Tag: Tato

Many are cold, but few are frozen


Pilsen, Chicago, Illinois

I’ve heard a lot of complaints this winter about how much snow we’ve had in Chicago this winter and last. People are also complaining about how cold it’s been lately. Most of these complainers are either too young or haven’t lived in Chicago for very long. These are the cold, bitter winters that I remember as a boy! No, I won’t exaggerate about how cold and snowy winters were in Chicago in the days of yore. I don’t have to. Just recall the weather since December and you’ll see how much snow we used to have and how cold it used to be. Once you get used to the weather, you can still enjoy living in Chicago. There are much colder places than Chicago.

When I was a boy, I spent a lot of time outside during the winter. I delivered newspapers, shoveled sidewalks for money, played ice hockey, and occasionally, played baseball in the snow. We liked to do things that would make adults shake their heads at us. Like staying outside in the cold. The one thing I did learn–although accidentally–was to dress in layers. We didn’t have very much money for proper winter clothing such as down coats, wool socks or sweaters, or insulated gloves. One day, while ice skating at Davis Square Park across the street, I got cold, so I went home and put on some more pants and socks and shirts, eventually experimenting until I learned the correct number of layers to wear. I would wear two or three T-shirts, three or four pairs of pants, and four or five pairs of socks, depending on the temperature. When everyone else went into the park fieldhouse to warm up, I continued skating outside. I never got cold again once I learned to dress for the weather.

And I also taught my brothers how to dress properly for winter. One extremely cold, snowy winter, our school, Holy Cross School, had a fundraiser for which we had to sell Christmas cards door to door. There had been snow on the ground since Thanksgiving Day. Even though the sidewalks were shoveled, there was snow piled up everywhere where no one walked or drove. My brother Tato and I started knocking on doors trying to sell our Christmas cards–unsuccessfully. We were at the third house and the woman who answered the door told us she was not interested in buying Christmas cards. So, we turned around and started walking down her front porch stairs. When I reached the sidewalk at the bottom of the wooden stairs, I heard my brother Tato slip on the ice and fall down the stairs. I checked to see if my brother was okay, and I helped him up. The woman who was watching us through the front window opened the door and called us back up to the porch. “I’ll buy a box of Christmas cards,” she said. Well, we sold her a box of Christmas cards and went on our merry way to the next house. This woman also refused to buy Christmas cards from us. As we were walking down her front porch, Tato again “fell” down the stairs. Of course, the woman called us back and bought a box of Christmas cards from us. We persisted with our sales pitch until we sold all our Christmas cards. In fact, the next day, we asked Sister Cecilia for more Christmas cards for us to sell. She was surprised that we could sell that many Christmas cards!

DDR

Lupita


Lupita is the nickname for Guadalupe

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.

DDR

Doctor Tato


Danny, David, Dicky, and Tato.

When we were little, my father took us to the Shedd Aquarium not only because it was an educational trip, but also because it was economical. In fact, there was no admission charge back then. We spent the entire day there and saw every fish, shark, eel, turtle, and every form of sea life that was on display at that aquarium. I liked the transparent fish, while my brothers liked the fish that glowed in the dark. What my father liked the most were the tadpoles. Tadpoles! Well, in Spanish, tadpole is el sapo. Just hold that thought for a while. El sapo. I’ll get back to it.

But first I must explain about how my parents named their sons, meaning my brothers and me. When I was born my father wanted me to be named Diego after him. My parents always told me conflicting versions of this naming process. But my guess is that neither version is completely true. My mother did not want her firstborn son to be named Diego. Especially since my father’s name was also Diego. Let’s not get into the psychoanalysis of my mother just yet. We’ll save that for another day. Anyway, the best my father could negotiate in the naming rights was for me to be named David Diego Rodríguez. At least, his firstborn son had his name in there somewhere. Brother number two was born, and he was named Daniel Rodríguez. WITH NO MIDDLE NAME! I never received any conflicting stories about this naming ritual between my parents, but I attribute it to the fact that we were much poorer by the time Daniel was born and my parents couldn’t afford to give him a middle name. Then brother number three was born, and he was named Diego! No explanation is necessary! Right? My father had finally won an argument in the great Naming of the Sons debate. My third brother was named Diego Gerardo Rodríguez. From that day forward, Diego was my father’s favorite son! And my father was not discreet about showing his favoritism towards my brother Diego.

Well, going back to the Shedd Aquarium, when my father saw the tadpoles, he turned his head and said, “El sapo.” But he was now looking at my brother Diego. “Diego is my sapo!” From that day on, my father called him, “mi sapo, mi sapito,” etcetera. Everyone started calling him Sapo, even his friends. The only one who didn’t call him Sapo was my youngest brother Dicky. (How did he get that name? That’s a long story for another day!) He couldn’t say Sapo, no matter how hard he tried. His four-year-old mouth twisted and contorted whenever he attempted to pronounce Sapo. But all he could utter was Tato. We thought it was so funny that we started calling my brother Diego, Tato. After a while even my father called him Tato. Everyone loved this new nickname except Tato, but the nickname stuck. We didn’t know of anyone else in the neighborhood or Mexico who was also called Tato.

Tato was unique! Until one day, my brothers and I heard the song “Coconut” by Harry Nilsson on the radio. The song where “she put the lime in the coconut, she drank ’em both up.” Well, toward the end of the song, the words to chorus, “Doctor, ain’t there nothin’ I can take, I said / Doctor, to relieve this bellyache,” are slurred slightly by the singer so that Doctor sounds like Tato. You can clearly hear the singer sing, “I said, Tato” several times! My brother was world-famous in our neighborhood!!! We would often tell my brother as if we were singing the song, “I said, Tato, is there nothing I can take?” This was certainly much closer to his name than the Fred Astaire song, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” in which he sings, “You say tomato, I say tomahto / You eat potato, I eat potahto.” Tato was in the Astaire song only if you forced it out, but in “Put the Lime in the Coconut,” Tato is there, loud and clear. It was a proud moment for our family, but especially for my brother Tato.

DDR