Don Quixote and youth of L.A.

I just finished reading “Don Quixote” (impeccable translation by Edith Grossman) and was captivated by the futile yet fulfilling adventures of the “knight errant” and his seemingly dull (yet cunning and in fact brilliant) sidekick Sancho Panza.

After reading Reed Johnson’s “The Quixotic Don” [June 24], I felt even more understanding of the adventures of the “knight of the sorrowful face,” and Reed also made apparent his acute understanding of Latin American and especially Mexican cultural mores.

Being an L.A. native of Mexican American background, I found much insight and a new way of thinking about the Mexican’s modus operandi, or as we old gangsters used to say, the movidas, from Reed’s fine treatise on Quixotic behavior by Latinos.

I started thinking about how we young Eastside Chicanos in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and being as poor as church mice, would, like Quixote and his steed Rocinante, buy an old used Chevy for as little as $100 and would make these into beautiful and unique lowriders that were in our eyes the equal of or better than any Cadillac.

Days spent scavenging at junkyards, or stealing, or just with elbow grease and imagination transforming our old used Chevy’s into low-to-the-ground, glass pack mufflers, spinner hubcaps, polished chrome, Appleton spotlights, mounts to equal Quixote’s mighty steed Rocinante.

And our unique pachuco clothing became our own armor fit for a knight errant! Like Don Quixote who put together his armor from a kitchen sink, and old used materials, we too turned the old unwanted post-WWII military-style clothing, scavenged at any number of L.A. war surplus stores, into a warrior’s uniform fit for any knight.

And as the knight errant sought out adventure and battles against overwhelming odds, so did we young Chicanos. To walk by oneself into a party in an enemy neighborhood and challenge all to do battle, to resist and fight the police, were the things of legend. To die in a futile, useless gang fight would make one immortalized in any number of corridos sung in your honor.

TIM TRUJILLO

Los Angeles