Canto CDXIX: Hope in a Wall

Gentle cabrones:

I knew a couple of things about the house we bought when escrow closed. The date it was built: in the 1940s. It was a flip, which explained the shitty flooring and carpet that my honey and I quickly took out along with the trees that masked serious plumbing issues (whole main line and all pipes underneath our crawl space had to be replaced within two months of us buying it).

People used to live in the garage because there was linoleum on the floor. After a few weeks, once the neighbors saw that we were chill, they let us know that the previous people who live there were party animals, as evidenced by a termite-ridden bandstand in the backyard that we tore down after we fixed the plumbing. And somewhere along the line, we learned that the bedroom that we sleep in, its adjoining bathroom, and the sun room right next to it were additions, making what was once a tiny two-bedroom place into a small three-bedroom one.

The house has served us well these past 13 years, which I still can’t believe it’s been that long. We bought at the right time, because it’s now worth almost three times what we bought it for – and no way it’s worth that much. Insha’Alllah we keep it for the rest of our days — we’re not planning to move anywhere else and I sure don’t have the money to buy a second house, nor would I particularly want to do that. But when you have an older house, things inevitably break down, which is why I had to call a plumber recently to do work on our main shower.

Had to break into the wall and put new plumbing and new tile and insulation and drywall and Hardie® Backer and voilà – we now have a new shower!

One weekend while my cousin and I were doing demo, he handed me a newspaper and two photos. Found them inside the wall.

The newspaper was an Orange County Register A section when Clarence Thomas was confirmed for the Supreme Court – I immediately recognized the front page because I have that exact one in my collection, part of the front pages of important events I regularly collected through a stretch of the 1990s (Canto CXXIII). Then I saw the two photos. One was outside what used to be the second bedroom, which is now the Cosmo Cavern. The other is what’s now our second bathroom under construction.

The first one had a white man in his 40s, the second one a white woman in her 40s. The husband-and-wife who did the expansion 34 years ago this October.

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The photos are focused mostly on the addition, so you really can’t see much of how the backyard used to be — but there are hints. The tree on the right side of each photo looks like a pepper tree, and there’s shrubs along the wall near it. There’s also spindly greenery next to the wooden wall separating the property from the house next door. Sickly lawn. A sun-wall decoration or whatever you call those goofy things — all that’s missing is a terracotta gecko.

But the most prominent thing to me are the owners. Gabachos. Middle-aged ‘90s gabas to the max. The woman wears slacks and a shirt; the guy has no shirt and short shorts out of Lt. Dangle AND a sun visor AND striped calf socks AND sneakers.

Because I’m a reporter, I was able to figure out who they were and sketch out a small history of them. They only owned the house for a few years before moving on to a more exclusive neighborhood in the same city. I’ve talked to some of the old-timers in the neighborhood who said it was majority white into the 1990s before it quickly turned majority Latino.

That, of course, was the era of Prop. 187 and other xenophobic California laws that changed politics and demographics in the state forever.

I hope those two people didn’t move because of people like me. I wonder how they’d feel about what my honey and I did to the backyard, or how I like to grow corn in the front yard. The pepper tree and shrubs were long gone by the time we bought it, and my neighbor replaced the tree on his property in the photo with a bunch of fruit trees. We tore out the lawn because lawn makes no sense when we can have planters that give veggies, you know?

When my parents bought their three-bedroom, two-bath swimming pool American dream home in Anacrime in 1989, the neighborhood was mostly Mexican by then. But I remember the small kid of one of the last families left telling my mami that his dad had told him they were moving to Washington because there were too many Mexicans on the street. My mami was always kind, especially to Kyle Coyote, so she never made a big deal out of it, but it bothered me even then, when politics were far away from my conscience and I was probably Republican-lite.

It bothered me we might be seen as lesser than the old guard. Once we got settled in, the Mexican family across the street from Jalisco told us that the man who lived in the house before us regularly threw R-rated parties and that the pool water was always filthy — but somehow we were ruining the neighborhood for the gabas?

The old-timers where my honey and I live said the street that we live in was sketch for a good amount of years but began to change for the better in the years we moved in as Mexican immigrants came in. It’s changing again. The last three houses that sold around us went from Mexican-Americans who moved out of state for bigger houses to young white families — nice people who aren’t Karens and Chads, thank God. Another house is for sale and ridiculously overpriced, which is why it’s still on the market (want to be my neighbor? Do it! Sorry, I don’t have people over).

I see the photo of that couple who owned our house so long ago. They’re beaming. They’re the same age as my honey and I now are. The husband died last decade. I found an email for the wife and sent her a message saying if she wanted the photos I found, but I never got a response. I would’ve loved to ask her why did they expand the home, why they left — and why did they leave their small time capsule for someone to find in the future.

I’m putting those mementos in my personal archives because that couple is now part of our story. From middle-class whites to middle-class Latinos in 30 years, our shared house has seen it all. From gabas to children of Mexican immigrants. They moved to a nicer part of town; we stayed and made the house nicer.

Before we sealed up the wall, my honey and I put in our own mementos just like that couple. I didn’t put in a newspaper, because print is dead. But I did put in a card of Alta Baja, stickers of Cosmo and Hook and the Guti Gang, and the date we sealed them in until someone, someday has to fix the bathroom anew.

Maybe that was the hope of the couple: that whoever bought it saw how they made it better. They did. That’s my hope for whoever’s next here, whenever that may be. There’s always going to be someone else. There’s always gotta be hope.

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Sign I saw at Chapman University while walking to my Latinx History of OC course. Who’s Gus?

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs” — Stephen King

LISTENING: “Five O’Clock Whistle,” Red Garland. I first heard this song in the Bugs Bunny cartoon that was a parody of Little Red Riding Hood, except in this case the heroine was actually an annoying bobbysoxer that Bugs eventually joined forces with the Big Bad Wolf to defeat! Even though the bobbysoxer was annoying, I knew there was something cool about this song — and the many, many covers I’ve heard since proved my hunch. My honey just started playing this jazzy version, so here it is. Hence included in Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly Radiola of Randomness YouTube songlist, where I’ve included every song I’ve ever featured in a canto — give it a spin!

READING: “If the Slipper Doesn’t Fit”: A great meditation on Zelda Fitzgerald historiography, although the use of “shoehorned” toward the end was a bit too obvious.

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo Events  

Oct. 5, 4 p.m.: I’m going to be in conversation with the director of The Little King of Norwalk, which has a shoutout to me! Staged by the Latino Theater Company at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. Tickets ain’t cheap, but support local theater by buying them here.

Oct. 11, 1 p.m.: I’m going to be on a panel for the occasion of OC Weekly’s 30th anniversary timed with a major announcement about its archives, which I disclosed last week! Going to happen at Alta Baja Market, 201 E. Fourth St., SanTana, and it’ll be FREE!!!

Oct. 17, 7 p.m.: It’s my honey’s annual Rancho Heirloom Bean Encuentro weekend festival of all things legumes. I’m in charge of “The Bean Monologues,” which is exactly what it sounds like — I and some brilliant people are going to give stories about…beans. WAY cooler than it sounds, like every goddamn thing I do, and it comes with food! At Grand Central Art Center Black Box Theater, 125 N. Broadway, SanTana, $20 — buy tickets HERE.

Oct. 18, 3 p.m.: The other event I’m doing for Encuentro is “How to Taste a Tortilla,” where I teach people exactly that. At Alta Baja Market, 201 E. Fourth St., Ste. 101, SanTana. $15, and people who go will get some tortillas to take home — buy tickets HERE.

Oct. 25, 1 p.m.: Join me in conversation with the legendary L.A. scribe D.J. Waldie as we talk about his new book! At my honey’s Alta Baja, where he’s regularly gone for years, 201 E. Fourth St., Ste. 101, SanTana. Convo FREE; books, BARATO.

Nov. 8, 9 a.m.: Join me and my People’s Guide to Orange County co-authors as we do a walking tour of Anacrime and its hidden history. $20 — buy tickets HERE.

Gustavo in the News

“‘ExxonMobil made the right call’”: The Week shouts out a columna of mine.

“Dark Histories Of American Chain Restaurants”: My taco scholarship gets cited.

“Protest and Publication: Los Angeles and the Chicano Movement in the Raul Ruiz Papers”: Post from this past summer about some of my work.

“A New Large Daily Newspaper in LA?”: A plug from a Substack fan.

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

“TKTK”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary isn’t online, so you’ll have to guess what it was!

"Alta Live: Ask a Californian”: Check out the latest Zoom version of me and my co-columnista Stacey Grenrock Woods chat it up!

“GustavoArellanoBBM”: Me on Last Call with Carson Daly a LONG time ago…

“In the world of ‘South Park,’ Mexicans are cool while ICE is the joke”: My latest L.A. Times columna finds me at Casa Bonita in the Denver suburb of Lakewood to pay homage to the foul-mouthed cartoon. KEY QUOTE: “I’m more of a “Simpsons” fan, but I’ve always appreciated “South Park” for consistently arguing throughout its 27-year run that indiscriminately deporting Mexicans is not just morally and economically wrong but foolish.”

“Cannibal and the Headhunters founder and L.A. Chicano rock pioneer dies”: My latest Los Angeles Times obit focuses on Robert “Rabbit” Jaramillo.” KEY QUOTE: “Their rollicking appearance on the nationally syndicated program was what members claimed caught the attention of Paul McCartney, who supposedly told Beatles manager Brian Epstein he wanted the “Nah Nah boys” to open for them.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!