The Long Haired Man Who Saved Me (It’s not who you think)

By Oscar Barajas

It was the awful year of 1989, and I was getting ready to transition to junior high school. It all weighed heavily on my mind, because the priests and the comadres had scared my mom into believing that I was going to transition into marijuana laced unprotected sex with the devil worshiping cholos of Hollenbeck Junior High School, home of the Junior Rough Riders in East Los Angeles. My mother’s first reaction was to inquire about private Catholic school. My father’s first reaction was to inquire about the price. Ultimately economics won the battle and I became a Junior Rough Rider.

The first thing that I noticed was that I was going to school with men and women. I mean, a lot of those students looked as if puberty had done a number on them. I was still waiting on my first whisker and a lot of my classmates looked as if they had some kind of wolverine gene. I remember being scared. All this time I had been a small fish in a small aquarium and now I felt like a smaller fish in a great lake.

When it came time to pick our elective classes, we were merely given two real choices.  We could decide between music and shop. I had seen the kids taking shop. A lot of them looked like a mix of the gang members from Training Day, but at the same time they could have been 21 Jump Street undercover cops. The only thing that was for certain was that I was pink and soft. There was no way I would have been able to survive. They were all building ashtrays and birdhouses. I can only imagine them beating me up with the remnants of my haiku holder.

So I decided on music – beginning wind instruments to be exact. I remember I wanted to play something cool like a saxophone or a trumpet. However, urban myths got in the way of that decision, because it was foretold by the prophecy that the crack addicts that dwelled at Hollenbeck Park were always looking for young victims to rob. The thought of a drug addict jumping out of a tree to steal a trumpet seemed a very real possiblity then – real enough to make me decide on the flute.

If you were good, you had first choice at the instruments. The gifted individuals picked the newer instruments. A guy like me got to pick the flute that looked like a mature banana. I would rub alcohol on the mouthpiece to try and kill the memory of previous user, but you could always taste the rust. This was still better than trying to make a bong at plastic shop and calling it a flower vase.

The teacher behind the piano was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Mr. Dennis Gurwell, had long hair and the ferocity of a football coach who is two touchdowns ahead playing like he is two touchdowns behind. He would direct every note with a flow that came from his fingertips. However, anytime we went against the fingertips, he would slam the piano with an animated intensity. Sometimes we could make him lose his composure six to seven times in the span of 45 minutes. Frankly, I don’t know how he put up with us. We were a horrible class that needed the musical outlet. The instruments would be locked up and we would be forced to watch a Beethoven or Bach documentary every time Mr. Gurwell was absent. We had the tendency of driving away every substitute teacher. Sometimes they would even bring in the dean of discipline or the choir instructor in order to calm us down.

I will always be grateful to Mr. Gurwell for not kicking me out of his class. After all, I was awful and I had no reason to be there other than to butcher Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” He was one of those few teachers that believed in me despite the lack of any musical talent or ability. I do not know where I would have been without the lessons he bestowed upon me – possibly on top of a tree with a “flower vase”, preying on the next fat kid that walks by with an oboe.