In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

✩ 177 ✩ C h a p t e r S e v e n t e e n Christy and Roddy Bea and I figured we’d have a large family, practically a tradition in Catholic, Mexican American families. Our first child arrived almost simultaneously with my diploma from San Diego State. I missed my graduation to stay home and help Bea when Ruth Christine added herself to the family. Bea had my personal help, mostly limited to sympathy, plus the help of the hospital staff because it was a difficult delivery. The doctor said my wife couldn’t have any more kids. That was it; we’d have to settle for having a small family. That wouldn’t be a particular problem because we could love one kid just as much as a half dozen. Christy made it easy to love. She was, and still is, a lovely daughter. With just a small family and no prospects of a larger one, we continued living in the apartment we rented from Bea’s mom for a couple of years, and then we bought a house—a small one. Our family expanded, but not with more children. It expanded with animals, thanks in part to Paul Walker. Paul was a retired navy chief, and I knew him as a wrestling referee. At that time, he ran the Dog Motel in La Jolla. It was a place to board dogs for people who were traveling. Sometimes, after being away from their pets for a while, folks realized just how much trouble their critters were and decided that they could get along without them after all. They just wouldn’t come back to the Dog Motel to claim them. That might have been a solution for the vacationers, but not for the dogs or Paul himself. He loved animals and had to find a home for them. In one such case, Paul saw a solution to his problems. Bea and I 178 ✩   chapter seventeen loved pets, and Christy, who was about a year old by then, obviously “needed a cuddly dog.” Sure enough, he had one we could rescue from whatever fate befalls dogs left behind in boarding houses. We adopted Mike, a dachshund, usually referred to as a sausage hound. Mike didn’t last too long at our home. Christy loved him, hugged him, and dragged him around. Then she developed welts, and we blamed the animal. Back he went, with the hope that someone, somewhere, wouldn’t be allergic to him and would give him a good home. Later, we discovered it wasn’t the dog’s fault at all: Christy had a general allergy unrelated to dogs. Back we went to the Dog Motel, but Mike had moved on, whatever that meant. We didn’t ask for details. But Paul, like all good chief petty officers, had another solution. He had another abandoned dog, a beagle named Smokey. We were moving up in size—and in noise if Smokey decided to bay at the moon. Those beagles can be noisy. Later Christy added several cats, all black and white, and all named Smokey. Life can be simple for kids. After we moved out of our apartment and into our own home, we added some farm animals to our family, but Christy figured they were pets. That’s why we didn’t go into any details when a duck that had been there one day wasn’t there the next—not when we would have to explain what was for supper that night. Now, a half century later, I suppose she’s figured it out. As our menagerie grew, so did our family. Convinced our family was limited to only three (not counting four-legged critters), we hired a contractor to build us our own home, a small one. Then, within a year, we outgrew it. On April 14, 1953, Roddy, AKA Roderick Christopher Rodriguez, checked in and took up residence in our small house. We moved to bigger digs, the one dubbed Rod’s Little Acre by my friend and fellow teacher Henry Wiggins. There we had more room to play and more room for our animals. Christy loved her little brother about as much as she did her cats, but he just wasn’t as furry or as pretty. I think it’s a rule that in a two-child family, the kids will be as different as day and night. Christy and Roddy differed in both temperament and the...

Share