Historias: Stories of El Paso - Virtual Exhibition

Historias: Stories of El Paso A virtual exhibition curated by our community Courtesy of: Victor Norman Title: Younger Years Growing Up “Sandlot Friends” Historia Type: Photograph When I was young (4-6 grade) I had friends similar to the Movie Sandlot. During football season after the Sunday Dallas Cowboy game on TV, we would meet at the El Paso High School football stadium to play tackle football. We were very good and sometimes played against neighborhood kids from Vilas and Mesita (local elementary schools) and whooped them. My teammates were Oscar Lopez, Mike Guzman, Hector Torres, etc. Life back then was not injury free; as I suffered a severe ankle sprain, Oscar hit his back on a fence and had to be carried home, and we would all just sit and rest after the game on the grass moaning. Nonetheless, we were always back in school on Monday morning. Christmas back then was fun with my Sandlot friends. Oscar Lopez would get new toys and I would get used toys. One year we both got “new” bikes. Oscar got a brand spanking new banana bike with chopper handlebars and mine was a used bike previously owned by the vejitos to get groceries. Oscar liked my bike so much, he would swap with me to go riding around the neighborhood for hours. We would switch back before getting home. My friend Mike Guzman was an explorer. He bought a 10 cent flashlight and persuaded me to go into the drainage pipes in the mountain from Schuster to Rim Road. We were young, adventurous, and verdant. We knew absolutely nothing about flash floods. When my sister Cecilia was old enough to attend 1st grade (I was 3rd grade), I would take her with us into the pipes. We would get home late as school would let out at 2:45 for 1-3 grade; we would arrive home at 5. Mom never really noticed the time and we are still alive, so “no” we did not drown from the flash floods. All my Sandlot friends hung out together until 8th grade; our next phase in life at El Paso High School we all separated ways. Daniel Williams is now in the symphony in Australia, Charles Patterson is well established doctor in the mid-west, and I became a mechanical engineer from UTEP. I worked at Texas Instrument for many years. But we all still reminisce the good ole days: our Sandlot years.