Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Eight): El Piojito

Part 8: El Piojito

By Armando Ortiz

My dad once told me a story. It was about how my mom got swindled out of fifty dollars. It took place a half a block down the street from where I stood that day. In front of the Botanica del Pueblo, on the corner of 7th and Alvarado, is where a man and woman desperately approached my mom and sold her a gold nugget. They told her they needed the money in order to fly back to their hometown. It turned out that the stone had been painted over with gold paint. The tricksters probably bought food and laughed at how another poor and naïve country bumpkin had been fooled once again.

El Piojito or in other words The Tiny Lice was near that intersection and directly across the street from MacArthur Park. Its logo was a cartoon of a smiling kid who had two antennae coming out of the top of its head. The store wasn’t the size of a louse, but it was a nice way of referring to a store that was small. One could buy all kinds of things inside. El Piojito was a downsized version of a third rate mall and we went there every other weekend to buy stuff like pans, slippers, shirts, detergent, deodorants and maybe a couple pairs of pants. One day, I wandered out of the store and decided to wait on my mom by the sidewalk. Out in the open things moved and the hum of cars could be heard.

I saw pedestrian traffic pass bye, and observed people float on towards unknown places. You could also see the street vendors that peddled their mangos, cacahuates Japoneses, and pepinos with sal and limon. It all seemed like water coming out of a faucet that pours onto the sink. The swish of the movements was like artificial white noise to my ears. I stood outside the entrance, looking across the street where three giant fountains were spewing water up into the air. The mist of the water was picked up by the wind and it slowly floated down settling on the one natural lake where ducks still waded. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a group of people all huddled together.

My curiosity got the best of me and I walked over to see what was happening. A game of hide the ball was taking place. The man in charge of the game was using baby food caps, colored in blue, and a tiny foam ball that looked like it had been used for so long that the yellow had turned brown. He kept repeating in a loud inquiring voice, “Adonde esta la bolita, adonde esta la bolita!?” He was dexterous like a magician and shot words rapidly. His eyes goggled every which way resembling those stuffed bunny rabbits. Occasionally he’d stretch his neck and turn to left and right as if to see what was happening on opposite corners of the street. The foam ball hovered on top of the black velvet cloth that the man had placed over his makeshift platform. He moved the caps swiftly, but I could see where the ball was going. The tiny inanimate object was directly across from my eyes. The sidewalk everyone stepped on was speckled with black spots of bubble gum contrasting with the grey cement. For some reason the sky that day was a deep blue, unlike any other sky blue I’d ever seen blanketing the city.

       

The man’s skin was a red mahogany. He wore a brown shirt that had white stripes running horizontally across his upper body. His hair was uncut and large curls were forming. He’d been out in the sun for longer than a day. I couldn’t quite tell if anyone was winning or losing money. I wasn’t playing nor could play because of my age and because frankly speaking kids weren’t the target for these hustlers. It was other people they were trying to get and who knows if they were successful at what they were doing. I found it fascinating though, and twice was able to guess where the ball was. Of course with those types of games odds were drastically stacked against the person betting their money. Looking back now I imagine that the man running the game most likely had some watchers and some people standing guard in case something funny happened.

I don’t remember what happened after my mom stepped out of the store. We probably walked to the car, got into the little Datsun and rode back home. I do remember telling my mom that I’d guess the location of the ball twice. She just smiled and swayed her head left to right in disapproval. “Did you win anything?” she inquired. “No,” was my reply. Her arm extended outwards and with her finger pointed up to the sky and reminisced out loud on that Tuesday afternoon that she left her town.