\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0About 12 years after the fact, a student ascribed to me an honor I would give my eye-teeth for. In introducing me to his parents, the then-30-ish young man told his parents, natives of Santa Rosa, that I had co-written \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bless Me, Ultima.”<\/p>\n
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Suspecting the man might have been playing a joke on his parents, I asked him later how he got the notion I was a co-author. He replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I remember putting it into my notes. You said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rudolfo and I wrote \u00c5\u2019Bless Me, Ultima.'”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 So it was a question of enunciation. I had meant \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rudolfo Anaya wrote the book.” What the student heard was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rudolfo and I \u00e2\u20ac\u201d uh \u00e2\u20ac\u201d wrote \u00c5\u2019Bless Me, Ultima.'”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Now I’m careful to articulate.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve raved about Anaya’s novel\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmy opinion is that it’s better than anything he’s written since then\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsince the early \u00c5\u201970s, when it came out. I believe what makes any work a classic is largely a matter of how well people can identify with its characters.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t appreciation of a work Ultimately depend much on whether it strikes a familiar chord? All of us have known a Vitamin Kid or a Horse, two of Anaya’s characters. And many of us can identify with the spiritual journey of Antonio, the narrator.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The education Antonio received, limited largely to Ultima, his own experiences, a parochial public school, and observation of his older brothers, crystallized some of the beliefs he was to have later in life. The community Anaya created emphasized how every adult is related to every child, socially or biologically.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Such was life in the \u00c5\u201940s and \u00c5\u201950s in this cocoon called Las Vegas. A few weeks ago, Work of Art discussed growing up in Las Vegas. Much of the reaction came from people who recalled several of the situations.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Much of growing up, in spite of the previously mentioned daily doses of fisticuffs, was pleasant. For example, a young man named Dennis, whose family apparently owned a dealership, drove by downtown and invited my sister Bingy and me to join him for a ride in a new Crosley auto he was demonstrating.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Bingy and I had been riding double on our family’s only bike, which our oldest sister owned and rented to us. We leaned the bike against a sign near the Serf and joined Dennis in a ride that lasted several hours. Dennis drove us home.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In bed, wide awake and a wee bit envious of Dennis, who drove a car while we shared a bike, I realized we’d forgotten the bike. I dressed quickly\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit was around 11 p.m.\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand ran downtown to find the bike untouched. There have been more recent times in which even the parking meter a bike might be chained to would have disappeared.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Another early observation was that the fuzz were ubiquitous. Unlike today, where it’s encouraged that up to five cars turn left on the red light, cops in the \u00c5\u201950s were everywhere. A lot of policemen walked their beat (remember, people walked in those days), and most of the population could be found on Douglas Avenue and Bridge Street.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Once, two Optic sellers invested a penny on a weight machine at Newberry’s, a five-and-dime. For a cent, you received your \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wate and fate,” in the form of a card that printed your poundage and gave you fortune-cookie-like datum. The entrepreneurs discovered that each time they got on the scales, penny or not, it coughed up a card. They’d collected some 30 of them, as well as a crowd. It’s hard to imagine the advantage to such an acquisition\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit’s not as if their wate or fate would change in those 30 seconds. The manager of the store summoned the police, who just happened to be on that block. Thereupon, the boys received a scared-straight-type lecture that they probably remember today. Worse was the policeman’s threat to notify the boys’ parents. That incident became the topic of conversation at many dinner tables that night. One result of living in a tight-knit community is that people handled things on the spot. The notion that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it takes a village” antedated Hillary Clinton by 50 years. We hadn’t heard of bleeding-heart lawyers, social workers and counselors who today would blame all of society for the woes of the two card-collecting boys.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It’s amazing how word got around in those days. In the pre-cell phone era, even those without a phone of any kind soon got word of any indiscretion, no matter how small. In spite of the rapidity with which a cell phone links people, today’s device pales in comparison with the speed in which news\u00e2\u20ac\u201despecially unwelcome news\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcirculated in the \u00c5\u201940s and \u00c5\u201950s. In one case, my mother knew I’d flipped off another person (totally in self-defense) by the time I got home. She had the business end of her belt ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0About 12 years after the fact, a student ascribed to me an honor I would give my eye-teeth for. In introducing me to his parents, the then-30-ish young man told his parents, natives of Santa Rosa, that I had co-written \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bless Me, Ultima.”<\/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":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}