Against All Odds: My Story (4 page)

One day Bobby broke a desk during recess. The teacher accused me of being the culprit. In those days corporal punishment was common in public schools, and teachers paddled students regularly. My teacher threatened that she was going to swat me if I didn't fess up to breaking the desk. I knew that Bobby had done it, but I was not about to tell. I stood up and dutifully followed her into the hallway to endure my swats, when one of the other kids spoke up and said, “Teacher, Carlos didn't break the desk; Bobby did!” The teacher took one look at Bobby's face and quickly figured out who deserved the punishment for the broken desk. I was off the hook with her but was even more odious to Bobby. He still chased me home after school every day.

Jack, the man who owned the gas station and our cottage, got tired of watching me being chased. One day, when Jack saw Bobby chasing me again, he stopped us and said, “Son, it's time that you fought this boy.”

“He's too big,” I said.

“It doesn't matter,” Jack said. “You can't run from your fears forever. It's time to stand up for yourself.”

While Jack was talking to me, Bobby was standing nearby, ready to resume the chase. I looked over at him and then back at Jack. I knew Jack was right. I turned around and faced Bobby. I grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground. We grappled with each other and rolled back and forth in the dirt. I was getting the worst of it until I grabbed Bobby's finger and began bending it backward. Bobby burst into tears.

“Do you give up?” I shouted at him.

He nodded his head and cried, “Yes!”

I let go of his finger. And he jumped me again! I grabbed his finger once more and bent it back even farther than I had before. He started crying again and screamed, “Let go, Carlos! Let go. I give up! I really mean it this time!” I let go. Bobby never chased me again, and before long we even became friends.

Confronting Bobby the bully taught me an important lesson about fear. It can often be overcome simply by facing it.

The move to Arizona didn't help Wieland's asthma; in fact, he got worse. Mom and Dad decided that we should return to Granny's home in Wilson, but we didn't have a car and couldn't afford bus tickets for all of us. One night Dad met a man and woman in a bar and talked them into driving us to Wilson. We gathered what little clothes and possessions we had and piled into the couple's car. On the way a snowstorm stranded us in New Mexico, and we had to hole up in a small, empty room for the night. It was freezing in that room, so Mom wrapped our lone blanket around Wieland and me and pulled us close to her, trying to keep us warm.

When the storm finally cleared, we took off for Wilson again, with Wieland, Mom, and me in the back seat, and Dad and the couple in the front. Once, while Dad was driving, the other man reached back and tried to caress Mom's leg. I saw what the lecher was doing, so I reared back and kicked the man's arm as hard as I could!

“Owww!” the man cried out.

“What's going on?” Dad yelled. Mom told him what the guy had tried to do and that Carlos kicked him. Dad glared over at the owner of the car and growled, “You better stop it and keep your hands where they belong if you know what's good for you.” It was a tense ride the remainder of the trip, but we eventually made it to Wilson.

Although we were happy to arrive safely at Granny's, we stayed there for only a couple of months before we were off again. Dad had managed to get a car, so we moved to Cyril, Oklahoma, where he had found a job as a truck driver. We lived in a small boarding room above a restaurant where Mom worked as a waitress.

About eight months after we settled in Cyril, Dad came home drunk late one night and announced, “Get packed. We're leaving.” Mom didn't know how to drive, and she begged Dad to wait until morning, but he insisted on driving to Wilson that night. Mom made a bed for Wieland and me on top of the clothes stacked in the back seat of the car. In his inebriated condition, Dad weaved all over the road as he tried to drive. Mom was crying hysterically, begging him to stop before he killed us all or someone else.

“Keep quiet, woman!” my dad roared, “or I'll leave all of you right here in the desert!” Mom pleaded with him to take us back to Granny Scarberry's, which he finally did.

That was the regular tenor of our lives—Dad coming home drunk, acting verbally abusive and belligerent, and Mom pleading for him to stop. The tirade would continue until Dad passed out. When Dad sobered up, he would tell Mom he was sorry and would try to do better. But he never did.

Dad left again soon after that, this time for Hawthorne, California, where he had gotten another job working for Bethlehem Steel. He said he would send for us later. In the meantime to support us, Mom found a menial job in Wilson, working in a laundry.

She never gave up praying for Dad, and she never tired of telling Wieland and me that we could make something better of our lives, that God had good things in store for us.

At the time that was tough to believe.

CHAPTER 4

A MOTHER'S LOVE

I
scoured the streets and highways of Wilson every day after school, searching for pop bottles on the side of the road that I returned to the grocery store. The grocer paid me two cents a bottle for regular-sized bottles and a nickel each for thirty-two-ounce bottles. I also picked up scrap iron that I sold for a penny a pound. I gave all the money I earned to Mom to help put food on the table.

One thing I looked forward to more than anything was to go to the movie theater in Wilson. When Mom could afford to give me a dime, I spent all Saturday afternoon watching the double feature and the serials, the documentaries and cartoons that ran prior to the main movies. I loved those Saturdays when I escaped into another world. The Westerns, starring men like John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, provided me with positive examples of proper and moral behavior. Truth is, apart from my mother and Granny, my only role models were the cowboy heroes I saw on the screen.

Each time I walked out of the theater, I felt encouraged by the belief that there were such men. I determined that I would grow up one day to be like them. Those cowboy heroes offered a lot to a young boy longing for a male role model to emulate. Their behavior in their films was governed by the “Code of the West”—loyalty, friendship, and integrity. They were unselfish and did what was right even when the risk was great. Years later I would recall those Western heroes when I developed the kind of character I wanted to play as an actor. As a boy, however, I was only a spectator involved in a vicarious adventure.

My father was a negative role model, the kind of person I didn't want to be, a bad example to be avoided. My mother, on the other hand, had such a loving and caring nature that she more than made up for his shortcomings. She never let herself get down or depressed. Even though we had a hard life, Mom maintained a strong faith in God. She instilled that faith in her sons and kept us in church.

I still remember Mom coming home exhausted from her job at the laundry and saying that we were blessed. “As bad as things seem to be,” she'd say, “many people are far worse off than we are.” Mom was the most positive influence in my life, and she taught Wieland and me always to look for the good in people and in circumstances, never to dwell on the bad. She believed in determination and patience: the determination to succeed in whatever you choose to do in your life and the patience to stick with it until the goal is reached. Her belief system shaped my character and became an integral part of my life. Mom's faith became my own, and although I didn't know it at the time, I now realize that my faith in God provided the core of my inner strength.

We were so poor, I didn't have real toys to play with, so I used clothespins and an active imagination. The clothespins served as toy soldiers or cowboys. In my stash I had large pins and small ones. I made the big ones the bad guys and the little ones the good guys. When I played in the dirt in our front yard, I would set up my cast of characters and prepare for battle. I hid the big pins behind a rock or tree stump and then had the little pins jump in. I visualized the fight in my mind and decided what each pin was going to do once the battle ensued. Before the fight even started, the victory had already been won in my mind! Many years later, when I became a karate competitor, I used the same technique of visualization before each bout.

When I was ten, Mom piled Wieland and me and our meager belongings on a train to Hawthorne, California, where we joined Dad. The four of us moved into an old, rickety, twenty-foot-long aluminum trailer shaped like a teardrop. Wieland and I shared the same bed, and at night, before we said our prayers and Mom tucked us in, Mom, Wieland, and I had a ritual of singing together. One of our favorite bedtime songs was “Dear Hearts and Gentle People.”

Dad quit his job and hung out at a country-western bar, not far from our trailer. Sometimes he took Wieland and me with him to the bar when Mom was working. We amused ourselves as best we could while he sat and drank with his buddies.

I always wore cowboy boots and a hat. I was a cowboy at heart even then, as I am to this day. One night Dad took Wieland and me to the bar, and after a few too many drinks, he called out to the band leader, “Hey, my boy here can sing. He sings ‘Dear Hearts and Gentle People.’ ”

“Let's hear him,” the band leader said.

Dad hoisted me onto the stage. The band struck up the music, and I sang along. Ironically, I was not scared. Looking back, I'm amazed that I had the courage to stand up on stage and sing that night, yet I couldn't muster the courage to speak in class. I guess I was similar to Mel Tillis, a country music star and actor who stuttered when he spoke but never when he sang.

I have no idea how good or bad I was, but I do remember looking for Wieland after my performance. I found him hiding under the shuffleboard table. Apparently he didn't want to be associated with my singing!

Not surprisingly we soon moved again, this time to Gardena, California, where we lived in a small, run-down old house, set on an acre of parched land, a barren peninsula surrounded by plush, beautiful homes with lush, well-manicured lawns. Ours was the only dump; all the other homes around us looked like mansions. It was embarrassing.

Our nearest neighbor was a Japanese family, Yosh and Toni Hamma and Yosh's grandmother, all of whom were wonderful people. The Hammas realized how poor we were and how we struggled constantly to have enough to eat. Often, after Toni finished grocery shopping, she came by our house and told Mom that she had bought too many groceries by mistake. “Here, Wilma, would you take the excess?” She almost made it sound as though Mom was doing her a favor by taking her food.

One day Toni came to the house with two dresses, one brown and one blue. She told Mom she could not make up her mind which one she wanted. “If you were buying a dress, which one would you choose?” she asked.

“The blue one is beautiful,” Mom said.

Toni handed Mom the dress and said, “Here, this dress is for you.”

Mom, Wieland, and I attended Calvary Baptist Church, down the street from our house. I was extremely involved in church activities, and I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior and was baptized there at the age of twelve.

For Christmas that year, I saved my money that I'd earned by working in a laundry after school, and I bought my mom a special present— a picture of Jesus. We moved many more times throughout our lives, and little by little most of our possessions were destroyed or given away, but that picture of Jesus went with Mom wherever we went. She still has it hanging above her bed today. Over the years I've given my mom many presents related to our faith, some of great monetary value and others of great sentimental value or other significance. But of all the gifts I've ever given her, Mom still treasures that picture of Jesus the most.