in loving memory of my father *

Mom and Pop

My mother always tells the best stories.  My father keeps most of his stories to himself.   They met for the first time in Los Angeles three months before they posed for an anonymous photographer on their wedding day.  They are still very much in love.  There are hundreds of snapshots, postcards, letters that capture the half-century that they've shared together raising their children, enjoying their grandchildren and great-grandson.

My mother was born and raised in El Paso, Texas.  She was the youngest of ten children.  Her childhood responsibilities included serving as the hospice care giver for her entire extended family.  She was acutely familiar with the process of dying at a time when she should have been going to school and playing with her friends.  Her parents refused to allow her to attend school beyond the fourth grade.

My father was born in El Limón, Sinaloa, Mexico but moved to Los Angeles at the age of six months.  From the age of eight years, he was required to work at his father's small print shop on Temple Street near downtown Los Angeles. He withdrew from Belmont High School during the tenth grade in order to work full time.  He changed his name from Carlos Enrique to Harry upon receiving his U.S. Citizenship when he served in the US Army during World War II.  He retired as a printing supervisor in 1989 when the family-owned Allied Record Manufacturing Company was overtaken by a corporation that ruthlessly invoked neo-capitalist techniques of job elimination.

My father has told me that during the 1940s, Mexicans were restricted on certain days from entering the Echo Park public swimming pool.  I once saw my father swimming in the waves of Redondo Beach.

My mother has explained that her dreams are vivid and complex.  Her dream narratives follow a path that stretch beyond analysis and usually evoke a sense of timeless hyper anti-realism.

On November 1, 1960, my father took me to Stan's Drive-In and bought me a pastel green pistachio shake in celebration of my ninth birthday.  He wore a grey suit and red tie.

On August 29, 1970, I caught a glimpse of my mother cheering in support of the Chicano Moratorium demonstration in East L.A.  She disappeared for the day in a thick cloud of tear gas.

My parents mostly spoke English at home.  I now comprehend that they never encouraged me beyond kindergarten to speak my native Spanish language as an effort to protect me from the hostile social environment of the 1950s.

My mother and father have lived at the same house in Boyle Heights since 1954.

They are inseparable.

©2004
Harry Gamboa Jr.

*Harry T. Gamboa died April 27, 2004.