By Juan Montoya
Call it Spanglish, bastardized English, or even South Texas patois, but the language spoken here is unique and particularly creative.
Sometimes it's funny. Other times it's downright crude. And sometimes it has nothing to do with the words spoken by other people. Consider, for example, when Ted Kennedy got into hot water (or was it cold) and a woman drowned in a creek.
Chappaquiddick. Remember? It is now being promoted as a new movie that will be featured in one of those cable channels.
In that one-car accident on Friday, July 18, 1969 Sen. Kennedy's reputation was forever tarnished and resulted in the death of his 28-year-old companion Mary Jo Kopechne. It was determined that Kennedy had been negligent and he pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of a crash causing personal injury. He later received a two-month suspended jail sentence.
Well, at about that time when the news was hitting the airwaves, we had a friend who was working at a Great Society social service agency in Mercedes who considered himself quite the galan. There wasn't a clerk or new employee at the agency who had not been targeted by the guy whose name was Amancio Chapa.
One day he invited a new hire for dinner and the girl – feeling somewhat obligated to Marcos for her job – accepted. After a nice dinner and drinks, Marcos drove out to one of the irrigation and flood control ditches by the levees in the area and after a while tried to put the make on her.
As the action got a bit too heavy for the girl, she stepped out of the car and yelled: "Chapa quit it. Chapa quit it."
And that's how Chappaquiddick came to be identified with the ditches in Mercedes.
6 comments:
That would be funny were it not for the fact that a young woman lost her life unnecessarily and the crime was covered up to protect the rich and powerful. Nothing funny about that bro.
@ April 5, 2018 at 8:15 PM
What? Too soon?
whaaat? who? Don't know that story
If the Kennedys are a joke, they are a bad joke. The old man (Joe Kennedy) made his money during Prohibition, in league with the mob, running whisky into the United States. He used his mob connections to get his son elected President by union votes. While in office, he was an ineffective President and a whore chaser who ran bimbos through the White House, some times ten a day.
His brother wanted to be President also, but took a bullet for the effort.
Ted also wanted to be President, but that aspiration was squashed by his crime where the young woman was killed. Still Massachusetts elected him Senator again and again.
I have no beef with the younger generations, but they have to stand or fall on their own merits.
The Kennedy Dynasty show what is wrong with America when money and power can move such white trash into high offices and power.
Juan, down here by the border on the sea, we learn by listening to adults. When we were kids we would listen to the sound of the word in English and try to make out that English word. Remember when we played London Bridge and it said,"Take a key and lock her up!" We learned the phrase as we heard it = Mantequilla lockaro,
whatever that meant. The same came out when the little anglos used to ask the teacher, "May I be excused?" and we Mexicans heard, "May I go to the be excused!"
thus bescuse became a word. Someone out to write about these things, pero we made it and succeeded when we corrected ourself. The boys used to go around repeating the words, Machine gun, and you can imagine what Spanish word that sounded like. All in jesture. Ha! We need to laugh about something.
At Resaca Ele the gringa fat teachers (without a degree) would spank your hands, pinch your arm, pull your ears and shake your head by pulling your hair and lock you in a closet just because you spoke spanish. YES those were fun years!!!
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