Pops - part one

Growing up there were a few legendary stories about my pops. One was that he got sent home from the first day of school because he had been placed in the white class but didn't speak English. It is a great story that speaks to many political issues but doesn't really tell you anything about my dad.

How that story was chosen to retell I will never know since anyone can tell you that I am the only *out* radically political person in my family. Oh yeah we are all lifelong democrats and my mom had my older siblings out on the street with Viva Kennedy signs in 1960. But I identify as Chicana. And it should tell you something about my family that those words make me radical and that I have to make a conscious decision to claim it and therefore be the *out* person. I take a fair amount of heat while they bask in their anonymous politics. But, I digress.

In later years another story about my dad's first day of kindergarten is revealed. Simply put he got sent home, kicked out are the words used, for getting in a fight.

My dad always smiles wryly when someone brings it up.

That condensed version, the one I heard most often, also doesn't tell you a lot about my dad. Sure he's a hot head and stubborn - fully embracing the bull of his birth sign and the goat of our last name.

But you probably don't need to hear that Gilberto story-light to know that about my dad.

It's the longer version that gets you closer to knowing the man I know as my father.

Dad is no angel. So on that first day of kinder (who knows if it is also the infamous first day ever of school) he was probably out wandering the hall to check it out. Irresistibly curious and the oldest of his family [read used to doing what he wanted] he would want to figure out this place called school. His official version, I think, is that he was on his way back from the bathroom. *wink*

Minding his own business, walking down the hall, he sees two kids. One of them is a classmate, [read also a kindergartner], but the other is an older kid. Said older kid is picking on my dad's new classmate who happens to be white. I don't recall now the ethnicity of the bully.

I am guessing my dad hauled off and popped the bully ... I doubt that his reasoning skills at age five would have allowed him to first reason with the bully and getting not the desired response needing to hit him.

Well, the bully, widely regarded as just that by all, never bullied my dad's classmate again. My dad's eyes always twinkle mischievously when tells that last part.

Dad and classmate remained "friends" - as much as was possible in a segregated world - and my dad went to that classmate's 50th wedding anniversary a few years ago - driving across several states to do so.

That's my dad. The judge. Not the went to law school kind, the nickname he picked up from my mother's brothers. I still have never gotten to the bottom of that one.

I am guessing there are a few layers of stories to sift through to get at the root of that one.

photo credits: these are all photos I scanned for my brother's 50th birthday party; these are some of the early years of my brother's life with my pops. So, the first one in April-ish 1961, the second one, my dad with his little boy and favorite truck, June 1960; the third my sister and brother with my dad at the beach, Ensenada, I think 1963; and my dad and brother on the beach with a play gun, middle 60s. The last one is my dad with his mom and siblings at a family reunion circa 1980.