Tag: Back of the Yards

Hildago


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!

Everyone called him Hildago and he never corrected anyone. Years later, I discovered that his surname was actually Hidalgo, which is derived from the Spanish hijo de algo meaning someone with wealth.

I first met Hildago when I had my paper route. Later, when I was promoted to branch captain (Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?), I was his boss. He was Mexican, but he didn’t speak Spanish. Now that I think of it, he only kind of looked Mexican.

Hildago is one of those persons whom I often meet when I least expect to. I knew him as a paper boy. Then I didn’t seem him for years until I went to Tilden Technical High School. We were in an English class together where the teacher really didn’t teach anything and we talked the whole period or read comic books in class. That’s when I learned his real name. He was the one kid my mother told me to avoid. She just didn’t like him, for whatever reason I never found out. The more she tried to break up our friendship, the closer we got.

When we moved out of Back of the Yards to Marquette Park, I didn’t see Hildago for a couple of years. Once I started working and got a car, I started visiting him again. I guess he was a bad influence on me, but he made life much more fun. Because of him, I met my first wife Linda who was his cousin. When we were nineteen, Illinois lowered the drinking age to nineteen, so we used to drink wine and/or Southern Comfort together. I went to my first concert with him and two other friends. We used to go to discos together a lot. I can now see why mother was against our friendship. He really was a bad influence on me.

Hildago was quite unusual in that he made a lousy first impression, but he was very well liked by many people in the neighborhood. He was socially inept, but he always managed to impress people who needed to be impressed despite his various faux pas. When we were young men, he no longer looked Mexican. I mean, he had black hair, brown eyes, and perpetually tanned skinned, but he looked Filipino! Whenever we went out, a lot of Filipinas were attracted to him. He dated quite a few. I remember he dated one nurse whose husband was back in the Philippines. She was saving up enough money to go back to the Philippines, but she was lonely here in Chicago. So she dated my friend.

He eventually married a Filipina and when they had a daughter, they asked me to be the godfather. At first, I tried to turn down this great honor because I didn’t think I could fulfill the responsibilities of being a godfather. He told me that I would just have to show up for a few birthday parties and Christmas parties and then I could disappear. He insisted and then his wife insisted, so I agreed.

Then, they introduced me to the godmother with the hopes of starting a serious relationship between us. Well, the godmother was a Filipina named Lalin. We talked on the phone a few times before the baptism. Since she had just come from the Philippines, she didn’t speak English that well. We eventually spoke Spanish since she had studied it more than English. We seemed to get along fine. We never actually dated, though. After the baptism we never talked again. Hildago kept asking me what happened between us, but I told him that there wasn’t much chemistry between us. I was probably more interested in her than she was in me.

I lost track of Hildago again. Later, I invited him to my son’s birthday party and he came with his daughter, my god-daughter, whom I had not seen since she was very little. Then I didn’t see him again for years. But then I saw him at a K-Mart by my house. Just when I never expected to see him again. He told me it was my god-daughter’s eighteenth birthday, so he invited me to her party. I went and my god-daughter was happy to see me. Now that I think of it, I haven’t seen her since. But I warned Hildago in the first place that I wouldn’t be a good godfather.

DDR

Kung Fu


 

Dr. D in kung fu uniform

You’ve probably noticed the yin and yang symbol at the end of some of my blog posts. I’ve been meanig to explain why I use it, but I’ve always been hesitant to tell you. Well, now it can be told. Now that I’m feeling more comfortable with you, gentle reader, I’ll tell you. But you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone. Okay? Well … Okay, I believe that you won’t tell anyone. So here goes.

I didn’t want to go to Divine Heart Seminary, but my mother made me go anyway. While I was there, I kept telling her that I wanted to leave. Finally, she gave in and she said I could leave the seminary. However, she didn’t make any effort to get me into the Catholic high school of my choice, or any private school for that matter. We lived in Back of the Yards, so I had to go to a public high school. I went to Tilden Technical H.S. I was extremely unhappy there.

As bad as things were, I never regretted leaving the seminary. At that time, I was only five feet tall and weighed about eighty-seven pounds. I was the perfect target for bullies. Ever since I was little, I always fought back no matter who picked on me, regardless of the consequences. When I transferred to Gage Park High School, I was suspended quite a few times for defending myself. My mother yelled at me for having to miss work in order to get me reinstated in school. I told her that if she would have sent me to a Catholic high school, I wouldn’t be having those problems.

Oh yeah, my bedroom was in the unfinished attic of our house at 4405 S. Wood Street. That added to my overall happiness of my adolescence. My bedroom was hot and humid in the summer, and extremely cold in the winter. I spent a lot of time by myself in that room. I had a black light and fluorescent posters. I had my own black and white TV. I had a radio that I wired to every speaker that I found. I had surround sound before anyone else even invented it.

Okay, get ready. Here comes the part about kung fu. Are you ready? Well, here goes anyway. I hated getting picked on at school. And, I loved to watch TV every waking moment, especially all the comedies like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Laugh In, The Bill Cosby Show, The Flip Wilson Show, the Johnny Carson Show, among many others. If the TV show wasn’t a comedy, I didn’t watch it. With one notable exception. Kung Fu. There was something about that show that attracted me. Something that really moved me. I felt lonely, scared, defenseless, and scared. After watching Kung Fu, I learned to apply some of that philosophy to my life. Oh yeah, and I observed those martial arts techniques and learned to use them to defend myself at school and in the neighborhood. I never backed down from anyone. And everyone learned not to start trouble with me. I’m not saying I won many fights since I was smaller than most of the bullies, but I would cause enough pain and anguish to my assailant the he often thought twice before picking on me again. Once, a bully approached me to exact revenge from our previous encounter. I gave him a look that could only be interpreted as, “Bring it on!” He shook his head in disbelief and walked away.

The TV show Kung Fu actually changed my life. I started practicing kung fu religiously. I wanted to be one with the universe. I wanted to be Chinese!

My favorite TV show when I was in high school.

Well, I never became Chinese. Or even learned to speak Chinese. But I have gotten older and wiser. That last time I practiced kung fu? Oh, about forty pounds ago. But I always fondly recall David Carradine as Kwai Chang Cane or Grasshopper when he was known when he was a young boy in the Shaolin Temple back in China. But I still feel that I benefited from watching Kung Fu. So whenever I get philosophical, in my own unique way, I categorize my blog entry under Life and end it with the yin and yang symbol. Peace, love, and eternal cosmic wisdom!

Peoples Theater


Peoples Theater, Back of the Yards, Chicago, Illinois

Growing up in the Back of the Yards neighborhood had many advantages. One of them was the Peoples Theater at 1620 W. 47th Street where we went almost every weekend to see movies. I was really impressed by the theater because it seemed so classy to me. There were marble floors, marble walls, and even the restroom looked elegant with its marble floor and walls. The incongruous thing about the restroom was the fact that the rolls of toilet paper were securely bolted in place. Otherwise, people would either steal the whole roll of toilet paper or dump it into the toilet. I could never understand why anyone would dump a perfectly good roll of toilet paper into the toilet, but other public restrooms in the neighborhood that didn’t take such precautions actually had rolls of toilet paper in their toilets.

However, in my circle of young friends, there was an unwritten rule that you never used the sit-down toilets of a public restroom. Never! Never ever! Under no circumstances. You were supposed to hold your number two in and run home to the comfort of your own bathroom, hopefully in the nick of time.

In the auditorium of the theater, there were a lot of terra-cotta decorations. I used to stare at them while waiting for the movie to start. I was always fascinated by the ceiling way over my head. There was a giant oval recess that was always lighted. I would imagine different things while looking at it. But what I usually saw was the underside of a giant turtle. I imagined that it was in a huge overhead aquarium and I was always afraid that it break open from the weight of the giant turtle and that we would all drown under the huge waterfall. As you may have already divined, I now tell this story because no such disaster ever befell upon me!

For Christmas, Holy Cross School would have a special day for us to go to Peoples Theater to see a Christmas movie. We would get out of school for this special field trip a whole two blocks away from the school. We loved any event that allowed us to miss class!

During the week in the summer, my mother would take my younger brothers and me to Peoples Theater while my father was working. She used to like watching those romantic movies, which I found so boring when I was little. I believe we saw Gone with the Wind, Dr. Zhivago, and From Here to Eternity. Whenever the couple kissed, I thought the movie was over and I would pull my mother’s arm so we could go home. My mother only took us to the show when she wanted to see a movie. My father would take us even if it were a movie just for kids. Of course, he would sleep through the entire movie because he worked the midnight shift at Curtiss Candy, a candy factory underneath the old S-curve at Lake Shore Drive and the Chicago River that manufactured Butterfinger and Baby Ruth candy bars. The only time he really wanted to see a movie was when they showed Cecille B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments. Of course, he fell asleep through those movies, too. We usually only went to the matinée show on Saturday because the tickets were only fifty cents.

When I was a little older, I started going to the movies with just my brothers and no parents. As the oldest, I was in charge of taking care of them. When my brothers were older, we all went to the theater separately with our own friends. I went a lot with Adam Mendez or Patrick McDonnell. One day, Patrick invited me to go with him during the week. I told him I couldn’t go because I couldn’t afford the full price of the ticket. He told me that he had free passes for the theater. His father had told him where to get them. There was an insurance sales office near the theater that gave free passes to customers. Patrick, who was wise beyond his years, showed me where to go to get the free tickets. He made small talk with one of the insurance agents who asked how Patrick’s father was and he gave us two free passes to Peoples Theater. After that, we went to a show once a week during the week when the tickets cost full price and sometimes, we were able to sneak in to see some adult movies. However, they caught us when we tried to see Bonnie and Clyde with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and they made us leave.

One day when we went to the insurance office, the manager told us that they were going out of business, so he gave Patrick the whole packet of movie passes. If we liked a movie a lot, we would see it at least twice, oftentimes, more. When Patrick moved away, I inherited the packet of passes from him. Then, I used to go Peoples Theater with my brothers and my friend Adam. I remember that Adam and I really loved the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly so much that we saw it everyday for two weeks. And we never got tired of it. I saw many of my favorite movies there: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Born Losers (a biker movie), Flipper, and others that I can’t recall now.

I just had to buy the DVD!

When I was older, my mother sent me to see Irma Serrano at the Peoples Theater. My mother went to Mexico when Irma Serrano came to Chicago. She told me to tell Irma I was Carmen Rodriguez’s son. When I did, Irma invited me backstage, and I took pictures of her. I never did learn how my mother got to know Irma Serrano

Alas! Peoples Theater is no more! There is a Walgreen’s on the site now. But I will always remember Peoples Theater for all its terra-cotta decorations and marble walls and floors, even in the restroom! It was kind of like going to church every week.

DDR

Patrick McDonnell


Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to me!
Patrick, Adam Méndez, Delia, David, and Rick at my twelfth birthday party.

Patrick McDonnell was my best friend in the second, third, and fourth grades at Holy Cross School. He was the smartest kid I ever knew. He had moved to Back of the Yards in Chicago from Ireland with his father, his brothers James, Leon, and Michael, and his sisters Cora and Margaret. His mother had died in Ireland before they came to Chicago. They lived next door to the firehouse on the corner of 45th Street and Marshfield.

I loved going to his house after school because we had fun visiting the firemen. Since he was a year behind in school because of his move from Ireland, he was older and wiser than me. Whenever I needed the mysteries of the universe explained to me, Patrick was there to explain them to me so that even I understood them.

Once, we were standing in the crosswalk on the corner of 46th Street and Paulina. I was about to cross the street when he stretched his arm across my chest to prevent me from crossing. Much to my surprise, a car drove right in front of our path. I was so amazed that he knew the car was coming our way. “How did you know the car was turning?” I asked him. “I saw his turn signal,” he said. “What’s a turn signal?” I asked. And he explained the Rules of the Road to me, edifying me about another one of the mysteries of the world, as only Patrick could. He performed a visual reenactment of our incident with him as the car and his eyes as the turn signals. He said he knew the car was turning left because he saw a left turn signal. He then winked his left eye repeatedly to represent the car’s left turn signal. For some reason, I always remember Patrick’s freckled face reenacting the left turn signal.

When his family finally moved to the suburbs—I don’t remember which one—he came to my house to say good-bye. In retrospect, I should have gotten his new address and phone number. On the other hand, he didn’t ask me for mine, either.

Rubén


 

 

Would you believe I never took guitar lessons?
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.