Today hundreds of bicyclists rode naked on the Paseo de la Reforma all the way to the Zócalo, the main plaza of Mexico City. They rode naked so that drivers would see them. The government is encouraging more people to go green and ride bicycles, but there aren’t many bike lanes, and the drivers don’t respect cyclists. Most people think of Mexicans as being very conservative, but once again they took off their clothes for a cause. No word on whether they wore helmets. Amazingly, I didn’t find any pictures of the bike ride on the Internet.
I remember last year when a photographer wanted to break the Guinness record for the most nude people in a photograph. He succeeded in breaking the record by putting ads in the Mexican newspapers and asking volunteers to come to the Zócalo to pose nude. He easily broke the record!
My bedroom at 3006 W. 64th Street, Chicago, Illinois
When I was growing up, I never had my own bedroom. I always had to share my room with at least one brother. I remember the bedroom we had on Wood Street. We had two sets of bunkbeds for the four of us. I always liked sleeping on the top bunk just to be away from everyone, even if it was only temporarily. Sometimes it was the only privacy I had.
When my parents started to really argue right before getting divorced, my mother moved her bedroom to the attic and gave me her bedroom all to myself. I felt bad because then my father didn’t have a bedroom, but he wanted me to have the bedroom for myself. He told me that he didn’t need a bedroom. My father worked the midnight shift, and he would sleep on the sofa while we were at school. He was upset that his marriage was breaking up.
Well, this new bedroom of mine was the first time I ever had my own bedroom, and I just loved the privacy! The doors even had a working lock because my mother had put it there to keep my brothers and me out. So, I used to lock my bedroom whenever I went to school. That was my very own private kingdom. I would always find things right where I left them! My brother Danny couldn’t borrow my hockey shin guards without my permission. Dicky couldn’t sell my stuff when I wasn’t home. Tato was the only one I could trust because we did many things together ever since he started helping me with my paper route. We were business associates. I also had a chameleon in my room that liked to hang on the red drapes and blend in.
When I went away to Divine Heart Seminary my freshman year, I lost my private bedroom. My father had moved out of our house on Wood Street due to their separation and pending divorce.
When I returned from Divine Heart a year and a half later, my new bedroom was in the attic, which was unfinished, unheated, unfurnished, and had no running water. The bedroom that my mother had for herself in the attic was very livable, but it was off limits to me. That was my mother’s emergency bedroom. Just in case. Just in case of what, I never did learn.
My father would only return to the house to take us out for a visitation. So, I was relegated to the rear of the drafty attic. My mother had found a stowaway bed in the alley, and she came to get me so I could help her put it in the attic. At first, I didn’t know why she called me. When we were in the alley, she said that we were putting the bed in the back of her VW Squareback. I had seen a dog urinating on it early in the day and I told my mother so. She told me to just help her take it home because that was going to be my bed in the attic.
Well, ever the optimist, I was happy to have my very own room again. I stuffed newspaper into the cracks between the roof and the wall to stop the wind from coming in during the winter. My mother and I installed a gas space heater to make the attic bearable during the winter, but it was still cold anyway. Luckily, I had been in the Explorers Club where I learned how to camp during winter weather. I used to sleep in my mummy sleeping bag with two wool blankets. I was quite comfortable even on the coldest nights.
I used my guitar amplifier to create surround sound in the attic by hooking up every speaker I ever found to my radio and 8-track player. I set up a little table with a manual typewriter and I used to type away for hours. And the final touch was my favorite. I bought a black light and some flourescent posters of M.C. Escher drawings that were so popular in the 1960s and 1970s. I always kept the black light on as a night light. Otherwise, I would crash into the roof beams and bang my head so hard that I would have large lumps. (That’s why I’m so hard-headed to this day.) And just when I had my bedroomm exactly as I wanted it, my parents’s divorce was final and my mother bought a new house in Marquette Park and we had to move.
When I think of all the bedrooms that I have ever had, my favorite one had to be the one at the house on Marquette Road. I went from one extreme to the other. From a cold drafty bedroom in the attic to a bedroom in the basement next to the boiler.
I actually started sleeping in my birthday suit for the first time in my life because the bedroom was so hot. This bedroom wasn’t actually just mine and mine alone, but rather a room I shared with Danny, Tato, and Dicky. But as they went off to Divine Heart Seminary one by one, the room became mine alone while they were away at school. But before they left, we painted the room completely black. We also painted the windows black, so the bedroom was completely dark. However, I brought the black light from my previous bedroom and put it up, along with the flourescent M.C. Escher posters that I had. My brothers bought more flourescent posters that practically lit up the whole room.
That room was perfect for sleeping! In fact, I couldn’t tell when the sun rose because the room was so dark. The only thing I really hated about the room was the concrete floor that wasn’t level. It looked deceivingly level, but if you put a ball on the floor it would immediately start rolling. The dressers were practically useless in that vortex of a bedroom because of the uneven floors. The drawers wouldn’t open or close properly because the dresser would become misshapen because of the floor. When the basement became very humid, the drawers would just freeze in whatever position they were in.
But as I said, the room was perfect for sleeping because it was so dark. The black light was perpetually on. It was the perfect mood lighting. All the posters were very comforting. I even got used to waking up in the middle of the night and looking at the one of the Satan-like creature with pterodactyl-like wings flying off with a baby in its talons into the flourescent orange sky. One of my brothers bought that poster.
My mother no longer used her portable AM/FM/8-Track player, so I used it for mood music while I slept. I especially loved the 8-Track player. Sure the sound quality didn’t compare to other stereos, but it had the distinct advantage of being able to play good music over and over and over again.
The most annoying part was when the looped tape would reach the beginning/end marked by a slilver strip that would change tracks. It would make a sound similar to the clack-clack-clack of a roller coaster as it ascends the first hill. Only it was duller and it sounded like wood thumping on wood.
I remember listening to these 8-Tracks repeatedly through high school: Led Zeppelin III, Black Sabbath Paranoid, Yes Fragile, Deep Purple Machine Head, and Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy. And when they wore out and broke from being over played, I would buy a new copy of to replace the faulty 8-Track. Amazingly, the 8-Track player never broke!
When I taught Spanish at Richard J. Daley College on the south side, the department sure made me earn my money. They got more than their money’s worth from me if you ask me. The ideal size for a Spanish class should be somewhere around fifteen students, but less would be even better. At Daley College, my small class had twenty-five students and my large class had forty-five. I was constantly correcting homework, quizzes, and exams. When I have such a large enrollment, I usually don’t notice individual students unless they are performing extremely well or extremely poorly.
One day, Lois came into my office during office hours. I was surprised since students do not normally visit me during office hours. I would like to attribute this to the fact that I’m a great Spanish teacher, but the sad reality is that students who really need my help are either too busy or too lazy to visit me for help. I knew of Lois that semester because she had failed every quiz thus far. At least she came to me for help early in the semester. She was an African-American single mother. As I soon found out, she was also on welfare, but the state required her to take classes or lose her welfare benefits. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be in college.
She said she was really trying, but I didn’t believe her. She said Spanish was too hard for her. She had not completed even one homework assignment. She gave me a lot reasons for her poor performance, but I told her that those were just excuses. She told me that she had no time to do her homework. “What’s the next item on your agenda?” I asked her. Well, she had to pick up her children from school in two hours. I told her to sit down and start doing her homework. If she had any problems, I would answer her questions.
Slowly but surely, she finished her first homework assignment. Sure, I had to help her, but she caught on rather quickly. She didn’t think she was smart enough to do the homework. She came to my office a few more times to do her homework and soon she was doing all the homework without my help. She started passing the quizzes and eventually earned a B- for final grade of the course. I was quite proud of her. She was only defeating herself until I showed her that she had the capacity to do college work. I’m sure she eventually graduated from college because she was so determined after that semester.
Duke was the best dog that our family ever had. When we lived at 4405 S. Wood Street, he followed my brothers and me home from school. He really did. At first, he followed us at a distance and that was fine with us because we weren’t sure if he would bite us. He was already full-grown, and he was at least part Golden Retriever and maybe a little bit German Shepard and Chow Chow. We were sure that, since Duke got along well with the whole family, he probably was also part Mexican.
He followed us into our backyard, and we went into the house. When we looked out the window later, he was still there. We gave him some bologna and went back inside. The next day, he followed us home again and we gave him some milk this time. He let us pet him and he seemed very friendly. He was too clean to be a stray dog and he didn’t have the battle scars of street dogs, but he didn’t have a collar or dog tags either. We never let him into the house because we knew our mother would get mad at us. But Duke kept following us home after school. He knew what time we got out of school, and he would meet us at the corner of our block and follow us home so we could give him something to eat.
One day, my mother came home from work and asked us about the dog on the back porch. “What dog on the back porch?” I asked, knowing we were about to get in trouble. We didn’t admit to anything. Eventually, my mother brought Duke into the house, and we all started playing with him. He was happy with us and never even growled when my little sister pulled his ears or fur. We asked our mother if we could keep it, but she said he belonged to someone else and they would eventually want him back. We could keep him until someone claimed him.
We were so happy to have a dog again. And the good news was that he was already house broken. At first, my mother would open the door to let Duke go out by himself thinking that he would eventually go to his real home. But he always came back. After a while, I started walking him without a leash. He always stayed close to me, and he would never run away. I walked him all over the neighborhood so that Duke would recognize his original home, but we never found his original owner. Soon I knew I was Duke’s master because one of the neighborhood bullies threatened me with Duke at my side and Duke growled at him ready to defend me.
Duke had some pretty good street cred, too, because when other dogs would see him, they would run away. I didn’t need a leash to control Duke because he so obedient that he listened to my every command. However, he loved to chase squirrels, but he would only do say when I gave him permission. Whenever he saw a squirrel at a distance, he ears would perk up and he would growl, but he would stay by my side until I said, “Go get him, Duke!” And he would run at full speed toward the squirrel. He never once caught a squirrel because the squirrels were usually too far away from us and too close to a tree that they climbed to escape. Only once did I think that Duke would actually catch a squirrel in his mouth. He was rapidly closing in on a squirrel that was foolish enough to try to outrun Duke instead of climbing a tree. I think that Duke slowed down to give the squirrel a running chance and the squirrel got away.
When we moved to 2509 W. Marquette Road, Duke moved with us. By then, he was part of our family. Somehow, I remained Duke’s master. My brothers and I had to be careful when we wrestled because Duke would attempt to bite my brothers in my defense. Even after I married and moved away from my mother’s house. Once I was visiting and I started wrestling with Tato, my brother Jerry, in the basement just like in the good old days. Duke just stood there watching. He was a lot older now and he didn’t growl at my brother as he once did. Well, I could still out-wrestle all my brothers even though we were all about the same size now. I managed to throw my brother down on his back on the sofa. I jokingly said, “Sic him!” and Duke ran and bit my brother’s face. I really didn’t think he would attack my brother. I immediately grabbed Duke by his collar, and he finally calmed down. My brother had some puncture wounds on his face from being bitten a few times. I apologized profusely to my brother. Neither one of us thought Duke would attack. But he did. I was still his master even though I had lived away from him for about a year. I still feel bad about this even now as I described the incident.
Duke lived to be incredibly old, but we never knew his exact age since he was already full-grown when he started living with us. Eventually, he had so many health problems that my sister had him put to sleep. He was such a great dog that I can still visualize him.
I only knew her as Lupita. I was incredibly young, about six years old, when one day she appeared in our lives in the Back of the Yards. She used to take care of us when my parents went to work. She looked like most Mexicanas of that era in the 1960s: long black hair, brown eyes, short, and pleasingly plump. Since I was so young, I’m not even sure how old she was, but I’m fairly sure that she was older than my mother who was in her twenties at the time. She spoke very little English with a heavy Mexican accent, even less than my parents. She was single and had no children of her own. Even though we were children, we always called her Lupita, just plain old Lupita, nothing more formal than that. Now that I think of it, Mexican children were always taught to call an adult woman Señora or Señorita plus her last name. Now I’m wondering why we even called her Lupita, just Lupita. Anyway, I’m not sure how my mother met Lupita, but it may have been at a factory where they both worked. Back then, factory jobs were plentiful, and when someone got tired of doing the same job for too long or they just got tired of their coworkers or bosses, they would just quit and find another factory job almost immediately.
Before Dicky was born, my brother Danny had to go to the doctor at Cook County Hospital a lot because he had osteoporosis in his right arm. My parents would take Danny and my younger brother Tato (Diego) to the hospital and Lupita would take me to her house on the bus. She lived about two miles north of us, which seemed like a long, adventurous trek to me back then. We would take the Ashland Avenue bus (Number 9, I think). Many of the buses were still electric then, and there were overhead wires to provide the electricity. Many parts of Ashland Avenue were still paved with cobblestones. I would take my train set that I received for my birthday or Christmas–I don’t remember which. At her house, Lupita would clean her house and when she was done, she would read novelas, which were books that were printed in sepia-colored ink that told soap-opera-like stories but looked like comic books. I would play with my train set that entertained me for hours at a time! It consisted of a locomotive, two boxcars, a caboose, and a small circular track. Most children my age would have been bored by it, but not me! The train set also came with some small wooden barrels that I would put under the tracks to create a “hill.” I could while away the hours just by positioning these barrels in every imaginable position! When I had accomplished that, I liked to experiment with the sequence of the locomotive and boxcars and caboose. I was so easily amused back then! Oh, wait a minute! I haven’t changed all that much since then. I’m still easily amused!
Well, when my brother Danny was better and no longer had to go to the hospital, Lupita would babysit us at our apartment after school. She genuinely enjoyed being with us. My brothers and I would play well together, but she would get nervous when we wrestled. We loved to wrestle. Since I was the oldest and biggest brother, I always won. The last match would involve Danny, Tato, and Dicky wrestling against me. I always won! I would pile them up, one on top of the other, and then pin them down for the count. Lupita was so afraid that we would hurt each other that she would stop us from wrestling. She always stopped us from having too much fun. Like the time we were throwing my mother’s records out the back window like frisbees. Or the time we used my grandfather’s encyclopedia from Mexico to build a fortress wall. I told Lupita that my mother always let us use the encyclopedia to build a fortress, but she didn’t believe me and made us put the tomes back on the shelf.
She never talked much, but she always sat in the living room with us. If we went to our bedroom and we were too quiet for too long, she would come to see what we were doing. Once, my brothers and I were in the bedroom just reading comic books, but she made us go into the living room with her. She didn’t trust us. And with good reason! We once gave her a really good scare. We were reading comic books in our room, and she didn’t check up on us. When we read comic books, we became our favorite comic-book heroes. I was Spiderman, Danny was the Silver Surfer, Tato was the Torch, and Dicky was Batman. Well, once, Dicky felt the power of Batman coursing through his veins and he dove headfirst into the air shouting, “I’m Batman!” However, he didn’t fly very far. His head hit the dresser drawer handle, which had pointed ends, and he had a huge gash from his forehead to the back of his head. Dicky screamed from the pain, and we just stood there silently not knowing what to do. Lupita came running to the bedroom and she almost fainted when she saw Dicky bleeding from his forehead. She picked him up, carried him to the sofa, and stopped the bleeding by putting a warm, wet towel on his head. My parents came home shortly after that and took him to the hospital where they closed the gash with twenty-seven stitches. Lupita stayed to watch Danny, Tato, and me while my parents and Dicky went to the hospital. We just sat there quietly in the living room with Lupita until they came back from the hospital.
I don’t remember the last time we saw Lupita. She was always a part of our family, but suddenly one day she just wasn’t there anymore.
Chicago USA 