Yuk Yuk’s real name was Claudio Ponce. But he had this funny laugh, see, and this is why we called him Yuk Yuk. Barrio names usually came from the obvious. Chin came from my deformed jaw. Chicharrón because he had skin the color of Mexican pork rinds. Clavo because he was thin and hard, like nails, and Wilo because he was skinny as a pole. The girls had similar designations. In the Hills there were rucas called Seria (serious) or Chatter (because she talked too much). Sometimes the placas came from corruptions of real names: Chuy from Jesus, Chi Cho from Narciso, Nacho from Ignacio, Yogi from Olga, Beto from Roberto and Nando from Fernando.
And then there were names that were simply made up: Fuzzy, Toots and Baba.
Tribe members carefully placed as many names as could fit on a wall, a means to identify individuals, not just the group. More and more the lists would end with “Animal Tribe/Lomas.” Lomas became increasingly prominent. There were dudes like Yuk Yuk coming out of juvey, the youth camps, or prisons who insisted Lomas, the barrio, be on every marking, on every wall.
Then there were dudes who didn’t even claim the Tribe anymore. Just Lomas.
Yuk Yuk got us involved in organized stealing. Up until then, we stole here and there without much planning or thinking. At seven years old in Watts, I remember going into corner grocery stores every day after school and stuffing my Roy Rogers Lunch Box with toys and candy. I took the loot home and hid it in the closet. Mama eventually found some, carved into my flesh with a leather belt, and made me return it. I remember throwing it over a bridge which crossed a sewer tunnel.
At 13 years old, a record shop owner caught me stealing records. Rano had stolen some records earlier and bragged about it. I decided to try it myself. I went back to the same store, a stupid thing to do, and stuffed a few 45s into my jacket. But a store guard stopped me as I walked out of the store, pulled the records out of the jacket and dragged me back in. My mother had to come get me.
Later various combinations of los cuatro stole food, vodka and beer from markets, and gas from service stations so we could cruise in Wilo’s carrucha.
Once we decided to rip off the gabachos leaving a Kentucky Fried Chicken stand. Chicharrón, Wilo and I waited outside the joint. As some dude came out with a bucket or two, we ran up to him and snatched the buckets from his arms, then took off like we were ravaging coyotes on yesca, chicken parts flying everywhere.
Another time, after a night of heavy-duty drinking and partying, hunger called out to us. Wilo waited in the parking lot of a 24-hour market nearby, the car running and in gear. The rest of us scurried through the store and packed our pockets, coats, shirts and jackets with chips, baloney, soda cans, bread, and canned hams. Then bursting with merchandise, we walked out at the same time. It was harder to catch three of us than just one.
Clavo was still with us then. I managed to make it to Wilo’s car. But one of the store employees ran up behind me and insisted I come back with him—they had spotted me stealing food. I discreetly placed the food under the car seats and walked back in. Of course, they had no evidence of stolen food and had to let me go. But the commotion around me allowed Clavo and Chicharrón to walk out with the items they took.
When I finally left the store, I saw Clavo running across the parking lot as store employees chased him. The pendejo couldn’t find Wilo’s car! Clavo ran down the street, through some alley, dropping packages of lunch meat as his long legs loped over the asphalt, four or five store employees at his heels. Wilo came by and picked me up and then sped off.
Later we roamed the streets looking for Clavo. Sure enough he evaded his would-be captors and we found him hiding behind some trash cans in an alley—an opened can of tuna in his hand and a huge grin on his face.
But this was all lightweight.
Yuk Yuk introduced us to two key figures in the stealing business. One was Jandro Mares, a 30-year-old budding entrepreneur. Jandro owned a large Victorian-style home in Alhambra. He had a large driveway and a huge garage. He “commissioned” teenagers like us to steal certain cars he needed, on order, then drive them to his garage. He taught us how to strip them down in a matter of minutes. With un chingo of dudes, this was easy to do.
“De volada,” as Yuk Yuk always said. Just do it without thinking; on impulse.
The other guy was Shed Cowager. He was a junk man who had a huge building on Garvey Boulevard full of metal, antique, and wood items. Shed usually sat in the back of the shop and you had to get through a long stretch of metal files, TVs, chairs and desks, and every hubcap known to humanity, to get to him. He didn’t tell us what to do or not like Jandro. He was just a guy who bought bikes, TVs, stereos, cameras, guns—whatever we could bring to him—and paid us cash on delivery.
Yuk Yuk had us walk around the malls scanning for bikes, good bikes, ten-speeds mostly. Many of the gabacho kids used to lay them down without locks when they entered a store. We walked up cool, got on the bike, and then took off. Wilo or Yuk Yuk followed near us in a car as we rode the bicycles to Shed’s business. The bikes were probably worth several hundred dollars. Shed gave us between $15 and $25 each.
Soon Yuk Yuk had us scoping out the good homes in Alhambra, some of which I cleaned when I was younger. He showed us how to find signs of nobody home. He also had us spot ways to enter them. For example, a lot of the homes had louver windows in bedrooms, kitchens, or bathrooms, which were easy to remove from the outside.
We were told to take only things we could walk out with, such as money, jewelry and guns. For bigger jobs, we’d pull up in a VW van Yuk Yuk had borrowed and then we’d take bigger items like TVs, cameras and stereos. Before long, Yuk Yuk started to hijack trucks, mainly from warehouses or appliance stores, and then sell the electronic equipment in parking lots and drive-ins. The, truck stops leading into L.A. were particularly lucrative. Yuk Yuk would pull a gun out on a driver, force him out of the truck, take his money, and if the truck was maneuverable enough, his keys too.
From there, armed robberies included the newly-sprouting convenience stores we called “shop and robs”. If we worked in teams, somebody stayed in the car, another held a gun, and another walked the aisles loading up on whiskey and food.
Placing a gun to a man’s head took some doing at first. We often took turns because Yuk Yuk didn’t want any lambiches going with him. If you could pull a gun on someone, with only a heart pulse holding the trigger, than you can do just about anything, Yuk Yuk reasoned. De volada.
But to me, stealing and taking someone’s life were two distinct capabilities. You can kill for a lot of reasons, or no reason at all, but killing for stealing didn’t sit well with me. This was a problem. A big problem, Yuk Yuk pointed out.
“You better get used to it,” Yuk Yuk would say. “Or you’ll find yourself at the other end of a gun and be dead, like real quick.”
I don’t remember whose idea it was to rip off the drive-in. We usually sneaked in there through several holes we created in the corrugated steel fence alongside the Alhambra Wash, a concrete tributary of the Río Hondo which snaked through here. We built ourselves a makeshift hangout among the bushes and weeds that lined the fence, the hideaway for los cuatro. We used wood planks for a roof. We found old carpet and metal siding to cover the ground and sides. We used banana leaves to cover the entrances. It wasn’t easy to find.
One night, as we relaxed on an old sofa watching the drive-in movie, it was decided we would go in after the cars left and rob the concession stand. Many times we would break in there for food, but this time it was for the night’s receipts.
“Chin, I want you to hold the cuete,” Yuk Yuk said.
“¡Chale, ése!” I exclaimed. “I’m not up to it today. I don’t feel good about it.”
“What’s this feel shit,” Yuk Yuk said. “I’m not asking for a temperature.”
Then he gave out his yuk yuk laugh.
I had on a long black trench coat. The others were in their cholo attire. We peeled back a section of fence and walked through. The march to the
concession stand was sustained and arduous. I held the small caliber handgun in my hand through the long pockets of the trench coat. Sweat smeared on the handle.
Chicharrón walked in first, then signaled the rest of us to follow. The concession stand looked empty. Wilo walked up to the cash register and rang it up to check for money. Nothing. Yuk Yuk probed around while I stood there, wishing the night would end, hoping nobody would be there.
Then an older fat white-haired guy walked in from another room.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he said as we ransacked the stand.
I thrust out the gun and yelled, “Freeze, motherfucker!” It had so much conviction, I failed to recognize the voice.
Tension sizzled in the air. He stood there, just staring. I stood there, gun pointed in his direction. Yuk Yuk walked up to him and demanded money.
“It’s in the safe,” the man said. “You can’t get to it.”
“Fuck you!” Yuk Yuk exclaimed. “You can open the safe.”
“No, I can’t,” the man continued. “The only one who can get to it is the owner. And there’s no way he would be here tonight.”
Yeah, let’s leave, I thought. Before the police came. Before somebody with a bigger weapon than mine showed up.
“I don’t believe you,” Yuk Yuk said, and me thinking: Believe him, believe him.
Yuk Yuk yanked the man down on the floor, and walked into the adjacent room where presumably the safe was stashed.
I continued to point the gun down on the man as he lay on his belly like a beached whale. Then Yuk Yuk pushed open the door and ran out of the room. Gunfire blasted a hole in the wood, splinters sailing around us.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Yuk Yuk yelled.
I supposed I could have fired the gun, but I took off just behind Chicharrón and Wilo. Whoever it was who fired ran out of the concession stand and shot into the dark toward us. We bobbed and fobbed, zigged and zagged.
“Shoot at him,” somebody said.
“What?” I responded in between breaths.
“Shoot at him,” everybody chimed in unison.
I turned around and saw a shadow highlighted by a fluorescent lamp above his head. He continued to hold a gun in two hands. I aimed at him, but then he fired again and I swear the bullet brushed my eyebrow, that’s how close it felt. Fuck it—I ran.
Unfortunately, we went in a direction away from the section of fence where we could exit from. Yuk Yuk looked lost for a moment, then began to climb. It’s not easy to scale a corrugated steel fence. But Chicharrón and Wilo followed suit. I dropped the gun into my trench coat pocket and climbed also. Suddenly everything slowed down. I just couldn’t do anything fast enough. The dude shooting at us appeared closer and fired another round.
“¡Chingao!” I yelled as a bullet struck the fence, resounding in a metal-echo peal next to my ear.
I tried to get over fast. I hoped I wouldn’t lose my grip and fall back down. There’s nowhere to position your sneakers when you climb corrugated steel. It was muscle and hustle all the way.
I reached the top. I could hear Chicharrón, Wilo and Yuk Yuk yelling at me, like a squad of cheerleaders.
“Orale, ése, you can do it!”
“Come on, Chin—jump, man, jump!”
I pulled myself over and then leapt, the trench coat like a huge cape fluttering around me. A bullet ripped through the air I had been occupying just seconds earlier. I encountered the ground, then took off like a desert rabbit. De volada.
Chapter Four
“Oh, you’ll get over it … eventually.”—La Payasa de Lomas
“HEY LOUIE, GET UP!”
Gloria’s voice swept across the small room. Through sleep-drenched eyes, I barely made out the outline of my sister’s body, framed by a clutter of boxes, clothes and opened dresser drawers. Unable to move out of the way, I felt a shoe bounce off my head. Gloria ran out of the room in fits of laughter. Another morning after.
It appeared to be a special morning with a sort of pleasing compassion. The tree leaves against the window glimmered green with veins of chlorophyll blood. Birds chortled in the branches, sounding like laughter. Sunlight oozed through window blinds.
The room, the size of a jail cell, was separated from the rest of the garage by unfinished sheets of wallboard. On every section of wall space were murals painted in acryllic and spray-paint, with fiery colors and images of vatos locos, three-dimensional crosses and serpents writhing through dripping syringes. Various scribblings covered the door and table tops.
I arose from a bed of old blankets on the floor, bumped a toe on the bottom of the dresser and almost stepped into a pail of piss. Somehow, I made it outside, greeted by the moist dawn air.
Limping toward the back porch, the smell of huevos estrellados (two grade double-As, looking at you) cleared the tangle of thoughts which lingered from the night’s turmoil of dreams. I made it across the back yard to my mother’s house and entered through a wrought iron door.
“Sorry about the shoe, bro,” Gloria said as she glanced up from the dining table with a grin. “Couldn’t help myself.”
“Just like I won’t help myself when I shoot you in the head, pinche,” I replied.
“Is that any way to talk to your favorite sister?”
“No, that’s the way I talk to my pain-in-the-booty, so-called sister.”
Mama leaned over the stove, preparing corn tortillas to go with the eggs.
“Hablen en español,” she said. “Ya saben que no entiendo inglés.”
Mama kept telling us this. And we kept talking in English.
The night before I was in combat with myself, against a dark side, poised for destruction, with death about to tap my shoulder. I tried to commit suicide. I had come home in a stupor from pills, liquor and from sniffing aerosol can spray. I had slithered into the house around 3 a.m. and made it to the bathroom. Everyone else slept. Leaning on a wash basin, I looked into the mirror and stared into a face of weariness, of who-cares, of blood-shot eyes, prickly whiskers poking out of the chin, an unruly mustache below a pimpled nose, a face that much as I tried could not be washed away.
I staggered out of the house and crossed into a backyard with lemon trees and decayed avocados on the ground, and a tiled ramada with hanging vines. I entered my room in the garage, grabbed the pail I used to pee in, and filled it with water from a faucet on a rusted outdoor pipe. I planned to thrust my arm into the water after I cut an artery (I didn’t want any blood on the floor—even at this moment I feared Mama cursing about the mess).
I pressed my street-scarred and tattooed body against the wall and held a razor to my wrist. Closed my eyes. Hummed a song—I don’t know what song. But I couldn’t do it.
Prior to this I had been exiled to the garage for months. My mother had thrown me out of the house and afterwards the garage became the compromise between coming back and the street. She was just too tired: pulling me out of jail cells, of getting reports from school about the fights I’d been in, of expecting a call from a hospital or morgue.
One day, I made 100 bucks working a weekend on the graveyard shift at one of the docks in the warehouse district. I took it home and placed it on the dining table in front of my mother. But Mama stood up, took the $100 and threw it in my face. Dollar bills, fives and 20s fluttered around me like green-and-black birds.
“¡Hipócrita! You can’t buy my love,” she yelled in Spanish. “You can’t show respect with this money. I don’t want it—I don’t want anything from you!”
That night I slept in the “fields.” The next evening Yuk Yuk took me in, but after three days his mother demanded I leave. I then took a bus to downtown L.A. and walked the streets of Spanish Broadway—what the Mexicans called El Centro—assaulted by the lights of the movie marquees, the sleaze bars and liquor stores. I spent about 75 cents in an all-night movie house, which featured continuous showings of three or four movies. There I slept with the winos and the other homeless, and woke up to ushers th
rowing us out at daybreak.
The sunlight invaded my eyes, forcing me to squint. Office girls whisked by on their way to work, their fragrance awakening my senses, and then my loins. Iron enclosures were thrown open as brick-and-stone stores began selling clothes freshly sewed from the nearby garment plants, as well as appliances and food items. The traffic up my nose.
This part of Broadway, from First Street to Olympic Boulevard, was where the Latino people shopped, roamed, explored. Norteños and salsas blared out of stereo shops and open-air fruit stands rippled with the breakneck bargaining and accompanying hand gestures of the Spanish tongue. On weekends, that stretch of Broadway must have had a million people or so.
On other nights, I stayed with homegirls who knew I needed a place to crash, crawling through windows left slightly opened for me. Also in abandoned cars. By the railroad tracks. Finally, I came home and negotiated an arrangement with Mama.
She laid down the rules: I couldn’t set foot in the house unless I had her permission. And I could stay in the garage room, which barely held blankets, some drawers and a card table. It had no toilet, no closet space, no heating. At night, when the desert temperatures fell to almost freezing, I could use a small electric heating device which would only keep me from becoming a block of ice.
I accepted.
I began high school a loco, with a heavy Pendleton shirt, sagging khaki pants, ironed to perfection, and shoes shined and heated like at boot camp.
Mark Keppel High School was a Depression-era structure with a brick and art-deco facade and small, army-type bungalows in back. Friction filled its hallways. The Anglo and Asian upper-class students from Monterey Park and Alhambra attended the school. They were tracked into the “A” classes; they were in the school clubs; they were the varsity team members and letter men. They were the pep squads and cheerleaders.
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