How does a certain ethnic group get saddled with such a stigma? Granted, I’m almost sure that there are some Polish people who are not very bright, but all of them? I find that hard to accept.

As for Jews being tight, I can only tell you that as a young linotype operator in the late Œ60s, I worked part-time for a Jewish-owned printing firm. Mr. George Levitan, a Jew and owner of Good Publishing here in Fort Worth, was anything but tight.

Until his death, he had a flourishing magazine business. His magazine Sepia, catered exclusively to blacks.

His employees cut across the grain of every ethnic background imaginable. Women, Jews, Hispanics, Anglos and Blacks worked side by side in his well-managed company. Aside from paying a fairly decent wage, he gave minorities the opportunity to learn an excellent trade in graphics and the printing industry. These were opportunities that other printing firms did not give most minorities in Fort Worth at that time. His office staff also included women and men of different ethnic origins. Again, that was something not commonly seen in most business offices in those years.

Good Publishing provided its employees with free health insurance, free uniforms, and a delicious free meal at lunchtime. Mr. Levitan did charge for the drink ­ a nickel. In the lunchroom was a piano that was put to use when top-notch black entertainers were in Fort Worth. Many black artists would visit Good Publishing and put on a free mini-show. I personally saw the great Dinah Washington perform there.

During Christmas, Mr. Levitan would give each employee a bonus. He also gave his best male and female workers of the year a lavish gift. His best male employee of the year was rewarded with a new Cadillac. To his best female worker went a mink stole.

The bidding winner for the top Angus bull raised by 4-H Club members during Fort Worth’s Annual Fat Sock Show was often Mr. Levitan. He’d usually outbid most businesses and banks. After purchasing the bull, he would have it slaughtered and give the meat to needy families.

These traits hardly typify a tightwad. Yet, I’m sure there are some Jews who are. Should they all be labeled as such? I don’t think so.

"Momma says Otha is getting as brown as a dirty Mexican because he plays in the sun a lot."

Those were the words of Marty Lee Moon, a 9-year-old Anglo neighbor. What Marty told me didn’t bother me as much as what his mother was instilling in her children: racial stereotyping. Sadly, Marty’s parent’s house was the worst-look in the predominantly Hispanic block. I remember I gently got Marty’s hand and asked him to sit down next to me in an area of my porch from where we could both see the houses in our block.

"Marty, you’ve been in my house, haven’t you?"

"Yes," he answered.

"Do you think our house is dirty?"

"No, it’s cleaner than ours," Marty exclaimed.

"How about Mr. Esquivel’s, Mr. Ruelas’ and my yard? Do you think they’re as clean as yours?"

"Cleaner," Marty answered.

"Then, Marty, tell me, who are the dirty Mexicans around here?" He though and looked around the street block for a while and answered rather proudly, "We are!"

The next day when Marty came to play with my son he told me, "Mr. Reza, I told my mom what we talked about yesterday."

"Yeah, Marty, what did she say?"

"Nothing. She beat the tar out of me!"

When I was a young boy, I was an altar boy at San Jose Catholic Church. As I left home to serve the 8 o’clock mass, Mom would already be up watering her flowers and sweeping the yard. What I couldn’t understand was why she swept the yard. It was a dirt yard.

As I walked to church, which was two blocks from our home, I’d see Mom’s neighbors and other women along the way sweeping their dirt yards. Clusters of two or three women would sometimes congregate around a pile of twigs, burning leaves, and papers, passing on the latest chismes (gossip) of the neighborhood.

Most of the folks in my old neighborhood would be considered poor, and our streets and sidewalks were not paved. But people kept them spick-and-span. They might have been dirt, but they were kept free from litter. Were there any dirty Mexicans, or rather American Hispanics, in our neighborhood? Sure there were, and plenty of them, but not all of them. Some of them took pride in keeping their dirt yards clean. Why, one could even consider calling them clean Mexicans, or as I prefer, Americans of Mexican ancestry.

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