The United States of the Pacific

Uncle Irving and the Senator

I picked up Interstate 5 out of the Altamont Pass and drove that foggy, desolate winter landscape through the heart of California’s Great Central Valley, up the grapevine outside Bakersfield to the City of Angels. Uncle Irving had arranged lunch at the legendary Friar’s Club in Beverly Hills, a social club for movers and shakers with a star-studded membership of Hollywood elites. 

I parked on Santa Monica Boulevard and entered the near-windowless building, where I was stopped at the reception by a heavily made-up woman in a black barely there spaghetti strap cocktail dress with a plunging neckline from which two silicon breasts the size of twin midgets sought escape. I had seen her somewhere. Maybe an extra in an old TV show - likely a starlet in an earlier life - from the ‘40s or ‘50s! She appeared to have cornered the market on cubic zirconia, flashy heavy bangles hanging from her earlobes, fleshy turkey neck, and bony emaciated wrists. The whole getup seemed a bit much for a midweek lunch, and when she called out over the intercom, “Friar Irving Cooper, your guest has arrived,” I thought her face, tightly pulled together at the forehead, and plastered with multiple layers of foundation highlighting her collagen plumped lips would crack from the exertion. 

I cooled my heels for about ten minutes, staring at the various signed photos of Friars past and present that adorned the walls. Ronald Reagan was up there, along with Jack Benny, the entire Rat pack (featuring Sinatra, Sammy Davis, and Dean Martin), Johnny Carson, Lucille Ball, Buddy Hackett, along with various producers and directors, stars and their spouses, too numerous to mention. 

Irving finally came through the heavy wooden doors, talking to a tall, breathtakingly beautiful blonde that I vaguely recognized. Irving looked remarkably like all the other Coopers: five-foot-five, gray hair, clean shaven, taut like a spring wound a few twists too tight, with the map of Israel, or possibly the Nevada desert, etched into his hard features. As we walked through the dining room, he was greeted by various luminaries. Milton Berle said hello, as did Bob Hope and George Burns. Though not a celebrity hound myself, I could not help but be impressed. “You know all these guys?” I asked incredulously. 

With his still barely hidden lower east side guttural inflection, Irving almost inaudibly muttered, “of caws, bizniss clients and brotha Friahs.” We were seated at a booth with a pristine white tablecloth, heavy silver cutlery, and padded red leather. Elegance, Los Angeles style - by way of Broadway and Vegas. Incandescent lights shimmered off the ornate crystal chandeliers as million-dollar deals were whispered in hushed tones, with leaded tumblers clinking oh so subtly in the background as the Black and Latino waitstaff scurried among the tables with heavy glass decanters of aged scotch and bourbon. 

As was his way, Uncle Irving got gruffly and quickly to the point. “Zach, we don’t know each other well, but your dad and the New York relatives speak highly of you. They tell me you have an interest in politics and a background in environmental law.” 

I nodded, not sure exactly where this was going. It vaguely occurred to me that Uncle Irving may have committed some heinous crime and needed representation. If the rumors were true, he could have done anything. My star-addled brain rushed through all the possible transgressions. That horse's head in the Godfather? The family had known Sinatra back in Jersey City. Nah, he’d have a good criminal attorney for that. Had he poisoned unicorns or painted a rainbow black? Who knew? 

“That’s true. But I don’t know if the family told you that I am thinking of leaving law. Life is topsy turvy right now. A mess all around.  I’m considering becoming a high school principal.”

Irving laughed. Or snorted. It was hard to tell which. He just sort of stared at me. “You’re fuckin with me, right?” “Why in hell would a bright young man such as yourself give up potentially millions of dollars to be a pencil pushing bureaucrat in our fucked up educational system?”

“Your mother says, how should I say this delicately, you can be a little soft in the head sometimes. Maybe she’s right?  Your Uncle Milton tells me you have quite the interest in left wing politics.” Look around you. You think ANY of these people got PHDs? Do you see any high school principals here?”

“And for the record, that nice Jewish car salesman’s daughter you're considering marrying? Your dad says she is a little mashugana in the head. A bit of advice, and take it from me, you can marry more money in 15 minutes than you can make in a lifetime. Capisce?” I wasn’t sure what to do with this little bit of wisdom, so I just nodded.

“Look, I get it. You think you gotta change the world. Let me tell ya, it ain’t changin. Jack Kennedy tried to change it. I was in DC scheduled to meet with LBJ on a housing project when they killed the Harvard boy. MLK. Tried to get us out of Nam and get his people some dignity. Mother fuckers killed him too. I was in the crowd at the Ambassador when that little A-RAB murdered Bobby.  They were all tryin to change the world. Doesn’t turn out well.”

You REALLY wanna make some kind of difference? Not your fucked up 60’s hippy dippy kinda difference but actually do some good. Well...I might have somethin that might be right up your left-wing commie alley. `` 

Before my imagination could go to too dark a place, my uncle continued,” I just returned from Ben Gurion University in Israel with a delegation of California legislators. Ben Gurion leads the world in water efficiency technologies, and these could be very valuable in California.” I had no idea where this was going. What was the angle? Was the Mossad behind this play? The Irgun? Did the Irgun still exist? Who would I be asked to kill? 

Irving went on.” On my trip was a state senator representing the barrios of East Los Angeles. Seemed like a great guy. Good sense of humor, smart, used to work for the United Farm Workers in the Valley. He goes by the name of Alex Villa. Villa’s the chair of the Environmental Quality Committee in the State Senate, and the lawyer who worked for the committee just left. Would you be interested in talking to him about a job?” 

I was both stunned and pleasantly surprised. I would not be required to bury a body in Lake Mead! As I would learn over the ensuing years, what made Uncle Irving so successful in the rough and tumble intersecting worlds of business and politics was his studied ability to never ask a politician or business partner to do anything they would be uncomfortable with, and to know and understand what they needed, what they wanted, and the difference between the two. 

In the case of Senator Alexander Villa, the committee chair seeking counsel, I was to discover that he was exactly what he seemed. He was a public servant who cared deeply about the people he represented; a man with a wonderful sense of humor; a keen intellect; and a capacity to move a room to tears with his impassioned and eloquent oratory. 

Villa had grown up in a Los Angeles very different from the glittery city of the 1990s, more Raymond Chandler than Beverly Hills, 90210. Double Dubuque - Iowa by the Sea, not Baghdad by the Bay, the moniker bestowed on its sinful northern California neighbor. It was a hard-boiled, working-class city, fairly conservative with a hard right underbelly. 

Los Angeles in the 1940s, following the lead of its flagship newspaper the Los Angeles Times and its founder and publisher Harrison Gray Otis, was a staunchly anti-union, law and order city, a sprawling, low density suburban metropolis larger than some states. 

With few natural geographic boundaries other than the Pacific to its west, and limited only by the scarcity of water, the white Protestant power structure had grand dreams, a belief in the divine good fortune instilled by evangelical preachers such as Sister Aimee McPherson and the Crystal Cathedral’s Bob Shuler, and little tolerance for whatever cultural elbow room its growing Latino and African American populations might require. 

Alex Villa had grown up in the once Jewish, now almost exclusively Mexican American barrio of Boyle Heights, where his father was an immigrant butcher from the City of Cuernavaca, high in the Central Highlands of Morelos State. Dad had come to LA in the ‘30s with his wife, a skilled artisan silver worker from neighboring Taxco, and made a life for Alexander and his twin sister in America.

The young Alex was educated on stories of the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, instigated by American servicemen and white civilians who attacked and stripped children, teenagers, and anyone else who wore the offensive (to whites) outfits. This was ostensibly because they were unpatriotic, but it was rooted in anti-immigrant zeal spurred on by a corrupt, racist police force. While most of the violence was directed at Mexican Americans, young Black and Filipino Americans caught wearing the offending apparel did not escape the mob’s “justice.” 

Villa’s father, a churchgoing and hard-working Catholic family man, was savagely beaten in front of a teenage Alex by one of Chief William Parker’s police thugs as he came home from a late night at the butcher shop where he worked. When the ten-year-old attempted to intercede, the blue-clad officer of the law, wearing his “ to protect and serve shield,” more of a sick joke than a reality, turned his baton and verbal assaults against “invading beaners and wetbacks” on the furious seventy-pound child. This earned little Alex the proud nickname of “Pancho,” after the Mexican revolutionary hero Pancho Villa, who had attacked across the New Mexican frontier in 1916. In a different era, one Villa would be instrumental in ushering in, he could have been California’s first Latino governor since Romualdo Pacheco, briefly served in the nineteenth century. 

I responded as I had been taught with regard to potential job opportunities. There was no decision to make until someone actually offered you a job. Irving set up the meeting for the next day at Villa’s LA office downtown across from City Hall. Before we parted ways, he looked me up and down. “You got a change of clothes, nephew? Cause seriously, you look like a hobo or something worse in those ratty jeans. Here’s my account number at Nordy’s. Go get yourself a nice suit. Pinstripes. Dark. Navy or gray. A good dress shirt. Silk tie. Wingtips. Nothing too gaudy. Cause, and you can quote me here, if you're gonna swim with the sharks don’t look like a tuna!” And with that sage advice, he took his leave. 

I immediately headed to the mall (a mall, not sure in retrospect, which one, as malls in LA are about as ubiquitous as fake blondes) and did as I was instructed. Navy suit, white shirt, red tie, black loafers. I was ready and feelin damn good!

I have to say, it was my first time in the heart of LA, and it fit my stereotypes well. Downtown LA in the 80s was a slow-moving disaster. While there were many 1920s era buildings with good bones, they were mostly in a shoddy state. The few skyscrapers were walled off and secure. 

Pedestrians were few with the exception of the homeless and inebriated who proliferated. It was a dystopian cityscape, as far removed from the beaches of Santa Monica, the canyons of Beverly Hills, and Hollywood dreams as the New Jersey of my childhood was from my life in California. My reality was separated by a continent. For the unfortunates wandering the streets of downtown LA, Hollywood, the beaches, and the canyons was probably even farther. 

Senator Villa greeted me at the door. He was a tall man with silver streaks already lining his jet-black hair. He had beautiful copper toned skin and the whitest teeth I had ever seen which he flashed in a big smile when he reached out his large soft hand in a friendly greeting. The Senator ushered me into a rather simply furnished office and offered me a chair across from his desk. I glanced around and noticed the various framed photos on the wood paneled walls. Villa with Cesar Chavez. In DC at a hearing with Teddy Kennedy. At a grape boycott march in Shafter alongside Bobby Kennedy, and many more. 

The conversation was rather perfunctory. We went over my resume, talked about salary, and why I would be interested in the job. Then he abruptly summoned the young aid at the front desk. “Gloria, please bring the car around. Mr. Cooper and I are going for a little ride.” 

His longtime scheduler, aid, and surrogate mother, Gloria Cardenas, met us out front in the driver’s seat of the state issued Ford Vic. Over the next two hours while the Senator ran through the various issues affecting his largely Latino working-class district we drove slowly through the streets. Like much of this car-centric sprawling metropolis, his district stretched east from downtown and was hemmed in by freeways. Interstate 10 (the 10 in socal speak) on the north and the Golden State Freeway, I-5, angling to the southeast. It was bisected by the LA River if one could still call that sad concrete lined garbage strewn culvert a river. 

What struck me on this first drive down Atlantic Ave. was the vibrancy of the street life. Yes, there was gang graffiti, but there was also art on those walls. Beautiful murals. There were restaurants and people. Street vendors selling mangos and pineapple rolled in chili powder. Hawkers walked the center dividers offering chiclets, oranges, and homemade tamales. There were carts offering street tacos and frutas. Children were everywhere. This was not a trip through poverty porn, but rather a live vibrant immigrant community. Poor and working class both - but alive. 

The Senator was watching me closely to see how I was reacting. When he rolled down the windows people approached and greeted him in both Spanish and English. “Buenes Dias, Senator! Cómo está tu madre? Y tu papa?” Si se puede!” 

Villa smiled his toothy grin. I was transfixed. “What do you think, Zach? You are from back east. Your legal work has been focused on the African American community and the environment. You speak no Spanish which is the first language of most of my constituents, as you can see. Contrary to what too many of my Democratic colleagues believe, all non gringos are not the same. 

The people you see on these streets have a very different history from African Americans. To state the obvious, they came here voluntarily, and while the white power structure has not been kind and placed multiple hardships on their journeys to arrive here, the families are mainly intact. That does not even begin to explore the differences within the Latino community itself. Central Americans can view the world very differently from Mexican Americans, let alone Cubans, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, or various strains of South Americans. Lastly, I also represent Japantown, Koreatown, and Chinatown. Are you comfortable in a world where you will likely be a permanent minority?”

I must admit, I had never really given that too much thought. In both the New Jersey, where I grew up, and Atlanta, the world was defined mainly by a binary division of black and white. Most of the east coast division that I was familiar with entailed various shades of white. Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Jewish. I knew the history of the African American community reasonably well and having been a regular target of anti-Jewish sentiment among many ethnic whites in my retrograde Jersey township, I had naturally gravitated to that narrative, but the Latino experience in the US was not one I understood well. 

It only took a few seconds to gather my thoughts. Yes, this was unfamiliar ground. And yes, I did not speak Spanish - yet. And yes, I did understand that human beings were often tribal in their allegiance. Somewhere in the distant past, when the first humans climbed down out of their baobab trees in southern Africa, it had become accepted wisdom that the people inhabiting your own tree were more likely to be allies than the people competing for food from a different tree. And this was passed down through the 200,000 years since, as if in our DNA. That said, different cultures always fascinated me. The diversity that the Senator had just described was one of the reasons I loved California and had decided to call it home. 

Maybe it was my Jewish heritage. We were ALWAYS a minority wherever we traveled or were chased that made me sympathetic to others facing discrimination. Whatever it was, if Senator Villa was willing to give me a shot, then I could learn to understand as best as possible and work in this community. 

“Senator. I would be honored and humbled to work for you,” I said quietly. 

With that, he offered me a job, and I accepted on the spot. I was going to venture into the very belly of the beast - a legislative staff job in the so-called laboratory of democracy, state government. 

I called Uncle Irving to thank him, and then called my dad. He was thrilled and reminded me of his career prediction for me, dating all the way back to when I was still in grade school. Staring into his crystal ball, way back then, dad had stated to all that would listen that his son, due to his argumentative nature, disagreeable personality, and passion for debate, was destined for a life in either law or politics. Currently, he would only half in jest tell friends that his son resided in the maximum-security wing at Cal State San Quentin. Because if he had to be honest, dad explained, having a son in the joint doing life would be less embarrassing and potentially less damaging to society than a son who was both a lawyer and a player in the political game.