Lost all his marbles

when we lived in San Jose i must have been about five or six. My dad had built us this teeter toter ( i guess thats how you spell it ) my brother and a friend were playing on it and i wanted to get on so they put me on. well i had a pocket full of marbles and every time i go down some marbles would fall out of my pocket. when we finished playing on the darn thing i lifted up the board on my side and went underneath to pick up my marbles and our friend went over to the other side of the darn thing and picked up the other side and the board came down and hit me on the head. and they start laughing at me well that hurt like heck, so i came out of there throwing anything i could get my hands on.our friend lived close by, there was a couple houses down the road and then there was this empty lot then his house. well I'm chasing them and I'm throwing rocks and stuff at em cause I'm madder then hell at them. Our friend runs across the empty lot and jumps over this little fence that they have separating there house from the empty lot. I'm running thru the lot and I can't find anything to throw at them and I just happen to look down and there's this shiny piece of metal laying on the ground, it's about 2 inches wide and about 12 to 16 inches long and real thin and shiny and i just pick it up and throw it.Well this kids on the other side of the fence and he's pointing at me and he's laughing at me.Well when i released that piece of metal i didn't see it after it left my hand because i was looking at the thin side,but when it started coming down it looked like a helicopter blade and i could see it real plain like because when it came down the flat side was facing me. well I'm looking at this thing coming down and i'm seeing this kid standing there laughing at me and then "whack" it sticks right in his forehead. The kid goes down and his moms right there she sees the whole thing, she lets out this big scream and i take off running cause this kids laying on the ground with this piece of metal stuck in his head, i thought i killed him. I ran all the way home and i go under the house to my little hideaway down there and i wait to see what happens and I'm down there for awhile and i don't hear nothing so i'm thinking it must not have been as bad as i thought. My moms in the kitchen so i go in there and i'm being real nice then i hear "MOOOOOOM YOU NEED TO GO SEE WHAT BUDDY DID" Mom let me have it big time for that one then Pop got a hold of me.My mind must have gone blank because I don't know what happened to me after that.The kid lived but i don't remember ever playing with him again.

colusa

Colusa was a very small town, so if you wanted some excitement you usually had to create it yourself, and being that it was so small, that wasn't always easy to do. During the week it was just dead.It perked up a little on the weekend,but still there was nothing happening there.You could go to the show, but they ran the same movie for a week. You could go around the town cruise,but that was about 2 miles long.Half the people would cruise one way and the other half would cruise the other way and they would honk at each other every time they past each other.That was pitiful.
We used to do a lot of hunting back then it seams like everyone had a 22 rifle in there car. If your out in the country and you see a pheasant and you had a clear shot at it you took it and it didn't matter what time of the year it was.Shoot it, cook it, eat it,and nobody said a word about it.Try doing that now and see what happens.
We used to go up to the Sutter Buttes, they say it's the smallest range of mountains in the world.Might be true,seams like everything around Colusa was small,There's also a smaller town right close by ( Grimes ) that has the smallest church in the world.It's about six foot by six foot. I went there a couple of times to check it out just to say I'd been there. It's actually kinda neat as far as I'm concerned.
My brothers and cousins and I used to take some pieces of cardboard.plywood or whatever we could get our hands on and head on up to the Buttes on rainy days and we would climb the grassy hillside up as far as we could go and then jump on the cardboard and ride it all the way down to the bottom.thats what i mean by having to create your own fun.
I remember sometimes we would walk to my friends ranch out in the country ( we used to call it the ponderosa ) it was probably a good 6 or 7 mile walk. We used to go swimming in the Sac. river over there. This one time we walked over there and we swam for about 3-4 hours and we started getting hungry, so someone came up with the idea that we could kill some bullfrogs and have some frog legs. So there we go looking for bullfrogs,there was about 5 of us and we probably got about 30-40 of them critters, so my friend says lets take them to my house ( the Ponderosa ) and see if mom will cook them,well thank god for his mom cause she was a really cool lady and she says sure i'll cook em if you eat them and we said o.k. so she puts them in the pan and these are just the legs of the frogs and they start kicking like there alive. ( ask anyone that knows about frog legs and they'll tell you that it's true.they kick when there getting fried ) she brings us this bowl full of fried frog legs,salad and some home made tortillas. We dug in and i'll tell you what ,it was almost like eating fried chicken.those things were delicious.
when i was about 10 or 11 my folks bought me a brand new bike.I was so proud of my new bike, I just couldn't wait to take it to school and show it off. That morning I got up to take it to school my mom told me I had to give my little sister a ride to school, this is not what I had in mind,but I said o.k.,I really didn't mind giving my sister a ride,but the problem for me was my mom always made her this egg burrito to eat on the way, so I always had to smell that egg on the way to school after awhile I got to hate that smell. That bike lasted about two weeks before i broke the frame on it and my mom took it back and told the guy she wants a new bike,well the guy at first refused because he said i must have really been doing something that i shouldn't have because bike frames just don't break like that.He said in all his years he never seen a bike frame break. My mom finally convinced him that he needed to give me a new bike. A few days later i got my bike back, with a new frame.How did I know that three guys on one bike couldn't go riding down the side of a levee without breaking it.One time we had 5 guys on one bike.sounds hard to believe doesn't it.Well it's true cause we did it.There was one guy on the handle bars,one guy on the cross bar,one guy on the rear axle and one on my shoulders,yes thats right i said shoulders,my friend Eddie's brother seen us when we were riding by these big hedges and he got mad and started cussing us and pushed us over into the hedges.thats the bike frame that should have broke.
We used to give our cousins a ride home from school on the handle bars, when we got to the park we would go real fast and then jump off and see how far they could go until they crashed.They got pretty good at steering from the handle bars. sometimes they got hurt when they crashed into a tree or something,but the next day they would be right there waiting for there ride on the handle bars.It's strange how we hardly ever got hurt real bad considering all the crazy things we used to do.We did get hurt though, i remember one time i was giving my cousin a ride home on my bike and he was riding on the handle bars and we were going real fast down the sidewalk.When we got to the end of the sidewalk there was this bump and when we hit it the front of the bike went in the air and apparently the front tire wasn't tightened down right because it came off when we were in the air and when the bike came back down the front forks went into the front wheel spokes and we flipped over. We both got banged up pretty bad on that one.
There was this one time when we went walking to the show and there was these kids that lived down the block from us.They were our friends but then again sometimes we would be feuding with them. This one particular day when we walked by there house we noticed they had a donkey out in front of there house and they were trying to ride it and it kept bucking them off. this was one of those big donkeys. Back in them days a donkey in front of someones house was no big deal.There was this one guy who used to ride to town on the weekend on his horse and he used to take his pet skunk with him riding on the back of the horse ( i think the guys name was sunny )anyway we see these guys trying to ride that donkey and we just laugh at them and just keep on walking.Well across the street from these boys house there's this corral where they load the livestock on the trains and we were about twenty feet from it,we liked to walk through the corral because we would climb up on the fence and walk on top of it. There was about five of us. All of a sudden I hear someone say watch out and I turn around and I see that big ol donkey running full speed right at us,well nobody had to tell me anything, I ran and jumped on the fence. when I looked back my cousin Leo had just turned and seen the donkey and I swear it looked like it was going to trample him.That donkey couldn't have been more than a couple feet from him when he seen it,My cousin was off like a shot.You ever see those movies and they fire a gun and you know that sound the gun makes,well I think my cousin made that sound when he took off running, he was at the rear and he beat the others to the fence.That ol donkey ran right into the fence, were lucky he didn't crush us.When we looked back those other boys were rolling on the ground laughing. I think we laughed all the way to the show.I think the times we almost died and didn't get hurt were the most fun...stupid,but it's the truth.

The Jeans are coming

Friday evenings at the Colonia were always my favorites. Every Friday evening around 5 or 6 you would hear somebody say "the Jeans are coming, the Jeans are coming" and sure enough here they come around the corner in my Tio's Chevy. My Uncle Henry and Aunt Jean and there 7 kids in one car. We would run along side the car with our dogs and some of the other neighborhood kids. When the Jeans were in town there was always something going on. I don't know who gave them the name "the Jeans" but for some reason it fit. They spent the weekend at their Grand fathers house.Ol Gramps had a small house, kitchen,living room and a big closet. Ol Gramps liked to sit about 5 feet from the front of the t.v. and watch the Giants or the forty-niners with his cup of coffee, newspaper and a cigarette. sometimes he would leave the cigarette hang from his mouth and there would be an ash about 3 inches long hanging from it. One time my cousin couldn't take it anymore and he went and tried to knock the ash off his cigarette and he ended knocking the whole cigarette out of his mouth. Well I'll tell you what Ol Gramps has a hair trigger temper and you just don't mess with him. The next thing I know my cousin comes running out the door with a boot right behind him and a few creative words to go along with the boot.

There was this one incident that happened behind my Gramma's house that will follow us to our grave and beyond. It had to do with my cousins and my brother and I. We were just kids playing good guys and bad guys or something like that , well my cousin just happened to be the bad guy,so what do you do with bad guys ? you hang them right! and thats exactly what we did. We put him on this bucket and tied a rope around his neck, tied the rope to the tree and kicked the bucket out from under him,well thank god we didn't tie his hands, because when we kicked the bucket out he grabbed the rope so he wouldn't choke to death. At that time his sister came walking around the corner and sees whats happening and screams at us, we take off running and she chases us and leaves him hanging. to this day I don't know who got him down before he choked to death but thank god they did.

There was this other time that involved the same cousin. Seams we were looking for something to do and we had our b b guns with us and we were tired of shooting at whatever we were shooting at so I said lets have a b b gun fight and he says o.k. so I tell him you take off and I'll count to 100 and then I'll go looking for you and he agrees. At the time we were at the rice mill. We were the only ones there so we had the whole place to ourselves. Well he takes off and I count. I go looking for him and I'm being real careful cause them b b's hurt. I come walking around the corner real careful like and I look and all I see is these rice boxes stacked one on top of the other. They are made of wood and they are about 4 ft by 4ft and about 3 ft deep. Well when I'm looking over there I see some movement. these boxes are about 50 ft away. I'll tell you what, I was called dead eye by this old man that had this chicken ranch and sometimes he would give me free b b's for shooting the birds around his chicken ranch because they used to eat all his chicken feed. Any way I see movement in the rice box.So I'm looking at this knot hole in one of the boxes and I see this eye looking back at me so I just point and shoot. Now who would have ever thought I would make that shot but I did I shot him right in the eye lid. My cousin jumped clear out of that box in one leap and took off home. I'm there thinking, now I've done it, I knocked his eye out.Well lucky for him and I because it didn't do any serious damage to his eye and he didn't rat me out so I didn't have to deal with his or my folks. Did I learn anything from that ordeal ? no because a short time later we had a b b gun fight that involved 4 of us. my brother, my cousin, a friend of ours and myself. my brother got shot in the lip,my cousin got shot in the neck and chest and I got shot in the wrist and the corner of my eye. Someone sent my older cousin over to break it up because it was getting too serious, so he goes over and gets one of the b b guns and breaks it in half and that was that.

school days

Going to Grammar school in Colusa was probably a little different than going to school in most other schools, because it was so small. I had a good friend that lived right down the street from me. We would get up real early and be the first ones at school. Now your probably thinking, man these guys really wanted to learn. Well not really you see we had a rule over on the baseball diamond that whoever got there first, got to be up first, so we were always there first. Playing baseball there was a lot different because someone decided it would be a good idea to put a baseball diamond on the asphalt, I seen a lot of skinned knees and elbows. The other thing was that when you went up to batt if you got a hit it was a miracle because there was about 30 infielders and 40 outfielders, thats why we went early so we could play a regular game without all the extra people.
I always enjoyed playing sports and I always looked forward to the meeting the school would have in the auditorium at the end of the year, grades 1-8, to honor all the people that excelled in school for one reason or another, but what I really liked was when they gave out the award for the best athlete. They always gave a special award to the guys that were the captains of the winning teams in baseball, football and basketball. They would call them up on stage by name,and give them there award individually, and there was a certain amount of respect that went with this honor,and nobody had ever won this award for more than one sport. When I was old enough to be captain of a team, I was nominated for captain in all three sports,and my teams won the league in all three sports so I figure I would be a cinch for the special award at the end of the year. Well guess what, at the end of the year we were all playing out on the playground and the teacher calls us over, there was just a hand full of kids there and the teacher gives me this certificate with this little football,baseball and basketball on it.He told me that was my award for being the captain of all three leagues. I appreciated the award, but I always wondered why I was treated differently than the others, especially since I achieved something that nobody else had ever done.Sometimes life makes you feel like Charlie Brown,that was a Charlie Brown day.

Our principle in this school could be a little mean to us kids sometimes, I guess that was his job, but there was this one incident when I didn't go to school because I didn't have any shoes to wear.the bottom had come loose and when I walked it looked like they were talking to you, I think some of you know what I mean,anyway my principle comes over to the house to find out why I was not in school so my mom tells him I didn't have any shoes to wear and she didn't have the money to buy me some. so he says not to worry because he's going to take me to town and buy me some. I'm sitting there thinking, damn I have to go with this jerk ( we didn't like each other ) anyway I get in his car and he takes me to town and we stop at the army surplus store. I don't remember what was going thru my mind but I can guarantee you it wasn't anything nice. We get down and go inside and I have a seat and he has the guy measure my feet. I would have settled for any tennis shoes and they would have been cheaper, but not this time Charlie Brown, This dude picks out the ugliest shoes I had ever seen in my life. My cousin came up with a name for them, he named them hamburger shoes, because the front of the shoe stuck up all puffy like and it looked like somebody dropped a hamburger on them.I had to wear these stupid shoes until they wore out,and believe me I helped them out the best I could. kids would see my shoes and point at them and laugh at them. Now check this out, about 50 yrs. later I'm sitting here at home, and my daughter calls me and says I'm wanted on the phone. so I go and get the phone and it's an old friend of mine from Colusa, he's in town visiting and he wants to see me.This guy was my best friend back then.We get to talking about old times of course,and we get to the subject of "our principle" and he starts telling me about the time he didn't have any shoes to wear and "our principle" bought him a pair of the ugliest shoes you could imagine,he described them and they were the same kind that he had bought me.When I said hamburger shoes we laughed for days.You'll never convince me that he didn't buy us them shoes to humiliate us. I guess you could say we had the last laugh though.

Chibics Ranch

We used to live in a ranch called "Chibics" ( I think thats how you spell it) it was right next to the river of course. We could walk to the river in about ten minutes. My brothers and my sisters would take a walk to the river in the evening sometimes. My brother and I were always throwing rocks at something. We both had good arms and a good aim. My dad made us a slingshot when he figured we were old enough, man we were shooting at everything. If it moved we shot at it. My dad didn't like us shooting at animals though.He didn't like seeing an animal get hurt.

My dad had this big old rooster that he was very proud of, and of course he was always catching us throwing rocks or clods at it and he used to get mad at us. Well there was this one day that my brother and I were outside in the back of the house and here comes my dads rooster walking right in front of us with his chest all puffed out and he's just strutting by all full of himself. Well my brother and I just couldn't help ourselves, we picked up some clods and started throwing them at him, he takes off running but he was too slow cause like I said before,we were pretty good shots, Well one of the clods found it's mark and "pow" right in the head, he went down and didn't move. My brother and I walked over to him and prodded him but he didn't wake up. So now were panicking and we don't know what to do because dads always checking on his rooster when he gets home, so we pick him up and go and throw him down the hole in the outhouse. We figured nobody will find him in there, well sure enough dad comes home and after dinner he's out back and he asks us if we seen his rooster. I don't remember what we told him but I'm sure it was something like "we seen him earlier" my dad looked for him for awhile and gave up. I'm sure he figured if something happened to him we had something to do with it. Try as we might we could never put one over on mom and pop, but this time we thought we got away with one. That night there was no rooster so there was no problem. Well the next day we went outside to play and here comes dads rooster, all full of a bunch of who knows what with paper and stuff all stuck all over him, he sees us and he takes off running to get away from us, we couldn't have caught him if we tried, so we had to leave him like that. He still had stuff on him when my dad got home but he wasn't as bad as he was in the morning. Now I know my dad knew we had something to do with his roosters condition, but he just didn't know how. That old rooster never let us get close to him after that. I guess you couldn't blame him. I always wondered what would have happened if that rooster would have tried flying out of that hole at night if or when one of my sisters would have gone out there and sat on the pot. god help us if it would of been my mom. The other thing I wonder is what that ol rooster was thinking when he woke up down in that hole. The last thing I wondered is how in the heck did he get out ? I guess I'll never know.

The way we were

Seams to me that some people don't like talking about there past for one reason or another, but not me. I grew up poor ( in other peoples eyes ) My life was actually pretty rich with family and friends and sure we worked out in the labor camps, but it wasn't as bad as that sounds. There was always something to do after work, because we were always right next to the river. You could go swimming, fishing, chase rabbits, squirrels, climb trees and a lot of other things kids liked doing back in that time. The farmers used to have there secret stash of peaches that they used to plant in some hidden location but we always knew where they were. We would go and sit in the tree and eat our fill and you just don't find peaches that good anymore. Now this probably sounds boring to you young folks, but you would have to have lived it to understand what i'm talking about.The work was hard, but it seams that there was always something going on, snakes, bats, beehives, baby rabbits, horses. We had to deal with these things constantly. (The horses pulled the wagons we used to load with prune boxes) Saturdays were always a treat because that was payday.They would have a picnic out in the orchard. The labor camps were nothing more than a bunch of one room shacks, no plumbing ( we had to use the out house) there was one light hanging from the ceiling. My mom did all the cooking outside on a wood stove or over a camp fire, but you know what, the food was always absolutely delicious. Home made tortillas, papas, refried beans, I mean the real deal here folks, sometimes we had my moms delicious refried chicken and a bunch of other great food, now don't get me wrong, my wife is a excellent cook, but i tell her to keep it simple because if she cooked all the food my mom did i would probably weigh about 300 lbs. nuff said about that.

After work you had to take a shower in this room with this big tank overhead that had nothing but cold water in it, but being that the temperature was always around 100, I don't think anyone really cared. Us kids would sit around the camp fire at night and listen to the grown ups tell there stories, and eventually they would get around to telling ghost stories which would leave us paralyzed with fear, But the next night we would be right back out there. Some of the older guys used to like to make us younger kids fight to see who could beat who, and there was always the new guy always trying to show you how tough he was. They hardly ever picked on me but i did get in a scrape or two. My sisters would always tell my mom if we got caught fighting. My mom did not like for us to fight with each other or anyone else. My dad had a dads point of view on this, all you dads out there know what i mean.

Whenever we moved to a new camp my dad would go on ahead of us and find us the best spot available and get the old water hose and wash down the inside of the shack to get all the bugs, spiders, lizards and any other little critters he could find, out. then he would break out his fly spray pump and get rid of any mosquitoes and whatnot that was left. I got the privilege of going with him a couple of times, when you went with pop it always made you feel special, cause the others had to stay and work. You still had to help him do whatever, but that was o.k. My mom would come along next and start setting things up and make it as comfortable as possible. Now i'll tell you what, my mom was so good at taking what she had and making the best of it. My brothers and sisters can tell you that our camp always had the most people around it. Sometimes it was just to visit, other times it was some kid we brought with us cause he was hungry. Heck i remember when i was older i brought a friend of mine home with me cause his brother had been beating him up and he was afraid to go home, he ended up living with us for about two, three years when we were at the Colonia. Mom never turned anybody away that was hungry. Mom was pretty strict with us on certain things, and i'll tell you what, i'm very thankful she was, because if she wasn't, there's just no telling what i would have turned out like. My dad only stepped in when mom asked him to or he seen we were getting a little too big for our britches. You just never wanted to put yourself in that situation. My dad wasn't mean, he just knew how to handle us. I couldn't have asked for better parents.

The labor camps were always jumping on Saturday nights, Because you always have people there from all over California that came for the harvest. Young women, young men, cool cars and great 45 records playing on the Hi FI ( 45 is a record type,not a gun ) always made for a great party. There was always a chaperon. We still had lots of fun, there was always someone who got drunk and made a fool of themselves, I think thats still the case today, It's just that the people handle there problems differently. I always hated to see the summer come to an end, your new friends went back to where ever they were from, and our town went back to the way it was.

The winters were always hard because us kids usually had to walk to school. ( about two miles round trip) even though the bus went right by our house. Dad didn't work much in the winter but mom always found a way to put food on the table. A lot of times it was just beans papas and tortillas. There still my favorites today.

This country has gotten pretty spoiled, we need to realize just how great this country is and be thankful for what we have and not complain about the things we don't have. I call myself a Chicano, what this means to me is that i'm Mexican and American and very proud of it.