Alex and the Hobo: A Chicano Life and Story

CHAPTER 6: ANASTACIO TAYLOR

CHAPTER 6 ANASTACIO TAYLOR Joe Taylor’s father, Anastacio, and the protagonist of Alex and the Hobo, Alex Martínez, have a lot in common: they both recognized and stood up to corruption. Joe’s father was a central force in defining his moral vision. When Joe Taylor was the same age as Alex, he learned a great deal about his father while spending time in Anastacio’s zapatería (cobbler shop). The shop was a little community center where many paid a visit to “old man Taylor” and talked about what was taking place in Antonito. Joe heard stories of corruption and of his father standing up to town officials who abused their positions of power. Anastacio was a model of the masculinity toward which Joe Taylor and his protagonist, Alex, aspired. Alex stood up to corrupt authority when he foiled the plot to blame the hobo for a crime he did not commit. Joe Taylor spent hours in his father’s zapatería when not working in the fields or going to school. When we were kids, the first thing we would do, we’d rush home. Right? And we’d change clothes. Nobody used the same clothes. You had your school clothes and shoes and everything, and you’d change and then you’d run back to the shoe shop. And you’d stay in the shoe shop until the end, until four, five o’clock. Six o’clock. And Saturday was a very, very busy day so you’d stay in there sometimes until eight or nine o’clock at night. But as long as that shop was open, we stayed there. He knew where we were and he didn’t want us going into the pool halls. Later on we’d sneak into a pool hall, but later on. If they’d told us not to go to church, we’d have snuck in the church just to defy them. My dad’s shop was a community center because people would go on in there and they would talk to my dad. Whenever a guy would 118 come into town and he’s from out in the country, the guy says, “Hey, I’m going to see Taylor, viejo Taylor, old man Taylor.” So they’d go on over there and they’d talk to my dad until the women finished shopping. Or they’d say, “I’m going to take a pair of shoes to old man Taylor.” It only takes five minutes to bring a pair of shoes, but they would stay there for quite a while. They would catch him up on what was going on. But that’s the kind of a shop my dad had. It was like a little community center. Everybody would go sit in there. I used to know a guy who worked as a butcher. And he liked his drink. And he used to buy a bottle of wine and take it to my dad’s shop, where we had a couple of little compartments in back of the shop, where we kept our coal and a bathroom. And he’d sneak out of the grocery and go on over there and take a nip of his whisky, and [my dad] covered up for him because he was a good man. He was raising a family . But there is always that person that has a weakness for alcohol. So all kinds of people used to go down and see my dad for one reason or another. 119 Anastacio Taylor’s zapatería. Learning about Corruption Joe recalled learning about corruption through his dad in the zapater ía. People who had problems with the law, they thought the law had done them an injustice, would go to my dad. And my dad knew that some of the cops were corrupt. And he wasn’t afraid of the cops—he’d go face them—because they knew better. They couldn’t jail my dad. They wouldn’t jail my dad. That’s one thing you just didn’t do. They accepted him. They accepted him when he criticized them, and they wouldn’t take him to jail. The cops that were over here, they respected my dad. They respected my dad immensely. And they wouldn’t put him in jail. One reason Anastacio Taylor garnered so much respect was that he was a good...