Not just a diary

Things really started looking up for me. It surprised everybody at school at how TK and I just clicked like that. He was a lot like me when I got down to it, I began to fully trust him. I got to know Lodi too, and know all about Prado Grande and the kids in it.

TK’s story was quite interesting to me. His real name was Luke Rodriguez and he had lived in Puerto Rico with his Aunt and Uncle until about a year ago. A year ago he had also met his real father for the first time when his aunt and uncle got on a plane headed for L.A.
He lived with his aunt and uncle in that very same apartment until about a week ago when his real mother came from London to marry. His aunt and uncle had then fled the country so she and her new husband just lived in it with TK.
TK’s real parents were split up, and both were remarried now. His real dad married a lady who had five kids and his real mother married a guy with a little boy whom I met in front of the TV. TK had a lot of step siblings apparently but he informed me he hadn’t met them all. His whole situation confused me.

Prado Grande was an exciting place. A rusty white fence and white brick walls surrounded it. There were three parts to Prado Grande. One none of the kids counted because it was at the far back with a separate entrance. It was mostly made up of old people and couples because they were all one bedroom apartments back there. Then there was the ‘left’ section and the ‘right’ section. The left was only different from the right because the left side was brown wooden buildings and the left was light colored stucco. Each section had their own ‘club house’ which consisted of a Laundromat, a few pool tables and stuff like that. A pool, a basketball court, and a tennis court was in between the left side and the right side.
There were approximately twenty middle school kids in Prado Grande that year. The high school kids weren’t around much, and there weren’t many elementary. They all went to Madison and road the bus. Everybody seemed to know everybody and there was always somebody to hang out with.

I also learned of the places surrounding Prado Grande. Across the busy street from the entrance where the bus stop was there was another apartment place called “Wyoming Place”. I heard bad things about Wyoming place. It was dark and the kids of Prado Grande hardly ever got along with the kids of Wyoming place. There was always a conflict going on and fights. I say it was dark because there were hardly every people out in Wyoming place. I walked through it once and saw nobody. Just dark brown shabby apartments and old beat up cars. Sure, Prado Grande was beat up too but a car would still run by every now and then. It had big green grass hills and trees while Wyoming place had nothing but rock.

There was also a real apartment complex called Casa Del Arroyo. It was an actual complex because it was just one big building of cement and stairways rather than the buildings scattered about Prado Grande that contained about eight apartments each, back to back. This place was more like a tenement. The Casa Del Arroyo kids were neutral and pretty nice but they refused to take sides in any Prado Grande-Wyoming Place fights. They were also the keepers of their section of the Arroyo because it ran right beside their place. It was a big cement ditch that stretched through this part of the city. It actually curved around Prado Grande eventually but it was still far from it. If we wanted to get to the nearest ditch to skate, or whatever, we had to go through Casa Del Arroyo.

There were four groups of kids in Prado Grande. There were the little kids who mostly stayed inside to play video games and trucks or have tea parties but they didn’t mean anything. There was our group of skaters who hung out in the Laundromat, which I soon learned to love as well, and then there were the thug kids who were associated with gang activity a lot and did drugs. They were the kids that only came out at night and stuff. The last group was the girls who just did girly things I guess.

Every weekend until the end of school I did something with my new friends. I got my new board and a pair of shoes and some other cloths from the coolest store in the mall and we went skateboarding a lot. My brother gave us free wheels and tune-ups as well. Some weekends there would be only two other kids with me… and some weekends there would be up to eight others, but I still was close with each of them in a different way.
It was about two weeks into summer vacation when I learned one of the hard truths about Prado Grande. Casey was moving away.
“But where are you going?” I asked.
“San Diego.” He said.
“You won’t be back?”
“I don’t think so…” he said. He slapped my hand one more time before turning and leaving us forever. To my surprise TK wasn’t at all saddened by one of our brother’s unexpected departure.
“…Prado Grande… funny place isn’t it.” Said Leon. We were sitting in the Laundromat again.
“Yep…” said TK.
“You say this happens a lot?” I asked.
“Yep…” said TK, “You see when people come to Prado Grande… they don’t usually stay long. We only know of one person who’s been here for over four years…and the average is one.”
“Oh…”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll probably be gone within a year too. Maybe even me. Who knows…? It could be any of us.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 19th, 2002 at 12:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.