By Rudy Giuseppe Coco Gandara
( Lil Rudy G, Tall Tales From El Hoyo Soto)
Back in Boyle Heights, we were kids around 10 years old, still at the age of some kind of innocence. It was me, Frankie, Randy, Crazy Tommy, and Whisky Pete. Barrio boys from El Hoyo Soto, around the hood of Whittier Blvd and Soto St. East of the L.A. River.
Our school was Soto Street Elementary. We all grew up together….during a time when the L.A. Freeways were being built all around East LA., cutting up the Barrios and “Building that Wall”, from City Terrace, Boyle Hgts, The 10, the 110, the 605, the 710 on and on…we were under attack and being Blocked.
The city of Los Angeles was growing fast and we were in the way it seems. Our neighbors were being evicted, houses were torn down, it seemed overnight. Hello, Goodbye, “where is Joey where's Chuy ”? …They were moved out misplaced, misfortunate sons of the barrio war.
NO power to stop it, East Los was up for grabs…and the community had no say. It happened in Chavez Ravine, for Dodger Stadium..so everyone seemed to just accept it and know the drill.
The upside for us little gangsters was our entire hood was like a playground with rows and blocks of abandoned houses between our homes and school. So, we would adopt a house…we each had our own house! Some still filled with furniture? Carpets…Drapes…Tables ..Chairs Family Photos …I remember one house, still had a record player and a lot of Albums. Jazz, Latin. Big Band 40’s, All collector's items today I suppose, but we just used them to toss around like little black flying saucers! One of our favorite things was to throw rocks, rocks fights were the game du jour.
We’d crash up windows…really nice stain glass windows, wood entry doors with leaded glass “bam, crash” ..done!
Once in a while, we’d find a Bum, sleeping off a hangover or squatting in “Tommy's house” or Randys or mine. So out came the rocks, we pretended we were soldiers…at war, quietly approach, and then we’d assault the poor bastard until he ran away screaming about wanting to come back and Kill us! Fuck him…these were ours!
This was the surreal dreamscape to our lives, Fields, and Freeway construction sites, Large Excavation trackers…Van Goghs “Yellow House”, Salvador Dali's “Living Still Life” Diego Riveras “Man at the Crossroads’. This was our crossroads, of our future…the destruction of our communities, barrio in Shambles…. But was still our home. We were the lucky ones that were not forced out? Yet had to live in a ½ abandoned place. Old neighbors gone…the local store is gone…Senora Chela? Mr. Kissoloff, Shuichi Akai? people we loved people we knew for years “Gone” no word, no trail just Gone. This was our reality of reality.
Of our crew, each of the boys had fathers. I was the only one without and they always reminded me of how lucky I was for it.
Our hustle was shining shoes, downtown on Main Street along the Bars, and back home on Whittier in front of the M’s Club. The M’s club was a basement lounge bar, that claim to fame was Frank Sinatra had once sung there. Now it was just another dive bar for Chicano men after work and weekends.
We’d take the bus sometimes during the week, but mainly on Saturdays all day. Up early, return after dark. Along the way, we could jump a fence and steal peaches or apricots…Steal a few sodas or beer bottles off someones back porch and sell for candy, chips and RC Coke or Orange Crush.
On an early Sunday morning about 7am, every now and then we’d meet up, and walk from Whittier Blvd Soto St. all the way to Brooklyn Ave. a couple of miles. Our inspiration was, They would deliver bundles of Sunday papers and dump them in front of local small time grocery stores or a Pharmacy. Now the Sunday paper always sold for more, like .25 cents, it was thick, had a big “Comic Section”, Sports Section, thick news! At some point when we found a Stack of Papers, one of the boys would “look out” for the Police…or strangers. Once we got the bundle, we’d split it up…each stands on opposite sides of the street corners and sell to passing cars! We made a small fortune! Quick and dirty. I found out later in life, that just a few generations before our time here, a local Jewish kid from New York named “Mickey Cohen” was in control of these same streets and he had a deal with the L.A. times Boss to do exactly what we thought was our idea! Selling papers on those streets. Mickey who wasn’t much older than us, had his boys cover the streets up and down and would issue each a corner, for a small piece of the Action. I think he was about our same age, 10 when he was in charge. Of course, he’d moved on to bigger “Gangster” hustles by our time on these streets. We were more pranksters than gangsters.
At the end of each run, whenever we were running the streets, one by one we’d say goodbye or sometimes pop into someone's house for a free sandwich or a little food. Moms where always so nice to our little gang. The Fathers were all a different story.
It seemed Drink and drinking hard after they got home was a way of life. Do your time at any one of the factories in downtown along the L.A. River…or bust your ass at a Steel or Meat Plant in the city of Vernon nearby. The Fathers would come home pissed off, tired and drunk after stopping off at the M’s club or Sabby's, or the Cita Club, The Latin Lover, one of many to choose from.
Little Frankie's father was special though. Not in a nice way, in a creepy way to us all. He would always stay quiet, in a corner…on the sofa or with a beer starring out the window to the backyard.
He worked at a Slaughterhouse somewhere. On his time off, he would go out and find tropical plants,..palm trees, elephant ears…banana trees. I don’t know where you’d find such plants in L.A. but he did, one by one ..year by year. He had what he would mumble sometimes out load was his “Victory Garden”. And as the years passed and the Palms grew thicker and taller, he would disappear in this garden. We never knew what or why he’d go into it. He’d walk in with his Dog and we never see him again for the day.
Frankies mom would just leave him alone for hours in there..until it was so late she had to yell for him to come in.
Big Frank, as they called him was a World War II Vet, from the Pacific theater. He served in many battles I learned and was a decorated War Hero, with ribbons and medals. Little Frankie would show us, boys, sometimes. We’d hold them up, rub them…pass them around then he’d put them back in the boxes and away. We had no idea, what they meant? Or why he got the honors. So, they looked special but held no value to us. Just pretty metals are all with strange names on the Boxes, like Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa…Philippines
As the years rolled on, and the Big Franks Victory Garden grew, so did his madness. The garden was now amazingly a lush Tropical forest. When no one was around we would go in there and get lost, it was that thick. But every time we did that the next day little Frankie would be at school and show us his bruises from being beaten down by this Father. He knew, He always knew. The Victory Garden was off limits, “No One” was supposed to go in there Just him. Years passed, and the story is told that Big Franks depression and drinking became intolerable for his wife Ruth, and she took little Frankie away and we never heard from him again. They separated leaving Big Frank alone to his rum, demons and the Tropical Garden. Neighbors used to hear screaming late at night. Sometimes a gunshot or two. This managed to go on for a while until one day…there was a fire at the house. Firefighters were called after all was settled and the blaze was put under control there was no one in the house.
The Police searched, only found a dead German shepherd the house pet named Fritz. One officer was lured to the backyard, after hearing what sounded like “Rain” drops. Frank had hooked up a water pipe above the garden to keep them green, with a spray nozzle to simulate Rain over the Garden Palms, it was still running.
Looking further the Cop found an entry to ‘The Victory Garden”. Walking into the mud trail, seemed a maze of twist and turns He found a small clearing within…an area with a bench, a small tent, it looked like a scene from a magazine out of WW II. Amongst it all there they found Franks body, in military dress, surrounded by his boxes of metals, loaded silver plated Colt 45 pistol military issue, minus a single bullet. Apparently placing the gun to his mouth, blowing the back side of his head off gleaming with mud and blood.
No one will ever know what he did, what he saw during those years of War, the battles, blood, comrades lost ..but Sargent Frank Ruiz could never escape the Horrors of War, What the eyes see, a wailing soul harbors.
There was no suicide note, just a lifeless body eyes still open, alone in a fetal position surrounded by the small jungle Frank loved and built just for this occasion.
