Counting on Tono

Come with me to a place called Jeffrey-Lynne, a poor, crowded immigrant community in the shadow of the Disneyland Hotel. I want to introduce you to Antonio Santos, a strong and silent type who’s been parking his produce truck in this neighborhood for 20 years.

Everybody calls him Tono. To his customers, he’s not just a mobile vendor, he’s a neighbor too. Lives just down the street, close enough to go home for a shower in the middle of his 11-hour shift.

Recently, residents have discovered that Tono has been wearing another hat, as ad hoc agent of the U.S. Census Bureau. He’s one of about 20 vendors recruited for an Anaheim pilot program to distribute information about next year’s head count.

Latinos have been historically undercounted, experts tell us. Many avoid census forms, partly out of fear of deportation. The government hopes to overcome those fears by appealing to the public through people they know and trust, like Tono and other vendors.

The strategy is not foolproof, as I learned from hanging around the truck one day this week. But the theory is sure sound. Few people are more recognized and trusted on Jeffrey Drive than Tono, the vendor with the thick mustache.

Through their association, vendors are assigned routes. Some like Tono are stationed permanently and become a center of attraction on their block. On jammed Jeffrey Drive, lined by two-story apartment buildings, people gather at the spot where Tono parks his truck.

Here, they stop to pick up tortillas, eggs or a soft drink. They flock to him, kids on bikes, moms with strollers, girls with piles of pennies. The men also hang out here after work, arguing over soccer and ribbing one another over hometown rivalries.

They create their version of the street-corner society, found in many American cities, large and small. This vendor may be foreign-born and speak Spanish, but he’s a lot like Mr. Smith of Anytown USA, the friendly grocer who has become an endangered breed in our impersonal and anonymous culture.

At the rear of the produce truck, people joke and gossip over the open boxes of mangoes, pineapple and cactus leaves. They create an island of precious interaction over a $2 purchase of tortillas and bananas.

Residents have nicknames for the regulars. Zulma, the slim woman in shorts with rings all around one ear, is the princess of the produce truck. The clean-cut, heavyset kid who pulls up on the bike and orders Fritos is El Gordito Rojas, admired around these parts for his speed and efficiency in running errands for his family.

Tono knows their tastes and their needs. He sells them everything from dried chilis for making sauces to tubes of Super Glue for repairing, rather than replacing, broken household items. He knows the brand of tortillas they prefer, the ones that sponge up like homemade when they heat them.

Tono came here in 1978 from his home state of Puebla, known for its hundreds of ornate colonial churches. His brothers followed but soon went back home. They didn’t like the lifestyle here, working such long hours for so little.

Tono doesn’t mind. He doesn’t get tired of his job and he doesn’t get bored.

“I found myself in this job,” says Tono, who’s single.

He works from 9 a.m. until the sun goes down. When it’s hot, like it’s been these days, his truck becomes an oven. He goes home at noon, takes a shower and comes back wearing a sleeveless undershirt and jeans. It’s going to be a long, hot afternoon.

Tono has a helper in the morning, but later he’s on his own, even during the dinner-hour rush. That’s no problem, he says. He’s used to moving customers fast.

“Give me a dollar of eggs,” says a woman who sidles up to the truck along with a girl holding a big umbrella against the sun. Then she orders onions, then tortillas. Tono fills the order, item by item.

“Give me toilet paper,” says another lady. Pause. “ . . . and a Pepsi, but make it a real cold one.”

Tono is beginning to sweat. He’s constantly scooping crushed ice from a cardboard box to keep his perishables cold. Perspiration is dripping from his chin.

Two teenagers pull up on their bikes. Outsiders might peg them as cholos, or gang members, by their looks. But Tono trusts them.

“Can I get credit for an orange soda and a water?” asks one of the youths. Without another word, the deal is made and the boys ride away with their drinks.

Tono has built a faithful clientele--even customers who walk over from his competitors’ blocks--by selling on credit and cashing people’s paychecks. And why not? He knows the residents better than any bank manager.

That’s Rutilio Reveles Montalvo who just pulled up across the street, taking groceries out of his trunk. Don Rutilio has lived in this community since the early 1970s. Holds a pretty steady job too. Been with Disney for 24 years, now doing what they call convention setup at the Disneyland Hotel.

Now, see the kid getting off the school bus, says Tono with a smile. This morning, he chuckles, they chased that boy for half an hour before they could put him on the bus. He doesn’t like school, but nobody wants to see him become a dummy.

Occasionally, Tono puts purchases in a bright yellow bag marked with Census 2000 in big black letters. Several people had no idea what the promotional bag was about. One customer, Adriana Rodriguez, wasn’t even too sure after reading a plain, dryly worded flier explaining the government head count.

Once I explained that the census is tied to federal funds for city improvements, Adriana warmed up to the idea.

“Oh, we need a lot of that here,” she said, looking around the drab, rundown courtyard of her apartment complex. “They need to fix all this because it’s pretty ugly.”

Alfredo Cabanas, 26, also walked away oblivious to the message on the census bag with his buck worth of bananas and three dozen tortillas for 75 cents. But he knows what a census is, of course. Census takers come around and count people in Mexico too. Down there, though, the approach is personal.

“They’re real open,” says Alfredo, who just came here from Veracruz eight months ago. “They come right into your home and you invite them to a soda. . . . People don’t get intimidated at all.”

But the car-wash worker still sounds unsure if he’ll cooperate here next year. “You think there might be a problem for me?” he asks.

That’s the problem right there, says Marco Antonio Rojas, who drives a catering truck. Passing out information won’t do the trick; some of the residents here can’t even read.

“That’s a fruitless expenditure,” says the burly man with the gold jewelry. “You have to find a way to talk people out of their fear. We have to convince them that rather than hurting us, the census will be beneficial.”

The government should hire this eloquent guy who can’t wait to get off work to come hang around the produce truck. This is where you get all the gossip, says Rojas, “from last night’s soccer game to last night’s love affairs.”

Rojas, a fan of the soccer team from Guadalajara called Chivas, loves to poke fun at his neighbor, Roberto Arellano, a Mexico City guy who roots for Toluca. The problem for Arellano is, Toluca lost the other day.

“When you talk about the Chivas,” Rojas jibed, lording it over his smaller friend, “please take your hat off, sir.”

It wasn’t Arellano’s day. He couldn’t get Tono to take his order at the rear of the truck. The vendor is deliberately neglecting him, Arellano complained tongue-in-cheek. What’s that word Americans use when one group mistreats another?

Discrimination?

“Yes, discrimination!” says Arellano, who has worked for Chuck E. Cheese for 11 years, since two days after he came to this country. “The people who pay cash, Tono serves right away. Me? Since I’m on credit, he leaves me for last.”

Tono doesn’t hear the mock lament, or pretends not to. He serves up another bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos spiked with an extra dose of Valentina hot sauce, an explosive treat popular with the kids who call them Chatos del Diablo.

“Tono, and what’s this?” asks a customer about the census bag.

“For the census,” says Tono in his serious baritone. “For the year 2000. So you can be counted.

“Pa’ que te apuntes.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.