My Nine Lives +

INTRODUCTION

My motivation for writing this series of pages of my life is that I really want my children, and in particular my grandchildren to have an appreciation of the Wild West struggles that we had in getting out of Los Rincónes of northern New Mexico and into the mainstream of modern America. Peñasco being the most centrally located of Los Rincónes is where we were born. By we, I mean me and my bride since June 6, 1951, my darling Maria Isabél Duran de Chacón, who already knows all about this, I think!

The Many Faces of Oo-ah! Me!

1944  @  135                1947  @  145                   1952  @  160                1977  @  185                1981  @  196 +
Eighteen Year Old Naval Aerial Gunner A West Point Cadet at 22 - First Chicano Graduate. First Lieutenant Fly Boy - B-26's Manager, Dayton Area Office, AEC Science and Technology Advisor for Central America

There is another motivation in doing this and I will try poetry in explaining it. Here goes.

I have to live with myself, and so,
I want to be fit for myself to know;
I want to be able as days go by,
To look at myself straight in the eye;

I don't want to stand with the setting sun,
And hate myself for the things I've done.
I don't want to keep on a closet shelf,
A lot of secrets about myself.

To fool myself as I come and go,
Into thinking that nobody else will know,
The kind of man I really am;
I don't want to dress myself up in sham.

I want to walk out with my head erect,
I want to deserve all men's respect;
But in this struggle for fame and pelf,
I want to be able to like myself.

I don't want to think as I come and go,
That I'm bluster and bluff and empty show,
I never can hide myself from me,
I see what others may never see.

I know what others may never know,
I never can fool myself, and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be,
Self-respecting and conscience free.

I want to like myself!

Perhaps Abraham Lincoln put it best, he said, "I desire to conduct the affairs of this administration, that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me."

And to invoke Shakespeare, he said, "To thine own self be true."

So now, let me start. After thinking about this undertaking for several months I am finally facing the screen on my computer wondering how to start.

It is a cold November 1998 morning, cold and rainy for this time of the year in Albuquerque. I dislike cold, especially cloudy Saturday mornings, mostly because I seem to run around aimlessly waiting for the weather to clear up so I can make plans for the day. Usually I wind up getting on Isabél's nerves, what with my baby talk as I seek her attention and my interrupting her reading of the morning newspaper. Today was different. When I detected that I was not going to get any sympathy I announced that I was coming upstairs and begin work on my "novel" and I said, "It is going to be all about us. You and me and the girls." The "girls" means our three daughters Dolóres, Cecília and Mónica. The term has now been enlarged to include Lenny, husband of Cecília and their children Paul Joseph and Richard Alexander, our grand-children as well as John Alleva, Dolóres' husband and their children Bethany and Lauryn. (Bethany and Lauryn are Dolores' step-children, our step-grandchildren) The term now includes Doug Glenn, husband of our darling Mónica.

Although I am just now beginning to put my thoughts into print it is not the first time I have considered doing this. Actually I have inadvertently attempted some trial balloons on the matter. On at least three separate occasions, with different classes, when the subject of writing comes up, I have sketched out some ideas I have had about this effort. To my surprise there was always enthusiastic encouragement and at the end of the course someone would ask, "How is your novel coming? When can we expect to see it in the book stores?" Well, now that I am semi-retired and on the way to full-time retirement, I have no excuse, I have to get on with this. We shall find out if it is any good later. What I have told people who have asked has been something like this. Some of it will be fictional, some not. Some will be disguised to protect the guilty, mostly me. It will deal with crossroads and the many decisions we make in our daily life, some speculation on how things might have been had other decisions been made, and particularly what effect taking time to smell the flowers along the way had on the quality of decisions, some made consciously, some not, as we face the crossroads encountered in life. Conversely, the other side of the coin will become obvious.

Perhaps Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, a much-quoted and often misunderstood poem, is appropriate at this point, it goes like this:

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And being one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the under-growth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for those passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

The road that Robert Frost took was not only the "different" road, the right road for him, but the only road he could have taken.

I would like to think that my crossroads have been of a like nature, yes different. For intance, a most intriguing piece of information just recently caught my attention. I wonder if my attitude as a cadet at West Point would have been much different had I known then that I am a descendant of the legendary Major Rafael Chacón, Civil War hero and Maria, a Picuris Indian princess, my great-grand mother.

I will come back to the Indian in me in later chapters, for now I want to focus on my graduation from Peñasco High School on May 25, 1941 just at the end of the great depression and the year Pearl Harbor was attacked, not once in my wildest dreams did I imagine what I would experience in life from that day on.

Isabel, also graduated four years later from the same school but at the end of World War II. This then deals with the story of our lives; the social, political, military, industrial, and educational life to which we were always fully committed, and in particular our family life. It will be central to the story as it unfolds. This story could not be told without the omnipresent influence of the members of my immediate family and it is, of course, to them that this story is dedicated. Others, particularly those who appreciate the culture of the South-western United States, I hope, will find it interesting and perhaps useful.

Perhaps I can best tell the story in terms of My Nine Lives +, while at intervals let you smell the flowers, sometimes even roses.

My first life could have ended, except for the grace of God, in early 1938. Rafael Abreu, Lloyd Bolander and I had gone sledding on the slopes of La Cañada de Tia Reies. We tied our sleds together, Rafael in front, Lloyd in the middle and me in the rear. We came down the snowy slopes dog sled fashion. It was great fun. We tried a steeper slope, same order. Rafael blinked and got stuck on a snow bank, Lloyd and I piled up behind him. The runner of Lloyd's sled was stuck in my face. The scar under my left eye is the ever present reminder.

My second life was a short lived one. Same year, 1938, late August. This is best told in terms of La Potranca. La Potranca was my horse. A beautiful horse; small, but with the guts and courage of a tiger and a winner. I have a scar on my right leg that shows, even to this day, how close I came to getting killed because I drove my horse way beyond the limit.

My third life had to do with my graduation from High School and my enrollment in the CCC's the following day. Now that is a long story, one that had long lasting leadership impressions for the rest of my life.

My fourth life can best be told in terms of a 1937 Ford Truck that my father bought to carry the mails from Dixon to Peñasco and beyond. The accident occurred a year before he died. I was home on leave from the Navy. What happened is really not too complicated, except that in Peñasco, at the time, there were only a very few families that owned a motorized vehicle. Those that did exist were driven by the Dads or by us kids. I was 12 years old when I first started driving. I learned in a big Ford stake body truck, not the one that nearly killed me, that came later.

My fifth life ended with the sinking of the USS Ommaney Bay in the Sulu Sea on January 4, 1945 during World War II.

My sixth life ended with my 41st mission during the Korean War. Even though I earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for that engagement, I still shutter when I think about how lucky I must be.

My seventh life ended when I turned over my 1957 Volksvagan as I was returning from Peñasco to Albuquerque one fall day in 1958.

My eighth life ended in the Department of Arequipa in Peru in 1964 when I came within inches of a precipice that can hold two Grand Canyons in its breach.

My ninth life ended (exactly 29 years after my fifth ended) in Albuquerque on January 4, 1974 at the corner of Indian School Road and Juan Tabo on my morning commute to the AEC at Kirtland Air Force Base when I was hit by a Falcon Ford and scooped up and tossed into the arroyo at that intersection. The driver, T. Hartshorn, told Cici's classmates that he had hit a man made out of brick.

My tenth life ended in Stubenville, Ohio in October of 1977. It has to do with the color of my skin and hate in America.

OK, so I am living on borrowed time, all the more reason I should complete this story.

I am seventy three years old now and I do not expect to have to fight any more wars for my country and I have also matured a bit so I probably won't be exposing myself to any danger any time soon.

I know I am getting close to the real end, and I want to tell you about each of these prior endings. That is if you care to hear about them. Any one still counting? So here goes! Read on if you are interested.

But, first, please do take time to smell the flowers, beginning with;.

The Many Faces of Oo-ah! Bibi! With Someone With Hair!!!

1940                                1946                                 1950                                1958                                                    1981
Thirteen Year Old Tom Boy ? ? ? ?

Read On! Enjoy!



God Bless America

By José Andrés "Andy" Chacón, DBA


Free Lance Writer & Ex-Adjunct Professor, UNM
Chicano Motivational Speaker.