Memories of an unpopular riot

By Oscar Barajas

It has been two decades since that Wednesday in April when Los Angeles went through either a civil unrest or a riot – it all depends on your perspective. For example, the beating that Fidel Lopez endured was a couple of clicks past civil unrest. That was a full scale riot. We all sat glued to our television sets, watching the carnage unfold wondering if the story was big enough to interrupt my mom’s novelas. It was like free pay-per-view, except that this fight was not going to be called in the first round. I still remember the smell, the air so thick with smoke from the fires from the other side of town that it replaced the usual stink of semi-truck exhaust that normally filled my lungs.

The following day was a Thursday. I was doing that deviant math people tend to do when they want to get out of something. Out East, people look out their windows and pray for snow. I thought that there had been just enough arson-related ashes falling from the sky to call it a modified snow day, but I was wrong. I remember my dad was sitting at the table nursing a hangover. He was the recipient of a four-day holiday and had started celebrating that Wednesday. He went outside for a second and looked past the smoke clouds and declared it unfit for both man and beast to venture into the metropolis. I thought that was the pardon I needed to cement my modified snow day – but then my mom objected. She made my dad and me find our pants, because not only was I going to school, but my dad was going to drop me off. There was nothing my dad hated more than giving me a ride, for any reason. I could be twisting around snake bitten and in pain, and my dad would still take the time to calculate not only gas usage, but the wear and tear on the thread of his tires. In addition, he would spend days giving me the silent treatment if his parking spot was gone by the time he came back.

Naturally, I protested that I had to go to school during a city-wide riot. My mom’s rationale was that I would be safer in school than at home. She figured that the teachers and administration were trained professionals and would therefore be able to address looters and arsonists. My dad was no help. He weighed out the lesser of two evils and figured that the possibility of losing a parking space was less severe than incurring my mother’s wrath.

The first thing that struck me was the emptiness of the school. I was like Charlton Heston in the Omega Man. The only other kids who were there were the ones who had received too many truancy tickets and could not afford to be seen outside of school. I remember for P.E., I still had to endure the charade of changing into my gym sweats to watch “Stand and Deliver” in the gym. It was reassuring to know that the school district’s contingency plan was to treat riots like a rainy day. The rest of the day followed a similar pattern. I spent three other periods watching a poorly dubbed documentary on Martin Luther King, “La Bamba” and a very special episode of “Growing Pains,” in which Kirk Cameron’s character receives an offer of cocaine. My other teachers used class time as a “rap session” in an attempt to connect with “us kids.” It was obvious they had spent all night watching the riot footage and neglected their lesson plans.

By the time fifth period rolled around, I asked for the bathroom pass and just meandered around the school. I realized that my teachers were actual human beings. They were no better prepared than I was. The only thing they were trained for was to tell us to duck our heads under the desk and take cover. I walked home watching that smoke cloud get bigger and bigger, all the while getting closer and closer, wondering when it would make it to my house. The riots were said to have ended that very Friday, although if you look up, you can still make out that cloud that has been hanging around since 1992.