When I was growing up, in an age before everyone tried to be politically correct, everyone told ethnic jokes. They were always insulting and mean-spirited to whatever group was targeted. Sure, some people were offended by these jokes, which only led to them being the target of more ethnic jokes. However, these jokes also brought a lot of joy and laughter among friends. For example, I worked in a peanut butter factory, named Derby Foods, with various ethnic groups who lived in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. In general, we all got along very well. Shirley, one of my Polish coworkers, loved to hear any kind of joke because she loved to laugh. Her real name was Ursula, but she preferred to be called Shirley. Anyway, she especially loved to hear Polish jokes. She always insisted that I tell her any new Polish joke that I heard. And when I didn’t learn any new jokes, she insisted that I retell her the old ones. Whenever I told her Mexican jokes, she told me she liked the Polish ones better. In this age of political correctness, I will not tell any Polish jokes lest I offend anyone. But I suppose it would be okay if I told some of the Mexican jokes that I still remember. I’m not doing this to propagate any negative stereotypes about Mexicans, but merely as a scientific exercise to preserve our humorous past. Now, I’m not saying that these jokes are funny anymore, but once upon a time, people laughed at these jokes. Some of them are quite dated. Okay, you have been forewarned!
Why can’t Mexicans be fireman? They don’t know the difference between José and Hose B.
Mexican weather report: Chili today. Hot tamale.
Why do Mexicans wear pointy shoes? To kill cockroaches in the corner.
What is the name of the Mexican telephone company? Taco Bell.
Why don’t Mexicans have barbecues? The beans keep falling through the grille.
How can you tell if you’re at a Mexican birthday party? There are more adults than children.
What do you call a Mexican basketball game? Juan on Juan.
What do you get when you cross a Mexican with an octopus? I don’t know, but boy can it pick lettuce!
Why doesn’t Mexico have an Olympic team? Because every Mexican who can run, jump, or swim is already in the U.S.
What do you call a Mexican in a BMW? A valet.
Upon further reflection, I retract the above listed jokes because they are in extremely bad taste. With apologies to Ursula, I mean, Shirley!
I’ve always loved comedy in any form since I was a boy. Of course, I loved all the old TV comedies like The Dick Van Dyke Show, the Honeymooners, and Laugh In, and the variety shows like the Carol Burnett Show and the Flip Wilson Show, but I especially loved watching the standup comedians like Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, Joan Rivers, and Phyllis Diller. I loved watching them so much that I wanted to be a comedian, too. For some strange reason, I would always remember every joke that I heard. Of course, I had trouble retaining my school lessons, like the multiplication tables. But I knew hundreds of jokes by the time I was a teenager. Other boys memorized baseball statistics from baseball cards or knew where all the pretty girls in the neighborhood lived. My friend Adrian could tell the year and make of any automobile just by looking at the taillights, the headlights, or the grille. When that became too easy for him, he graduated to airplanes. Anytime a plane flew overhead, he would tell us what kind of plane it was and what airlines used them. If no one stopped him, he would recite every statistic he knew about that plane. He even knew about military aircraft. But he still knew his cars as well.
Anyway, surrounded by friends like that, I wanted to find my niche, my very own specialty. Something in which I could indulge to the nth degree. In the immortal words of Tina Turner, I never do nothin’ nice ‘n’ easy! I decided that jokes would be my forte! When we went to the library, I would check out a joke book. Every Sunday, I would read the jokes religiously in the My Favorite Jokes section in the Parade Magazine that appeared in the Sunday paper. Since I didn’t speak English that well, learning all these jokes helped me improve my English. And I became one of the best spellers in the third grade even though I didn’t speak English all that well. My mother, who had the same love for jokes, and I would always tell each other the latest joke we had heard. I even read Reader’s Digest just for the jokes.
So, it’s no wonder that I became a standup comedian. However, I was always nervous on stage, even when I settled down and became comfortable. That’s one of the reasons I gave up performing. I would feel nervous for days before performing. That feeling would intensify while performing. And then, I wouldn’t get over my nervousness afterwards for days because I would think about all the mistakes I had made or things that I should have said. But that didn’t stop me in my quest to become funnier.
Funnier? I wanted to be the funniest comedian ever! That’s the way I am. When I do something, I must go all out. I don’t let my actual talent and limitations stop me. I know my limits because I cross them all the time. I wanted to become so funny as a standup comedian that I would make someone die from laughter! I fantasized about someday performing at the Chicago Theater and seeing my name on the marquis and an ambulance on standby parked in front. Yes, I thought I could be that funny!
And to that end, I watched every classic TV comedy show and every classic comedy movie ever made. But that wasn’t enough for me in my quest for killer comedy. I also read every humorous book I could find, usually by culling the bookshelves at one of the many used bookstores that we used to have in Chicago. I even bought a book autographed by Bob Hope for a dollar! I read a lot of comedy, humor, and joke books in my lifetime. Well, as usually happens to me whenever I read a book, while reading I discover at least two or three other books I must read. Especially with the comedians who are always thanking someone who positively influenced their comedic skills. So, let’s just say that I read a lot of funny books.
My favorite book of all time!
So, one day, I was invited to a party by my friend Mary McCall at her condominium at 400 E. Randolph. That’s the high-rise building with the pool covered by the glass geodesic dome that used to be located by the Lake Shore Drive S-curve until someone decided to straighten out the S-curve. The building is still there, but the S-curve is gone. Anyway, I met, just by chance, Aaron Freeman the comedian. Mary introduced me to him, but we already knew each other because we both had performed at the Clout Club, the comedy club founded by Jim Wiggins on North Lincoln Avenue in 1986. Aaron mentioned that there weren’t any funny books written. I couldn’t help it, but I had to disagree. “What about the classics?” I asked him. Aristophanes and Shakespeare wrote some very funny stuff. Cervantes was a very funny guy, too! Of course, Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye are also hilarious. I told him he had to read anything by some of the lesser-known humor writers, but equally as funny, such as Ring Lardner, Stephen Leacock, S.J. Perelman, James Thurber, Groucho Marx, Will Cuppy, Woody Allen, Dorothy Parker, Richard Armour, and Max Shulman. He said he would read them. I really enjoyed that conversation with him because I love talking about jokes and funny things that I have read. I never met Aaron again, so I haven’t been able to ask him if he ever read any of my suggestions and read any of those funny writers. Such is life.
My father always loved going to the Chicago Auto Show every year. He would go several times each year and he would always take my brothers, sister, and me the first time he went. He always managed to get free tickets either through work or some promotional event. Somehow, he always found free tickets and took us every year.
When I was older, he would go with just me so we could take our time and really look at all the cars. He loved looking at the cars and we loved collecting bags and bags full of automobile literature, pamphlets, key chains, and anything else they gave away there. My father was a mechanic at Curtiss Candy, so he loved to show off his knowledge of all things mechanical while we were at the auto show. So if they had a motor displaying the internal parts, my father would explain how the internal combustion engine worked. My brothers weren’t all that interested in his explanations, but I always tried to learn something new everytime we went to the auto show.
My father always fantasized about owning all the latest expensive sports cars. He would always insist that we sit inside the car, behind the wheel. Then, he would explain all the features of the car, as if he were a car salesman. My favorite part of the show was the celebrities who made appearances. They were so accessible to everyone. Usually all the Chicago sports teams such as the White Sox, the Bulls, the Bears, the Blackhawks, and the Cubs sent a few players to represent them. I don’t really remember exactly who specifically showed up, but I do remember that if you waited long enough after their presentation, you could walk right up to them, shake their hand, and talk to them. We would always wait to meet the celebrities, but I was too shy to actually talk to them. I was content with shaking their hand and standing close enough to listen to them talk to others. The only Chicago player I really remember meeting there was Walter Payton. I also remember meeting Jesse Owens who came every year. He was always so patient just standing there waiting for everyone who wanted to greet him.
And long after the auto show was over, we still had our bags of automotive literature to entertain us well into the summer.
There is this little Mexican church built in the Spanish Mission style in the Back of the Yards on the corner of 45th and Ashland. When I didn’t attend mass at Holy Cross Church, I went to Immaculate Heart of Mary where all the masses were in Spanish instead of Latin. I liked following the prayers in Spanish in the missal. I always wanted to learn Spanish formally, but this was as close as I got.
There used to be a rectory right on the corner when I was little, but it’s gone now. They added an addition to the back of the church where they put a baptismal font and my sister Delia and brother Joseph were baptized there. That was the only church that I saw at that time that had a crying room for the children in the back of all the pews. We never went in the crying room even though we belonged there on some Sundays because of our behavior.
Sometimes my brothers and I would start poking in each other behind my father’s back, and slowly intensify our physical agression until my father would scold us and finally hit us. And if we still continued, my father wouldn’t threaten to really hit us when we returned home. Of course, my father never hit us for anything, but he was a very devout Catholic and he thought we should listen to mass with our undivided attention. So once he threatened to hit us, he would follow through with it once we returned home. We really dreaded the trip home knowing that our father would hit us.
They had a social center in the middle of the block where we would sometimes go after school to play boardgames and basketball. I was an altar boy at Holy Cross Church, but not at Immaculate Heart. When a friend of the family got married, she asked the pastor of Immaculate Heart if my brother Tato and I could be her altar boys. This was the first time that we served in another church, but somehow, we managed to wing it. My favorite part about this parish was their annual carnival. Not so much because of the rides, but because of the Mexican food that they served. I went to the carnival every year, for every day of the carnival. My favorite drink there was atole. I just loved drinking it. And when I had drunk too much, I would stand next to stand that sold it and just inhale deeply so I could continue enjoying this atole.
I just finished typing up a handout for my Spanish class. I mainly put verb conjugations for whatever tense we studied in class and other pertinent grammatical lessons from the chapter that will appear on the exam. Whenever I make up these handouts, I always wonder why students ask me for them in the first place. All the information in the handout is already in the textbook.
I never needed any handouts when I studied for exams. If fact, when I make up the handout, I pretend that I’m a student studying for the exam, and I leaf throught the textbook in looking for things that might be on the exam. But for some unknown reason, students like to have the handout to study for the exam.
One student told me that she liked the handout so she could study on the train. I suppose that’s better than lugging around a textbook. But if the students study for exams, I’m all for passing out handouts. I think that the reason students want the handout is because they feel that it gives them an advantage.
Well, in this age of computers and video games, everyone wants to know how to beat the game, and to that end, a lot of players resort to cheats they find on the Internet. I think this is how my handout functions, as a sort of cheat to do better on the exam.
Well, as long as the students study and they do well on the exam, I’m happy to make up the handout for them. It’s not like I give them the answers. In fact, I put as much information as possible into that handout. Feel free to look at these handouts. The links are located at:
Chicago USA 