It was a stucco three bedroom house set on the corner of a dirt alley in a place we called Mexican town in southeast Anaheim. Chano was tall and strong looking, his skin was not dark and he had brown hair. He spoke english with a quiet Mexican accent. He stood straight and always wore clean clothes. He always had his hair combed and he looked neat. I don't remember seeing his father but his mother was light skinned, had black curly hair, and she was also well dressed whenever I saw her. The hard dirt behind her house had a home-made half basketball court with a hoop that had no net. All the Mexican kids in the neighborhood practiced playing basketball, and they let me practice too. We often played half court with two or three players on each team. The other houses facing onto the dirt alley were made of old wood and were only half the size of Chano's house. I was always barefoot like the young Mexican kids.
One day when I was ten years old I noticed Chano carrying a twenty two rifle under his arm. He was about eighteen and he was friendly to me, so he allowed me to go hunting for rabbits with him in the orange groves near his house. As we walked past the rows of trees Chano instructed me how to walk quietly. He showed me how to take long steps striking first the heel then the rest of the foot. We sneaked past each tree and peared down the rows between the trees. Chano and I spoke with low volume to keep from scaring any rabbits we might see. He said sometimes a rabbit will sit still with his ears drooped down and from a distance look like a clod of dirt in the row between the trees. Sometimes the dirt was plowed, but most of the time we sneaked over land that was coverd with short grass or weeds.
We walked through several groves before we saw something that looked like a rabbit. It was about ten trees away from us and just looked like a small rock or a clod of dirt. Chano knelt down on one knee, aimed his old fashioned rifle and fired. The sound was sharp like the crack of a whip. The clod of dirt jumped into the air, and when we walked up to it, the rabbit lie quivering on his back. Chano was wearing leather shoes. He stepped on the rabbits's head, gave a little pull on the back feet, and the rabbit stopped shaking. It was dead. I was allowed the carry the rabbit holding it by its back feet. Drops of blood dripped from the rabbits nose, and I was careful not to let it drip on my shoes.
Chano looked at my hands and my dirty fingernails. He said, "Johnny, you should try to keep your fingernails clean. After you use soap and water to clean your hands you can use your fingernails to clean all the dirt from under all the rest of your nails."
He showed me his hands and the fingernails were all clean. I think he used a knife blade to keep them clean. Chano seemed to me to be one the of the high classed people I would ever meet. He became a respected school teacher. Whenever I wash my hands or look at my fingernails, I think of Chano Parez.