I deliberately placed myself in a rather emotional roller coaster borne out of a dream. A dream screaming to be told from which after seventy plus years of comatose state of mind I have finally become awakened to write here at Dkos. Write not about a dream but to tell about a nightmarish poker hand that fate dealt me from the bottom of a deck. I made many snap decisions during this nightmare as only a child can make. The reason I write here about this nightmare is because the one snap decision I made as a child was to "hold `em, not to fold them", allowing my brain to record in my mind permitting me to tell about it.
This is the eleventh installment of the diaries published so far about my childhood`s nightmare. I made snap decisions following my abandonment at infancy. Beaten, hounded, and relegated among the homeless and vagrants while suffering starvation but I have survived to write about it. My life as I tell it here begins as I was about 5 or 6 years old and rejected by my mother into the bowels of pain and misery.
I fell behind in my self-imposed schedule to publish my installments due to a mental tsunami that caused serious overlapping of bad memories that forced me to slow down. Here is my previous installment including another fateful snap decision Shining Shoes in San Antonio after I was evicted from my place of refuge. Bulldozers leveled the secluded home I had chosen to hide in. Hide from my tormentors and where I sought protection from those, who like me were starving and homeless. I am looking back through a mental scope into a dark and forbidden chapter into another lifetime I think I have lived. I cannot conclude another reason for being here today.
It was very challenging being a child born at a time of historic economic turmoil in this country. The extreme misfortune of having been abandoned to fend for myself in infancy into a world of misery, calamities and turbulent chaos set in motion this story. As our nation was struggling yet on its knees the Great Depression continued to drag through the lives of those less fortunate. Poor kids like me had the harsh role of being the ones who suffered the most. I have documented abundant chapters of my life in the previous installments so I will avoid being repetitious as much as possible. Here is where I left off in the previous diary Augie and I would shine the shoes of all these soldiers as I had just made another of a string of snap decisions.
When I decided to join forces with my friend Augie to become partners in the shoe shine business everything sounded so promising to me. We would work shining the shoes of the service men who walked the downtown area. The job prospect looked and sounded like just what I needed. I had spent the last two nights sleeping in an alley behind a large department store near the downtown San Antonio River. Hunched under cardboard boxes picked up from the trash piles I managed to catch a few naps with one small exception. The first night was eerie as some Winos or tramps as homeless men and women were known then decided to camp right besides me as I tried to sleep. These men frightened me as they drank from a bottle to drown their despair and hunger as I got up and walked away. I looked and found another spot and could not sleep at all the first night. It was at this point that I realized that I had made a bad decision coming to this location to shine shoes.
It is a universal understanding that any business has to start from the bottom up, unless of course one is super rich. My case was no different. I had to start from the bottom as I did not have the resources to shine shoes from the start. Augie and I had built the shine boxes and I thought I was well on my way, but I was mistaken. I did not have anything to work with while Augie had in his own shine box two brushes and the necessary waxes both black and brown to shine shoes. All I had was several pieces of soft cloth materials to use as shoe shining tools. Augie suggested that if I found a customer to shine his shoes, he would come to my side and let me use his shoe polishes and waxes. Of course, as a child I thought Augie was smart and that he had a great idea. But that would not work for several reasons.
I had never shined shoes before, never. One gentleman Sailor was my downfall. In my first try shining his shoes, while applying black polish wax to his shoes I accidentally stained his white socks. The Sailor and his buddies laughed and asked me to allow him to remove his shoes -- so I could shine his socks instead. The men all around laughed at me and I knew I was fired. I was not paid. But that was the least of my problems. A few doors from where I was stationed by the bridge was a legitimate shoe shine parlor. There was a row of high chairs arranged against a wall so that customers who needed a shoe shine could sit on these chairs while professional shoe shine men did their work. Complaints about nuisances caused by roaming unattended children brought additional problems for me. The police came and took my shine box and ordered me away from the area. But I would not go away.
Across the street a few doors away from the bridge was cinema theater. I noticed a couple buying tickets to enter the movie house. I made another snap decision.
I went over and stood close to the ticket booth and asked people buying tickets if I could have some of their change from the tickets to buy food. Although some were very nice and gave me small change, but others stared at me and looked quizzed at the ticket vendor inside the booth. I did this begging one time too many. A man came from within the darkness of the theater and told me to get away from my spot. As I walked away towards the street a police car pulled up to the curb and called for me to approach his car. Inside he asked me where I lived.
I was terrified to tell him. That would result in a sure return to the house of horror, my aunt Elvira. I told him I did not know the address of my home and that my mother was working. The officer asked me if I wanted to go to jail, or if I wanted to show him where I lived. He gave me one choice. I told him I would show him where I lived. But I lied to him.
When we reached Comal Street I told the officer to turn left as we reached the street. My desperation was leading me to avoid being taken back to the same place where I had spent so much time trying to escape from. I saw a large empty yard with tall weeds and the Alazan Creek in the background. I told the officer that the house across the empty yard was where I lived. He exited his car and took my arm. As he led me gently towards the house I had pointed out to him, I pulled myself free and ran across the street and jumped the fence into the tall weeds. I kept on running wildly and stumbled down towards the Alazan Creek. I kept running until I came upon a spot of the creek that I could jump across. I found
the spot and jumped over and kept running.