Boston

By kiki

The Boston Marathon bombing brought back memories from my travel to the "Cradle of Liberty" city. In 1973, as head coach of the 1973 Los Angeles Golden Gloves Team, I traveled with the team to Boston for the National Golden Gloves Tournament.

We arrived at Boston's Logan International Airport on a Sunday for the week-long tournament. A bus was waiting for us to take us to a hotel in Lawrence, which is north of Boston. The tournament was held in Lowell, which is northwest of Boston.

After the first night of boxing, I went to a pizza joint, and as soon as I walked through the door of the joint, a gentleman in his late 50s approached me and said: "you are Mexican or Mexican-American, right?" I told him that, yes, I was a Mexican-American from Los Angeles, California. He then proceeded to tell me his name, don't remember it now, and how he ended up in Boston after WWII. Said that he was from New Mexico and that he too was Mexican-American, could have fooled me; he was whiter than some gabacho's I know, Said that during the war, he was station in Boston with the US Navy, and that he had met a local girl, married her and stayed in Boston. He told me how happy he was to see a follow Mexican-American because there weren't many in Boston. Met his family, wife, and grown-up children. He wouldn't let me pay for my dinner, which was okay with me. Later in the week, he had me over to his house for dinner with him and his family. And he was a cop!

One night I was at the hotel bar, which was slow in action. I asked a guy drinking at the bar if he knew of some nightclubs where a guy could go dancing. He looked me over and said, "for you, about five miles down the highway" I drove the five miles and ended up in a Puerto Rican neighborhood. I didn't stop, too many PRs in the street, went back to the hotel to sleep instead. Was that dude racist or what?

Mid-week we had a day off from boxing. A couple with us asked me if I would like to go to Salem and see the Witch Houses. So I did, but I was disappointed; I didn't see any witches.

Tournament over, we were coming home with one national champion "Roy Hollis."

Checking in for our flight back home at Logan, a lady working the check-in counter said to me, "you are Chicano, so am I" She then told me she was from Texas but had moved to Boston; I asked her why, but she wouldn't tell me. I think she was on the lam from a husband or a boyfriend!

Flying back home on a 747, a bar was set up on a counter in mid-plane. On top of the counter was a small galvanized tub full of 6oz cans of Coors beer in ice. A flight attendant was selling the Coors for fifty cents a can. I think she was drinking more than she was selling because she started acting like she was at a party, kinda wild!! I parked myself next to the beer tub and drank for free, by the time we landed at LAX I wasn't feeling any pain.