Things to know up front:
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Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.
While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!
1982 was an important year in my life. I was 22 years old when the year began. I lived alone in my small apartment on 7th St, and I continued to work part time at Fry’s. I turned 23 on the 15th of January, just as my final semester at the University of Arizona was about to begin. I signed up for four classes, and they were quite demanding, with lots of assigned readings, tests, papers and lab reports. All of this kept me rather busy.
On top of all of this, I continued to spend time with my friends, who included Frank, Scott, Richard, Tim, and others, and to indulge myself in having fun, going out to the bars to dance and partying a lot. There were times when I felt like the partying, which consisted primarily of drinking lots of beer and smoking, was starting to have an adverse effect, and I wrote in my journal in February that I wasn’t focused enough on my schoolwork. There were even a few times when I had to fake being sick and take time off of work to catch up on school stuff. This was risky, as I could have easily lost my job by calling in sick, but I was luckily able to get a doctor’s notice (usually by making something up, like a bad back or a sore foot) each time I needed time off, and that covered me with work.
February 23, 1982: Contemporary Latin America exam
February 24, 1982: Political Sociology Take Home exam
February 25, 1982: Mexican American Politics exam
I saved a lot of my schoolwork from this period. (To see my work, just click on each title above). Overall, I got good grades on my tests and papers, even though I was having too much fun. I was young and full of energy, I suppose. One way or another, I covered all my bases when there were deadlines to meet.
In February, my mother bought me a car. My ’64 Buick Special turned out to be a real lemon, and was always giving me trouble, so I needed to get another one that was more reliable. As luck would have it, my next door neighbor was selling her recently deceased husband’s 1964 Galaxy 500, a beautiful white, four door monstrosity with a great engine and body. I told my mom about it, and she agreed to buy me the car as an early graduation present. The former owner took great care of it. I had a lot of fun with that vehicle in the next several years.
I received several letters from my sister Becky early in the year. Her relationship with her husband Paco was over, and by early March, she had divorced him. Aside from one or two notable exceptions (see above), most of her letters from this period are heart wrenching, and describe a very lonely, unhappy person in the midst of profound change. I was elated when she came home in the Spring. My brother Charles flew up to Washington and helped her pack her stuff and come home. Charles drove a U-Haul back with her and all her stuff.
As the semester progressed, I continued to subscribe to and read a lot of political magazines, such as The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, In These Times, and the Guardian. I considered myself a socialist, and even joined the Democratic Socialists of America .
I was also starting to get interested in the Sanctuary Movement, which was founded in Tucson by Reverend John Fife and others. The following article appeared in the local paper in late March.
Sometime in the Spring, I met a young woman from Bolivia named Pamela Bartholomew. She would sit in on my Political Sociology class at times, and we became friends. She soon invited me to attend a play called “Semilla Sembrada”, by Teatro Libertad, a local political theater group.
I attended it, and loved it. I later got to meet the members of the group, and would soon end up interviewing one of them for a paper I had to write in my Mexican American Politics class. A couple of the female members, Pernela and Teresa, had also grown up in my neighborhood and I knew their brothers. I would end up becoming a member of Teatro Libertad by year’s end.
My niece Michelle’s first son, Solomon, was born on March 28, 1982. Here’s a photo of him taken a couple of months later.
I had more papers and tests due in March, April and May. Overall, I continued to get A’s and B’s in most of them. The one class I didn’t care for at all was titled Introduction to Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I got a C in it. Even though I had done well in previous science classes, this one just didn’t interest me at this point in my college career.
March 30, 1982: Contemporary Latin America paper on the Somoza Dynasty
April 1, 1982: Mexican American Politics exam
April 20, 1982: Political Sociology essay on American Ideology and Science
April 30, 1982: Mexican American Politics paper
May 11, 1982: Political Sociology Final exam
I was exhausted by the end of the semester, but it was worth it! I graduated on May 15 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, with a minor in Sociology. I remember that I promised my parents when I quit high school that I would complete my education at the University, come hell or high water, and I did it! It took five and a half years, but I didn’t care. I had reached one of the most important milestones of my life. I ended up with a 3.41 grade average, which wasn’t bad at all. I was the first and only one in my family to go to a four year college and graduate, and it made my parents extremely proud, and that made me very happy.
I had no immediate plans for the Fall, so I hung out with my friends and had fun. Frank and I drove up to Oak Creek Canyon at some point, and we took some photos. My dad had taken the family up there way back in 1965. He had grown up in the area, and knew it well. It’s beautiful country, and the drive with Frank was very enjoyable. I loved playing my guitar at the time, and Frank enjoyed listening to me. He was my biggest fan. Nobody else thought I played very well, and I probably didn’t, but he was a real sweetheart to me.
I also attended several concerts over the summer, including one by the Clash in Mesa, and one by the Grateful Dead. I drove my friends Richard, Denise and Mike up to Mesa in my new car to see the Clash show, and we had a blast. Denise made some silk-screened t-shirts for the occasion and sold a bunch of them up there.
When we went back up to Mesa to see the Grateful Dead, I got a ride with someone. It’s a good thing, because I was flying higher than a kite that night. It was a wild, memorable, trippy occasion. I won’t divulge the details, but believe me, we all had fun.
I didn’t have a steady boyfriend, but I had a few very close friends like Frank. He and I were very tight, and he would write to me a lot as he traveled the country and Europe. He bought me the book, Be Here Now, and was a big follower of Bagwan Rajneesh, and A Course in Miracles. He loved me dearly and was my mentor. Sometime in the summer, I took a flight to Albuquerque to meet up with him while he was staying there. I remember shopping at the various record stores in the University area with him. Poor Frank quickly learned that I had a constant habit of shopping for books and records. He even found a copy of Joan Baez’s album, “Live Europe’83: Children of the 80s” for me when he went to France the following year. The record was available only in Europe at the time, and apparently, it took him a while to find it, but he did and he brought it back for me. Bless his heart.
While I had did have strong feelings for Frank, I was also still very infatuated with my friend Scott, who was quite handsome and a very nice guy. We would go hiking together to Sabino Canyon, and he taught me how to shoot a gun, believe it or not. We didn’t really have a lot in common, as he was into things like hunting, but we enjoyed each other’s company. We also both worked at Fry’s, and would often go jogging together. Other guys that I hung around with at this time included my friend Harold, who was a choir director for a local African American church, and Michael, who turned me on to the movie, Harold and Maude. He and I clashed some, so our friendship only lasted a few months. My friends Ron and Jane, Sylvia, Dennis, Jim and Gary were still around too. I was very lucky to have so many good friends at this point in my life.
In August, my dad and I took a road trip to Las Vegas in my new car. We stopped along the way in Superior to visit his brother Raul, and then drove through Phoenix before heading north to the Verde Valley region, where he was born and raised.
We visited Jerome, Cottonwood and Camp Verde. At one point, in Cottonwood, we stopped by the river and he took his shoes and socks off and waded into the water. It was so cool to see that. This was where my dad spent his childhood and youth, and it was a very special moment.
We continued driving north to Flagstaff and visited a lady who was from a family my dad knew when his family lived there in the thirties. From Flagstaff, we drove west to Needles. We had almost made it and were just 40 miles outside of Needles when, as luck would have it, my car’s water pump went out, and the car stalled stuck outside of Yucca, Arizona, in the middle of nowhere. It was the middle of the night too, and we were stuck. My dad tried lighting a fire to get someone’s attention, and a State trooper even drove by, but did nothing whatsoever to help us. We ended up walking a couple of miles up the road to a motel that had a pay phone. I barely had enough change to make a call to my uncle’s house, and I had to memorize his phone number after getting it from the operator. It’s a good thing I was able to do that. Otherwise, I don’t know what we would have done.
My uncle came and got us, and the next day, we got the car fixed. It was a very scary situation there for a while, but we pulled through. The experience helped my dad and I bond like never before. All that walking we did was hard on him, as he walked with a limp due to a broken leg he had gotten years ago while working in the mine. I felt really bad for him, but he was a good sport.
Once we had made it to Needles, we spent time with my dad’s two brothers Val and Failo, and their families. We also went to Las Vegas, but it was awkward and we didn’t have a great time. He wanted to see showgirls. I didn’t.
My cousin Clarisa later took me to Laughlin, Nevada, another gambling mecca on the banks of the Colorado River. I had a really bad experience there too. As we were walking through one of the casinos, we went through a dance area that had a band playing, and the band started mocking Mexican music and making stupid noises. I yelled back at them and flipped them off. Little did I know I was being watched. A few minutes later, we were served drinks, and I suddenly got very, very sleepy. I ended up crashing in the car, and the next morning I was sicker than a dog. Apparently the servers slipped something into my drink so that I wouldn’t cause any further trouble. I had never vomited bile before, but I did that day. It took me a while to get back on my feet. It was a horrible experience, one I’ll never forget. We later made it home without any problems, thank goodness.
I decided not to enroll in school in the Fall. I needed a break. There wasn’t much to do other than work, so I continued that and just hung out with my friends, listened to lots of music, partied and went to the movies.
Sometime later in the Fall, I decided I wanted to branch out a bit and find something creative and fun to do. Since I liked playing the guitar and flute, I looked around and found a music group that I liked that I thought I’d try to join. After hearing her group perform at an event, I met up with a woman named Rebecca, who was with a folk music group called Bwiya-Toli, to talk about the possibility of joining them. They played progressive folk music from Latin America. I auditioned with them, but didn’t impress the group leader all that much. I didn’t know how to play percussion and they wanted me to do that. I could play the flute and guitar, but hadn’t played in an ensemble in quite a while either. Things didn’t work out with them after all.
However, my friend Pamela soon thereafter invited me to attend a Teatro Libertad meeting. The group had been in existence since 1975, and had several major plays under their belt by the time I came along. Earlier in the year, I had attended a performance of Semilla Sembrada, their most recent full length play, and over the summer I became friends with Teresa, one of the members of the group. My very first meeting with the Teatro was on November 9, 1982. The group was very disciplined, and meetings were held two to three times a week. There would be no alcohol or other drugs allowed at any of the meetings, and punctuality was very important to the group.
While the primary focus of Teatro Libertad was theater, the group also sang a lot, and I particularly enjoyed participating in the singing and learning new songs. The acting was another story. I had always been, believe it or not, a very, very shy individual ever since I was a child, and it took all the courage I could muster just to get up in front of a group to speak. I had trouble giving presentations, for example, in college. I would just freeze at times, and usually bombed whatever presentation I was supposed to give. I knew if I wanted to stay in the Teatro, that I had to get over this fast. It took a few embarrassing moments, but I was soon participating in skits and contributing as a full member to the group.
Jesse Jackson visited Miracle Valley, Arizona on November 11, which was the sight of a controversial shootout in the predominantly Black community south of Sierra Vista. He also came to Tucson and spoke at the Mt. Cavary Baptist Church that evening. I was there and he was fantastic. Unfortunately, the writer of the article had to be a smart ass about things. It’s so frustrating that some journalists can twist things around like this and get away with this kind of garbage.
This Ray Charles concert was alright, not great. My friend Richard was one of the people that hollered at the wrong time. He yelled out, “You bad, Ray”, and Ray told him to shut up. How funny is that? Richard told me about it later. This was the first of two Ray Charles shows I saw in the 80’s. The other one took place a couple of years later at the Temple of Music and Art. My brother Charles and I took our mom to see him. The concert was over in about 40 minutes, and was the shortest performance I’ve ever attended. We we all very disappointed.
As the year came to a close, I knew I needed to make some decisions about my future. I decided to take the GRE exam and to go back to school. I considered going in to social work, and my friend Frank even wrote me a letter of recommendation, but I also thought about law school. I couldn’t make up my mind, and it took a while to figure it all out.
I knew one thing for sure. My feelings for my friend Scott continued to deepen, and I wrote him this song. I was crazy about him.
