CHAPTER 1| I grew up in the 50's and 60's in Brawley, California, a small agricultural
town of about 8,000 people in California's irrigated desert called the
Imperial Valley. We were a family of five all being raised by our
mother. None of my 3 brothers and 1 sister is full blood related
as we each had different fathers. Of all these men, I remember only
one, a memory I prefer not to have. He was a mean step- father
and would beat my older brother and my mother. One night he beat my mother
very badly. I was seven or eight years old at the time, my older
brother was 12 or 13. After witnessing him hit her several times
with a belt, she told us to run outside to the neighbors. We went
outside, but not to the neighbors. We just stayed on the porch and
listened as he kept beating my mom. I remember crying when my mom
screamed for him to stop, and my brother vowed to kill the S.O.B.
That was the last we ever saw of him.
My mother was a Nurses Aid all those years and worked different shifts to keep us in clothes and food. Her income was supplemented with welfare and we lived in low income housing which we called the "projects." Back in the 50's, living in the projects was not just meant for minorities. Brawley was a transient town with agricultural labor coming and going. Most of my friends were Okies, Mexicans and Blacks just having moved here and trying to get on their feet. I would have friends for a few years and then they would move on, either because their parents had found steady employment and made too much money to live in government housing or they would move on with the seasonal crops. I learned early that friends were not to be had for long. Most of my memories are with other families because my mother's work would require all five of us to be watched by sitters. I usually came home from school and went straight to the sitter until my mom came home from work. I used to sit and wait for my mom to come home like a dog waits for his master to arrive. And when she worked swing shift I would try to stay up until eleven so I could get a kiss goodnight from her. I never understood then why she worked so much, and never tried to. I just knew and accepted the fact that every day she would go to work. And every day I would look forward to her coming home. My teens were my rebellious years. I was getting tired of the sitters always telling me what to do. I didn't like making new friends every year only to see them move on. And I was becoming very aware of the poverty in which we lived. We were still living in the "projects", but had moved to another area of town which we called the "Government Camp." The Government Camp was a little community of 24 duplex stucco homes nearer to the middle class neighborhood and away from across the tracks in the poor side of town, or as we called it, the East Side. Moving there was kind of like moving up the poor people's social ladder, and after being there for several years you kind of gained seniority by being the longest resident in the "Camp." The other kids in the camp would respect you when you told them how much longer you lived there than they had. Other kids would just beat up on me to prove that I wasn't anybody just because I lived there longer than they. Most of the people in our grammar school were from the same background and upbringing but when I entered Junior High it was a different story. Everybody in Brawley went to the same junior high school. The rich and middle class kids right along with the poor kids. I was aware of the kids on the "rich side of town", as I had made little sojourns into their neighborhood on my bicycle, but I never really had a chance to interact with them until junior high. Also, when I reached junior high I got reacquainted with old friends that I had made when their parents lived in the projects and had moved up the social ladder after finding steady employment. Some were glad to see me, others couldn't care less and others would make fun of me because I was still living in the Camp. By the eighth grade I had made friends with boys whose parents were well off, either middle class or as we called them- rich kids. I was amazed when I went to their homes and saw how "normal" kids lived, refrigerators full of food, air conditioning, cable T.V. I was starting to like this kind of lifestyle and preferred hanging out with them. These kids were equally amazed at how I lived whenever they came to visit at my house or in my neighborhood. They weren't used to 110 to 120 degree heat with only a swamp cooler to cool you off, or the fact that almost all my neighbors were Mexicans, Okie or Blacks, including most of my friends. Needless to say one or two visits to my house and they would prefer that I come to their house to play after school. By 1962 I was too old for baby-sitters. I gave that up at age twelve after being publicly beaten with a leather strap for laughing at my sitter's daughter after she fell. I made fun of her dress being pulled up and I said, "I see your panties." For this I was taken into the living room stripped to my underwear and beat all over with a leather strap while everyone watched. I never went back to their house after that, although my younger sister and brothers had to go on enduring these people. These people were from Oklahoma "all the way," and because of them I acquired a dislike for anyone with a Southern accent, always referring to them as "Okies" regardless of where they were from. To me, if you were from East of California, you were an "Okie." It took many years to overcome this stigma. The most trouble I got into by the eighth grade was to get swatted for being put on detention more than three times. I was given two swats with a razor strap on my bottom and upper legs. This was the worst I had ever been spanked and vowed never to have this happen again. I remember walking home, my ass tight as a drum and stinging from the pain. I almost got swatted again that year, this time three swats, because each time the swats would progress by one or two, depending on the severity of the reason you got the swats in the first place. A girl sitting behind me said she had no feeling on her legs, so I poked her with a sharp pencil. She screamed and I was sent to the office. I was given the choice of a 3-day suspension or three swats. Remembering how the swats felt the first time, I took the suspension. Upon my return after the three days were up, I was told that I was going to be given three swats, not for poking the girl, but as punishment for being suspended. To make matters worse, I was not to get them until after school which gave me all day to think about the pain that was going to be inflicted upon my ass. The vice principal would wait until between classes when everyone was changing rooms and then he would test his strap on a wooden chair. It was so loud you could hear it all over the school. He would do this daily to put fear into the unruly. It only took me until lunch time to decide I wasn't going to get hit again, so I went home. I told my mom what had happened, and told her I didn't think it was fair to be punished twice. She agreed and went to the school with me. She told the principal that if he hit me again he would answer to her. I was not given any swats that day and never got into trouble in Junior High again. Good 'ol Mom, she really came through. It wasn't the first time, and little did I know, it wouldn't be the last. In 1964 I entered high school. By now I was the sitter for my sister and younger twin brothers. My mom decided to go on the graveyard shift at the hospital and figured I could get everyone up for school and she would be up in the afternoon when we all came home. This worked out pretty well except for the fact that I was free to roam the town at night or have friends over to party after mom had gone to work . By 1965 in my sophomore year I was a surfer wannabee. Light blue tennis shoes, light blue jeans that came to the top of your white socks. Surfer tee shirts, and a surfer haircut, (a wave in the front) was the norm for the boys my age, even if the beach was 200 miles away. Toward the end of the school year in 1966, I was smoking, had dropped out of school, and was attending this new idea the California Education System had come up with called "Continuation School".. It was for drop outs not yet old enough to legally quit school. We went to school for two hours each night from seven to nine and had our days free to roam the town in search of trouble. Needless to say we found it. Days were spent sneaking into the bars across the tracks in Mexican town and playing pool for a nickel a game. The owners knew that if the police came in the front we would run out the back. If we got a hold of a few bucks, we would hitch hike the few miles to the border and spend the day in Mexicali, Mexico getting drunk. I had a Social Security card that I typed a phony birth date next to and the bar owners in Mexico thought it was legal I.D. or just didn't care. I spent a week in Juvenile Hall after I was caught trying to sneak across the border with 8 ounces of grain alcohol stuck down my pants and drunk on my ass. A week in "Juve" was enough for me, so no more border runs. Some of the guys' I hung out with were still in regular school and I would wait for them outside the school so we could hang out afterwards. I had let my hair grow as I was now a Beatle wannabee- coming close to being a Hippie wannabee the latter of which had not come about yet as such people were just rumored to exist. This was late 1966, I didn't care too much for the Beatles, and was more into the Beach Boys, Stones, Mama's and Papa's, Sonny and Cher. One day while hanging outside the school, I decided to go on campus. I walked a girl to her class and then went around back to wave to her in the window. I was jumping up and down looking in the window which was above my head, when the teacher spotted me and yelled for me to stop and come inside. I yelled back "Fuck You" and he took chase. I ran through the gym and hid out in the auto shop under a car. The next day I was arrested by the sheriff and taken to Juvenile Hall for disrupting class and for being on campus, as I had been warned to stay off of school property. When I was taken before the Judge, the Imperial County School Board said they did not want me in any school in the county including continuation school. The judge was going to put me in Juvenile Hall until I graduated from school or reached age eighteen, and when released I would be on probation until age 21. All this for disrupting class! This all happened early in 1967. I was due to become 17 years old in May. There was a little thing going on called Viet-Nam. My probation officer explained that when I reached age 18 I would most surely be drafted and sent there, or I could volunteer at age 17 and pick my career and possibly avoid Viet-Nam. By committing myself now I would also get all my juvenile records sealed forever. I didn't know what or where Viet-Nam was. I remembered we had an exchange student from Saigon in our school back when I was a Freshman. Everyone made a big thing of it. I thought, big deal. I didn't pay much attention to the evening news as right about that time I had better things to do. So I said, "sure I'll do it to stay out of Juvenile Hall." So I was hauled off to the Army Recruiters office and I promised to show up on my birthday, a few months away, in exchange for my freedom. |
CHAPTER 1
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