My name is Art Garcia. I came from a family with 10 brothers and four sisters. I am No. 13.
I went through the entire school system with the name Arthur. I joined the Marines and was honorably discharged in 1969 with that name.
Well, so what, you may be thinking, and I would agree with you except for what happened one day when I needed a copy of my birth certificate. I've forgotten the reason for needing it, but that is not important. It's what I discovered when I went to obtain the copy of the certificate that plagued me.
You see, I couldn't find me. That's right, ol' friend. There was no Arthur Garcia born April 16, 1948, to Vera and Frank. Oh, there was a baby boy born, but his name was Manuel. Manuel! I yelled at the clerk at the Office of Vital Statistics. That ain't my damn name. I was so upset, my grammar was suffering.
The clerk calmly answered, "Well, according to this…" I didn't let her finish. I knew she was going to give me some bureaucratic crap.
Look, I said. I've been known as Art my whole life, without any problem. I don't care what it says there, it's wrong!
My older brother and sisters were there when I was born and they've all told me my name was Arthur.
They said it was probably a mix-up of my nephew. I have a nephew the same age as me whose name is Manuel, born at the same hospital. You do the math.
Well, enough of me, my brother Bob and his twin Bill, RIP, were to find out on their birth certificates they were actually Ray (Bill) and Ed (Bob). I asked my brother Bob, "How can your name be Ed, when we already have an older brother named Ed." And on it goes. My older brother Ed changed his name to Frank.
By the way, not only was Bob and Ed Bill and Ray, they were also white. That's right, ol' friend, their ethnicity was listed as white. How can that be, I ask you. We all have the same mother and father. Besides, we all look alike, in case there was any question of one of our parents fooling around (mommy?).
The thing is, while I am a good red-blooded Mexican born in California, why are some of our family registered as white, for there are other sisters and brothers of mine I'm referring to who are also legally white while others are Mexican. This, ol' friend, has gotten me mighty perplexed and a little bit confused, I might add.
I was just pondering on something I found quite amusing to myself. I was about 14, just before I was kicked out of the foster home. This was probably the real reasons: Seems old Mr. Averill, my foster father, asked me to change my name so he would have someone to carry on his name. Even back then I wasn't completely ignorant, ol' pal. For I saw right through this man who was really a bigot. Why, we grew up hearing the words "you have to do better than other kids cause you already have two strikes against you — you're Mexican." But that's another story.
He didn't care anything about having me for a son. He just wanted someone to carry on his precious name, which meant a lot to him. Scottish and Irish, you know, or was it Welsh. Hell, I never could remember.
I knew one thing I told my brother Bob years later. Had I changed my name, I would have been a Mexican with the white name of Averill and he would have been a white man with the Mexican name of Garcia. We both still laugh every time we think about that.
My dear brother Bob has Leukemia now. I just got back from seeing him in California a couple of weeks ago. We talked of many things during my stay there at his home in the San Joaquin Valley.
I asked him what he thought of the controversy about the Mexicans coming across the border illegally. He said, "You know, Art, those are our people too, although they are from another country." Therein lies the problem. They are our neighbors, they're so close to us that it probably seemed kind of natural for the first one coming across. It just became easier. Back then was when it should have been taken care of.
My brother Bob then said, a border brother (that's what he calls them because he lives in California), this Mexican, had told him that there was no way that Mexico could win back California in a war, so they were simply going to over-populate.
I believe that it is certainly having some kind of effect.