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Ernest Rodriguez' "Impressions," 1960s-1980s
Impressions
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IMPRESSIONS The kids of our neighborhood disappointed me too. You would become their friends and then if something happened and they got mad at you then they would call you names like Mexican greaser and sometimes Nigger. I learned that there being white made a difference to them.I longed for the barrio we had left where everybody was brown like me and their parents didn't look at me like they didn't like me. I could trust my old barrio playmates, we were more like brothers we ate the same foods and shared the sameness of being Mexicans. I heard Papa and Mama one day soon after we moved in the neighborhood say that our land lord said that some of the people in the neighborhood had taken up petition to have us kicked out of the neighborhood. Our landlord refused to do what they wanted and they said that our next door neighbors who lived in the big white house had told the people who asked them to sign that they were Catholics and they didn't care who lived next door to them . They also told them the Rodriguez family was nice and their children behaved better than some others in the neighborhood. That was the first time I had heard what a petition meant. I began to like to read books because they would take me out of the reality of my personal misery of being a misfit and take me to places and lands and times that were wonderful to behold and to experience. I especially liked reading about a fictional character called Henry Ware who was kidnapped by the Indians and had learned all their customs and ways. He left the Indians and became frontiersman who always won his fights with bad Indians because he was smarter than they were. I wished that I had lived with the Indians like him. Only I would have stayed with them .
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IMPRESSIONS The kids of our neighborhood disappointed me too. You would become their friends and then if something happened and they got mad at you then they would call you names like Mexican greaser and sometimes Nigger. I learned that there being white made a difference to them.I longed for the barrio we had left where everybody was brown like me and their parents didn't look at me like they didn't like me. I could trust my old barrio playmates, we were more like brothers we ate the same foods and shared the sameness of being Mexicans. I heard Papa and Mama one day soon after we moved in the neighborhood say that our land lord said that some of the people in the neighborhood had taken up petition to have us kicked out of the neighborhood. Our landlord refused to do what they wanted and they said that our next door neighbors who lived in the big white house had told the people who asked them to sign that they were Catholics and they didn't care who lived next door to them . They also told them the Rodriguez family was nice and their children behaved better than some others in the neighborhood. That was the first time I had heard what a petition meant. I began to like to read books because they would take me out of the reality of my personal misery of being a misfit and take me to places and lands and times that were wonderful to behold and to experience. I especially liked reading about a fictional character called Henry Ware who was kidnapped by the Indians and had learned all their customs and ways. He left the Indians and became frontiersman who always won his fights with bad Indians because he was smarter than they were. I wished that I had lived with the Indians like him. Only I would have stayed with them .
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