The words were branded on the photographic memory of the boy
I was.
Never get in a car with a stranger, my mother warned.
There I was in her husband’s car.
“Tu madre es retarda,” he said less like a schoolyard bully
and more like a medic with a battle weary bedside manner far from TV doctors
that deeply cared about the sick.
I look back at the 10-year old kid I was who looked through
the car’s windows to see the burnt out buildings of The South Bronx give way to
better homes and gardens on the way to a Path Mark Supermarket on the other
side of The Bronx.
“Your mother doesn’t know how to shop,” he said as he stared
up ahead on the highway of billboards that promised the good life to all
Americans.
These are my memories in a blink of an eye.
I saw See The USA In A Chevrolet, romantic getaways to the
Bahamas and Ronald MacDonald, a clown I longed to meet along with a friendly
rat in mystical Disneyland where rats spelled backwards reads as star on The
Walk Of Fame.
The highway brought me back to an older kid who caught rats
in cages.
I followed older kids to the highway where nickel bets were
placed against the rats making it to freedom on the other side of the highway
of speeding steel wheels.
Squish.
Rats became bloody spots called road kill.
An ambulance killing another rat would be absurd but it was
an 8-wheeler and Puerto Rican kids roared like Romans over Christians attacked
by lions in an arena
Squish.
I’ve never seen anything like it in the time of a love song
to a rat named Ben sung by Michael Jackson.
.
Squish.
Them were the days, as Archie Bunker used to sing on All In
The Family on CBS.
Welcome home.
COPYRIGHTED 2018 BY DAAD/DANIEL ANGEL APONTE DESIGNER
ALL HUMAN RIGHTS RESERVED
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