The Price of Good Service: Columbus Would Have Loved This

Some months ago, a PG&E service guy noted a small gas leak in one of the pipes leading to an insert I had installed into a fireplace in our living room. "You should get this fixed", he said, "it's costing you money."

I dismissed the seriousness of the the warning, yet on the porch leading to the front door, in the months that followed, we would get a waft of the smell of gas.

Last Saturday, as another serviceman was doing routine inspections on our street, he again noted the leak, but as I spoke to him, he added "There's something else going on here and I've called another guy with more sophisticated equipment who can verify exactly where more gas is leaking from." About 45 minutes later, a second service guy appeared and aiming some kind of "clicking" device at the wall said, "You have a serious leak in the pipe leading through your foundation. This is a hazardous situation and we have to shut off your gas immediately. Call a reputable licenced plumber to fix it. When it's done, call us back and we'll turn the gas on immediately."

"Shit. Big bucks", I thought and cursed my fate. I scrambled through the Yellow Pages, and found a plumber with a proven reputation, but when I called, I got a message telling me they were "out for lunch." It was Saturday, and I thought "They're  probably out till Monday", so I plotted how we would manage without gas and hot water till then, and thanked God for the microwave.

Meanwhile, I spoke to my neighbor, Steve, who often has contractors of all types working on his house if he knew a guy who could replace the leaking pipe. "I know a guy, Braulio. He can do it for you. I'll call him right now. It was Sunday. When Braulio called me he mumbled some stuff, barely audible, about coming out to see the problem. Hours passed. Nothing. So about 6PM, he again called and said he was lost and something about his brother. I was pissed. "This guy is probably another of these unreliable dudes, not too interested in making money." I decided to wait for the guy from the Yellow Pages to call on Monday. He did, bright and early (7:45 a.m.), assuring he an estimator would call me "Soon." About 11:00 no call. So I called the outift again. "Oh, we'll call him again. He should get a hold of you soon." Well, he did. Five minutes later he called. "I'm on my way."

Meanwhile, I see this Mexican guy in a pickup pull up next door, with two other guys, who walked to Steve's house. "Oh, no", I mumbled, "This is probaby Braulio!" It was. Now, I would have two plumbers there at the same time! Luckily, the other guy took about 15 minutes to get to my place, giving time for Braulio to size up the situation." As the other guy arrived, Braulio walked past him saying "I gotta' make un delivery. I call ju soon." When the Yellow Page guy finished his inspection he announced, "It'll cost you about $500." I was broken. "I'll think about it", I said, "and call you back later." He left.

10 minutes later, Braulio called. "Can you fix the pipe? How much?" "How mush di oder guy wan'?" I hesitated. "500." "Thas' mucho dinero", he said. "How much will you charge me? " A pause. "Hunder fifti." I contracted him on the spot! "When?" "Ahorita." And 15 minutes later, Braulio was there with his two helpers and promptly got to work. Thank God for Mexicans! A couple of hours later, the job was done, and I threw in an extra fifty bucks for his helpers. Braulio was grateful.

Now, came the easy stuff: call PG&E and they'd send a guy right away to turn on my gas. When I called the 800 number, I got a recording, of course, that prompted me to Press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish, 3 for that, 4 for something else, and "If this is correct Press 8", after each one etc. etc. etc. I was finally told to "wait" while a representative spoke to me. When he got on the line, he promptly asked me to repeat all the information I had just finished punching into the recorded prompts!!! "This is just to verify that what you entered is correct", he said in an appeasing tone. "How long is the pipe you replaced?" He asked. "About 4 ft. long." "Oh, you will need to call the CITY and get them to do an INSPECTION on it, before our serviceman can turn on you gas." "But I was told nothing about any CITY inspection!", I complained. "I'm sorry, sir." "I'll give you the number?"

So after reaching another recording at CITY HALL, telling me to Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, and to press 3 for this, and 4 for that, and 5 for something else, the voice finally "asked" me to enter my Building Permit Number on my claim! I only wanted an INSPECTION, but no, evidently I had to get a Building Permit, BEFORE they could even do an inspection. But the job was already done!? Being still early, I decided to drive downtown to CITY HALL and speak to LIVE PERSON and get all this shit straightened out.

But when I got there, the parking lot and all the spaces were empty. Then, I remembered. "OH SHIT IT'S GOD DAMMNED COLUMBUS DAY!!

In a fury, I called PG&E again when I got home, determined to speak to the president if necessary. I figured out a way to get a REAL PERSON right away and I related my plight to her, trying my best to win her pity and compassion. It worked! "Mr. Rios, I don't see why you need a CITY inspection at all. I will put in a request to have your gas turned on, but let me see... ummm, looks like we don't have a service man available until next... Monday?" I exploded! "Next Monday???" She must have sensed my desperation, so she put me on hold while she checked further. When she came on the line again after about three minutes, she uttered, "We'll send someone out today. He'll be there no later than 8pm is that OK?"

Two hours later, the service man knocked on my door, ran some pressure checks, and announced "Look's good, Mr. Rios", and promptly turned on my gas!

Now, that's what I call "service." Now, I'm really looking forward to a good, HOT shower but I just wanted to finish this, first.

A Sneak Preview to the Cover of My New Book

No wonder I'm 70 something and still haven't published a book! It's a lot of work. When I started this project I had little idea what I was getting into. Some years back I began writing stories about my childhood, growing up in a small Barrio in Modesto, California during the 40s and 50s with no real direction. I began reading them for audiences and got enthusiastic responses from them.

In a few years, I had some 15 or so stories and a large collection of poems but still no real order to them all. When my E-Buddy, William Snyder, recently published his book "The Eight-Fingered Criminal's Son", I bought and read a copy and laughed all the way through it! His stories of a childhood growing up in Los Angeles sounded so much like mine! If he could do it, so could I!

Bill, by the way, has been one of my most ardent Chican-izmo fans and has constantly urged me to publish a book, so in part, I owe the effort to him. Putting the stories into some kind of cohesive order was the first step. They were not in chronological order, but on a closer look, I began to see that they kind of were. So that took a lot of time. As that began to happen, I noted gaps in the stories, holes that need to be filled in so I wrote new stories to fill them. Now a definite chronology began to emerge.

But the real killer has been the editing! I began ambitiously attacking the grammar, punctuation and sentence structures and soon got caught up in the style, the tone, adding a detail here and there, deleting wordy and repititious structures, again and again, and soon I became mired! When does it end? When is a story finished?

I am self-publishing through an online company Bill referred to me. So far, they have been quite easy to work with. Evidently, Indie books are the coming thing. Self-publishing is a bit like paying someone to tell you they love you, shameless, and a little self serving but what the hell.

I can't tell you how many times I have told someone "I want to write a book, some day." To the point where I was saying it just so people wouldn't think I was just another lazy artist. It appears that soon I will be able to actually say "Oh, by the way, I'm an author." Sounds good, huh?

My book attempts to capture the life of Mexican immigrants finding their way in a foreign world, their hopes, their dreams, their tragedies and and especially, their triumphs. I am hoping it will be available in November, and I will keep you abreast of that in future posts.

By the way, the image on the cover of the book is a from an old black and white photo of me when I was a about five, with my dog, Skippy, the grinning dog. There is a complimentary story of him in the book.

Read, Mis Amigos, Read

It's been years since I have read one of Castaneda's books and I picked this up a few weeks ago, one I had never really read, and began. It didn't take me long to get "hooked" again as I first was when I picked up "The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowlege", sometime in the early 70's.

Like so many at the time, I was completely and forever blown away by the stories of magic and the possiblity of other worlds, other existences, other ways of seeing the world, "a separate reality" as Carlos often puts it.

But in this one I miss the appearance of the Brujos (sorcerers) Don Juan, and his magical sidekick, Genaro. I'm not sure how many books there are in total, but some eight or nine? All telling of the amazing encounters Carlos had with the other world, in the deserts of central Mexico. He was a graduate student doing his thesis on the use of medicinal herbs among the Yaqui Indians of the Southwest, and in a Greyhound bus depot he meets an old Yaqui man he called "Don Juan", asking him if he might know someone who can tell him about medicinal plants. Don Juan says no, but he himself has "a little knowledge"
of their use, the qunitessential understatement of modern times!

The books are somewhat chronological, and I suggest reading them in order if possible, because they document Carlos first encounters with the magical world of sorcerers, his initiation into to it, and his clumsy and frightening journey to becoming what Don Juan and Genaro call a "man of knowledge." The power and beauty of their "teachings" compares to any of the ideas of the modern Western world of philosophy and psychology.

By the time this book is written, Carlos finally realizes that he was not alone in his intitiation, but part of a group of apprentices, 4 women and 3 men, although he had met them before briefly. What a movie this would make, putting modern psychological thrillers to shame! Carlos is a master at detailing the supreme fears and terrors he experiences, his stupidity and his debililitating clinging to his reason in the face of the inexplicable.

Anyway, I am glad to be reading again. I was an avid reader in my youth and years have passed since I have picked a book, and actually read it, so it feels good, a sense of accomplishment. I also just finished reading "Letters to a Young Poet", by Rainer Maria Rilke, a book I had been introduced to by my college philosophy instructor. Rilke's message seems simple: Find courage in your solitude, embrace it because from it you grow stronger.

It is tragic that today there seems to be fewer and fewer readers. I had to labor ceaselessly to get my students to read an essay or even a short story! And I was dismayed when they would confess, with a measure of glee, "This is the first book I have read in my whole life", or "This is the first book I read all the way through, "Mr. Rivers."

I hope this reawakening to the pleasures of reading in me, is not a passing fancy but hangs around for a while longer.

My New Book

Me an my dog, Skippy CA.1934

Pictured here is my grinning dog, Skippy and I when I was about 5 in the front yard of my home in a small barrio in Modesto, California. It will be used on the cover of my new book, "Songs From The Barrio: A Coming of Age in Modesto, CA."

The book will be composed of stories and poems that document my experiences growing up during the 40's, 50's and 60's, in "Juarez", as we jokingly called our barrio in South Modesto, a one-city-square block of a dozen or so, houses of Mexican immigrant familys

The people who lived there were all Mexican immigrants, poor and uneducated, who left Mexico in the 1920's after its devastating Mexican Revolution (1910-20), and came here legally and illegally to better their lives and those of their children.

But they brought with them a vibrant language and culture and they kept it alive the best they could in competition with the powerful pull of Americanization. Slowly, their kids assimilated, forgot most of their culture and moved to the Northside,or out of town in search of jobs and the American Dream.

We grew up poor though the old timers felt rich, when compared to what little they left behind in Mexico. Our barrio's streets were unpaved, unlit and unmarked but we played in them nonetheless. Everyone knew everyone by name, being related or comadres or compadres of one another, having baptized one anothers kids. The houses were divided by wire fences and they could see and gossip with neighbors on both sides, in contrast to the 6' tall wooden fences we use today, sheltering our lives from those of our neighbor's.

We underwent our own form of discrimination covert, and often overt, to the point that some of us were ashamed to call ourselves "Mexican", preferring the title "Spanish" instead. College never entered our vocabulary. Most of us quit school, got a job, had kids, and a handful graduated from high school.

It was another time and another world then and I felt the need to document it now, before it's completely gone, for my kids, my grandkids and my family and for any reader hungry to learn how America became the Melting Pot that it is, though some of us refused to melt, completely. The barrio needs to be assigned its rightful place in the history of California and the United States. Not only that, but I'm an old fart now, and time is passing. I can't screw around. It's now or never.

While I have been writing since the mid-1960's, I have toyed with the idea of some time publishing a book. Many of the book's stories were already written, but as I began to edit and organize them into the idea of a book, I saw holes and gaps and set out to write those stories.

Keep tuned in and I will try to update you on the book's progress. I will be uploading the manuscript to the publisher in a few weeks, I hope. Wish me luck and I hope you'll buy a book when its ready. You owe it to me for all the hard work.

A Book is Being Born

I've not posted for a while as my energy has been going into the organization, planning and writing of what I hope will turn out to be a book about my life growing up in a small Mexican Barrio in South Modesto (CA), during the 40's, 50's and 60's. Inspired by, and on the heels of my Blogger Buddy's Bill Snyder's recent book "The Eight-Fingered Criminal's Son", (read it, it's a riot), and with his encouragement, I am looking to getting my own book published soon.

Most of the stories have already been written over the past half-dozen years and at first the book was going to be a random collection of recollections, but now I see that it needs some kind of chronology establishing a beginning, a middle, and an end. I have read many of them in public and gotten enthusiastic responses to them.

I'm feeling a sense of urgency because as you might have guessed, I am no Spring Chicken and life is quickly passing me by and the things I write about need to preserve what life was like during this time period and what part Mexicans, and these barrios had in forming the diversity of American Culture. I want to document this for my reader, for myself and for my children and grandchildren.

"Don't ever forget where you come from", my mom used to say. Mom, I haven't.

Updates will follow. Meanwhile, any encouragement would be appreciated. If not "I will understand", like hell. It kills me when people write crap on Facebook, and then ask you to repost on your own status adding that if you don't, they will understand. Yeah, you're a jerk if you don't repost.

I am 1/4 Indian, 1/8 Spanish, 1/5 Black, & The Rest Eskimo.

I remember somewhere back when I was a kid my mom telling me "Mexicans are part Indian and part Spanish." "How much of each?" I asked. "Half and half". And so I went on to tell people I was a Mexican. I had no particular pride then in being Indian. Indians were killed in the old cowboy movies. "Don't stand in the sun too long", my mom said "Or you get black like and Indian."

Only later when I began to learn about Mexico's history did I begin to get a sense of the great significance of blood lines to people. Indian was bad. Spanish, or European was good. It meant to be "white skinned", not "prieto" or "dark-skinned", and that was good.

When I learned the word "Meztizo", my world changed. It was the term the Spanish Conquerors of the New World called those born of a Spanish Father and an Indian mother (Spanish women did not play  around, I suppose). It was synonymous with "half breed", a person despised by the indigenous for having European blood, and hated by the Europeans for having Indian blood.

More amazing was to learn of all the terms the Spanish invented for the incredible mixing of blood lines which were to come in the New World and they had a word for each and every one:

Peninsular = Spaniard born on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain)
Meztizo = One born of a Spanish father and Indian mother
Creole (Criollo) = Child of a Peninsular but born in Mexico (New World)
Caztizo = A Meztizo + a Creole
Cholo = An Indian + a Meztizo
Mulatto = A Peninsular + a Black
Zambo = A Black + an Indian
Euromeztizo = Indian with Spanish characteristics dominating
Indomeztizo = A Spaniard with Indian characteristics dominating.

In Henry Parkes' A History of Mexico he adds one final absurd footnote to this unholy mixture of bloods: a saltapatras' or "throwback", all the way to the start! How in the world, at the end of this stew of bloodlines, could one return to being a Peninsular?!

But even more incredulous is how the term Meztizo came to mean Mexican; this word that for 300 years of Spanish domination in Mexico was uttered with indignation. But it did.

Its origins are fodder for debate but a prevailing theory is that the people we currently refer to as Aztecs, never called themselves by that term, but called themselves the Mexica (Meshica) or the Mexicans (Meshicans)

After Mexico's War of Independence (1810-1821), the word Mexican would be proudly used for the first time to define the Meztizo, a person born of the bloods of two great civilizations, the European and the Native American.

Strange bedfellow, que no?

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me: The First Mexican Martyrs

(Painting showing Aztec fathers putting newly Christianized sons to death)

    Many years ago, I came across a poignant dialogue that describes a first encounter between a group of Spanish Conquistadors, a Captain and a Catholic priest, backed by a host of soldiers, and a group of Maya warriors, led by a chief and a woman who serves as a translator. The Spanish Captain tells the Maya woman, "Tell your chief we have come here in search of gold and silver." Immediately, the Catholic priest interrupts saying "No, no! Tell your chief we have come here so that they may come to know The One And Only True God'!"

    After a lengthy translation by the woman interpreter, the Maya chief says, "Tell this powerful men here (addressing the Captain), that in the Sun which is our gold, and the Moon which is our silver, lies our everlasting hope, but in order for him to reach them, first he must kiss the earth."

    This dichotomy between the acquisition of power and the saving of souls, was the hapless burden of the European conquerors and the Catholic church in Mexico. In her book, "Idols Behind Altars", Anita Brenner tells, among other things, of the church's struggle to convert Indians to Christianity during the early years of the Spanish conquest in 1521. 

    Suspicious and fearful of the new religion, the Indians reluctantly embraced a new Christian pantheon, but often, at the risk of grave danger, covertly clung to their own deities. Brenner describes how the Indians, who comprised the labor force building the numerous Catholic churches across Mexico, sometimes hid idols representing their own gods deep inside the altars as they built them, then quickly covered them up!  Thus, as they reverently knelt and prayed before the altars during mass, they were actually praying to their ancient gods hidden inside them.

    For the first decade after the Spanish Conquest in 1521, the Catholic Church was relatively unsuccessful in convincing the stubborn Indians to convert to Christianity, and despite openly condemning their beliefs, destroying their temples, paintings and idols representing their old gods, only a few brave souls dared be baptized into the strange new faith, some paying with their lives as the image above shows.  I cannot imagine putting my own son to death for his conversion to another faith.

    Ironically, with the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the Indian, Juan Diego in 1531, everything changed and thousands of Indians flocked into the churches to be baptized. Now, they had a new heavenly woman they could believe in, Mary, one like them, dark skinned ("La Virgen Morena"), not like the pale, white gods they had heretofore seen adorning the insides of the cathedrals they had helped build.

    Nonetheless, for years, indigenous beliefs flourished underground in secret, in caves, hidden from the eyes of the Europeans; for it was no easy matter to let go of the gods they had worshipped for centuries, in time forcing the church to find other ways to attract converts, not by pointing out differences in the native and european beliefs, but the similarities.

    Thus, in Mexico today we see this bizarre mix of Indian and Christian beliefs. Where one belief ends, and another begins is a supreme mystery, as Aztec dancers dance before the Virgin of Guadalupe at the hill of Tepeyac in Mexico City, at the very same place where they had once worshipped a female diety, Tonantzin.

     In fact, "La Catedral", the main cathedral in the heart of the "Zocalo" (central square) in downtown Mexico City, is built at the  very same spot, with the same stones that once made up the main pyramid of "Tenochtitlan", the Aztec capital, that Cortez himself had once characterized as the "Constantinople of the New World".

It was leveled by the Spaniards to build the city we know today.