The Salinas California Chinatown. It looked the same when we hung out there in 1964. My buddy Anthony’s mother worked at the Republic Cafe, a chop suey house, where you could play the latest supremes song on the jute box.

I used to pick up a few bucks down there

1964. I was Eleven years old. I liked to watch the Working girls stretch out on their front porch sofas with the lamp light sparkling those ankle bracelets and their eyes bright as candles as they laughed and cried “where you going with that shine box, white boy!”

Often I’d be shining a dude’s boots when a bad fight broke out at the bar. I’d be buffing a toe while a bloody head hit the floor. That was the best time to grab a wallet. While the body lay prone and inert. I never worried much as long as the jute box kept playing.

After a good take, I’d lay off for a few weeks. I spent my afternoons at the Crystal Theater where you could watch 5 Monster Movies and gorge on candy bars and all-you-could-eat popcorn for a buck…

Opened as Brown’s Opera House. It was renamed T & D Theatre on August 23, 1919 and closed in 1921 when the towns’ new T & D Theatre opened (now the Fox California Theatre). It was reopened in the mid-1920’s as the Crystal Theatre. Closed in the 1970’s, the Crystal Theatre was demolished in late-2003 for the 14-screen Maya Cinemas multiplex.

I don’t know what happened to my shine box. It just vanished. I guess I didn’t appreciate what a money maker that box turned out to be. I built it myself and hid it on a roof top. I don’t know why I didn’t keep it with me. We used to travel the entire block of lower main street from the rooftops, hopping the narrow gaps between buildings. We owned the rooftops. Maybe that’s why. I didn’t need to carry the box all the way home. It was just there where I could find it when I needed to make a few bucks.

One day I found it missing. I never made another one. Soon after, I buried the kid alive, and spent three days in Juvenile Hall. They didn’t keep me any longer than three days. The kid had lived. They revived him and he claimed I knocked him out and buried him. He feared his own parents would punish him for hanging out with a street kid like me, so he made it look like I assaulted him. It’s been so long, maybe I assaulted him a little bit. Anyway, in the eyes of the law my malice was suspect. But they couldn’t let me completely off the hook. I was sent to Monterey to live with my Aunt and Uncle. Where I might learn discipline and self-restraint.

I spent a year in this house

530 Franklin street. My Uncle paid 25,000 dollars for this house in 1962. Current value is over 3 million. Teddy Roosevelt slept there. In the front bedroom.

I lived in the attic.

Many a night I lay on my attic cot and dreamed of returning home to my neighborhood jungle. Back to the seedy bars and the Republic Chop Suey house. Back to the streets roaring with life. Where I sold newspapers on the street corner, right there out front of the Crystal theater. With mobs of people milling about.

The Sherman Tank was there, on its pedestal. At a round-a-bout memorial at the end of main street. We crawled all over that tank. It has since been moved. It wasn’t a Sherman Tank. Turns out it was a Stuart Tank, an earlier version. Crazy how all this time I’ve remembered it as a Sherman tank.

Anyway, my memory is of a Sherman Tank.

And a thriving Chinatown.

But it’s since fallen on hard times.

Even Chinatowns fall on hard times!