Back in the day

By Ed Piper, Jr.

Just graduated from college, soon after my 21st birthday, I moved to Mexico City and taught English language arts at a small private school in the wealthy neighborhood of Lomas. My sister Melinda had been taking her math teaching methods course toward her secondary credential from a woman who ran her own school, and introduced me to Bernice during an earlier 10-day visit.

While living and teaching in the Distrito Federal, or Federal District, as it is known (much like our Washington, D.C.), I played basketball for two teams in the non-school-affiliated leagues for men in Mexico City. As you can imagine, the entire 14-month experience was thrilling and life-changing, and has served as a reference point for me ever since.

One thing that is remarkable is that my second coach, Yula, was the only female coach of a men's basketball team. She had played for the women's national junior team, I believe. But she was a natural as a coach, commanding respect and demanding hard work from her group of playground stars and me, a tall 6'5" foreigner who was just learning Spanish.

Yula's secret to our team success was running us throughout practice five nights a week, 9 to 11 p.m., Monday through Friday, in our tiny gym venue in the Delegacion (city section) Venustiano Carranza. That way, with our greyhound-like conditioning, we could full-court press the entire game and smother most opponents.

We weren't super-talented, but we were in shape basketball-wise and we did have our coach's firm hand. Our pinnacle was defeating Politecnico, a college team, in the championship game of a tournament held at the SOP arena (Secretaria de Obras Publicas, or Public Works), before a packed house. Our guard Tito stole the ball with 52 seconds left and scored to win the game. What a blast as a 22-year-old living his dream in a foreign country.

I look back fondly--though my young body felt the agony at the time--on being picked up from my rented room by Yula's boyfriend, Tono (I don't have the "enye" on my keyboard--pronounced TONE-yo for Antonio), on a Sunday morning and the entire team being taken out to a natural park, El Desierto de los Leones (Desert of the Lions), where Yula ran us over hill-and-dale for a couple of hours.

It was a great team-building exercise, as well as great for our running shape on the basketball court. I also remember defeating a team in Xochimilco, site of floating gardens in southern Mexico City, hitting some key free throws near the conclusion. It was the one-of-a-kind experience you live as a young adult, and can never replicate.

However, I didn't move to Mexico City for the purpose of playing basketball. I had graduated from college with a major in journalism, and truth be told, I didn't want to sit inside an office wearing a tie while typing up stories for a newspaper. I had done that in three different internships during college, and though I loved--and love--writing, I didn't enjoy the things that inevitably accompanied it at the time.

When my sister's instructor offered me the job teaching language arts at her 22-student secondary school, I jumped at the chance. I didn't speak Spanish--didn't even know that it was Buenos dias instead of Buenas dias--but that was part of the excitement of venturing into a foreign culture. (I was the only non-bilingual student or staff member at the school.)

My year living in the biggest (and smoggiest) megalopolis in the world wasn't without its challenges: I was just out of college, not yet established, and I developed medical problems that went undiagnosed till some time later.

When the Mexican peso was devalued in August 1976, then again two months later in October 1976, cutting its value in half, then halving it once again, I gladly moved back to Southern California when the editor of one of my earlier internships who knew my family reached me in Mexico City and offered me the sports editor position at a tiny daily newspaper in Goleta, next to Santa Barbara. I hitched a ride north from a contact driving to the border, then took the bus from San Antonio back home to Ventura County.

As a young person, I always hoped to go back to Mexico City, the site of so many exciting and fulfilling experiences for me as a young adult, and live for a time. But I was never able to.