Shimmy Shimmy Cocopah: A Memoir about Life in a 1950s Arizona Barrio

It was 1955, and leaving our abusive father behind, we left Texas and headed toward a new life. Crammed into our dilapidated Chevy and pulling a wobbly old trailer, we must have looked a lot like the Beverly Hillbillies minus the oil money. Our entourage included my mother, two dogs, two cats, my teenage brother and sister, and me. I was five years old. Arriving in Phoenix, it was hotter than hell, which was okay because we were broke as the devil. With no money down and forty-five dollars a month, we settled into a little house on Cocopah Street, a humble street of shabby houses and tidy yards. Nobody in our neighborhood had much of anything in the way of material things. But using our standard of what was normal, we did okay. I suppose my childhood was not a particularly remarkable experience. After all, nothing much ever happened; grownups worked at blue-collar jobs and came home at the end of the day to take care of their families; kids went to school and came home to play. That was the life we knew. We were content in our sheltered world and did not give a lot of thought to the rest of the universe. But we were not without tragedy. Firemen, policemen, bad people, the welfare lady, and the angel of death touched our lives and visited our neighborhood. These stories about the old neighborhoods I grew up in were written to please my mother, amuse my friends, and attempt to capture the moments that were mine when I was growing up. With those goals in mind, I consider it a job well done.