Growing up in Los Angeles (Part One): Drawings

Part 1: Drawings

By Armando Ortiz

Memories of my elementary school years suddenly dance out from the hidden catacombs of the mind, like citipati. Salsa or Cumbias are not emanating from the bowels of my subconscious; it’s more like simple ritual dances meant to honor the moon and ancient spirits. Images seen with the eyes but not lived or experienced become more and more haunting as I become older, and at times can only understand or explain things under the hypnotic rattling coming from an old tortoise rattle. 

I was in the second grade, and on a particular day was drawing on a notebook. A bunch of buddies of mine were drawing spaceships and rockets.  Each one had their own notebook or piece of paper to draw their image. One of them, who was from El Salvador, kept drawing some strange things. We found it strange the way he drew his bombs, and couldn’t pinpoint what were the things drawn or how those instruments could be used. Generally speaking, projectiles with bombs flew to the heavens, but this was different. The drawing he made looked like pointy dreidel tops that are used for games where one spins the tops, and instead of having markings that told the player what they had won after the spinning had stopped his bombs were left blank. There was no reason to draw these funny looking things, but that is beside the point. The point is that it created vexation amongst us because it couldn’t be identified; maybe I was the only one from the group that was unable to see the meaning behind what the kid drew. 

I remember asking him, “What are those things?,” and he replied with a blank stare, “Bombs.”

“Bombs?,” I replied with an incredulous wave of intonation.

“Yes,” he said.

The only images I had of bombs back then were of dynamite sticks that resembled large firecrackers. Big red dynamite sticks that had ACME plastered on the sides and came out in cartoon programs. The missiles that projected out of the television were always shooting up to the heavens. Interestingly these missiles, as they were drawn by me were always pointing up or passing through clouds.  I recall going back to my desk and drawing a version of what proper bombs looked like to show him, drawing them all cool and explaining to him how real bombs went up and how sometimes if they were made of gunpowder its fuse could be lit with a match. Dynamite sticks could also be turned into rudimentary rockets that could be ridden, like the coyote who was always chasing the roadrunner.

Almost anything that was related to bombs or missiles always went up into the heavens, hypnotizing audiences across the US while in other places bombs were falling projectiles that struck their target. On the other hand, here in the states we were busy stargazing, looking up at the shooting rockets or at stars that came out on television every day. Living a reality that was carefree and easy going and detached from the life of those that were migrating to the US, more specifically Los Angeles. 

Our classmate had escaped a civil war. His depictions of bombs were based on his personal experiences. What he drew were actual hand grenade sticks, RPGs and mortar shells that had fallen on people from his neighborhood, ammunition that he’d seen guerrillas and government forces carry by the loads. The bombs he drew actually fell, landed and blew up, bursting with loud bangs, giving sudden roars, raining showers of blood, brains and dirt. Unlike the coyote though, people that survived a bomb explosion rarely continued going about their business or had a quick recovery like he had.

Kids born in the US had no idea what war was, and what real bombs were. We were in second grade, it was the mid-1980s, and the Civil Wars in Central America were at its peak. People from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala were flooding the streets of Los Angeles, more specifically Alvarado and Pico. They hadn’t had time to recover from the violence that was happening around them, but quickly left those places, and unlike the Coyote didn’t fully resume with their daily lives. It was during an era of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Pink Floyd, and Guns n Roses were at the top of the pop charts. The War on Drugs against urban centers and the poor was just beginning to take effect. Punky Brewster hadn’t had her breast reduction and Gary Coleman was being swindled by his own family. We were growing up in fast times, gazing up into the heaven looking at stars, and at school playing kickball at recess and tetherball for lunch was our main concern.