The slip-slap clatter of domino tiles on cardboard tables was an oft heard sound as perspiring men on plastic milk crates played with competitive camaraderie, a beer or two stashed discreetly underneath.

There was a group of women I came to think of as the Sisterhood of Pink Curlers. Their uniform was plastic flip flops and atop their head, hair set with enormous pink curlers. Day after day their hair was a work in progress awaiting a reason to allow its freedom. Other women dealt with motherhood attached to strollers holding a toddler who might be balancing a pacifier and a red dripping shaved ice cone as the mother tugged another child along.

Tight restaurants selling cuchifritos, various fried pork foods, often called Puerto Rican soul food did a brisk business. Stooped old men pushed frozen ice carts along the gutters pursuing customers. Korean grocers stocked blackened plantains, shiny green avocados, past-prime oranges, large bags of rice along with cane stalks. Tropical fruits filled the outdoor bins. Bodega (convenience stores) inside windows were stacked high featuring small bottles of detergent, toilet paper and Pampers. Beer and soda were staples. For those needing a single cigarette, the bodega was the place to go. Paying high rents, the owners charged high prices.
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Music was everywhere, loudly. Blasting out of cars decorated with bright ball fringe. A crucifix or Christ figure adorned the dashboard or swayed on the rearview mirrors. Or radios set on ledges. All day and into the weekend nights, amateur virtuosos of the conga or bongos sat on upturned bruised plastic paint cans repeating the same rhythms over and over.
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Boys hung around vying with each other to attract the high breasted girls in pretty dresses that paraded by. The girls, generally in pairs or a group, would arch their gaze, pretending to ignore the comments while offering a not-so-shy smile of encouragement.

Fix-A-Flat spots were as plentiful as Starbucks are in today’s midtown Manhattan. Lettered white tire or inner tubes hung on walls of virtually every side street from East 103rd uptown to the Harlem.
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The community and the Fire Dept. sparred over water. An adult would wrench a hydrant on. Like a dam breach, water exploded out to the delight squealing children and in the course cooled the air. It then tided back to the gutter ushering trash to clog the drain. Firemen would arrive to turn it off. Before they could get back to the firehouse, a hydrant would be turned on there or in another block.Curbside fire alarms were vulnerable and were pulled on a regular basis, creating excitement. Wailing and honking, two or three trucks hanging off the sides rushed down Second Avenue or up Third primed to fight a fire that didn’t exist.

Heroin took a toll on many lives and ruptured families in the barrio. The wasted became a familiar site, staggering or nodding on the streets. Not all were young. Soliciting became more obvious. Car break-ins became common. Occasionally, an addict one would slide down in a reeking doorway never to rise again. Walking from the subway or near the bus stop became a gauntlet. I began to hear more about violence – stabbings, domestic violence, murder. Bullet holes in plate glass windows were not uncommon especially after Saturday night but stabbing seemed favored over Glocks. I no longer felt safe.

Fervent Pentecostals in storefront iglesias tried to counter the bad influences with open doors, drumming, chants and rickety folding chairs. Venerable St. Cecilia’s on 106th Street noticed a drop in attendance about the same time they had to put a stronger lock on the poor box.

In the barrio, the cops from the 23rd precinct were not called New York’s Finest. Returning an occasional lost child home, calling an ambulance for an ailing elder or a few toys given out at Christmas was too little to garner respect. Reports of brutality, racism and intimidation were reported. If a patrol car experienced a traffic mishap, the event was celebrated. And sometimes a flat tire discovered on a patrol car was much more than a simple flat tire.

The spirit of young Puerto Ricans lifted when the activist Young Lords in purple berets marched through the streets in military formation. City Hall responded with dismay and not a little fear. They sent young white cops in riot gear. Pablo and Felipe became familiar names in the media. Bricks rained down on patrol cars. It became front page around the country when the Lords, fed up with the lack of basic services and policing erected a barricade of garbage across Third Avenue. Sanitation services improved for a time.
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Once I remember looking down from my apartment to see a laughing crowd right a Technicolor VW bus after it flipped and skidded on its side into the bus stop on 106th Street. A shaggy red haired guy and a slender blond girl in a long broomstick skirt climbed out from the shattered side window. After a few high fives, the couple got back in the bus and drove off. There was applause.

What can I say, it was the Sixties in El Barrio.

Next Post  – Part 2  – People I Met in the Plaza

 

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