My Ninth Year
An important year. There were many changes, and potential changes, internal changes, and perspective changes. This was one of the most important years of my early life.
Let’s say my ninth year started a bit before I turned nine and a few months past my 10th birthday.
The experience of 10 months of almost daily trips to the Tijuana cancer clinic, made my dad want to move to Mexico.
Even though all those months I went to school early on Fridays to take tests and get assignments, the teacher welcomed me back to the class telling the other kids that I had moved to Mexico, and that now I had come back. This last month or so of third grade, this return to normal, didn’t feel normal.
Soon after my ninth birthday my dad packed us up and we went for the summer to Mexico.
My dad wanted to move us to Mexico. We spent some time in the town of Guaymas on the mainland side of the Gulf of Cortez. We stayed at an old hotel. I don’t know how old it was, but 20 years later I went there and they were tearing it down, and when I told them this story they made me the last guest.
There were colonial rooms where the furnishings were that wood and leather Mexican colonial furniture, the floors were tile, and the walls were stucco. They also had modern rooms with contemporary furniture, with hotel doors on the hotel side, and sliding glass doors that opened onto the beach on the other.
We stayed in a colonial room the first night, then my mom wanted to change to a new room. We were at the desk making the arrangements when we met a couple with a girl about my age. Her dad was Spanish, a toreador, and a race car driver. I think he drove for Alfa Romeo, so he and my dad had a lot to talk about. Her mother was French and an artist. They lived in San Francisco. The girl’s name was Sarah. We hit it off immediately.
Later that day, my family was down by the beach, walking in the surf, and my brother started screaming, which he often did. He was four. We look at him and all around him the water starts turning red. My dad swooped him up and his foot was seriously bleeding. He had stepped on a stingray and the barb had sliced open his foot. It took many stitches, and we had to stay for weeks while it healed.
The next day, waking up before dawn, as I did, and went to the beach, and who did I find? Sarah was there and she didn’t need much sleep either. We explored around the hotel and the beach. We were both free range children, and our parents weren’t concerned where we were or what we were doing.
The next day, we went exploring further away from the hotel, we found some cool tide pools, and we took naps in the early afternoon on the beach in the hotel hammocks. Next we explored the town.
The following morning we watched the fishing boats come in at dawn. The fishermen saw us watching them and waved.
The next day we waited on the pier for the fisherman. They showed us a group of pelicans (the collective noun is Pod). They gave us buckets full of fish guts, and said we could toss the pelicans the guts. We soon learned that the pelicans would open their mouths and we could put handfuls of guts into the pelican’s pouches. Or maybe the pelicans trained us. Pelicans lined up, waiting to be fed.
It was magical.
We napped under the pier, but it wasn't comfortable. The next morning we were again there before the fisherman came in. They fed us fish that they had caught and had prepared. This was probably the first time I had uni.
It was another world.
We reeked of fish, so we went back to the hotel and took showers and napped in our parent’s rooms.
The next dawn we did the same with the guts, and the pelicans, we were a little more tidy, and didn't really smell. Or at least we didn't think we did. We went back to the hotel, and we found an empty room, and that's where we took our nap. We did this for a few days.
There were a few more days and more adventure, but the day came when she had to leave. She wrote her address on a piece of toilet paper. I lost the paper, or it was disappeared.
A few weeks later we were in Acapulco and there was Formula One racing going on in the streets and Sarah’s dad was one of the drivers. I wanted to try to find her. But I didn't. Maybe, that was my first real regret.
We came back to Los Angeles in September and onward to 4th grade. My dad bought me a hand sized Japanese transistor radio in Tijuana. These radios were not yet available in the United States. I was very popular with the boys that fall because during recess and lunch we would listen to baseball games on my transistor radio. They say that 1962 was a very interesting year in baseball. I tried to be interested, I tried to understand the enthusiasm that all these guys had about baseball. I didn’t get it then, and I don’t understand the enthusiasm for sports now. What I did learn was the feeling behind the phrase, “When will this game end!”
In the fourth grade, we were given IQ tests. I did well. So well that they accused me of cheating. Specifically, too well in vocabulary, and correctly finishing all of a spatial test. Here you are shown a two dimensional picture of a three-dimensional object and then you have to select which of three choices are the same object rotated. They made me take that and a couple of other tests in front of them. This put me well on my way of not respecting authority.
Well before Halloween, and this is pretty common among families with sick children, my parents were going to divorce. My mom knew she couldn’t handle me. And my dad didn’t have the parenting skills to handle me at all. My grandmother took me by train to Juarez to live with my Aunt Josie and Uncle Marcos.
This made me happy.
While we were waiting in the train, my grandmother told me how my grandfather had helped build Union Station. I knew already that he had had something to do with building the Sears Complex on Soto and Olympic Blvd. But I never heard, and only a couple of times since, how he had something to do with building Union Station. They lived in what became Chinatown where the Pasadena Freeway now goes, near the pedestrian bridge, and my aunt who died as a child was born at the French American Hospital located at Hill and Alpine. It was just torn down in January of 2026.
As soon as the train left the station, after possibly having done something mischievous, (who, me?), my grandmother suddenly became a disciplinarian. I felt betrayed and shocked by how she changed. She wouldn’t follow me into the lounge of the men’s room on the train, so I stayed there. I met a wonderful old drunk, who could recite the alphabet backwards, and who knew lots of jokes and riddles and I had a wonderful time.
The memory of arriving in Juarez, or to my aunt and uncle’s big large house just isn’t there. My dad once took some measurements and discovered that their living room was bigger than our house on Lee Street. They gave me my own room and I quickly felt at home.
A responsibility was given to me by my tia Josie. She kept a live Egyptian scarab decorated with diamonds in a shoe box on a small table at the end of the hallway. My job was to keep him alive with water, bits of vegetables, and an occasional bug.
My aunt took me to many doctors, mostly in El Paso. The one that impressed me the most was an ear doctor who removed a lot of wax from my ears, and my hearing greatly improved. She took me to an optometrist, but I was still up to my old tricks there. (Read about that here ) She took me to another doctor, whose nurse was very impressed how calm I was with blood tests. She didn’t know how many times a day for 10 months there were injections and blood tests and an IV at the clinic
My aunt also took me to interview at a few schools both on the El Paso side and the Juarez side, but nothing ever came of it. Maybe she already knew my time there wasn’t permanent.
We went shopping, my aunt, my cousin Estella, and I. The most impressive stop was going to see the glass blower. Max still has two glass fish that I help make.
We went to a number of football games because my cousin Danny was a quarterback on his high school football team.
Christmas there with Marcos, Josefina, and my cousins was my first real Christmas. The lights and the foods and the pink aluminum Christmas tree and so many wrapped presents. My parents were Scroogy so we never did that. There was a Christmas in Bakersfield, and another Christmas in Fontana, but they were both modest. But in Juarez, this was an all out Christmas, and they also had a big loud Christmas party. I wanted that kind of Christmas for my children.
But I like a real Christmas tree.
My tio Marcos took me a with him a few times to his restaurant. He would sit at the end of the bar and he would do business deals and grant favors. One time he asked me, Do you know how many $100 bills are in $10,000, after a few seconds I answered, 100. He told me, Soon I’m going to hand you an envelope and I want you to stand behind me and count the bills. If there are 100 $100 bills, put the envelope in your pocket and then sit back down next to me.
A guy came in, talked with my uncle a little bit, gave him an envelope, my uncle slipped it to me. There were 100 bills, into my pocket, and sat down. My uncle did not ask me for the envelope until much later in the afternoon when we got home. I felt so grown up.
My uncle and my two cousins went every Saturday morning to the barber. They took me along. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like the haircut they gave me, but it felt good to be there with the men.
My aunt made a bedroom for me out of her craft room. She was very pleased that her mother had taught me how to crochet.
My cousins Danny and Alonso had their bedrooms, and across the hall from me was my cousin Stella‘s room. I remember spending the most time there with her. We became very close, I love her very much, I miss her so much.
Downstairs was a large den, with a long full bar that had been in a hotel restaurant, fully stocked, with one of those bar guns that shot water and sodas. My cousin Alonso and I spent a lot of time there, playing games. There was a pool table room, he showed me how to play. Alonso also taught me magic tricks. For the next eight years whenever we went to Disneyland together, which might have been two, three times a year, Alonso would take me to the Main Street Magic Shop, and we would watch a magic demonstration and buy a trick. A couple of years ago I went with all our grown kids to the magic shop in Disneyland and bought them all a trick. I don’t know if any of them ever practiced it.
Alonso also got me my first MAD Magazine, which I bought nearly every month for 50 years.
Those few months in Juarez were the happiest family times of my childhood.
On New Year’s Day, my dad came to take me home. I was so glad to see him. I really had missed him more than I knew. They had decided not to divorce and my dad was there for me. There was a big tearful goodbye to my uncle and my aunt and my cousins.
We drove back to Los Angeles only stopping for gas and eats. We were living at my grandmother‘s house, my mom was in bed, and I remember distinctly and so clearly jumping onto the bed and giving my mom a big kiss and saying how much I missed her, and at the same time knowing that it wasn’t true. I felt embarrassed at myself.
From January through June there I was in fourth grade. I ran for student council and won. I was in plays, I danced, I learned the clarinet. I had a wonderful time. Remember, I had not really been in school since second grade.
I made friends with an older couple who influenced me greatly.
See a life changing story of them here
Read about a life defining moment at Disneyland here
It was on a very hot day in late June, around my 10th birthday, a bank thermometer read 119, we left again to try to move to Mexico.
The previous summer Mario had gotten hurt in Guymas, this time in Mazatlan I got monstrous food poisoning, probably from shrimp. We stayed in the same apartment there as the year before, at the southern end of the bay, at the end of the beach. Google says the building is still there. When I got a little better, we went to Guadalajara, but I was still feeling crappy and so my parents left me alone while they saw the city. We stayed in the same apartment house as the year before, in a nice part of town. My dad really wanted to live in Guadalajara. My parents left me alone for a couple of days and I watched TV all day on a station that showed old American movies with subtitles in Spanish. When I started feeling a little better and I went out on walk-about. I left the front door unlocked. A few blocks from our apartment I discovered the home of Jose Clemente Orozco. Later I was able to make my dad think he discovered it and we toured the studio.
I had an interesting experience with betrayal, you can read it here
I got my first pair of glasses in Guadalajara.
You can find the full amusing story here
We went to Mexico City and stayed for weeks at this very modern hotel. My dad really loved that hotel and the city. He and I would go out exploring the town. It seems my mom was intimidated by the city and she and my brother stayed there at the hotel most of the time. There she decided there that we were not moving to Mexico.
Soon after returning to Los Angeles, my dad bought the house on Lee Street, and we moved out of my grandmother‘s house. The move was exciting and fun, and I got to ride in the U-Haul trailer buried under furniture. A few months later my dad bought the house next door. My brother did not do well with the change of school and the change of house and he really didn’t do well with the move next door a year later. My mom declared that we would not be moving anymore, and they never did. The move was great for me because there was no more sleeping on my grandmother’s couch, I had my own bed in a room I shared with my brother, and there were places to keep my stuff. My new school was good and so were the teachers, and there was one great teacher.
"Most people don't grow up. Most people age."
Maya Angelou