Electrician at Cushing Street Bar

 

Many incidents took place at Cushing Street Bar. It was a very nice place, clean, sharp, with a personality of its own. Tall, thick walls, clean whitewash, very professionally run, an open patio in the back, and if you asked, “where are the bathrooms?” they’ll tell you, “Go out in the patio behind the big oak three.” Only behind the tree could you see the bathroom doors.

One evening, I was sitting at a table with eight other people, everyone talking at once and having a good time. Cushing Street Bar attracted mostly Anglos. However, everyone was welcome and treated well. It was more American than Anglo. You saw different cultures, races, and nationalities there at any point in time. One night there was an American of Mexican descent among us, cracking jokes and talking up a storm. He reminded me of Raul, the man I had worked with at the construction site, who said he was an electrician. This man today was also an electrician and I looked to see if he too was missing a finger, but he was not.

Somewhere along the conversation I heard him say that he was born in this Barrio.

I jumped at the chance. “You were born here? In the Barrio? I need to talk with you.”

“Oh no, you won’t”

“I won’t what?”

“You are not going to talk to me.”

“But you don’t know what I want to talk to you about?” I responded, baffled.

“Yes, I do. And the answer is ‘no.’”

I was speechless, but I don’t give up easily. I tried again.

“You said you are an electrician, and you said you were born in this neighborhood, I would like to …”

“I know what you want, and the answer is ‘No’.”

He saw the puzzled look on my face and with an air of resignation, he took a deep breath and continued to tell me his story and his reasons why he said ‘no.’

“You want me to help you with the kids. When I was little, I never finished high school. I had to work to bring money for my family. I was, I am, a very hard worker, and I was feeding my parents and my brothers and sisters. They all finished high school, while I did not. I became a licensed electrician, making good money, and by then I was also feeding my uncle and a cousin, and sending their kids to school. I had no time for myself...”

He took a long drink, took a deep breath, whipped his thin mustache, and slowly and painfully went on. “Then I got married and I took my new wife and left this Barrio for good, never to return. I cannot help you. Or anyone. With the kids in this neighborhood, I am burnt out. I did my part. I am done. Now, it is only me, my wife, and my children, period. You want me to teach others about electricity? Find someone else, not me.” He was done, alright. I didn’t raise the issue again. Soon he was joking and laughing with all the others about mundane matters, but if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. (You’ll see how we did so.)

My first reaction was rather negative. His attitude left me thinking hard and deep. I understood his behavior to some extent. That is what happens to Anglo families. I began to look around with a new perspective. I began to see the dynamics taking place. The Barrio was draining away the best and the brightest, collapsing in a downward spiral. It was like a dark hole sucking the energy out. Even to a sharp Hispanic with extended family roots, and if you wanted to make something of your life, you had to leave. The pull was much too hard. The downward spiral was too strong, but was it irreversible? The people left behind were many, but not all, losers. Some were those that didn’t have enough gumption to get out and do something positive for themselves or had given up. Others were left behind because they had no place to go or were too old. Few found a comfortable niche and stayed, but the critical mass and peer-pressure from those staying behind was mostly negative on the economic front. Reality and truth are not always pretty, but you need to face it and identify it so that you can correct it.

I wanted to tell him how the third group of youths in the Creative Teen Power was getting positive encouragement from the previous groups. It was not a hopeless case, but I knew it would not make a dent on him. His mind was made up. Yet, this Barrio was the cradle of some of the best of the best that the Hispanics had given Tucson. Those of strong families had come from here or from the old part that had been torn up by the City. There you see one of the effects of urban removal: a crippled neighborhood that loses its center and continues to decline, drowning first the weak, then the strong, and leaving crippled leftovers. I am speaking figuratively. However, that was not totally true, as I would find out.

How to transform this looming black hole neighborhood back into an incubator of greatness instead? One example on how to do it.

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The existing problem goes deeper, much deeper. Modern American culture has moved away from the extended family because in an economically driven nation, you follow the best jobs and you bring only a few with you, your wife, and maybe children, but only the immediate family. The Hispanic instead will by-pass a better job to stay with the family, the extended family, or at least they used to.

The one who gave me independent advice was Suey Gee at Jerry Lee Market. Talking to Suey had produced a different perspective. One day, while grocery shopping, we had a group conversation and Suey was talking about this topic.

“This is a cultural issue,” he said. “The American economy is a powerful force that attracts people from other countries to come to the United States looking for opportunities for a better life, the freedom to do it and be better providers. Sometimes they leave families behind, but always send money back to them and dream of bringing them here or going back wealthy someday.”

Someone local in the group, Tito’s cousin, then said, “Unfortunately, this could be changing. My family did so as well. They came from Guadalajara, but I see others who are beginning to come for the welfare, to be given things, not to work hard as we all did. My grandparents stood in line and became citizens. I wish all others would do the same. I resent it when they don’t.”

“In all our cases, our families are still at the core of our existence.” Suey Gee responded.

The man from Guadalajara was still bitter. “They get across the border illegally and with their hands out begging for welfare. It bothers me.”

For me, this observation created a very interesting double whammy! Despite Suey being from a third culture, the Chinese, Hispanic, and American family cultures differ, mostly in size, while on the other hand, the three cultures can coincide in their desire to improve and advance, at least those immigrant Hispanics, such as the young man’s family from Guadalajara, who came here looking for a better life. Elements about the Chinese family culture, and why they are so successful, would be material for another book. However, the pertinent example of Jerry Lee, and now his son-in-law Suey and wife Lillian, was there for all to see. They all worked very hard. 

Ray’s whining about those coming across the border had been somewhat similar, but I never listened to him when he complained too much. However, I was now hearing this from one of the Hispanic families themselves. A new generation is beginning to come for the welfare, not for the work ethics, and it gets worse.

The Hispanic families I knew were not prone to begging, so I had put that minor detail aside for now. Who cares how they come? If they get in, let them work. Until I heard the comment by someone standing next to me, “Crossing the border illegally is not immigration. It is breaking and entering. Breaking into a house doesn’t make you a homeowner.”

In error, I thought of it now as two separate issues. First I would assume that those coming for welfare would never be too many, since here by tradition you do have to work hard to make it. Handouts makes that inaccurate.

Later I also noticed two wonders of human nature. Even if legal immigrants were unanimously against the flow of illegal immigration, the moment a family member, brother, son, cousin, uncle etc., was here illegally and in hiding, even if the family didn’t approve, they would no longer voice their opinion in public or vote accordingly. Family ties will trump.

Another lesson was that many illegals who obtained welfare benefits here, began to go back home to spend it, returning latter to renew them. They had found a quirk in the system that allowed them to get money here for free and spend it elsewhere, where its value went further.

At the time, it was not my concern. Besides, here in this Barrio, there was still hope. Exceptional families, like the Pérez family, were still here after generations, and happy and healthy, and many others were too. I saw that it was not too late, not yet. This is a reason that a Barrio is different from a neighborhood. Not better. Not worse. But different.

I was now halfway into my personal transformation, and partially prepare to put into action the steps necessary to answer the key questions to cause real change. So, what are the positive assets that can be bundled together and put to work?

The main answer was now clear; bring the youth back. Changing the scale in the other direction. Pride, Family, Hands. That was to be cemented with the Rehab Crew. And I don’t mean La Raza type of pride. That is the wrong kind of pride. You do not promote pride. You have it inside. It is an individual thing shared through cultural upbringing if you want, tradition, but individual. You either have it or you don’t. Rather than shout it, you live it, and all these people had it. You saw it reflected in their responses to certain things. You don’t need to talk about it, only to tap into it. I put together two elements:

 

Architecture = shaping the physical environment. Housing, parks, centers. along with

Psychology = innate pride shaped by shaping the physical environment.

 

And then I forged a path of action.  Family, Pride, and Hands.

Not all pride is good, but within the Barrio there were certain common denominators that stimulated a moral and constructive sense of pride in existence and in things well done[xxxii]. Think of the positive results of the children’s painted tiles in the fountain and the Park. This was Pride, Family, and Hands. Once we progressed, we should add Brains and Knowledge.

 

Path to Action

I now had more knowledge of how to approach the future. Talking with the electrician gave me the answer and my talk with Suey at Jerry Lee’s gave me focus.

“Family is the core of our pride and existence,” Suey proclaimed.

To tell the truth, at that moment in time, I was not fully aware that I was hitting the raw nerve of the essence of the group of people I was involved with. I was just trying to get close. I was at that mental turning point. To that I added an intuitive scream, “Stimulate, motivate, encourage, make the tools available, but never, never do anything for anyone.” I was not going to fall into the same pitfall that the electrician had fallen into, doing it for others instead of pushing them to do it themselves. For a very strong man, that had been his weakness.

Too often, we specialize in one cause and one solution, and we lose perspective of the whole. Remembering that the downward spiral can only be reversed universally with actions working simultaneously at the bottom, in the middle, and at the top: comprehensively developing the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional with the education of the child, opportunity for the adult’s family unity, and with historic continuity for the elderly. I assembled all the past assets such as, pool, tools, center, rehab, development, jobs, safe homes. Priority Number One: to bring the young people back, that was to be the job of both the Housing Rehab Program and the Self-Help Housing effort[xxxiii].

We will see how successful this was, and how the City, and the enemy from within tried to annihilate it.

 

Struggle

Clean your own house first, for the battle of good and evil is everywhere. Evil is necessary to flush good people to the surface, evil can give goodness an aim for existence.  Some people believe we can do away with evil and retain only goodness by ignoring evil, but that won’t happen, attempting that will only give a free rein to corruption.

Of course! All political parties need to clean house.