for weekend fiestas, and all the other amenities could be had for a small fee. I was told that the place was closed up after an incident that occurred at a wedding reception where a young woman was abducted, never to be found again. As the years went by, the lakes dried up, and the buildings were set ablaze by vandals. I only saw photos of what it was like back then before my time.
I would conjure up an evening in the past and what it would’ve been like to swim in the lakes. As I would stand in those places, I just couldn’t conceive of the barren dirt beneath my feet as being any sort of Eden-like mini paradise. Now if you stood still in one spot for too long, your shoes would start to heat up.
Chapter 2
The Mighty Santa Cruz
Tucson in the summer was brutally hot and could be unbearable. We never knew better as young teens. It was what we were given, and believe me, we lived it to its fullest.
This mighty river is only mighty two to three months every year in the summer. Though it is a wide river, it is bone-dry most of the year. In Tucson, there is a monsoon season in the summer when it can rain like holy hell, with the river flowing to the top of its banks becoming a scary sight. Standing at the edge, one can become mesmerized and drawn to the muddy water as it roils along at a faster-than-normal flow. If you fall in, there is no salvation for at least forty miles to where it peters out to a manageable flow.
There were tamarack trees that lined the bank on the east side of the river that slightly obscured the old dance hall next to it. My gang found no real interest in the river because there was no real entertainment to be had. The sandy bottom was no place to pedal a bicycle, and it was just too damn hot to play in.
The dance hall had long ago been closed up and just sat there abandoned for many years. It had windows that were whitewashed over, but they were seven feet off the ground and not appealing to us curious ne’er-do-wells. Amazingly, the windows were intact, and looking back now, I ask myself how could that be. Every other building that I ever found abandoned in my travels had the windows broken out from rock-throwing contests. I guess they just held no appeal. The dance hall was a two-story structure probably, as best I can recall, measuring about 250 feet by 120 feet. Simply a large pale-yellow building made of brick.
It would be a few years later before the old dance hall, the lakes, and the bridge that spanned the Santa Cruz River on Congress Street would be of a profound significance to me.
One Saturday morning, the fellas and I came up with the notion to walk north in the riverbed for a change in our routine. I couldn’t say why we all agreed, because it never once held any appeal in all our years tramping about.
Unlike today, water was never a consideration for a trip. When we got someplace, we’d tap a neighbor’s spigot and be on our way.
I myself, and still to this day, do not require water. Now and then, my body will scream for water, and I will gorge myself till my stomach aches, but that doesn’t happen very often.
We six vagrants took off down the sandy river bottom for the first mile of miserable heat, with nothing exciting taking place. Then we realized where we were, and a small dose of fear came over each of us. We had crossed into the next neighborhood’s turf and were praying that no one would be out by the river that day. We didn’t get along at all with those guys, and they had an official gang which boasted some sixty of their neighborhood hoodlums as members.
I thank God that those guys, like us, found the river unappealing and seldom ventured there in the daytime. We all knew one another because we attended the same school together. We got along for the most part. It was at recess and lunchtime that we competed at softball or other sports.
So getting along was fine, but when the school bell rang, all bets were off. They would exit through the north gate of the school to their barrio, and my bunch left through the south gate to our slightly more upscale neighborhood. I think they resented us because of economic disparities. Our parents chose to assimilate and learn the King’s English, whereby their parents spoke Spanish solely and passed on their laborer’s trades to the kids. So I was not liked out in the streets.
Anyway, it was mutually decided upon that we should turn around and go back to our piece of heaven or hell, as it were. We had turned about, and an object caught my friend Blackie’s eye. It looked like a shard of glass with fabric attached to it, and it was barely exposed being buried in the sandy bank. Each of us took to digging around the object, and as we cleared away sand, it became apparent that they were human remains. They clearly had been there for some time, and they were the remains of a young girl, maybe fifteen or so years of age.
We were shocked and sickened by the sight. None of us had ever witnessed death before. We had to run and tell the police or the first adult we ran into, and run we did.
The fire station was our first stop as some of the men there had come to know us from our playing around the station. Big Dave was polishing up the fire truck as we approached him with the breakneck speed of a crazed horde. He probably thought to himself, These little bastards are gonna mob me and take the fire truck. Dave had seen us crazy at play before, using slingshots against one another and other roughhouse tactics. We always kidded him about taking his fire truck down the street, although none of us knew the first thing about starting the engine, much less driving it away.
Today was different. He saw in our eyes a sight he had never seen before. He yelled to his firemen mates to come out as he held up his hands as one would do if trying to stop a stampeding horse. I was the elected spokesman for the group whenever a serious event needed discussing or having to talk one of us out of a tight spot. I had a way with words and rationalizing things in a manner that seemed to always make sense. The consummate bullshitter.
After explaining to the gathering firemen what we had discovered, they got on the telephone with the police department and relayed the claims we were making. Dave assured us that if we were making this all up, there would be hell to pay, and we would be restricted from ever playing around the firehouse again. We assured them that we were dead serious.
The police arrived at the station in two cars and asked that Blackie, Tommy, and I accompany them to the location. Oh boy, I was riding in a cop car, and I really thought I was something. We went by my house where my mom was out front sweeping off the porch. She saw me riding in the back seat and turned pale, dropping the broom to run inside and call my father. I felt kinda good knowing that a whipping wouldn’t be called for, and I would be a hero in the next day’s newspaper.
Arriving at the scene, we pointed to the body’s location and were instructed by the police to remain on the bank and not to go down into the riverbed. Meanwhile, more policemen and investigating detectives had arrived to the area. As the medical examiner and his team totally excavated the body from the bank, members from the rival barrio gang arrived. First, they asked what were we doing there and then asked us what was going on. I explained that there was a dead body and that we had discovered it earlier that day.
Furthermore, we told them we were brought there by the police, and if they wanted to start something, the police would come to our side. This was big news to them, and they forgot about territorial rifts. We kibitzed about all the possibilities surrounding the girl’s death just as if we were on the school playground. My guys and I were getting hungry and decided we would head home.
I gave the officer all our addresses and told him where we could be found if he needed more information from us. He let us go and thanked us for our service that day. We said our goodbyes to the gang guys, and they said their goodbyes as well, with a cordialness we weren’t used to.
Getting home was a fun experience. By now, all the neighbors were
