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Search - Fisherpeople

Fisherpeople
Author: Red Jordan Arobateau

FISHERPEOPLE is Pulitzer Prize winning material. Reminiscent of Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea.-- Step by step Red Jordan Arobateau takes us through the life of Senor Alverez. His daily routine with his animals, his yard, and his past as a young migrant farmworker in the Salinas Valley: "Senor Alverez had once been a big man, tall, medium we... more »ight; but now stooped, thinner. 6'3". Brown skin, thin white mustache like a line against his swarthy skin. A Chicano. Tweed pants of gray, an olive green jacket; his cowboy boots had Cuban heels, high ones, black & white bucks like saddles. Senor Alverez and Senor Poochie. See them making their way down the road. Senor Poochie. She was a refined dog, yes. Walked with an even gait." Sometimes the writer frames the conditions under which the old man dwells like a social scientist: Senor Alverez lived in very troubled times. Crime. Political upheavals. The beginning of the widening split of lower and upper classes--between which the new striving middleclass was being wrung dry like a rag. He lived in a predominately poor neighborhood, few whites, a lot of Mexicans, some blacks and Chinese. Mostly older people in the houses which they owned. While the young were in new apartments going up. Among them, the wild ones who hung around Main Street. He'd been in the neighborhood a long time." We find out the essentials of his life, his family, now grown & flown. And his daily worry --getting food for his table: "One thing to know about Sr. Alverez was his backyard. Behind the 1 bedroom house was a broken down lot filled with assorted junk. Fenced areas--which had once been even rows and paths,--now the grass was everywhere and blew like wild green hair with the wind. A hen coop built of spare lumber, rotten with age, wire sagging, rusted; feathers & straw caught to it like moss to branches. The hens were old like he was, seldom laid an egg. He'd been meaning to buy a handful of chicks and begin raising a new batch... 5 of them; Conchita and her bunch. Corn grew in the garden, striving for water among the weeds. Artichokes-- a perennial grew along the border. The same vegetables he had harvested in his youth in the Imperial Valley. Lettuce, beets, turnips, spinach, strawberries. Many were rotted, devoured by bugs. But the bed still produced--and were tasty even when partially green. He fed the animals vegetables from his garden; the dog & chickens that is; the snotty cats turned up their nose. And fed the cats an occasional egg the chickens cracked by mistake, scooped it up in his wrinkled brown hand out of the straw. People with land don't starve to death in California. There is food to be grown all year "round." A mix of peripheral characters surround the old man, who are quite interesting; and, typical of this author, there's lots of great dialogue: "The way he'd gotten Nino; he was standing in his front yard & Hattie in hers, just having passed by each other and stopped to say hello and remark what a warm day it was, and about the latest crime in the neighborhood; when a baby kitten came stumbling across the lawn. Pitifully thin, on shaky legs. As if by the hand of God, the kitten meowed, and walked straight up to Theodoro. "There you go." Hattie remarked, or something to that effect. "I can't take it." The old man had said stiffly. "I already have too many cats. I have... Cinco." He held up 5 fingers. "Of course you can!" Hattie said sharply. That ain't too many! I knows folks who has 10, 15 cats!" "But I have too many!" He protested again, looking down a the pitiful kitten as skinny as a skeleton with huge liquid eyes begging for mercy, for it's life. "Oh no you don't! 5 cats, Ha. That ain't nuthin'. The lady down the street, look how many cats she got! Her yard full of cats! They suns themselves up on top her house!-- So you can count every one of "em!" Senor A's poverty is documented: "His pension check was due. He had saved two potatoes--the last--from the sack, to plant. - -Cutting out the buds, or eyes, & set down into the earth of his garden to make more potatoes. But he got so hungry he sliced & fried them in grease & ate them. "What am I going to do?" Questioned Senor Alverez, pacing the floor. "What am I going to do? No money. Dog hungry. Cats hungry. I am hungry." And the simple idea flowed to him, smooth as waves in a tide. "I will go fishing.'" We read with interest his history as a young man in the fields: "8am. The ground crew had already been picking for an hour since daybreak. Picking fruit by the pail. Cutting lettuce at 20 cents per carton, two dozen heads in each. With knives they cut heads off their stalk, took off the broken leaves around it, and put it in a carton that traveled on the flatbed, pulled by a tractor thru the fields. Huge cauliflower's. Produce to stock the supermarkets of the cities." Soon, Love comes to the romantic Theodoro: "There in the Imperial Valley he had met a beautiful Chicana. Lupe wore Indian dresses, Colombian style jewelry, blue Topaz set in silver, and imitation red Rubies set in tiny crucifixes in her pierced ears. Braided hair. Her Indian face dark complexioned. Lupe was very impressed by the Rose.. Her boyfriend was a dreamer." Descriptions of the ocean. The fishing are so palatable, this novel transports you THERE: "Cold windy day at the pier. Big white splotches-Gull droppings. Ocean made it's noise slapping against the pilings of the pier. Steady breeze from the south. Gulls landed on the rail. Majestic birds, white feathered wings outstretched. Sky was greyblue, identical to the water. Near the end, out into the ocean, he found a booth in which he sat. It smelled of stale piss. And empty cans of soda underneath; a fishhead, and rusted hooks." FISHERPEOPLE is also a very spiritual book: "He was hungry to follow after Christ. He was hungry to go walking across the water on spirit feet into the setting sun, to see his Maker. Hungry for relief. For salvation. For the end of troubles. Fishing. For a few dollars passed over the wooden counter; racks of flys and casting reels & rods and hooks and snells, hung from the ceiling, or on shelves behind glass in he dusty little shop; put to use. -- They say the water is the home of the Spirit. We are baptized in water... Born in water. Conceived in water. They say we evolved from water... That life walked up from out of the sea millions of years ago. The old man looked into his heart and saw the thing he wanted most in life-- "Master, I want to sit by You, by the sea of Galilee.'" Like many Arobateau's stories, there's a twist at the end. Dedicated to the author's own father, you won't forget this wonderful tale & its deep spiritual insights; another human portrait by Master Artist Red Jordan. Book Review by RED JORDAN PRESS, 2005.

ISBN-13: 9781411621329
ISBN-10: 1411621328
Publication Date: 1/1/2005
Pages: 171
Rating:

Currently 0.5/5 Stars.

0.5 stars, based on 1 rating

Publisher: Lulu
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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