Special to The Tribune
HARLINGEN, Texas - Jacobo "Lou" Lozano has no freakin' idea where his daughter, Evelyn, is on this particular night. He is driving like a maniac as he scoots past darkened streetcorners, past jet-black alleys and past rowdy cantinas offering accordion music that sounds like it's coming from the bowels of Hell. It is four Ayem and Evelyn has not been home since dinner, when she ate a chicken taco and then got up from the table to say she'd had it with her family's boring life.
"I need to find her fast," Jacobo was saying, as he spun onto Ed Carey Drive. "I don't find her by dawn and it'll not be good news for the wife."
Evelyn Lozano is 16, he tells me.
Harlingen does not have a teen curfew, so local kids have taken to partying and then partying harder. On most nights, they can be spotted cruising up and down downtown streets. On weekends, the action bolts for the fringes of this struggling community of 74,000 residents.
"Cops find them doing weed and drinking beer out of quart bottles," Jacobo is going on. "I don't wnat my kid in that world. Those kids are losers, dopers and drunkards. They're lost, not worth a damn to the city or its future."
Suddenly, a trend that has played out across the country is fast-falling on the defenseless RGVofTexas.
Next to rampant unemployment that has local men doing menial jobs for minimum wages, resolving the teen problem looms as important for some parents here as landing a good-paying job. Lou Lozano is on unemployment benefits. He hasn't work in almost two years, having lost his job at a construction company after arriving semi-drunk for his evening shift. "I was sick back then, man," he explains. "I was seeing two other women not my wife, and, well, I didn't have the energy to service all of them. I guess that's it, yeah. The day before I was fired, I spent the morning with my wife and then split the afternoon with the two other broads. By the time I got to work, I had no freakin' energy. My legs were gone, man."
He wheels the car into the parking lot of a popular nightclub and parks in a dimly-lit spot. There are two cars and a van in the lot. The club is closed for the night, but Jacobo suspects his kid is in the van with a guy, or maybe more than one.
"I see that van begin to rock and I'm charging that sonofabitch," he says in a quiet voice.
On this night, he struck-out on finding Evelyn.
When I last saw him, he was wheeling a load of branches from the vacant lot to a flatbed truck that would take the trash to the city dump. He looked gone, his face a portrait of both desperation and defeat...
- 30 -
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Writer Bob Veracruz is originally from Madrid, New Mexico. He currently resides with his girlfriend in Brownsville. Mr. Veracruz has tried his hand at pro wrestling, cab-driving, bullfighting and once served as referee at a cockfight. This is his first report for The Tribune...]
7 comments:
Mr. Veracruz, sounds like he has been bumming around for awhile. You better move back to the Valley soon. Othewise, Hargis Bonner, might end up owning the Tribune just like TC sold his trashy blog for $50.00. I would hate to hear that.
That Kermit guy, looks mean. He looks like he is having a bad day.
As for Vercruz, if lives like Mexico was living he won't be around too long.
That door looks like the movida bar entrance in Brownsville.
Alcatraz where do find this writers???
I was at the Harlingen Municipal court this afternoon. There were a bunch of teen age boys and girls. Fighting, truants, possession of drugs, speeding, no insurance, no driver license, girls fighting in school over rumors.
What is wrong with this world.
Mr. Editor, you are a wordly man, no doubt about that, are things as screwed up, up in Maine, or New York, Boston, or where ever your travels take you. Just wondering.
speedy
I've never understood why men will think it's okay for themselves to cheat on their wives and don't realize they will pay a price when it comes to their children acting out sexually. If you are dishonest with your partner, if there is no honesty or respect for their feelings (especially empathy for the pain you cause), how can you expect your children to respect the morals you preach. I realize that sometimes teenagers just take the wrong road, no matter how upstanding their parents are, but I truly believe that many parents don't realize or take responsibility for the example they set. M
Harlingen, has a minor ordinance, why, I don't know, they don't enforce it. I came home late the other night, and the local circle K, looked like it was around 9 pm, full of kids, unsupervised. By the way, it was 3 in the morning.
So much for the Harlingen Police dept. doing their job.
Mr. "M", I blame all this stuff on television. They glorify adultry, etc.
Look, adults can do as they wish, but 14 and 12 year olds is something else.
Besides, where are the parents when young adult at this age are up and around untill late at night.
In Harlingen, half of the football team was caught on a grass and beer party at 3:00am in the morning. As did some San Benito, and Los Fresnos football players. Sorry state of the Union.
sofia
ANONYMOUSES & M:...This story has resonated far & wide, from Roma to South Padre Island. It used to be latchkey kids (those whose working parents could not be home when they came home from school). Now, it is as if all parents have given up, and so the kids party. When I was a teenager in McAllen, my father would say, "Son, you come straight home if you can't get a gal in the sack by 9 p.m." Life is both cruel and funny that way... - Editor
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