Chapter One

(DRAFT)

Hoppy, Gene, and Roy - 1957

PROFILES IN COURAGE, by Senator John F. Kennedy, is awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

ON THE ROAD, by Jack Kerouac, is published.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is organized by Dr. Martin Luther King.

The McClellan Committee's chief majority Counsel, Robert F. Kennedy, investigates corruption in the Teamsters Union.

At Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1000 Army paratroops are sent to supervise the enrollment of nine black students: September 24.

Sputnik 1 is launched by the Soviet Union: October 4.

On the street where I grew up, all the daddies came straight home from work. The cars knew the way so well, they drove themselves home. The mommies always waited at the door, so when Daddy came home, they could get a kiss on the cheek. Dinner was always prepared when the daddies came home so they could fall right into it.

The rent was always paid on time; the first Friday of every month. Even though life was a struggle, everybody knew that we were living in the best of times and that, one day, the struggle would become easier. And that made everything alright. Like we learned at Disneyland, "There's a big bright beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day, and it's just a dream away."

Because no one had anything, it was easier to imagine what it would be like to have something and to pretend your baseball cap was a cowboy hat and the stick stuck into your pocket was actually the super deluxe cap gun, Roy Rogers model, in a real leather holster.

I couldn't tell you why today, but I was in love with all things cowboy. At that time, the closest I'd been to a horse was the pony ride in a little amusement park that used to occupy the corner of La Cienega and Olympic Boulevards, where the Mall now stands. I'd never seen a real, live, cow.

Early memories are a lot like doors you open for the first time. When I think back to the first things I remember, I don't recall the how or why. I only remember what was.

Here's what I remember about my love of cowboys. Cowboys sang, always kissed their horse at the end of the movie, and never drew their guns in anger. They lived by the Code of the West: Always treat women well, never lie, and live a good, clean life.

Television was my inside world and Roy Rogers was more than "King of the Cowboys." He was king of that world so full of images, ideas, and stories. He sang, rode an orange horse, and always did the right thing. Roy was the Code personified. Next came Hopalong Cassidy. Hoppy was older, wiser, and always had a younger guy who looked up to him. I could picture myself being that younger guy. I loved that all their adventures took place outside where the spaces were wide open and the views went on forever. Finally came Gene Autry. Gene sang and played guitar but he never struck me as being a real cowboy; only an actor.

My world beyond the television was the expanse of lawn in front of our apartment building in the Venice section of west Los Angeles. Three, two story buildings formed a horseshoe which entered onto a long street that curved out of sight. It was quiet there like the opening scene of a movie when the hero first rides into town. During the hot and dry Los Angeles summer, or when the seasonal Santa Ana winds blew, I pictured our neighborhood as a ghost town with tumbleweeds rolling through.

I used to love playing cowboy. Whoever I could talk into the game and I would act out scenes from one of Hoppy, Gene, or Roy's latest show. We'd gallop across the lawn, in a kind of half-skip, slapping our butts with one hand and sticking out the other one like we held onto a horse's reins. That's why Monty Python's King Arthur and his Knights are so funny. There would be lots of gun battles. Getting shot, so you could die creatively, was how all our games ended.

There was a boy, one of my playmates, who was from New York. He talked like it. When his bottom teeth came in, two of them were so long they stuck out of his mouth like upside-down fangs. He had to have them pulled out so he could eat. We used to play together and when I got a cowboy hat for my birthday I let him wear it until his mother made him wear his own hat. His hat reminded me of the ones I saw in the photographs of all the little immigrant children. He had the same eyes, too. Dondi eyes. Eyes that later became popular with velvet painters.

The summer of 1957 was the summer before I started school. It is the first I remember of time having continuity and when meeting somebody was not always like meeting them for the first time.

I knew an old man named Marco. He used to deliver the advertizing circulars. They came rolled up and tied with a rubber band. You read them, or not, and then threw them away. For that reason, my parents used to call them the "throwaway." On Saturday mornings, when all the kids were watching cartoons and the parents were still drinking coffee or sleeping, Marco would walk up and down the streets of our neighborhood and toss the throwaways on every porch.

Marco had lived in real cowboy country: Wyoming, Montana, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. He looked like a cowboy. He stooped when he walked; waddling like a chimpanzee in a Tarzan movie. You could have passed a hoola-hoop, widthways, through his bowed legs. His face had deep lines. The lines extended into his skin like a fractured glass marble, cracked in the oven. His brown skin was rubbery and textured, I suppose, by years of wind and sun. When he smiled, the line of hair above his lip would twitch like a caterpillar arching its back on hot pavement. His eyes had some kind of sparkle to them, as if Marco was always laughing at something I didn't know. They made me think of sunlight on water droplets.

Marco talked like a cowboy too. He didn't have the hick accents of movie actors, but the genuine inflection of a man of the west. The Spanish words rolled off his tongue like water. Lariat. Chapadores. Remuda. Arroyo.

When he saw my mother, Marco would always bow deeply and sweep the ground with his J.B. Stetson hat. It had a double crease in the crown with a wrapping of rawhide that ended in two tiny bells. It gave Marco a jingle when he walked. He called my mother, Senora, and my father, Patron. My parents always spoke politely to Marco. It was important to them that Mexicans, Negroes, and orientals be treated with respect.

I would get up early in the morning on Saturday and sit on the stoop, waiting for Marco. Then, we would walk the rest of his route and talk about being a cowboy.

Marco had different words for the most common things in the world. He taught me the true meaning of phrases like "store-bought." It was more an attitude, or feeling, than anything else. When you lived far away from manufactured items, where everything was rough and home-made, often by clumsy fingers, items bought in stores held special fascination.

While all the movie cowboys wore pearl handled revolvers, Marco told me of his plain forty-four pistol. "A gun, mi amigo, is a tool, a deadly tool. There is no need for tools to be pretty." He also taught me that good riders were tough enough to, "ride anything with hair on it." To make real "cowboy coffee," you poured the grounds directly into the pot minus the formality of percolator. Coffee was only properly brewed if it would, "float a horseshoe," or, "tan your hide."

Blankets were "sougans," a ground cloth was a "henskin," unowned or untamed horses were "the wild bunch," and "ornery" referred to anything or anybody who was hard to handle, difficult to control, or, "just won't cooperate no-way, no-how."

Nobody ever kissed their horse in Marco's stories of the old west. You wouldn't expect someone today to kiss their car would you? Most horses were called "Dan," except for the ones called "Old Dan."

The animals were large, powerful, and stupid. Marco used to say, "There's nothing more stupid than Dan, unless, of course it's a cow." Here, he would smile, his caterpillar twitching, before adding, "Of course, amigo, the only thing dumber than a cow is a sheep; they're just looking for an excuse to die."

"Really? Why would they want to do that?"

"Because, Amigo, they do not have the brains God intended for them. When the wind blows, they will take shelter in a stand of timber and then forget to come out when the winds die. So, they will starve. In the winter, I have seen with these eyes," and he used both index fingers to point into his cracked and rubbery mask, "sheep piled on top of each other trying to get away from the snow." They reminded him of snow itself, he told me.

During the big die-off in Wyoming, the winter of 1892, there were so many cattle and sheep piled one atop the other trying to make whatever shelter possible that they suffocated each other. In the spring it was impossible to separate the carcasses to salvage the hides. That year was the beginning of the end for Marco and his way of life. He couldn't have been more than 16 at the time.

To me, Marco represented a holdover from another world. His stories served as time machines, transporting me to an era when the contrast between living and surviving wasn't all that bold. People, today, talk about being carried away on spaceships by otherworldly beings. Marco was something like that for me.

When I think of Marco these days it seems to me that he was always waiting for something. He surely had the patience born of long nights watching the herd, or of days spent on the back of a horse riding to town for one night in a saloon. When he tossed the throwaways, the sweep of his arm encompassed the northern desert where he was born, the high plains where he spent so much of his life, and the urban setting he had come to.

Marco gave me my first lesson about guns. I asked Marco if he'd ever shot anyone. You know how children can be. They don't really know much about life or death except for what they see in the movies. The good guy shoots; the bad guy falls. Everything ugly about death is kept hidden in hospitals where people go to die. Or in "rest homes" where old people wait for the same thing.

For just a moment he lost the twinkle in his eyes and they became grey. He looked away, into the sky. "Well," he said slowly, accentuating his western drawl, "It isn't right for one man to ask another if he's done any killing. Killing isn't right, Amigo and neither is asking."

It was easy to let the matter drop and I didn't think about it except once or twice when I saw Roy and Hoopy take care of a bad guy or two. It didn't seem wrong to me that some people got shot. In fact, the way they portrayed the villains, it seemed that some of them needed killing.

On the Saturday mornings when I would meet Marco outside the horseshoe of lawn, we would walk up one side of the street to the corner and then back on the other side opposite where we'd begun. His route was almost over by that time and we would walk slowly, talking, or not. He would ask me what I'd done that week and how my parents were.

A very old man and a very young boy. We must have made for quite a tableau the many times we sat on the bus stop bench. We sat there to wait. I don't know what we were waiting for, but Marco would point out things to me while we sat there. Things like the male pigeons puffing up their breasts and strutting around, "To please the senoritas." Marco said the pigeons reminded him of Sage-grouse in Wyoming.

I told him my mother didn't like the pigeons because they would sit on the clothesline and poop on the laundry.

Mostly, Marco talked about his life in the old days on one ranch or another. He would roll a cigarette, lean back on the bench, and begin his stories with a long drawl, "Well, it was like this, Amigo." Then, off he'd go.

The last time I ever saw Marco, he told me about why he left the cowboy life for something else.

He grew up at the century's turn along the border between New and Old Mexico. His grandfather had come up during Maximilian's reign. His father had fought with Diaz. They were pure, "Pura, like water," Marco said. "Always it had been this way. All the way from Espana."

From the family ranch they could see the flat-topped summits of mountains far away. The forests in the mountains supplied the ranchers in the sagebrush and pinyon flatlands with lumber for houses. In the fall they would hunt elk in those mountains. Pinyon poles, taken from near the ranch, with three strands of barbed wire running between them, made up miles and miles of fence.

The territory had been occupied by Indians before the coming of Europeans. They, too, had lived on the sage plains and traveled into the mountains for the lodgepole pine to make tepee poles as well as to hunt. So, Marco and his family were repeating behaviors started long before they ever entered the country.

Marco's family were cattle ranchers. When the first settlers came to the pinyon and sagebrush country they saw mile after mile of land that stretched to the sky in every direction. When they looked closer, they could see ragged bunches of grass growing between the sagebrush. Everywhere were birds, rabbits, and other animals.

The land was too cold, and water too scarce to farm, and so these early folk took their hints from the land. Deer, elk, and pronghorn had roamed here; large herbivorous mammals that spent most of their lives with noses on the ground looking for grass to eat. So, the settlers brought in cattle and turned them loose to roam like the animals the whites eventually drove from the range.

When Marco got older, he drifted away from his parent's ranch and wandered all over the west. He ended up in Wyoming. A cowboy could still make a good living in those days, as long as he didn't mind hard work and not saving any money. "I was young and strong," said Marco, "and didn't think like an old man."

The roundups were the most enjoyable days during the year. "All of the little outfits like ours would get together and go after the mavericks that were born on the range the previous season. Well, according to the law, any unmarked calf was the property of anybody what could lasso and brand it himself. For a week or so, people would be helping out with the rounding up and branding because without everyone helping each other out only the big outfits with the hired hands would get any of the dogies.

"The big outfits didn't like us going after what they considered to be their property. See, they figured that since most of the cows running wild had their brand, so naturally most of the newborns had to be their's too. We didn't see it that way at all and pretty soon one thing led to another, and words was said, and then no one was listening, although everybody was talking. Yelling and screaming mostly.

"The patrons that ran the big outfits started to call us rustlers. They had some stronger words too. Some folks on both sides got beat up; one or two were dry-gulched. Ugly times, and I ain't afraid to admit it. People always wore guns, those days, but no one felt safe and secure all of a sudden unless they had one on the hip, another in the pocket, and a rife or scatter gun within arm's reach.

"See, we all had our own interests to protect. Nobody gave a thought to anybody else except themselves. Selfish is what we were and so we lost it all. Most of the bigger outfits had stockholders back east or in London. Heck, a bunch of the places were owned by cattle cooperatives or syndicates with no one man in charge. They wanted the best return on their investment, same as the little guy. Only difference was that the little guy lived on the land and the big guy lived back east. We all wanted the same thing."

It was a big country, but it got smaller and smaller in the two years following the winter of the big die-off. The world in Wyoming got so small that season, in fact, that a range war began. Ranches were burned, more people beaten, and a few were shot up. The big outfits banded together and revitalized the Stockman's Association that had driven out the smaller outfits 40 years before. They had enough political influence that they were able to create an extralegal "law enforcement agency" to deal with the "rustler problem."

"There wasn't any problem. The only real problem was some people getting a bit too greedy for their own good. And everyone else's."

That was when I asked him if he'd ever killed anyone with his pistol.

Marco didn't say any more about his part in the range war. All I was sure of, concerning his part, was that before it was over he was forced to leave.

"On account of some hard feelings, it is not a good idea for me to go back there even now. If you hurt a person, they have a long memory."

After leaving Wyoming, Marco hired out as a hand. He fished in California, cut trees in Maine, swabbed decks, and did, "Lots of dirty jobs for lots of dirty people." If he hadn't been a cowboy for years, that is still what he was to me and his leather boots, silver in-laid belt, and J.B. Stetson hat proved it.

He didn't say much about his family except that his parents had passed away when he was overseas and that he'd lost track of his brothers. Talk about his family always took the shine out of Marco's eyes.

On that last day with Marco, summer was just about gone. The days were shorter and autumn was definitely coming on.

Most people who lived in Los Angeles when I was growing up had moved there from someplace else. Someplace, "With seasons," they liked to say.

Los Angeles has seasons. The difference is that they don't beat you over the head like the seasons in the Rockies or back east. Autumn is subtle here and if you aren't accustomed to observing life around you, then you miss the seasons in southern California.

Marco could tell. "The air feels changed," he said. "You can feel it when the sun sets; almost like it's sorry to go. Things cool off much quicker and it takes longer and longer for the mornings to warm up." He would know.

There were other differences too. No matter how much they watered the lawn, it was turning brown. The wind was changing directions so the smog didn't stick to my lungs. The sky was blue and we could see the low profile of the Santa Monica Mountains. The sparrows didn't sing as much. I could count to nearly hundred already so if I had known about such things, I could have counted down the days before school began.

So, there we sat on the bus bench, with summer leaving and autumn coming on, each of us deep in our thoughts. Autumn in Los Angeles is a feeling. You may not experience it yourself, but you will see everyone else going through it. It's kind of like the disappointment you feel when a love affair doesn't work out. There was so much potential. There's always so much potential.

A big leaf, fallen from some sycamore far up the street, tumbled by, rolling and rolling along its edge. Suddenly he spoke. "Life doesn't get much better than this, does it Amigo?" Marco's smile stretched from one horizon of his face to the other and the caterpillar did flips and flops.

From our perch, Marco tossed a throwaway into the street. To me, Marco wasn't throwing papers. He was throwing a lasso at some dogie. The bench that held us was Old Dan. Marco's right arm and hand went up as one, arcing from the lower right to in front of his face. Then it went past his left shoulder to behind his ear, then head, and with a snap of his wrist he'd let the lasso fly on straight ahead.

A police car drove up our street, circled back around and parked in front of us, blocking any car from coming or going. The man inside rolled down his window and I heard the snap, crackle, pop of his radio. An unfamiliar odor caused my nostrils to flare. He stuck his face out from the car's interior, looked at me, and demanded, "Whaz your name?"

When I told him, he said, "Your mother's worried about you. Thinks you run off, maybe. Might be with an old guy named Marco." He looked to my friend and arched his eyebrows with a silent question.

"Buenas dias, Senor. My name is Marco."

"Get in," said the cop, ignoring Marco. "I'll take you home."

I looked to Marco. "Go on, Amigo. He is not much but he is no stranger: he is The Law. I expect you will be safe unless you have a doughnut in your pocket." So I got into the car and drove the half block to the apartment building with the horseshoe-shaped lawn.

"Beaner thinks he's funny." The cop spoke directly to Marco. "I'll see about you later."

I made no reply. Beaner was a word my parents didn't allow. The interior of the car smelled of the man.

The policeman took me up to our front door and knocked. I opened the door and we walked into the kitchen. My parents walked in from the rear of the apartment. I could hear the television. My mother's face was angry; my father looked concerned. His brows were knit.

"Here he is," said the cop.

"Where have you been?" demanded my mother, verbally underlining each word.

I looked at Dad and saw the same concern that crossed his face whenever I did something wrong.

"I was walking with Marco, like I always do."

"It's almost noon!" said mother, underlining again.

"What could have been on your mind to be gone for so long?" asked father.

I didn't have an answer to that because I hadn't been thinking anything at all. I was out for a walk. But you can't ever admit to your parents that you weren't thinking. Plus, when you're young, there aren't the words or phrases in your memory to explain much of anything you do. So, I started to cry. It seemed like the thing to do; I was frightened. My parents were mad at me and I didn't know why. I was afraid of being punished.

Then my parents smiled. A shocked sort of smile. They both bent down and embraced me. "We were so worried. We thought you might be lost and needed us," my mother explained.

"You're not mad at me?" I blubbered.

"No! We're concerned. It's so late and we didn't know where you went. You were gone when we woke up." Then they were crying too, and hugging me, hugging each other, and everything was all right again.

One of the ironies of life is that the unfathomable mysteries of childhood become deeper with adulthood. As a teen, I knew everything. Except for why my parents were so incredibly dense. In college I began to learn what I knew and how to separate it from what I thought I knew. When I became a teacher I began to realize that learning and education were incredibly different; some of the most educated people I met were also the least learned. One of the greatest conundrums of all is in understanding yourself.

For instance. I am surprised that the older I get, the more like my parents I become. At first this was great cause for alarm. Now, it is amusing. I'm sure it amuses them as well.

When I became a teacher it was because I believed teachers touch the lives of their students in positive ways. In a way, teaching became my way of becoming Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Gene Autry. I tried to teach my students The Code of the West though by that time it had changed to The Golden Rule.

I think there is a reason why we must never lose hope for the children of the world. We must shelter them as long as we can from what is ugly and mean, and destructive. We must want life to be better for them. The only way we'll ever be immortal is to teach our children the tools for learning how to get along with each other.

Sometimes we get so caught up in what we're doing, in our point of view, that we lose sight of what is going on around us. We don't recognize we've embarked on a journey, don't know the cause, don't see our mistakes. It is only when we step back that we see the growth taking place. When we see the end become further and further away, that is when we realize the trip is the goal, not the ending.

My parents, that morning, saw that. Because of my walk with Marco we became closer. From such events families are built.