I was very young, about 5, nearly 6. My dad was an attorney and
also a business man. One of the businesses he owned was a moving
and storage business located in what I was to learn when I got older
the very poor part of town, the Hispanic part of town. I used to go
with my dad from time to town to his moving and storage business
that was called Merchants Moving and Storage. All this occurred in
the late 1940s. While dad was conducting business in his company's
small office, I would wander outside across a dirt alley adjacent to
the moving company. There were rocks in the dirt alley that I would
pick up and throw into the air. One day as I was doing this, a kid
showed up at the end of the alley. His name, I found out, was Jesus,
a nice kid, but he didn't speak English. He spoke, as I later learned
in life, Spanish, and lived in what I later learned in life, was a shack.
That Jesus and I couldn't talk to each other did not deter our
burgeoning friendship. We both could throw rocks and pal around.
I liked Jesus a lot. He was a nice kid. One afternoon Jesus motioned
to me to come into his house, which I did. The floor of his house
was dirt, just like the alley. I, of course, had never been in any house
that had a dirt floor. Seeing dirt on the floor instead of a rug was
different, but really didn't bother me at all then. But as I grew up,
as I got a lot older, that's when it began to bother me. A dirt floor
in any house--even in a shack--was poverty at its worst. I slowly,
but inexorably, was becoming what I would be throughout my life:
a human-rights advocate. Sadly, I slowly lost touch with Jesus,
but I never forgot him. And I never forgot the dirt floor in the only
home he ever knew as a child. Jesus was not only my friend, but
also my mentor, my moral mentor. I think of him often and wish I
had had a chance to thank him for being my friend, my dear friend
forever. Todo el tiempo. Que le vaya bien, amigo mio.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks