Just Kids From the Bronx (32 page)

I married a Dominican. The cultures are similar in the food that they eat and the music that they hear. The difference is in their identities. For example, Dominicans are very proud of who they are, because they have their own country. Puerto Rico is in between. We really don’t know what we are. As an unincorporated territory, we’re really part of the United States. That limbo creates a different uncertainty. But the United States is a beautiful country. I love it here. It’s the only country that a son of a cook could actually become a doctor. I would die for the United States at any given moment.

I went to visit Puerto Rico with my wife and her father, my Dominican father-in-law. It was his first visit to Puerto Rico. On that trip we ended up going from San Juan to the West Coast. The Mayaguez area, where my parents are from. When we were in San Juan we went to the Bacardi rum factory. I was amazed to see what they did there that transformed the rum industry. It was so simple. They charred the oak barrels. When you do this, you get a charcoal formation along the barrel. The charcoal acts as a filtering agent and it also acts as a coloring agent. Just in doing that, they made the rum a little bit smoother and cleaner. Charcoal is what you get in a Brita water filter. It acts as a filtering agent, so it smoothes it and takes out the impurities. That’s when I got the idea for opening up my own distillery.

My background was in organic chemistry at Fordham University and I did a lot of research there. In that research, we used a distillation apparatus. Basically, it’s heating up the chemicals, allowing water to cool down the vapors, and collecting the materials at specific boiling points and temperatures. And that’s what alcohol distillation is.

Once I saw what Bacardi was doing, I knew that I could do it too. I knew that I could manipulate some of the properties to create my unique flavor and that if everything went well I could probably leave a mark behind in the world that I actually existed. For me, to standardize the process, the process has to start and finish the same time every time. At some point, there are different people that taste it, but I don’t. I’m the type of person who does things excessively when I like something, so I prefer to not even place myself in the kind of situation where I may lose control. Therefore I’ve never touched alcohol. My father likes drinking, so he’s one of the tasters and part of the process.

I love what I do as a doctor. I’m serving others. I’m blessed that I’m living my dream, but the distillery is different. Which one do I value more? Definitely saving someone’s life. There’s nothing better in life than doing that.

RUBEN DIAZ JR.

Politician, Bronx borough president

(1973– )

When I was two years old we moved from Jackson Avenue in the South Bronx to the Soundview section in the East Bronx. We got out of the projects. My father bought a house that was burned down and literally fixed the house from the ground on up. That’s why he got a good price when he bought and that’s why we were raised in a one-family house with a backyard sitting on two lots. We were the only guys, my brother and I, who grew up with their biological father. For us there was structure. There was discipline. There were expectations. There was fear! Fear of Dad, right?

Although we moved from the South Bronx to the East Bronx, we still had a strong connection to the South Bronx. My brother and my sister and I were still going to school at P.S. 5, which was on 149th Street in our old neighborhood. Then I was identified as a gifted and talented student, which meant that I went to a special program at P.S. 31, which is on the Grand Concourse. It was almost as if I had two lives. I had my neighborhood friends that I grew up with in the East Bronx, and then the kids I went to school with out of the neighborhood.

At school, there were a bunch of important teachers for me—Mr. Coletti and Mrs. Beckham. Mr. Peloso was my sixth-grade teacher and he’s the reason I know:

“When shall we three meet again?

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurlyburly’s done.

When the fight is lost and won …

Where the place?

Upon the heath.

There to meet with Macbeth.”

Those are the opening lines of
Macbeth
and I still remember them.

Mr. Coletti is the reason why, although I’m not much of a writer, when I write I don’t use the word “but.” I use “however” or “on the other hand.” Not “but.”

And then Mrs. Beckham in middle school—she was the person in social studies class who put American history in chronological order for me. A lot of times, kids study different wars and other historic events and the dates are all chaotic. It’s because of her that the chronological order of events is neat in my mind.

I was that normal Bronx kid who sometimes got into trouble. I played a lot of sports, so there were broken windows from hitting baseballs, or throwing baseballs and cracking car windows. We also played in empty lots. Those were our playgrounds. Remember, I’m speaking from the late seventies all the way to the late eighties. There were people who burned down their buildings for insurance purposes, insurance scams. There was flight. And then you had rubble. The bouncing gym for me was a bunch of mattresses stacked up in an old dirty lot. If you look at movies like
Fort Apache, the Bronx
—if you look at those visuals, those are the lots.

Today on Commonwealth Avenue between Gleason and Watson, there are a bunch of houses. But prior to that it was just a whole street of empty lots. And it was like a jungle. We used to play “manhunt” there. And we got into trouble because our parents didn’t know where we were. We would bring canned foods, put on our fatigues and camouflage gear with combat boots. We would take Chef Boyardee and Campbell’s soup and we would camp out there and make a fire, put the food in a pot and warm it up as if we were in the military.

I’ve only lived in five different places in my whole life. All within two-point-eight miles of one another in the Bronx. For me, that’s everything. It’s the good and the bad. I grew up with a good home life. You know, Mom was the stay-at-home mom. We had good meals. We had the dogs, the yard, everything. But I also grew up, you know, in the late eighties, early nineties, with the crack epidemic. Traveling back and forth to school, having guys I loved—Isaw their sensitive and emotional side, but they were not the nicest boys to the rest of the world. Some of them suffered from drug abuse. Some of them suffered from fantasizing about being rich and then took the wrong route to making that money. So you sort of had to come together for protection from everybody else, right? These days we call them gangs. Back in the days, it was “crews” and “blocks.” I remember being chased by crews of two, three, or four hundred, without exaggeration. So nowadays, if you see a group of, let’s say, twenty guys, that’s a lot.

We used to get chased by a few hundred. Hundreds from Bronxdale houses. And let’s say, we then teamed up with Bronxdale. But now if you team up with Bronxdale, you’ve inherited beef with Castle Hill, or you’ve inherited beef with Bronx River. That was when I was a teenager. And when they chased you, you ran.

Individuals like my father and the world of politics influenced me in a positive way. Being around senior citizens’ centers and the programs that my father started influenced me. My mother became an assistant teacher involved with day care. And hanging out with the guys on the block—that influenced me as well. And everything in between. Everything I didn’t want to be part of and everything that I wanted to—they all influenced me.

When we hung out in the neighborhood, the store was mecca. There’s this sentiment that there’s a bad element there. But what people don’t realize is that in our communities in the Bronx, the store was a communal place in addition to where you did your grocery shopping.

In the summertime when your parents worked, they had an agreement with the store owner. In Spanish we call it
fiao
. So my parents had a tab going with the store owner. We would get pastrami sandwiches and would get all the drinks, you know, cookies and the quarter order—we’d always call them the quarter order potato chips—and you’d go there and they’d put it on the tab. You get a
fiao
. And at the end of the week, my father would come into the store and say, “Okay, what do I owe you for my kids?” If you went too far, they’d tell you to slow down. You guys are getting too much
fiao
from the corner store.

There was Dona Clara, who used to live on the fifth floor. If she needed help with her groceries, we’d all help her. There came a time when she couldn’t come out of her apartment, so whenever she needed something she used a long rope with a big basket. She would tell you what she needed and then put the money in the basket and would lower it. Think of the level of trust there. We were the guys on the corner. There were bad guys there, along with everyone else, so instead of taking the money and running, Dona Clara, whoever she sees, and I mean, these guys were tough guys but even if she saw Crazy Hector, or whoever, she’d say, “Hey, I need you to…” “Okay, lower the thing.” If something was a gallon of milk, something she couldn’t haul up, then you brought it up to her apartment. It was a good deed, you know. It wasn’t done for a tip. Nowadays you get kids who hang out in front of a building. If someone comes in a cab with groceries, you’d be lucky if they even make way for you to go through the door. But not only did we make way, like the whole crew would take all the grocery bags up in one trip. ’Cause there would be six, seven, eight, ten of us. So everybody gets two grocery bags, two other guys open up the doors. Here we go.

I struggle every day with that difference between the kids then and now. All I can say is that something happened in the eighties and nineties and even in the turn of the century where the relationship between parents and their children changed. I mean parents have always been young, but parents weren’t always your friend. And then it went from parents trying to be your friend to parents not being around and then just a level of disrespect. That translates to the grandparents too. I don’t know if I’m making sense here, but it was like, my mother was not my friend. My father was not my friend. My mother was the police. My father was the police. Not just for me but for all my friends. You know, their mothers were the police. There was a respect that you had. And for the grandparents too. It’s almost like young kids now view themselves as equal to adults. The boundaries are blurred. The young folks feel like they don’t have to go the extra mile for you. You don’t do it for me. If you’re talking down on me, I’m going to talk down on you. In my day, Dona Clara could talk down on us all she wanted. That didn’t mean that the guys from up the block could talk down on us without having a problem. You know what I mean. But Dona Clara could talk down on us all she wanted.

I think it’s all about memories. My first kiss at Rosedale Park, that’s where I kissed Krystal. I remember Krystal. You know, when you like somebody, maybe you didn’t kiss them but now you’re playing freeze tag, now you’re teasing them. These are all memories. This is what helps formulate who you are as an adult. This is what I’m trying to provide. Chances for good memories, concerts for young teenagers out in the street. And what I want is for that thirteen- or fourteen-year-old to go to the concert and not to start a fight with another group of guys but maybe even to meet a girl there. To hopefully start a relationship that lasts. My wife, Hilda, and I have been together since we were sixteen. We met each other when we were fourteen. You know, to say, I met your mother when that guy Ruben Diaz used to do concerts—that’s a good memory. We met at the concert or we met at a salsa fest at Orchard Beach. Those are good memories.

We fought in my generation, but when you talk to those guys now and you speak of growing up, fighting is not what they talk about. Sure you can pull it out of them if you’re around them enough and if you’re asking the questions, but that’s not who they are now. That’s not the first thing they want to put out there.

No matter where you grew up, no matter how bad it was for you, whether it was in the Bronx in the seventies or eighties, or wherever it was, the good memories can overcome the negativity.

JEMINA R. BERNARD