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.