Drinking was at the root of all his problems. I never saw him sober even once. He was always drunk or suffering from a hangover. When we stood in formation, he would always teeter during inspection. I’m surprised that he never fell over at roll call because a few times he was leaning more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Despite all his flaws, he had a girlfriend whom he had met near the base. That is, until he got into a fight at the club and wasn’t allowed to leave the base for months. So he would drink at the club everyday, only leaving to check in with the sergeant.
Our superiors really came down hard on Alva. They controlled every aspect of his duty hours. We all thought they went beyond the call of duty. Finally, he told our commanding officer that he was tired of being harassed and he wanted everyone to leave him alone. He wanted to everything to go back to the way it was. He even told the CO that he had written his congressman. Why did Alva feel harassed? He would have to check in with the sergeant every hour just to make sure he was still on base.
One day, he went to the club to watch Monday Night Football and later returned emotionally distraught. He told us that the game was interrupted for a special announcement: John Lennon had been shot! None of us could believe it. But Alva was the one who was the most depressed by Lennon’s death. Alva seemed to drink less after that shocking assassination.
It was during this time that I learned about his special talent. He could play chess. That was surprising because he wasn’t the type of person who exuded intelligence of any sort. One day, he challenged all comers. He walked into the radio shop where we worked and announced, “Who’s the best chess player here? I challenge you to a chess match!”
Somehow he had heard that I used to play chess. It might have been from me because I used to like to tell people I used to like to play chess. I might have said that I used to play when I first arrived at Camp Pendleton and Alva remembered. He had a good memory. At first, I didn’t want to play because I hadn’t played since high school and I was afraid that if I started playing again I would get addicted to play chess again. But I couldn’t control myself and I accepted Alva’s challenge. Anyway, Alva won every game easily.
Eventually, I played chess with Alva regularly and he always beat me easily. To add insult to injury, he was always very drunk when we played. Okay, I was hooked. I wanted to beat Alva at chess. We played chess everyday in the shop. Whenever he made a particularly good move, he would say, “Don’t mess with Texas!”
I never beat him until I finally figured out his strategy! He had no strategy! He was always so drunk that he would only play the best move for the position. With each game we played, I improved my game. Finally, I figured out that if I planned my strategy at least five moves ahead, his best move for the position wouldn’t help him. Eventually, I was beating him on a regular basis. He wasn’t used to losing even though he never studied or practiced chess formally. He was truly amazed that anyone could beat him. And I was surprised that anyone so drunk could play chess so well. Oh, yes, and Alva’s congressman called up our commanding officer and Alva was no longer on restriction.
Chicago USA 