Abuelito paterno


Eutimio Rodriguez
El Carmen Mueblería

I actually met my paternal grandfather when I was little and went to his funeral when he died in 1965. I didn’t know him very well, but I heard some stories about him that were not very flattering. My mother told me that he was very mean to me when I was little, but I don’t really remember how he treated me. When my Uncle Plácido became a bishop, I remember reading in his biography that my grandfather had to escape political persecution. I’m not sure where the truth lies. When I was in Celaya, Guanajuato, on my trip to México, my tío Eutimio told me that his father Eutimio Rodríguez Cárdenas, a distant cousin to President Lázaro Cárdenas, met one of the president’s cousins and they didn’t like each other. But other than that, there really was no trouble between them. My tío Timio was the only one from my grandfather’s family to stay in México when all the other family members eventually moved to America.

My grandfather had owned a furniture shop that made furniture to order. The shop was called Mueblería del Carmen because it was located near la Catedral El Carmen in downtown Celaya. He gave the furniture shop to my tío Timio and my grandfather went to America for about a year. While there, he met a priest named Father Thomas Matin, CMF. My parents met Father Thomas in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and he would eventually become my godfather.

My grandfather promised Father Thomas some furniture if he could arrange U.S. citizenship papers for my grandfather. So, my tío Timio ran the mueblería while his father lived and worked in America. When my grandfather returned to Celaya, he locked himself in his room for days at a time. My tío Timio ran the shop and business was booming. All the profits belonged to my tío Timio since he was now the proprietor. Soon, the shop received a government order for chairs with a round backrest, but they wanted high-quality chairs and in a very short time. My uncle took the order even though he wasn’t sure he could complete it in such a brief time. My grandfather came out of his room and worked in the shop. In order to complete the chairs on time, my uncle devised a mold so that he could cut the rounded backrests four at a time. My grandfather didn’t think the mold would work and told his son that. Well, they had to finish the chairs on time in order to gain more business. My grandfather couldn’t work with the mold and his chairs kept breaking. So, he locked himself in his room again. My uncle finished the order with plenty of time to spare and the government agent was extremely surprised. He said that he should have given him the rest of the order that they gave to another shop. However, they weren’t even half-done with the order yet.

My uncle was paid handsomely for his work, and he gained a lot more furniture orders as his reputation increased. My grandfather took the profits from this enterprise and used the money to go to America. He also took the furniture that his son Timio had made and took it to Father Thomas. If it weren’t for tío Timio, my grandfather and his sons wouldn’t have had enough money to go the U.S. I wouldn’t have been born in the U.S.

DDR

Azteca Tacos


The ambience makes up for the sinking seats.

My favorite all-time Mexican restaurant is Azteca Tacos in Pilsen, 1836 S. Blue Island Avenue, Chicago, IL 60608, 312.733.0219

I’ve eaten there many times over many years. I was still in high school the very first time I ate there. My father and I went to the Fiesta del Sol when it was still on Blue Island Avenue. Rather than eating at one of the vendors from the fiesta, we went to Azteca Tacos and ordered our food through the window with wrought iron grating as we stood on the sidewalk.

It was kind of like eating at a restaurant in México. Authentic Mexican food is served by authentic Mexicans. The food is so delicious–¡Riquísima!–and they serve you large portions. It’s like being in México. Street merchants walk in to sell you everything from chiclets to blankets. Once an elderly man came in with a boom box and a book with a list of songs in Spanish. I picked two songs that I recognized and he sang them for us. I paid him $10 and he left the restaurant with a smile.

I like going there with my friends because it’s a nice place to hang out for a few drinks. Granted, it doesn’t look like a luxury restaurant, the seats in the booths are worn down a little, and the bathrooms remind me of México, but the food and the ambience make up for everything else. You have to go there at least once in your lifetime!

DDR

Chess


 

I can't believe my mother let me grow my hair this long!
I can’t believe my mother let me grow my hair this long!

When I was in high school, I met my friend Jim Harmon in physics class. We really didn’t learn much physics because Mr. Wlecke the teacher didn’t really teach much in the way of physics. He would sometimes make a half-hearted attempt at teaching us something, but then he would lose his focus and stop. My friend Jim always carried a chess set wherever he went. So one day, after Mr. Wlecke inexplicably stopped teaching, Jim challenged me to a game of chess. I accepted, but explained that I only knew how the pieces moved and that I wasn’t very good. We played anyway and Jim won–of course. From then on, we always played chess in physics class and at lunch sometimes. Once Mr. Wlecke missed class and the substitute teacher was surprised to see Jim and I playing chess in class. I told him we played chess in class everyday, but he didn’t believe me. I slowly but surely improved my game of chess. Jim later talked me into joining the chess team. I later learned that Jim was the best player on the chess team.

I became obsessed by chess. I loved playing on the chess team! I studied the chess books that the chess coach Mr. Crowe had lent us. I even bought chess books of my own. When I decide to dedicate myself to something, I go way above and beyond the call of duty! I really improved as a chess player. I wanted nothing less than to be first board on the chess team. Eventually, I played well enough to play first board, but then I lost my game at the match and I never played first board again. This failure only drove me to study chess even more diligently!

Soon after joining the Gage Park H.S. chess team, we went to the La Salle Hotel downtown to play in chess tournaments sponsored by the Chicago Chess Club. I really wanted to win a chess trophy. All my brothers had various trophies for different sports, but I was the only one in the family without a trophy of any kind. So I spent every free moment studying and breathing chess. I won more and more of my practice games. I even beat my uncle at chess even after he stopped letting me win. One day, I did win my division in a tournament. I was the 1974 Northern Illinois High School Novice Unrated Champion! I know this is the exact title because I’m looking at the trophy as I write this. However, as luck would have it, the trophies were not delivered to the tournament on time because the trophy factory had burned down the previous week. These eerie coincidences have happened to me throughout my life. I’m used to them now. None of my friends went to that tournament, so no one believed me that I had actually won a trophy. Especially my mother! She almost didn’t give me the $6 for the then astronomical entry fee to enter the tournament. I was told I would receive my trophy in the mail within four weeks, by February of 1974. Well, it didn’t come until May! And then, finally everyone believed me that I had actually won a trophy. And it was bigger than any of the trophies that my brothers had won. Even my mother had to believe me then!

Abuelito materno


Mi abuelito

My maternal grandfather, José Guillermo Martínez, is another family mystery. My mother told me several stories about him, but I’m not sure if any of them were true. Although they may be based on truth, my mother embellished them beyond recognition. My cousin and I compared stories when I was in Mexico and all the stories seem to be plausible to a certain extent.

My mother absolutely loved her father, and many things often reminded her of him. She would tell me about him on these occasions. I really believed all these stories for most of my life.

When I began playing chess religiously in high school, she told me that I reminded her of her father because he always loved to play chess. People would always go to visit him so they could play him at chess. One day, my mother asked me what the highest chess ranking was. I told her chess grandmaster. She then said, “That’s what my father was! A grandmaster!” I was truly proud of this fact! No wonder I suddenly developed this interest in chess. It was in my genes.

I started bragging about this little interesting tidbit about my grandfather to my chess friends. My friend Jim asked me what my grandfather’s name was, so I told him. A few days later, he gently broke the news to me. My grandfather was never a chess grandmaster, or even a master. Jim had looked up the names of all chess masters and grandmasters who had ever lived. If my grandfather were really a chess grandmaster, his name would have appeared on one of those lists. I was so embarrassed. I told my mother about this little discrepancy in her story, and she brushed it off as if it were nothing. I told this story to my cousin in Mexico, and she had heard that our grandfather did like to play chess but didn’t know much else about his chess career.

My mother also told me that her father’s father had come to Mexico from Ireland during a potato famine. His surname was either McLean or McLin, but she really wasn’t sure. Well, he met a Mexican girl, and when she got pregnant, they killed him. That’s what my mother told me when I was a boy.

My cousin had never even heard this story. She had heard that he was possibly Jewish and possibly from Germany. He had studied electrical engineering and had many books on the subject in German. He also knew various languages. My cousin’s mother told her that they called my mother and her sisters, las judías, again suggesting that my grandfather was possibly Jewish.

When my grandfather was on his deathbed, my mother flew to México from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to be with him. I went, too, but I was still a baby in my mother’s arms. My mother was so concerned about his spiritual well-being in the afterlife that she told her father that she would get him a priest to administer him his last rites. My grandfather indicated that he didn’t need a priest and said, “If he comes, I’ll talk to him. But I won’t confess.” My mother never told me that story.

DDR

My American accent


Sombrero in a Chicago restaurant.

I am bilingual. I know Spanish and English. I like to think that I speak, read, and write two languages very, very fluently. However, I always have the vague feeling that I don’t communicate like a native speaker in either language. Sometimes people tell me that I speak English with an accent, which I don’t doubt at all.

As I was driving through to Mexico to visit my family, I had no trouble communicating with anyone. Except at the border where I applied for an auto permit to drive in Mexico. The clerk asked me something that I didn’t understand. She repeated it three times, but I understood everything else she said, except for one word. She asked if I drove a Pontiac. But she pronounced Pontiac in Spanish, and I didn’t recognize the word immediately. Finally, her colleague pronounced Pontiac in English and I understood. This taught me that I had to adjust my way of listening since I would be listening to different dialects.

Once I reached Celaya, I had no trouble communicating with anyone. I met my family, and we understood each other perfectly. Ditto for my relatives in Mexico City. They mentioned other family members who had come from the U.S. who spoke no Spanish at all. However, a few relatives discreetly mentioned my accent, of which I have always been painfully aware. I wanted to buy some Mexican T-shirts for my sons at the mercado and my cousin told me to be quiet and she would do the haggling. If they heard me speak, they would think I was tourist, and we wouldn’t get a fair price. On the one hand, I had an American accent, but on the other, several people mentioned that I spoke Spanish extremely well. Well, that’s me to a tee. I abound in paradoxes. I speak Spanish with an accent, but very well. A few people mentioned that I stuttered through plenty of conversations while speaking Spanish. I pointed out that I stutter in English, too. But I was incredibly happy that I could communicate in Spanish in Mexico!

DDR