Jaime

Before World War Two Anaheim, California was a segregated town. There were no African-Americans I saw except for the shoeshine man on Center street. Mexicans were allowed to swim in the city swimming pool only on Monday the day before the pool was cleaned. I finally found out the pool is cleaned every day, not just on Tuesday. At the Fox movie theater only whites were allowed in the orchestra seats. Mexicans with dark skin were seated in the balcony area only. I think children of Mexicans from Mexico sat down front with us white kids because they spoke good English. Mexican children went to La Palma Grade school where the principal and teachers were Mexican Americans. Anaheim had one Mexican policeman whose name was Joe Miranda. Joe was the most respected and well liked of any policeman I knew. The town had been mostly German people, but folks from Oklahoma and other poverty stricken farm states moved to Anaheim during the nineteen thirty depression even before Walt Disney came to town.

Jaime, (pronounced Haimi) was my best friend in grade school. His small wooden house was off a dirt alley in a little ten acre area we called Mexican town. I spent my youth playing there with Jaime and many of his friends. Jaime and I walked through orange groves to Lincoln School. In 1937 the Santa Ana river overflowed causing a flood in Anaheim. After the flood, thick crusts of mud covered the ground and turned to silt when it dried. Silt is made from finely grained earth filtered from the flood water. Cracks formed in the dry silt making a jigsaw pattern where silt was protected under trees and under houses. At age seven Jaime and I collected snail shells and buried them under the silt in secret places. By carefully replacing the pieces of silt over our buried treasure, nobody could see where we had dug.

Jaime went barefoot to save money on shoes his parents were not able to buy for him. I went barefoot to be like him. He was a year older than I, and one of the best athletes I ever met. He had an excellent memory and did well on tests which he was able to complete swiftly in class. One day we were asked to learn a poem called "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Jaime memorized and recited the poem to our teacher within one hour. Sometimes he let me try to trip him as we walked home from school. He never showed any anger toward me, yet he was a fighter with others who tried to bully him.

As a small boy Jaime sold newspapers at night in the city ten blocks from our neighborhood and gave his earnings to his father. His father and mother appeared to me to be old and stern. They didn't seem to notice me at all. Few of the Mexican parents ever spoke to me. But Jaime's house was warm and smelled good inside. Beans were always cooking in a pot, and I love the odor of Mexican beans.

Jaime and I became blood brothers by making small cuts on our wrists and mixing blood from one wrist to the other. It made me part Mexican for the rest of my life.

By the age of ten Jaime worked picking oranges. One summer I picked oranges, too. Each morning we climbed into a canvas covered truck where we sat on wooden benches on the sides of the truck bed facing each other. The workers spoke only in Spanish, but it was easy to see they were gently teasing me. I could tell by by their glances and attitudes.

We used long, heavy ladders to climb the trees. We carried a special tool to cut the orange stems and wrapped tape on the tool handles to prevent hand blisters. A canvas sack that was carried over one shoulder was open on the bottom. When the bottom half of the sack was folded up and secured with snaps, oranges could be carried easily. When the sack was full we opened the bottom of the sack and dumped the oranges in wooden orange crates. The long ladder was carried from tree to tree with difficulty because it was heavy. The ladder was carried on one shoulder with the narrow part high over one's head. Each picker dumped their oranges into a crate marked by the foreman with chalk to keep track of how many boxes each worker picked. We were given seven cents a box. Some pickers filled more than one hundred boxes a day. I could pick no more than twelve, but Jaime picked almost as many as the older men. We were not allowed to pick up fruit that had fallen on the ground, but some orange pickers threw in the fallen fruit anyway to fill the boxes faster.

At age eleven Jaime and I crawled under his house. Jaime reached into a cavity, removed some pieces of silt, and removed an object wrapped in a white rag. After unwrapping the rag he showed me his treasure. It was a real gun that he had stolen. The revolver was big and heavy and was a little rusty. We each took turns holding and pointing the gun before placing it back in the hiding place.

In junior high school Jaime lifted weights and became very strong. He did one hundred push-ups each night before sleeping and developed a big chest and large muscles on his lithe body. Later Jaime became Anaheim high school's best long distance runner and a star basketball and football player.

In his teens Jaime began to hang out only with other Mexicans, and his Mexican accent became more pronounced. He let his hair grow longer and wore special gang clothes. Some wore zoot suits with baggy trousers and tight cuffs. They stood on street corners at night twirling watch chains attached to their trousers. They oiled their hair and combed it back to form duck tails. Few were able to afford a car, but the cars they had were usually dark sedans lowered in the back almost dragging on the street. Mudguards with reflectors hung behind the wheels. Little religious dolls, knitted baby socks or dice hung from either the rear view mirrors or back windows. Sometimes Venetian blinds covered the back windows tinted almost black for privacy. Rumors spread quickly that Pachucos were smoking marijuana and carrying razor blades in their girlfriend's hair. Mexican dancers hunched their shoulders to look cool. They promenaded counter clockwise around the floor like Montana Cowboys did in those days. Mexican guys twirled the girls endlessly, and the boys had fights outside in the parking lots.

In the early nineteen forties, when a young man got in trouble with the law he was advised by the police that in order to avoid jail he could join the armed forces. I doubt if Jaime joined for that reason, but he did join the Army before he graduated high school. After the war, Jaime married his beautiful high school sweetheart. She was as pretty as "The Madonna". Jaime became a foreman for a crew of orange pickers, and later he worked in a defense plant. His family grew and prospered. Jaime then became a highly respected citizen in Anaheim where he eventually retired after having several children and many grandchildren.

I did not stay in touch with Jaime after he went in the Army, but I phoned him recently. I asked him what ever happened to the gun he hid under his Dad's house.

Jaime answered, "I guess the pistol is still under the silt."