"Riding The Gauntlet"

By kiki

When I used to live in "El Hoyo Simons." The Mom and Pop stores were all up the hill from El Hoyo. We guys who lived in El Hoyo always had brick fights with the guys from up the hill. - When our next-door neighbor, Panfelita, would send me to the store I would ride my bike as fast as I could by Carlos and Elio Diaz's house because they would throw bricks at me as I rode by their house, They would then wait for me to ride back and throw some more bricks at me, after dodging bricks going and coming, I would get back to Panfelita's, get off my bike sweating bullets and go "wow! I survived the gauntlet!!" And what did I get from Panfelita for almost getting killed? A penny? a nickel? No, she would just tell me: "Gracias, Mijo, aye que te lo paga Dios" Well, I don't think God was going to buy me a chuchuluco!

"Bow and Arrow"

By kiki

Two girls attending Montebello Junior High School in the early '50s were best friends; they were always together, one was named Rosie, can't remember the other one's name. Rosie was tall and stood straight as an arrow; the other was slightly hunched, not like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but slightly hunch nonetheless; I think you can guess where I'm going with this; yes, we called them "Bow & Arrow." "Here comes Bow and Arrow," someone would say as we saw them coming.

Junior Golden Gloves Finals 1965

Wrapping the hands of one of my junior fighters, Romulo "Boy" Ventura, facing the camera is Frankie Baltazar; the little guy is Tony "The Tiger" Baltazar. 1965

By KiKi

I had Romulo "Boy" Ventura fighting Andy "The Hawk" Price in the open division of the 1965 Junior Golden Gloves finals at the Valley Garden Arena. Both were around 12 years old at the time. Andy entered the ring first; we then made our way to the ring, and once on the ring apron, Boy turned around and waved to his family and to the crowd; he then put one leg over the bottom rope to enter the ring, and that's when he saw "The Hawk" shadow boxing and looking like a miniature Sugar Ray Robinson, Romulo then turned around and looked me in the eye and said to me "I don't feel like fighting tonight after all."

I gave Romulo a shove into the ring and told him, "he looks pretty, but can he fight?" Romulo fought a great fight that night, giving Andy a good scrap before losing by a decision.

Romulo never fought again, and Andy had a stellar pro career.

Tecate, B.C. Mexico

                                       

                                              Mando and the late Gene Moreno
                                   
By kiki

I discovered Tecate, a beer-brewing border town that sits high up in the mountains of B.C. Mexico. Circa 1978. I had a guy, Tony, working for me; one day, he asked me for a week off; I asked him why he needed a week off. He told me that he was getting married; I said," okay, and you are not going to invite your boss to your wedding?" he said that I wouldn't go if he did because he was getting married in Tecate, a small mountain town just across the border. I did get an invite. My wife, Connie, and I, with some friends, John and Bea Martinez, went to Tecate for the wedding, and we fell in love with the small town.

                                                Tony and his bride

We used to ride Harleys then and started going to Tecate for weekends with friends. In April of 1993, I retired, and around the same time, the company Connie had worked for the last 30 years was moving to Tijuana, B.C., and she was offered a chance to go with the company. Connie accepted their offer when the company offered to provide a rental allowance for us in the San Diego area and moved south to Bonita, Ca. While living in Bonita, we would ride the Harley to Tecate on summer weekends for tacos and a beer or two.

                                                     Da Beer

In December 1995, my brother, Mando, and his wife, Pat, with some friends, came to our house in Bonita on a Friday night; we went to the Tijuana Toy Run the following morning. After coffee that next day, we headed out on our toy-loaded Harleys to Chula Vista Harley-Davidson, where the run would start. Then, after more coffee, we queued and were ready to start our California Highway Patrol escorted ride to the border. We were met by the Tijuana Police at the border, who escorted us to the main drag in Tijuana's Avenida Revolución. There the toys were dispersed among the kids of the Tijuana barrios.

                                                             Tony Barron

After we passed out the toys decided to ride to Tecate for a beer or two. We rode 30 or so miles, and as we were approaching the outskirts of Tecate, we were pulled over by a Tecate motorcycle cop. He asked us what we would do in Tecate; we told him we would look for a place to have dinner and a beer or two. Then, he asked, "a bar?" Of course, "si," we all said in unison; he told us, "follow me," so we followed. He paraded us down the main drag with his red and blue lights flashing to an alley with a restaurant/bar. We offered to buy him a beer; he said no, that he couldn't drink while on duty, but that he would keep an eye on our parked Harleys.

                                        Mando's wife, Pat, is about to start crying.

 

We sat in the restaurant's bar area for an early dinner; as we were having dinner, two old guys (late' 70s) with guitars approached our table and asked if we would like them to play and sing Mexican songs for us for American dollars, of course. Mando asked them to sing Jimi Hendrix's 'Hey Joe' they looked at each other and said they knew 'Aye Jose' but not "Hey Joe" After singing a few songs for us that we requested, they moved on.

After having dinner and polishing off a few Tecates, we left the restaurant and found the cop still watching our bikes. Each one of us guys gave him five bucks for his help.

We got back to the house in Bonita late that night. Mando and Gene insisted on riding home that night. I told them to spend the night, that it was too cold for them to ride, told them that they could get a fresh start in the morning; they said no, that they needed to get on home. So they left. I talked to Mando about a week later, and he told me that they nearly froze their butts off, that it was so cold that they couldn't even talk when they stopped at gas stations to warm up.

When the company closed in 1996, Connie and I left San Diego.

                                                 Tecate Park

November 12, 1913

By kiki

Today November 12, is my father, Aurelio Baltazar, birthday (1913-2000). So I’m going to reflect a bit on his life as I remember it on this the ninety-eighth year of his birth.

I remember my dad been a hefty drinker when he was a young man, but he was also a very hard worker; Pops worked very hard during WWII, holding two eight-hour jobs. But his heavy drinking never kept him from going to work. Every time Pops was drinking heavily, he would take off, my mom would asking him where he was going, and he would answer: “to join the army” he, of course, was turned down every time.

During the war, Pops worked at the Simons Brickyard during the day, and then he would go to work at the American Foundry at night. The Simons Brickyard workers would start early in the morning, around 4:30 or so, they would start working without breakfast. During the summer, around 7 in the morning, I would go around the barrio, pull a wagon, and pick up breakfasts that I would deliver to some of the workers at the brickyard. My mom would pack a breakfast for both my dad and me.

While we were living in the Simons Brickyard, Pops used to grow his own vegetables. Pops also had animals, chickens, rabbits, and a goat; fed to eat them when we were short of store-bought food.

One of my chores as the second man of the house was to feed the animals. Unfortunately, our rabbits were stolen one time, and another time our goat, but those are stories for another day.

Pops was so happy at the birth of my brother Mando in 1950 because he only had one boy out of five kids at the time, so happy that he got stinking drunk; when he sobered up, I remember him saying to mom that he had had his last drink. He was true to his word. He was sober for the next 50 years.

After the war, he got a job working at a pipeline company, Pacific Pipeline. He worked at Pacific Pipeline for several years.

In 1952, we left the brickyard and moved to Pico, now Pico Rivera. Around that time, he got a job with a landscaping company. He worked landscaping the new freeways around Southern California.

He worked at the landscaping company until his retirement in 1968 at the age of 55 years. After his retirement, he worked on his own as a landscaper/gardener; he did that till he was in his late seventy’s.

Pops, a humble and gentle man who loved baseball, passed away in May of 2000.

Happy Birthday, dad….Love you…

My bro

                                                                     By kiki

My brother, Armando “Mando” Baltazar, was born in 1950 when I was 13. At the time Mando was born, Mom and Dad had five kids, four girls and one boy (me). Pops was happy as a lark when Mando was born, and with four girls and one boy, who can blame him? One more girl was born in 1960.

I don’t know much about Mando’s childhood; he was four years old when I got married and left the house in 1954. I do know that he grew up to be a fine young man, going to school and graduating from high school (El Rancho High School, Pico Rivera) in 1969. He joined the military right out of high school. He served two tours with the 101st and 18th Airborne in Vietnam.

Mando came home from Nam in 1972, I believe it was. He soon joined the now defunct Los Angeles County Marshals Department, was with the Marshals for a few years, then the marshals were absorbed into the Los Angeles County Sheriff department, thus he became a deputy sheriff.

Mando and I became close after he returned from the service. We started going camping, motorcycle riding, and, yes, drinking a few beers now and then. He would say more than a few, I am sure.

Mando married, not sure what year. He and his wife, who will go unnamed here, had two children: a daughter, Bianca, and a son, Chris. Bianca is now a Biologist, and Chris followed in Mando’s footsteps and joined the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The marriage ended in divorce.

After being single for several years, Mando met Pat. After being romanced and wined and dined, Mando said yes when Pat asked him to marry her. With Pat, Mando has three great stepchildren, Eddie, Andy, and Mandy.

In later years, my wife, Connie, and I became really close to my one and only brothers, Mando and Pat. We went camping, took week-long motorcycle trips, and just had a darn good time together.

Today, Mando and Pat live in retirement in the mountain community of Wrightwood, California.

Love, kiki

The Hole On The Wall

By kiki

Circa 1948, a friend, Richard, a.k.a. Lunga, had a cousin who moved in with his family when she was 18 or so. So my buddies and I were around 11/12 years old, still at the age of some kind of innocence.

The houses in Simons were no more than wooden shacks lacking indoor plumbing. When nature called, the inhabitants would use outhouses and wooden huts for bathing.

Lunga’s bathing hut had a hole in one wall. When the cousin was going to bathe, Lunga would go around telling all of us guys: “she bathing! she bathing!” we guys would get our pennies, nickels, and dimes together, and we would then be queued in front of the wall with Lunga standing by the hole, and he would take our money, the more we paid him, the longer we could watch the cousin bathe. The next day we were looking for bottles to take to the store for refunds for the next bath. Don’t know how many here are old enough to remember when you could take bottles to the store and get refunds.