Chapter 1 THE BOY
Chapter 1
THE BOY
The boy watched the clock. It ticked to the moment he waited for all day. The moment he would play baseball.
School meant only two things to the boy: recess and after school.
He remembered kicking the ball. It hit his female teacher in the head. Next thing he knew he was in class with the teacher walking up to his desk. She wrote a big red F on the top of the his paper. He put a line though the front of the F, which made it look like a A. She turned red in the face. After that the boy got only bad grades.
Figuring if he was dumb a least he would have fun. He daydreamed of making a fantastic catches like Willie Mays. He felt in his blood the bravado of Juan Marichal whose pitching delivery started with his foot kicking above his head. He wanted to be like Willie Mc Covey who kept playing despite terrible knee injuries. Willie Mc would run around the bases even though he could hardly walk.
The ballplayers loved what they did. He wanted to be like them using every bit of talent to
achieve heroics. After school, the boy was happy playing baseball and daydreaming. This was his last year of elementary school.
After a long walk he saw the sign: Fisher Middle School. He didn’t notice the sign. His mind was occupied. He had just walk through the middle of the gangs.
The whites were on one side of the street and on the other side were the Chicanos. For the first time he saw what looked like real race hatred. Inside the school everything was cliqueish. Few of the kids from elementary school went to Fischer. His baseball playing afternoons were over.
The boy became a paperboy and threw his energy into the paper route. He hated school. His only ambition was to get out.
His younger brother and he cut school for a few weeks. They called each others school with “parental excuses” for the other. The boy in his deepest voice said ” Matt Martinez is sick. His not going to make it to school this week.”
One day after feasting on lunch from paper route money, they were caught and forced back.
The next year there were still to gangs, but now they were Chicano and Black. The neighborhood was changing and so was the world.
Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. The neighboring highschool rioted so all the Blacks were let out of Fischer. The world was turning ugly.”
Then Robert Kennedy ran for president. The boy thought “He is such a good man. We hope he’ll make everything right.”
We saw Bobby at Our Lady of Guadalupe church. A lady pinched to see if he was real. He blushed and smiled. He really touched the little people and we touched him back.
The Martinez family stayed awake until Robert won the California primary. The happy boy went to sleep. He woke up to his mother's crying. Bobby was killed. He cried and then dilivered his paper route.
The rest of this essays deal with episodes in the boy's later life. These episodes lead him on a search. The results of that search will make up the chapters of this work.
Click here for Credit Card and Amazon Order of Fred Martinez's book "Hidden Axis":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1410746186/qid=1099936755/sr=11-1/ref
For your FREE copy of Hidden Axis click here:
http://hiddenaxisofevil.blogspot.com/2005/05/free-book-offer.html
To see other articles go to:
http://fredmartinez.blogspot.com/
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/
http://thefredmartinezreport.blogspot.com/
http://themeaningofloveandlife.blogspot.com/
THE BOY
The boy watched the clock. It ticked to the moment he waited for all day. The moment he would play baseball.
School meant only two things to the boy: recess and after school.
He remembered kicking the ball. It hit his female teacher in the head. Next thing he knew he was in class with the teacher walking up to his desk. She wrote a big red F on the top of the his paper. He put a line though the front of the F, which made it look like a A. She turned red in the face. After that the boy got only bad grades.
Figuring if he was dumb a least he would have fun. He daydreamed of making a fantastic catches like Willie Mays. He felt in his blood the bravado of Juan Marichal whose pitching delivery started with his foot kicking above his head. He wanted to be like Willie Mc Covey who kept playing despite terrible knee injuries. Willie Mc would run around the bases even though he could hardly walk.
The ballplayers loved what they did. He wanted to be like them using every bit of talent to
achieve heroics. After school, the boy was happy playing baseball and daydreaming. This was his last year of elementary school.
After a long walk he saw the sign: Fisher Middle School. He didn’t notice the sign. His mind was occupied. He had just walk through the middle of the gangs.
The whites were on one side of the street and on the other side were the Chicanos. For the first time he saw what looked like real race hatred. Inside the school everything was cliqueish. Few of the kids from elementary school went to Fischer. His baseball playing afternoons were over.
The boy became a paperboy and threw his energy into the paper route. He hated school. His only ambition was to get out.
His younger brother and he cut school for a few weeks. They called each others school with “parental excuses” for the other. The boy in his deepest voice said ” Matt Martinez is sick. His not going to make it to school this week.”
One day after feasting on lunch from paper route money, they were caught and forced back.
The next year there were still to gangs, but now they were Chicano and Black. The neighborhood was changing and so was the world.
Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. The neighboring highschool rioted so all the Blacks were let out of Fischer. The world was turning ugly.”
Then Robert Kennedy ran for president. The boy thought “He is such a good man. We hope he’ll make everything right.”
We saw Bobby at Our Lady of Guadalupe church. A lady pinched to see if he was real. He blushed and smiled. He really touched the little people and we touched him back.
The Martinez family stayed awake until Robert won the California primary. The happy boy went to sleep. He woke up to his mother's crying. Bobby was killed. He cried and then dilivered his paper route.
The rest of this essays deal with episodes in the boy's later life. These episodes lead him on a search. The results of that search will make up the chapters of this work.
Click here for Credit Card and Amazon Order of Fred Martinez's book "Hidden Axis":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1410746186/qid=1099936755/sr=11-1/ref
For your FREE copy of Hidden Axis click here:
http://hiddenaxisofevil.blogspot.com/2005/05/free-book-offer.html
To see other articles go to:
http://fredmartinez.blogspot.com/
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/
http://thefredmartinezreport.blogspot.com/
http://themeaningofloveandlife.blogspot.com/
posted by Fred Martinez at 4:44 PM
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