"The Varrio's War's"

Simons vs. Pico 

                                             
By kiki

Summer of 1953, there was trouble brewing between the guys from Pico and Simons, and a rumble was in the air; War was coming between the two barrios sooner rather than later.

We had moved into Pico from Simons in the fall of 1952, and I had gotten to know and become friends with some of the guys from Pico, though some still saw me as an outsider and would chase me around the barrio when I would be driving home or when they saw me talking to their homegirls. At that time, I was still hanging out with my Simons friends; maybe that's why I was chased…On a hot 1953 mid-week summer night, while we were shooting pool and listening to R & B on the jukebox in Nacho's Pool Hall in Simons, there was some talk among the Simons guys about going into Pico to settle matters…Lil Raul, Frankie, Bobby, Joe, Carlos, et al. asked me if I was in; I told them no and that I couldn't fight Pico guys since I was living in Pico and was friends with some of them. They all said they understood and told me to stay out of their way. I told them I would stay home whatever night they decided to "invade" Pico.

It was decided among the Simons guys to hit Pico on the following Saturday night. Their weapons of choice were baseball bats, chains, and fists, no knives, though I am sure some carried some switchblades. Guns were not much used in rumbles back in the early-'50s. That came sometime later.

What follows is hearsay, mainly since I wasn't there….Somehow the Pico guys found out, or maybe it was just youthful intuition; either way, they knew that the Simons guys would hit them on Saturday night, and they were ready and waiting for them. They were also armed with baseball bats, chains, and maybe a blade or two; who knows. Saturday night: at about 10:00 PM, the Simons guys drove into Pico in three cars full of guys and weapons. They were met with swinging baseball bats and chains as they drove up to the Ibsen and Acacia streets intersections. The Simons guys exited their cars and started swinging their weapons too. Gilbert, a Pico guy, went after a Simons guy, Lil Raul, with a bat; and what happened next? You would think it could only happen in the movies; Lil Raul grabbed Gilbert's bat and took it away from him, and broke Gilbert's arm with his own bat, man! That's got to hurt!! Then, somebody on a party-line phone called the cops. 

As the cops raced into the barrio with their sirens screaming and red lights flashing, the Pico guys scattered into the four winds. The Simons guys jumped on their cars; some now had broken windows, but they got into the wind without any of them getting busted; none of the Pico guys got busted. A couple of days later, I saw Gilbert with a cast on his left arm at Uncle John Adame's house getting a haircut; I asked him what they were fighting about "hell, I don't know," he replied. I don't think anybody knew what they were fighting about; I sure didn't

Why do I write about wars among the barrios? I do so because it's part of our history. It's the mid-20th-century history of the Mexican-American barrios that were scattered all over the Southwest. It was a time when our people were segregated. People were forced to live in barrios with names like Hick's Camp, Jimtown, Pico Viejo, Cantaranas, Maravilla, El Ranchito, Simons, and others. I can't explain why there was always warfare between the barrios, i.e., among our own people; I don't think anybody can explain that craziness.
 

The Cold Within

The Cold Within
~ James Patrick Kinney

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In bleak and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood
Or so the story’s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs
The first man held his back
For of the faces round the fire
He noticed one was black.

The next man looking ‘cross the way
Saw one not of his church
And couldn’t bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes.
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy shiftless poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight.
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.

The last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain.
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.

Their logs held tight in death’s still hands
Was proof of human sin.
They didn’t die from the cold without
They died from the cold within.

La Guera

By kiki

In the spring of 1953, I had a girlfriend, La Guera (The White Girl). La Guera lived in the Montebello Gardens and was one of those rare birds: a white girl among Chicanos; remember, this was the early-'50s: "the innocent '50s."  One beautiful Saturday night in the spring of that great year, 1953, I picked her and some friends (guys and girls) up in my '38 Chevy. We were going to a teen dance (Hunter Hancock's sock hop) in Uptown Whittier, CA. Before heading to the dance, we went to the Spot in Montebello for a bite; we ran into some friends who were also attending the dance. After eating, my friend Frankie asked me if he could follow me in his 1940 Ford since he didn't know where the dance would be held; I said, "Sure." Frankie wanted to race me along the way, but I wasn't taking the bait; I was just cruising nicely and easily. There was no sense in getting a speeding ticket, right? I only remember a little of the dance, other than we swayed and danced till it was over around 11:00 PM, or was it 12:00 AM? Whatever time it was, after the dance, we all made our way to the parking lot to hang out and smooch with our respective girlfriends/boyfriends. After some French kissing, we all jumped in our cars and headed north on Greenleaf to Hadley. Heading south on Hadley, Frankie started egging me on to race him. I took the bait and floored the gas pedal; what's the use of being a teen if you can't do crazy things sometimes, right? Hadley Street is on a south/north slope, and we were heading south, down the hill, which made it easy to gain speed. We were racing, and I was holding my own when I hit some railroad tracks that caused me to lose control of the car and "pow" damn! If I didn't hit a parked car!

Soon, Hadley was full of Whittier PD cars. We, all the teens in my car and in Frankie's, were piled into cop cars and driven to the Whittier Police station, getting busted for curfew; we were told we were all about 15-16 years old at the time; I don't believe anybody was 17 years old yet. At the station, the cops were collecting phone numbers to call our parents; when I was asked for our phone number, I told the cops we didn't have a phone; we did; it was one of those party-line contraptions of the times, but the cops didn't need to know that. While sitting at the station, I noticed one cop who kept looking at Guera, the only white person in the bunch. Finally, the cop's curiosity got the best of him; he walked up to Guera and asked her in front of us all, loud enough for all of us to hear, "What are you doing with all these Mexicans?" she replied, "me no speaka da Engleesh" loud enough for all the other cops to hear. The other cops and us kids laughed as the cop, with a red face, went behind a desk and sat down.

Around 3:00 AM, we were turned loose; some parents were called, and others, like me, were turned loose on our own. Frankie's car had been driven to the station by some cop, and since my car was not drivable, he gave us a ride home or close to home anyway. Frankie dropped me off at the corner of Beverly Blvd and Lexington Rd, which was about a mile from my house in Pico Viejo, and that was okay with me; being 16 years old and full of piss and vinegar, I could run a mile in no time flat. As we approached Lexington Rd. Frankie slowed the Ford down, and I flew out of the car and landed on my feet running. I kept running until I saw a red light approaching me from behind. I stopped and waited for the cops. The cops from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department wanted to know what I was doing running at 3:30 in the AM; I told them I had just gotten out of jail and was on my way home. "Jail! What for?" they asked, all excited. "Curfew," I answered; I think that was a letdown for them. After checking my I.D., the cops told me to get home. Since I was about half a mile from my house, I asked the cops if they could give me a ride home, "no, can do, kid, you are on your own," one of the deputies told me. Ran the half-mile like a champ...Innocent '50s? I like to think so; my friend and editor of some of my stories, Phil Rice, said after reading and editing some of my stories, "Maybe not so innocent."

                                               EPILOGUE

This story happened 60 years ago, in a time I like to refer to as the "innocent '50s," it happened during those beautiful years of our youth when we were carefree, and the most we had to worry about was where we were going to get the coins to put gas in our old cars.  

La Guera? I wish that out of respect for her privacy, I am keeping her real name out of the story, but truth be told, I don't remember her name. I'd keep seeing her through the summer of '53; after that, we went our separate ways…Guera, sometime later, married Mundo, a Simons guy.

Frankie? Frankie was a lifelong friend from the Simons Brickyard. Frankie is the guy I sold my dad's 1941 Ford Woody transmission for 10 bucks while Pops and Mom were on vacation in Mexico; I am still waiting for Frankie to pay me the 10 bucks. When I was attending Montebello Junior High School, I had a girlfriend who dumped me for a high school guy because he, she said, "has a car." Years later, Frankie married that girl, and no, Frankie was not the high school guy with the car. I haven't seen either one in over 50 years.

Hunter "Huntin' with Hunter" Hancock was a Los Angeles disc jockey who was a rarity in those times of blatant racism. Hunter was a white man who played only black music on his radio show, "no white artist need apply." He had a big following among Southern California's Chicano and black youth of the 1950s…I got to know Hunter during those early years, but as time went by, we lost touch; in the early 2000s, I heard he was living in an an-old-folks home; I called and left my name and phone number for him to contact me if he wanted to, he did return my call a few days later. I was surprised that after so many years, he still remembered me. We reminisced about the '50s, and after that call, we kept in touch via phone…It was mid-July 2004 when I last talked to Hunter; he called me from the old folks home in Claremont, CA. We again reminisced about those bygone times, the record hops, the dances at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in East Los Angeles, the Montebello Armory, etc. Unfortunately, my friend and favorite D.J. of my youth died at age 88 two weeks later, on August 4, 2004… R.I.P. friend. 
 

It cost me $900.00 to have that parked car fixed. I didn't get a ticket. My car? I went to the junkyard next door to the Whittier Drive-In and bought a complete front end for $75.00; I replaced the damaged front and later painted the Chevy.

Never Too Late

                                                     

 “You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence. Let the words run through your veins and let the colours fill your mind" -Author unknown

Floyd Mayeather vs Canelo Alvarez

                                                                                                                                         
                                                      By kiki

  

Watch the fights last night with family and friends. Liked that Cano kid that fought in the first fight, just one thing missing, he can’t punch. Carlos Molina? If God wants to punish me for any past sins, all he has to do is make me watch Molina fight.

The Danny Garcia vs Lucas Matthysse fight was in my opinion the best fight of the night. Have to tip the fedora to Philly Ray for telling us naysayers how improved Garcia was since winning the title, yes, Danny has grown since winning the title, he is a much more disciplined fighter in the ring than he was before, He’d revert back to his wild swinging old style couple of times, but he caught himself doing it and corrected himself quick. He is going to be a force to reckon with at 140 pounds; or at 147 if he; decides to move up to that weight class. But I do think he needs to be kept away from Floyd for at least a year or more.

I have been telling my friends and anybody that would listen to me for some time now that Canelo was a manufactured fighter. What with his good looks, a Mexican with red hair, what was there not to like? But, I, from the first time I watched him fight saw a very limited fighter, my friend Charlie Ortega thought that Canelo was sent down from the heavens, he bet the ranch last night and now he is homeless. I was constantly been told, “He is a young fighter, he is still learning” But now he has close to 50 fights, at what point do you say he has learned as much as he is going to learn? I say that time is now. Not to take anything away from Floyd, but, Canelo, in my opinion looked like a very ordinary fighter last night. Some will say “most fighters look ordinary against Floyd”  and that may be true, Floyd is a master after all, but I can’t help feeling a bit vindicated in my assessment of Canelo.

Drive-In Memories

                                         

By kiki

I am sure you oldies but goodies remember those glory days of yore. I do too.

My first memory of the drive-in theaters was when my buddies and I rode our bikes to Bell Gardens circa 1949. Bell Gardens, AKA "Billy Goat Acres," had one of the first drive-ins in Southern California. Bell Gardens was also an easy bike ride for us, as it was not far from the Simons Brickyard, a stone's throw away from our houses, as the saying goes.

Back then, Bell Garden was the Bakersfield of Southern California in that its inhabitants were mostly white country folks who had settled there after WWII. Most had horses to accompany their honky-tonk twang style of steel guitar music. Now you might ask, "what does all this have to do with drive-ins?" Well, I bring it up because when we used to ride our bikes to the back wall of the drive-in, and the darn wall was too high for us to see over it, that's where the horses came into play. There were always local Bell Gardens kids; on horseback by the back wall, and they would let us climb on their horses to watch the movie "giddy-up horsey."

 

Later on, as I got a bit older, it was the Whittier Drive-in in Pico-Rivera that my buddies and I used to frequent on weekends. On weekdays they used to charge by the carload; on weekends, it was by headcount. So on weekends, we used to load the car trunk with guys, gals, and beer. The drive-in had a young kid riding a bike, flashing a flashlight into the back seats of the cars to see if anybody was doing the horizontal bunny hop. Sometimes, some guys would take the bike away from him and ride it around the drive-in doing the kid's job. And some pissed-off guys would let the air out of the bike tires a few times. And on more than one occasion, he was chased on foot by a really pissed-off guy zipping up his pants as he chased the kid.

Remember; to get in line at the snack bar and check out all the girls. Then, buy a hot toddy and put some Jack in it.

I can only remember waiting in line at a drive-in one time, and that was in 1955 when the Whittier Drive-in showed the movie "The Blackboard Jungle." Connie and I were newlyweds in the summer of 1955 when we drove up in our 1946 Chevy to the entrance of the Whittier Drive-in, only to find a double line of cars waiting to enter. There was a party atmosphere outside the drive-in, with teenagers and people in their early twenties having a good old time. With Rock & Roll blaring out of their car radio, some kids were dancing on the driveway of the drive-in while waiting to see the movie. I am sure some empty beer bottles were left on the drive-in's driveway….Chasing the kid on foot? I plead the fifth.