Obsession With A Culture

First Contact 

It began in 1983 after the long trek home from school, following closely behind my older sister Gina, to our small one story house in a middle class neighborhood of San Jose, California.

We were what they called “latch key kids” which at the time was normal. In the 80s it was somewhat normal to have a dual income household. The kids would have to walk home from school by themselves and stay in the house for the next few hours while they waited for their parents to come home from work. We’d always call Mom at work as soon as we got home. I don’t know how she never got in trouble because it never turned out to be just one call. Usually Gina and I would end up in an argument and there would be phone call after phone call to her complaining about each other. Ahh, to be a child again.

I’d just developed my first crush on a boy, Scott, a year older than myself, whose long blonde bowl-cut hair, the latest 80s style, covered his face. He looked like Ricky Schroeder from my favorite TV show Silver Spoons, who was, at that time, the object of all the girls’ affection. I was young and impressionable, still a small child at the age of eight. As soon as I arrived home from school and finished my chores for the week I quickly flipped on the television set (you actually had to get off the couch and walk to the TV set to turn it on in those days). I switched the channels until I found Silver Spoons. The show was about a millionaire father, Edward Stratton, III, who lives in a mansion with a train running through the middle. He discovers he has a son, Ricky Stratton and tries to make up for lost time by spoiling him with lots of toys and video games a boy (or man) could dream of.

On this episode, Ricky promises Consuelo, a girl he’s trying to impress, that her favorite music group, the Puerto Rican pop sensation Menudo, whom she loves is going to be singing at his birthday party. In fact, he’s never met this guys and has no such plans. Ricky pretends to be a room service waiter at the hotel that Menudo is staying at in order to meet the guys and convince them to come to his party. When the guys find out there will be video games they agree to go to Ricky’s party and sing their hit song, “Gotta Get On Movin.” Watching those five unusual looking teens singing and dancing their awkward dance moves was my first experience with the Puerto Rican culture and the very event that would lead me down an unexpected path into the arms of several Puerto Rican men and a life of music. 

Phase 2 

It wouldn’t be until two years later that I would find myself making contact with the Puerto Rican world yet again. I was 10 years old and in the sixth grade. My parents had put me in school a year early so I was a year younger than the rest of the kids in my class. One day while I was at school I met a handsome, dark haired and dark eyed boy, Kenny. He didn’t look like any of the other boys in school and he certainly didn’t act like them either. He had mostly female friends (who usually had a crush on him) and he always walked around in tight biker shorts looking like he was ready to hop on his bike at any moment and go for an 8-mile ride. He would become a casual friend in my junior high school years but it wasn’t until high school and then later in life that we forged a bond and developed a real friendship. Kenny was also Puerto Rican. 

Calling Me Home 

In 1987, as an eighth grader, I would enroll in my first Spanish-language class as a part of my middle school curriculum. I found myself becoming interested in the culture and then soon enough I was actually becoming good at this foreign language they call Spanish (except for “napkin,” the one word on a vocabulary test that I didn’t know so I wrote in English and placed the accent on the “I” like so: “napkin.” Somehow the teacher missed that one). During the school year I would practice and develop my skills at speaking this new intriguing language.

As a tool to help us better absorb the vocabulary, our teacher Ms. Pereirra would bring in the lyrics to different songs and we’d listen to the song and read or sing along as the music would play. We learned “Happy Birthday” (Cumpleaños Feliz) and Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba.” For the first time I was finding something I loved and I was developing a strong passion for a new culture and the very thing that would take over my life for the next twenty years: Latin music.

It was 1988 and I was entering a new phase of life, becoming a freshman in high school. I was back to the low end of the totem pole but my sister was in her senior year and we would share one semester together in the same school. I reacquainted myself with a friend from elementary and junior high school, Georgina. She was different from the girls I usually spent my time with. She came from a multi-cultural home. Her dad was Greek and spoke with a heavy accent and her mother was Mexican who melded her own culture with the American way. We quickly became best friends, spending many days after school together, walking to the grocery store to buy our favorite pastry with the spare change we could dig up from the couch and our parents’ pockets. Some days I would even eat dinner over at Georgina’s house. This is where I had my first real Mexican dish – Chicken mole. Who knew chocolate would taste so good on chicken? It was delicious. Soon my hunger for the Latin culture grew more intense.

It was that year that Georgina introduced Menudo back into my life. She shared with me the group’s English language LP (yes, I’m old enough to admit that I listened to actual records!), “Sons of Rock.” It would become part of my life for the next 15 years, running in my blood.

One day at school Georgina announced to me, “Menudo is going to be at the record store on the East side signing autographs.” Ricky, Sergio, Ruben, Ray, Angelo and Robert were all going to be there. These were completely different members of the group than the first time I had seen them on Silver Spoons. You see, the whole basis of Menudo was that each time a band member turned 16 or started to get too big, too tall, or his voice started to change he had to leave the group, to be replaced by a newer, younger, cuter boy. Robert was in training mode because he was replacing Ricky (later to become famous to the rest of the world – THE Ricky Martin) who was getting ready to retire based on the Menudo rules.

I don’t remember why I couldn’t go to the autograph signing but I was heartbroken. These boys were adorable and they gave me something to live for. I couldn’t get enough of them. I listened to their music, taped their interviews on the radio (yes, I did say “tape”), joined fan clubs and began exchanging letters with pen pals, all young girls who were fanatics just like I was.

Then Georgina announced that she was going to the concert at Cow Palace in San Francisco. Indeed I HAD to go too. The next thing I knew my sister and I were in her car on the 101 freeway headed north to the concert to see Menudo. Being four years old than me, Gina could drive and she had a car of her own so we didn’t need a chaperone. I don’t know how my parents ever let us get away with the things we did. Driving up to SF, 60 miles away, on a Saturday evening by ourselves and then come home late at night was a pretty bold thing to do for two teenagers. Especially at a time when there was no such thing as a cell phone. But we did it anyway.

I remember the Sons of Rock concert just like it was yesterday. I had a secret crush on Ruben but as I heard Angelo sing “You Got Potential” and watched him dance on stage my heart fluttered. It was as if he was singing directly to me, the only girl in the room. Me, of course, and the thousands of other girls screaming at the top of their lungs and jumping up and down with signs in their hands saying, “I love you, Ruben” or “Menudo, you are the Sons of Rock.” That event was such a pivotal moment in my life, one that would lead me to a future with bands. I still have the quarter page flyer with a photo of the five Puerto Rican boys that would change my life and my first Menudo concert ticket which read: Menudo, Cover Girls and TKA Cow Palace Saturday, November 5, 1988.

After the concert was over, Georgina, my sister and I rushed to the side of the stage where somehow we managed to convince the security guy to tell us what hotel the group was staying in. After little debate we agreed to go to the Choice Hotel and find the boys’ rooms. It was in this moment that I would meet Menudo for the first time and my life would be Menudofied forever. I don’t remember the details of how it happened but somehow the group’s choreographer Joselo would bring the boys out into the hallway. We would meet Angelo, Ricky (thee Ricky Martin), Ruben and Sergio. We managed to take photos with Angelo and Ricky, me with my short curly hair and my silver rail road tracks covering my teeth and my sister with her giant hair and huge white hoop hearings. It’s a day I’ll never forget. To be continued…