Almost two years ago, I wrote a doleful tale of the transfer of ownership of my childhood home. Unintentionally, I may have hurt the buyer’s feelings by referring to him as an outsider.
A sudden job transfer means the owner needs to sell the house, and wouldn’t it be fitting if we Trujillos were to re-acquire the house on Railroad Avenue, the epicenter of many activities of the ‘40s, ‘50s and even later?
A tour of the house, in which the current owner stressed the same features of the house, the same way my family did two years ago, understandably reminded me of the neighborhood in which many of us grew up.
The privacy factor for us children, members of the Railroad barrio, was zilch. Almost never could one of us leave the house without meeting neighbors. We had the Maestases to our left, the Bacas to our right, and the Peñas, Kemms, Greenways, Bustoses, Gallegoses, Anayas, Herreras, Sisneros and the Vigiles a few feet away.
There were eight of us in a house of 800 square feet, one bathroom and hideaway beds that came out only at night. It would be interesting to learn how today’s residents-per-household factor compares with occupancy then.
Residential congestion forced us all outside, where it seemed every other kid in the neighborhood had the same idea.
In our neighborhood, a no-name gang of about 15, whose raison d’etre was unknown — even to them — communicated through a series of Tarzan-like howls.
Carlos, a gang wannabe, daily would stop near our house, cup his hands, howl a while and, surprisingly, get a reply from someone on the 800 block, who in turn would perform his wireless communication with someone farther down the barrio.
And what were these secret codes? Was a howl simply a vacuous message that says “I’m here”? Did it mean “I need help” or even “Can I borrow a quarter till the weekend?”
Carlos once let out a howl filled with many vowels: “aaaoooooeee.” As a serious fifth grader at Immaculate Conception School, I thought, “How ungrammatical! Doesn’t Carlos know it’s ‘aaa’ before ‘eee,’ except after ‘ooo’”?
Other than looking tough, they didn’t seem to do much. Except once, when Carlos and his friend Mike stopped outside my house as if waiting for one of us. I was around 11 at the time, leaving for school, when Carlos shoved me, causing me to flip over the two-foot wall in front of our house. He said, “This is from Mike.”
Later, as I recovered from the sheer surprise of an unprovoked shove, I wondered why Mike himself, larger than Carlos, hadn’t done the honors. There was a standoff, and though both boys were older, I asked them what they had against me.
“You think you’re too good because you’re rich,” Carlos said. “Rich” is a word that certainly did not describe the Trujillos. Rich described some of the folks on Seventh and Eighth streets, who had bicycles, a car and lived in those big two-story Victorian houses.
I must have convinced Carlos that I was no rich kid, and soon we became buddies and often traded or shared shifts as pinboys at the eight-lane bowling alley on Grand.
The idea of wealth and opulence simply wasn’t in my ken, but to others we may have appeared better off. But why? Was it because we car-less Trujillos spent part of Dad’s income on paint or devoted weekends to sprucing up the yard?
Lawn manicures and square corners weren’t common in those days, and people seldom got building permits. Close by, the standard 24×36 house seemed to have whelped, as the occupants grew from eight to about 21, each generation opting to stay w-a-y close to home.
If cinder blocks were cheap that year, they became the primary material for a new room; if the price of lumber went down, the residents constructed a multi-material addition. The rooms we later added to our house were made of adobe.
Once I toured one of the nearby igloos, as we (the rich Trujillo clan) called them, and discovered that several spliced extension cords provided the electricity to the new stand-alone suites.
It seems miraculous but neighborhood fires were rare. One such blaze would have destroyed half a block on our crowded street. Many lots were originally 25 feet wide and 75 feet deep but some people bought double lots, which today seem the size of postage stamps.
Most vivid is my recollection of the busy sidewalks. Before our block got pavement, we played our baseball and dodgeball on the street. And drivers in that area often respected our turf.
Once, a man driving home observed our game and courteously backed up his car and circled the block to avoid disturbing us.
In order to grow up to be strong, we boys were conscripted to perform physical activity. After our yard chores, we played ball outside, while our older sisters relaxed over an ironing board and a coal cook stove.
Along with the physical activity came freedom to roam. My brother and I often walked as far as the Old Town Bridge — but no farther — whereas my sisters must have heeded our parents’ admonition to stay on the east side.
Strange, but lately I’ve met many west-siders whose parents told them the same thing — to stay near their familiar haunts and avoid us easterners.
The recent tour of my birthplace showed amazing changes. The sidewalks, for one thing, rarely are populated. Outdoor games have moved indoors, or else disappeared, and the gang members of old, who communicated through howls — if they even exist any more — probably chat by cell phone or text messages.