Mi Familia II.

I cooked cow tongue yesterday and made tacos out of it, and since my family never cooked cow tongue I naturally thought of them. It is with this in mind that I decided to post a picture of my family in 1950-something.

I’m not sure if this picture was taken in Mexico or in the United States but it was right about the time of this picture that my grandfather decided to move his family from Mexico to the United States. I wasn’t even close to being born yet (my mom is the girl with the braids who looks like one of The Timbertoes) but my grandfather was a visionary. In the dead of night some angels visited him and said:

“Hear ye this. In the year of the dog thy daughter shall bear a son. Call his name Lenny and make thy way to Zacatecas. There he shall grow into a great man and he shall save thy people.”

“Damn all that”, my grandfather said. “We is goin’ up nawth and he shall be named Michael and shall go blogging and pool shooting.”

From this picture I can see that it must have been all the rage back then to wear old fashioned clothes. In fact throughout history I guess every year the style was throwback jerseys up until the present time where we’ve finally got it right. The one thing I really like about this picture is that, while the mass media still portrayed US society as white and black, here was proof that there was a diverse influx in the making. We’re not here to flood your job market, we breeng you culture. In fact my aunt (directly to the right of my grandfather) invented the 7-layer burrito and the cinnamon twists!

Unfortunately my family doesn’t have any really cool coming to America stories like Alex Haley who wrote “Roots” or the documentary about when Prince Akeem and Arsenio Hall moved came here from Zamunda. But some of my first memories are of my grandmother (pictured holding that bastard neighbor child who managed to bogart its way into my family’s picture and I’ve made it my life’s mission to hunt that motherfucker down and saw it’s FUCKING HEAD OFF!!!) taking care of me when my mom was out running the point for the Minneapolis Lakers. I will treasure that for the rest of my life.

In summation, while my family might have started from humble beginnings and had not a lot of money, they really knew how to Hokie Pokie. And when all is said and done, isn’t that really what it’s all about?

Resources: Dan Rather

9 Responses to “Mi Familia II.”

  1. Cosmic Siren says:

    I need my dad to email me the scans of our family pictures. Then you can see short men married to tall women and lots of Swedes wearing some sort of medals.

  2. Mexigogue says:

    I don’t have a scanner at home so this is actually a digital camera picture taken of a framed picture. That bright spot on the right is the sun’s reflection off the glass over the picture.

  3. Cosmic Siren says:

    Dad has the originals. I don’t.

  4. TB says:


    there is nary a sentence in this post that doesn’t make me fall down laughing.. . Arsenio from Zamunda…Viva el mexigogue..

    so wonderful.

    happy roots!

  5. guy in the UNLV Jacket says:

    Why does your Mexican grand daddy talk like a black man?

  6. Mexigogue says:

    Because he was down. He was so down he probably even had high blood pressure and razor bumps!

  7. R says:


  8. Amicusser says:

    Cow tongue is lengua, right? Tacos de lengua?

    Like I said before, I know enough Mexican to order pretty much anywhere.

  9. Mexigogue says:

    Yes, lengua is right! In fact that’s what I had to say when I went to the Mexican store to buy the stuff because none of those suckas spoke any English! Whatupwitdat??