Of Carne Asada, Crime And Family In East LA

The summer of 1988 was a memorable one in my neighborhood. We still lived in that yellow house on Bodie Street in East LA. The sun still managed to leave evidence of its permanent penetrations by making our residence into a hellish sauna by night. The family rarely slept at all that summer. Every Sunday would end with a cookout, as the adults would drink late into the night and deal with the consequences on Monday. The children were allowed to stay up and throw trash into the grill – until the adults chased us off. What made the evenings more interesting was that all the families in the neighborhood came together for a common cause.

We weren’t the only ones that were up at night congregating. That summer there was a burglar on the loose. The odd thing was that the burglar was not breaking into houses, but rather into cars. At first, everyone blamed the cholos. Windows were being broken and possessions were being taken. The whole neighborhood was on the lookout, but they were being outsmarted and outdone by an apparent criminal mastermind.

One night my mother noticed the light was on inside of the family van. She let my father know, who in turn consulted with my uncle. My uncle then went into the box that was located on the top shelf of his closet. Inside that box he had his gun — a beat up piece held together with luck and duct tape. My mother was nervous about having a gun in the house, so she made my father convince my uncle to keep the bullets separate from the gun.

So my uncle went out to the porch, while we all waited by the doorway. We waited for the man who was inside the van to emerge and for the light to go out. It was then when my uncle yelled for him to stop. He squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times, four times – and missed him by a mile each time. The gentleman inside the van stopped like a deer in the headlights. He did not know whether to move forward or dive back in the van. He was a young man, skinny and wiry. I remember he had the wildest eyes I had ever seen on a human being. Looking back now I do not know if that could be attributed to a drug habit, or the fact that he had avoided a hailstorm of bullets.

And that was when the neighbors came out. First, they yelled out to make sure my uncle was out of bullets. Then they came out of their houses and surrounded the young man. He was nervous. All of the men pushed him around, and no one wanted to call the cops. However, one of the wives finally did – although they never did show. The whole ugly scene was broken up by a Highway Patrol car that was exiting the freeway. They had me translate the happening between them and the angry mob – and in the end, all they did was take him in the squad car only to release him under the bridge, while keeping the angry mob at bay and giving him a reasonable head start.

Justice was not served that day. I was happy about that, because all the men from Bodie Street lacked a leadership mentality – yet if one of them was capable of throwing the first punch, the rest were sure to follow. The mob mentality was in effect, but the turbulence was subsided by an uncommon sense that dulled the sensibilities of my father and the rest of the men. They were tribal creatures living interesting times inventing their game to hunt along the way.