\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you the nice guy or the mean guy?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What? I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been asked that question in years. Hearing it, I harked w-a-y back, to 1966, when I still lived at my birthplace, at 906 Railroad, in a barrio we called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tuff Street.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Every house got a little tuffer, and I lived in the last house. The person who inquired about my naughty- and nice-ness used to live in the second-to-the-last house.<\/p>\n
When I moved back to Las Vegas, I lived next door to three little boys, sons of Mel and Bella Martinez. I may have snubbed one or all of them the first time; the next time I saw them, I have been told, I was friendly. That prompted the oldest boy, Ralph, to ask why I was sometimes mean, sometimes nice.<\/p>\n
But instead of conjuring up an answer, I came up with a clone. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the nice guy. The mean guy is someone else, but he looks just like me, so be careful,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I explained.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what got Ralph and his brothers always to ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you the nice guy or the mean guy?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Once, in the back yard, as I visited with my mother, the three oldest boys came by and asked the inevitable question. Feeling feisty, I roared, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the mean guy!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as I lunged toward him. He fell off a little stool, setting off a giggling spurt in my mom that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never witnessed before.<\/p>\n
So, when I heard the nice\/mean question last Friday at the Rec Center, I naturally caught the allusion. Ralph, now in his 40s, remembered having asked the question many times in the past. Now a driver for Ross Oil, Ralph recalls the many times he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d alternately meet either Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.<\/p>\n
So, Ralph, when you saw me Friday, you were speaking to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nice Guy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d However, that label is subject to change without warning.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2
\nSeveral columns have involved looking back. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pleased when people call, write or stop to tell me they remembered some of the people and things I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve referred to.<\/p>\n
Last month, I wrote a retrospective for the new Senior Review supplement to the Optic, about businesses that no longer exist here. And a large number of businesses have merely changed their name but not location.<\/p>\n
A while back, a woman in an SUV stopped me to point out an error I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d made when referring to an Old Town drugstore. In an earlier column, I must have confused the erstwhile Delgado\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Drugs with Cokie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, now the Plaza.<\/p>\n
The column was about my first date in high school, when I arranged to meet the girl at a place she called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cokie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Where\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cokie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
My date said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be Plaza Drugs to you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
As a product of New Town, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t familiar with all the businesses on Bridge Street and on the Plaza, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been reminded there was Saibe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Drugs and Leo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pharmacy in that area as well.<\/p>\n
Well, so much for what I thought was a good memory. The SUV driver, Evelyn Wootton Harris, however, apparently doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget a thing, or let an error go unpunished, as she informed me that Cokie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Delgado\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Drugs were not one and the same.<\/p>\n
In the Senior Review column, I listed 15 old businesses, such as T.J. Maloof Pontiac, Art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Market, The Lobby Newsstand, Brownie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cleaners, The Sorority Shoppe and Charles O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Malley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.<\/p>\n
And I invited readers to identify these places. Evelyn was able to name all the businesses of yore, and she convinced me she should be quizzing me.<\/p>\n
For example, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d referred to a place called Dean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pharmacy, at Sixth and University, but Evelyn pointed out two names even before that. So, the chronology now appears to be: 1) The Pepper Pot, 2) the Ice Cream House, 3) Dean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pharmacy, 4) Graham\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pharmacy, 5) Del Norte Pharmacy.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
From the (e-mail) bag:<\/p>\n
A column in October on Joe Six Pack, the iconic ideal voter, in the mind of Sarah Palin, used expressions like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153darn tootin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ya betcha\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to illustrate the southward direction of the English language.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad there are people who care about proper English, as illustrated by this e-mail from Tito Chavez, a retired English teacher:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thank you for your continuing clarifications regarding standard English. When I taught English, I usually stated to my students up front that I was teaching Standard English as a Second Language. They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like this very much because they always asserted vigorously that they already knew how to read and write English.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take long before I was able to show, through simple testing and oral questioning, that, in fact, high school students are sadly deficient in their knowledge of standard English.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153After doing this exercise early in the semester, I always let the whole subject drop and proceeded to teach English literature, grammar and composition, always hoping to increase student skills and make it possible for them to pursue higher education or at least be able to communicate with the rest of the world in creditable English.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
A previous column in which I pondered why \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of all the pronouns in English, requires a capital, drew an e-mail from Ben Moffett, a retired sports editor. He wrote:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve wondered about … discrepancies in capitalization related to Christianity. For example, we not only capitalize \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcJesus,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 as we should, but we capitalize most of the personal pronouns. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcJesus said He would return to Earth.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI have walked with Him all my life.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. . .<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Another thing that confuses me: We go to all the trouble to capitalize \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pronouns and then, in Spanish, at least, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 gets the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcti\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 all the time. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTu eres\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 be entitled to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcUsted\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 for God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sake?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
My reply was merely to agree that languages are strange. Why, for example, do buddies in Shakespeare refer to one another as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thee\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thou\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when speaking to royalty?<\/p>\n
More on this next year.<\/p>\n
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first word you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll speak in 2009? What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the last word you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll utter in 2008?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you the nice guy or the mean guy?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What? I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been asked that question in years. Hearing it, I harked w-a-y back, to 1966, when I still lived at my birthplace, at 906 Railroad, in a barrio we called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tuff Street.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Every house got a little tuffer, and I lived in the last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}