From Lennox to Huntington Beach

During the Christmas Holiday my friend Marcos from Oakland visited me and as we looked for the famous pancake place on Main Street he asked me, "how did you go from Lennox to Huntington Beach". This place that had the skin head reputation, the Republican hotbed and other notorioties and just not a welcoming place for Mexican Americans so I thought. I just told him "I don't know", but living near the beach for me is not new. Lennox, 90601 if I can remember was really unincorporated South Inglewood, with the worst racial poverty reputations that could be seen with the same main avenue Haarlem name except we were a combination of Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals, some Central Americans, some Blacks, some Samoans, some Cubans both Black and White and some Whites--a Stajoviak.

In Lennox, I had the same ocean breeze as El Segundo or Manhattan Beach without the funny smell from the hyperion plant and it was just as crowded as Manhattan except for the graffitti on 106th and Hawthorne Blvd. Beach culture is not new to me unlike most Mexican Americans that generally live east of east before the 105 freeway connection directly to the 710 freeway and north to the greater east sides of which there are many. From my Lennox perspective, everything was east.

Ironically, Marcos grew up just east about 5 miles on 98th Street in Los Angeles, South Los Angeles and in a time before our move to Lennox in 1985, I too lived on 99th street in Inglewood right near the 405 freeway. One reason I have always liked this guy, is that we share geographical history because we grew up in the South Bay, around Blacks, him more than me and in circumstances quite challenging. Both our neighborhoods were places that depressed you as you drove through them, now imagine having lived there. He grew up not just in a Black neighborhood but a violent impoverished neighborhood where he saw Freeway Ricky Ross doing business and being picked on because he looked White. He wasn't just a Black hair Mexican American but a fair skin kid with yellowish blonde hair, hence his nom de guerre Yellow Boy, but his father has Black hair. I think he had it rough because those communities were aggressive and I did not live in that kind of neighborhood. West Inglewood tended to be safer and those Blacks would be afraid of a South LA Black.  There were class and violent differences in these neighborhoods.

I got a taste of South LA Blacks when I attended Crozier Junior High in downtown Inglewood in 1982 and met Blacks from Crenshaw Blvd. east. It was rough, I got into fights, got suspended twice, learned to defend myself because the Black teachers didn't defend me and the lone Mexican American English teacher I had would quitely say Mexicanisms at the rude Black students.  I knew not all Blacks were this way because my best neigborhood friend was a Black kid named Scott, we are still in touch- but I knew those from Crenshaw east were a different kind, much more aggressive, Rolling 60's Crips as I heard along with Florencia. Sometimes I heard Florencia existed as protection from harassing Blacks, it's just the way it was. The best advice I got from a cholo or cholo look a like, Enrique at Crozier was in Spanish, "defiendete y nos les ensenhenes miedo", that was the inspiration and best lesson I learned in 7th grade.  And it worked, a few fists, a pushed table and those Blacks feared me and befriended me.  At least there was progress.

Marcos and I have that bond because we didn't grow up in traditional Mexican American communities though in my case, because my family had rancho roots on a street called Ballona, El barrio as it was called on a 1 acre lot. A rancho carry over from the turn of the century that ended when eminent domained, my grandmother Kika would cry how the city took their land even if they did pay, the spatial memory has been lost and I'm the youngest at 42 to have that memory of time long past. The watermelon fields are not even a memory anymore. And even I didn't cherish the place because by age 8 they were pushed out hence my grandmother Kika crying to me as I stopped to visit her on the way home from Oak Street Elementary on Kenwood. Even my mom has memory of pre 1965 days before the Watts riot when there were few Blacks in Inglewood.

Marcos was part of the Mexican American movement into South Los Angeles in the early 1980's after Blacks had moved in in the 60's but they weren't the first there, my mother's cousins from her father's side the Seguras were born in Watts on 106th Street in the mid 1930's and part of that family remained on 106th Street even until today. My mother's aunt Ventura would talk about how money dried up in the depression who then moved to the Imperial Valley to take up ranching near the Cerro Prieto where my great grandfather had paid for that land. Marcos family had moved from the MacArthur Park area now most associate to Centro Americans but he is evidence that Mexican Americans existed there prior to the arrival of newcomers who don't really have a historical place other than to look for inexpensive housing.

Marcos and I share this experience of having lived near Blacks, near the beach and not near Mexican American neighborhoods where they are 95% of the population. And that sometimes is something people don't understand about me, including Blacks themselves who have moved in from the South looking for a job and don't think I know anything about Blacks. I think I have more Black than Barack Obama who was born in Hawaii, coming from Inglewood and so does Marcos in our own Mexican American way. We know the head bop greeting chin up, the jive and the confidence of where we came from and most important a common history other Mexican Americans don't have.

Our experience cannot be generalize and if it wasn't for our discussions our history would be relegated to oblivion because it's not valued in the world of academia.  And as we walked back to the car, all I cared about was that my buddy travelled 400 miles to visit me because both of us came from places unknown and faces generalized into endless names of people never to be recognized.

It was a good evening.