In our youth, Saturdays were the greatest of days. For 26 cents, we could spend the entire day at the movies. Sixteen cents allowed us to enter the Serf Theater, and the extra dime would get us popcorn.

Even though we had three thriving theaters in town, including the Coronado and the Kiva, most of the kids in my circle went to the Serf because the features usually were first-run and in English. There were cartoons, a newsreel and a double-feature.

After two viewings of the continuous filmings, my sister Bingy and brother Severino would stagger out, overdosed on popcorn. But what was even more enjoyable Monday at school was watching classmates — most of whom sat through as many screenings as we had on Saturday — re-enacting scenes we had all seen, sometimes twice.

I recall a number of swash-buckling movies in which the protagonist fought off a dozen less-experienced sword handlers. I recall the dramatic rescues and the tossings overboard. It amazed me how easily many of us students at Immaculate Conception School tried to become the persona of Errol Flynn or Clark Gable. Continue reading →

Wagon Mound High School, the place from which our youngest son, Ben, graduated, has always been proud of its basketball, whose season generally runs from Aug. 1 through July 31.

It was the school my dad attended around the turn of the last century. “We didn’t have a fancy name for our team,” he said, when asked if he played for the Trojans.

The team has captured its share of state championships, especially during the tenure of Alfred Romero, after whom the gym is named, and there have been many more appearances at state as well. A host of coaches — some serving as many as three stints ­— have led the Trojans. They include Romero, Bobby Clouthier, Danny Gray, George Marquez, Matthew Baca, Fabian Trujillo and Felipe Garcia.

Remember, also, that when teams like the Immaculate Conception Colts, from Las Vegas, competed against the Trojans, the schools were of similar size.

But the really challenging part was competing in a state that had only two size classifications, A and B. The really big schools were Class A; the rest were B. Continue reading →

The rules for Railroad Avenue baseball in the ‘50s were simple: Shorty Bustos’ abandoned car was first base; unless he awakens, that sleeping dog, “Sweetums,” is second base; third base is . . . well, you see that pile of rocks over there? And home is that other pile of rocks. And depending on who’s batting, “over the tracks” was either a homerun or an out. Simple.

Much ink was already been devoted to the guy who customarily murdered the horsehide and didn’t seem to care whether that 98-cent baseball was brand new or a relic of last season, held together with strings and friction tape.

We played our games in an empty lot that ended at the tracks on Columbia Avenue, and we had a host of spontaneous rules that demonstrated how politically correct we were — long before the word “gender” became associated with male or female instead of a grammatical term that encompasses words like he and she. Continue reading →

Remember when boys would go to school, their pockets bulging with marbles, and those same marbles would work wonders when spinning around their moms’ washing machines?

I doubt one can find a game of marbles anywhere anymore, its having gone out of style when gadgets like Rubik’s cubes and little tile games made the scene.

We’ll get back to marbles after a brief mention of toys boys and girls used to buy at Funk’s and Newberry’s in downtown Las Vegas. There is a gadget whose name I never knew, that consists of about 15 interlocking numbered tiles. One’s job was to place them in ascending order. There was a blank spot that allowed the user to jiggle the tiles around. Those who mastered the numbers, without taking the contraption apart, were considered gifted. And they all went to Immaculate Conception School.

On the I.C. playground we began a game of marbles anywhere we found a flat plot of ground. We often brought along a “steelie,” an abnormally large metal marble that knocked everything out of its path. Once, someone I was playing against brought a marble the size of a golf ball and cleaned up. After complaining about the size of his shooter and getting nowhere, I said, “Then it’s OK to bring any size marble to a game?” Continue reading →

Adabbler in languages, I came across a book titled Les Bon Mots. I found it at the latest AAUW book sale, where early birds can get some amazing stuff at a good price.

The book is a guide to hundreds of French words guaranteed to make people sound oh-so learned. As interested as I am in English, Spanish, French and German, I fear that decades from now many of the lesser-spoken languages, including a host of Indian tongues, will have vanished to make room for English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

But this column isn’t going to be about the death knell for languages that don’t get passed on to grandchildren.

Yet, let me mention one linguistic anecdote. A couple of years ago, my wife and I took a river cruise on the Rhine, from Amsterdam, Holland, to Basel, Switzerland. Our ship docked overnight in a city that appeared bi-national and bi-lingual, with equal amounts of French and German. Continue reading →

The standard for survival in college is “two hours of study and preparation for every hour in class.” Go figure: You enter college as a full-time student, signing up for five courses totaling 15 credits. The credits, or units, correspond neatly to the number of hours of class time each course requires.

And to be successful, one ought to devote twice as much time preparing and studying as time spent in an actual class. For most college students, that adds up to 45 hours devoted to college classes. Now we all know that some courses require little preparation or homework, and many students spend far less time boning up than the two-hours-for-one formula recommends.

Even when I taught at Highlands, and professors touted the 2-to-1 formula, there were countless students working full time and somehow managing a full course load. Continue reading →

Without hesitation, I declare that no person had a bigger positive influence on the English language than William Shakespeare, whose birthday was believed to have been April 23, coincidentally, also the date of his death.

But this isn’t going to be a pep talk on Shakespeare; rather, it’s a lament.

Let me explain:

Daniel Burnett, secretary of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit dedicated to academic excellence, recently wrote that Shakespeare studies are virtually non-existent today.

The headline to Burnett’s opinion piece that appeared in the Albuquerque Journal read “It’s Shakespeare’s birthday. Who knew?” And to that we might add, “Who cares?” Continue reading →

On the wall of the office of long-time Highlands University department secretary Jean Greer was a framed photo that showed a lone goat atop a craggy mountain. The message beneath it was, “I’m so far behind, it looks like I’m w-a-y ahead.”

That was years ago, when I worked there. I’m reminded of Amtrak and its penchant for tardiness. Why doesn’t the government-subsidized railway company simply adopt this slogan: “We’re always prompt, no matter how long it takes”?

By contrast, the much-criticized Rail Runner, which hooks Santa Fe to Albuquerque and parts south, runs like clockwork. Having relied on the ‘Runner for many trips, I’m amazed at its punctuality. On numerous occasions, when taking my grandson and namesake to Santa Fe to catch the rails to Albuquerque, it and we arrived just in time.

But once, driving to the South Capitol stop, we arrived two minutes late, but the train waited for no man or woman. The second gamble was to try to head off the train at the next stop, a few miles south. That worked: no speeding tickets; in fact, no speeding. Continue reading →

On a trip last weekend to Missouri, my wife and I were among the last breakfast eaters on the Amtrak unit, their probably having run out of items on the menu. I chose toast with my omelet but received a (not-too-shabby) croissant instead.

The waitperson explained that earlier diners had consumed the railway’s supply of toast and therefore, all they had to offer were the croissants. “We lack toast,” the waitress said, in a manner that seemed as if she’d said it before and was expecting a cute reply. That gave me an opening to say, “Well, I’m tolerant.” Almost as if we’d rehearsed the dialogue, we put together “Lack toast and tolerant,” which is the way some people render the condition of being “lactose intolerant.”

That was good for a chuckle. It also triggered questions as to why today my consuming ice cream often leads to an hours-long belch-o-rama within my intestines. Am I “lack toast and tolerant?” I ask myself. It may have started decades ago when ice cream was a luxury.

In my youth, we lived across the street from E. Peña’s Grocery — there were grocery stores on virtually every corner of Las Vegas, back in the days when we used to eat dinosaurs. Continue reading →

For a man who’s younger than I and who doesn’t make a posh living through the manipulation of language, Mayor Alfonso Ortiz appears to have broad knowledge of terms we use in Spanish and English.

He said that “some day” we’d get together, where he could brief me on terms his and my ancestors used in their prime. A while back, I’d written about the diminution of terms in Spanish, used by my parents, especially Mom.

We’ll get back to the mayor in a few graphs. First, let me review some of the points I made in a previous column about how my parents, the late J.D. and Marie, used the diminutive inflectional ending for many things. Dad, during his advanced age, ceaselessly referred to my brother Severino and me as “hijito.”

Now, if this usage were to come in Mayor Ortiz’s presence, I would have said that there was considerable irony, as for years, I’ve not been a small son, nor was my brother, although I suppose I still outweigh Sev by 30 pounds. Continue reading →