Part of missing the old days in Bandera means thinking back to things my momma would tell her kids.
“Stop slamming that screen door.”
“If you kids are going to fight and kill each other do it outside.”
“Go get a drink out of the hose and quit dirtying up all the glasses.”
With peach tree switch in hand, “Go ahead and run, you’ll come home when you get hungry.”
When she was really mad, “I’m gonna send you off to reform school.”
My momma is the one who gave me driving lessons in our old Chevy truck on the gravel backstreets of Bandera. I loved that old truck and wish I had one just like it now.
Starter, gear shift, headlight dimmer switch all located on the floorboard. Even had a crank out windshield.
On rainy school days it got pretty crowded in the tiny cab with kids closest to the shifter and starter having to be instructed on how and when to engage.
When it came to my dad’s driving lessons it was a different learning experience.
“Don’t ride the clutch.” “Don’t ride the brake pedal.”
“Start slowing down before you get to the stop sign. You’re gonna wear out the brake shoes.”
“If you get a ticket I ain’t gonna be the one who pays it.”
My granddaddy Kindla and his brother, my great uncle Phil Kindla would sometimes speak to each other in Polish when they were working together.
Not sure if it was just to stay fluent in the language of the old country or not wanting to let the kids know what they were talking about. Little pitchers with big ears I believe is how the saying went.
Other than just a few words I never heard my mom or her brothers speaking Polish. Sadly no one ever gave me lessons in speaking the language of my Polish ancestors.
My childhood friends Angel and Joey Martinez did give me Spanish lessons but I soon figured out that most of it couldn’t be used in public.
I had to be careful because the taste of soap wasn’t unfamiliar to my taste buds.
Some of the words I learned from older boys and from reading the graffiti under the Bantex theater proved to be hard lessons.
Let me tell you, some of the drawings on those concrete beams under there were truly works of art. That learning experience was familiar to many young boys in town and a few adventurous girls too back in the day.
It is often hilarious when I am talking to my granddaughter and using phrases I had picked up throughout my years of Growing Up In Bandera and she has a lost look on her face.
I thought everyone knew that a person who likes to brag is just a blowhard. It takes a bit of explaining sometimes because it comes from a place and time in a world that no longer exists.
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