Author Archives: smit217@usc.edu

A Train to Alcatraz: A Contemporary Legend

Nationality: American
Age: 58
Occupation: Attorney
Residence: Tiburon, CA
Performance Date: 4/20/18
Primary Language: English

So they’d convicted Al Capone for tax evasion in Chicago and sent him to prison in the Midwest, uhh Atlanta, I think. When they transferred him to Alcatraz, y’know maximum security – no one gets outta there, and they say his gang was planning to break him out during transit when he was coming through Tiburon on the uhh traintracks– you know the bike train used to be traintracks.

 So the exact route for ‘is move to Alcatraz was… top secret. What they did was made it sound like he was going by either armored truck, maybe by train to San Francisco… But they, uhh, they secretly put him on this train car and chained him to the floor – I mean, they chained him to the floor.

And so the train come into the train depot downtown, where Café Acri is now, and they used cranes to lift the entire car onto a ferry, a uhh uh uh, barge with Al Capone chained to it and then barged him to Alcatraz and completely avoided San Francisco.

This is story I’ve heard numerous times. My dad (aka Paul) has a knack for saying the same thing over and over, paraphrasing himself, retelling stories. My dad mainly tells this story whenever he’s showing someone from out of the area around Tiburon. I may have heard it before, but I still love this story. I remember one day we were walking along the bike trail, the former train tracks, and we worked out that my Great Grandfather almost certainly watched from the porch as the heavily guarded train car passed by his, now our, house.

Interestingly enough, the legend turns out to be true. Around 40 inmates were being moved from an Atlanta prison to “The Rock,” also known as Alcatraz. The warden discovered a plot to free Al Capone in route because an escape from Alcatraz was reportedly impossible. Capone was transported with extra security and, seeing the biggest weakness in security would be the trek through San Francisco, opted to go through Tiburon instead. Al Capone’s train car was placed on a barge and towed via tugboat directly to Alcatraz. There were apparently guards at the Tiburon ferry terminal and in small boats to make sure no other boats came close to the barge.

For more information on this legend, see the following articles from local newspapers like Mercury News and the MarinIJ.

 

47: The New 13

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/27/18
Primary Language: English

Alright so we’re flying out to Hawaii, myself and three other friends who also believe the power of 47 and, by the way, our groupchat name is 47. So, we get to the airport and we see that it, not only our gate number’s 47, but the time that were flying out? 3:47.

‘ get on the plane, take off, fly for 30 minutes over the water, the pilot says, “This is your captain speaking. There’s been a malfunction with the plane and the- the s- uh-uh-uh the technology to fly over water is not working right now. We need to turn around.”

So we fly another 30 minutes back to LAX, so we’ve been in the air for about an hour and we have fuel for five hours ‘cuz we’re supposed to go to Hawaii, so were full of- full of gas – a lot heavier – we turn around, we land at LAX with the firefighters and paramedics there just in case.

‘ everything’s fine, we get off, we go t- we go to Ono Hawaiian Barbecue that night ‘cuz we wanted Hawaiian food – we’re supposed to go to Hawaii – so like of course- L&L. It was L&L Hawaiian Barbecue closes at 11, so we run to it (gesturing sprinting by swinging his arms at his sides with fists clenched). My receipt number’s number order 47. It was too much, too much.
So, then, in Hawaii, we ate uhh then in Hawaii after the very. 1st. day. we get there, we go snorkeling. I get stung by a box jellyfish, my arm swells up like crazy and burns, hurts so bad. The 47 ruined everything after that. The next day we drink at my friends’ house. My friend got way too drunk and threw up in his bed, slept right in the puke, woke up the next day super sick. Everything was bad bad. That’s all from the trip. 47.

The Informant had zero hesitation when I asked him if he had a lucky or unlucky number. He said, “Oh dude 47. 47 for sure.” I feel like he could talk for hours about spooky coincidences that seem to always revolve around the presence of the number 47.

The first and one of the only recorded instances of a distinctive focus on the number 47 began at Pomona College. A student tried to determine if the number occurred more often than any other random number. This turned into a widespread hunt throughout the campus for 47 and has turned into a traditional celebration on campus ever April 7th. The Pomona inside joke has popped up throughout many Hollywood films and TV shows, but there is never any indication of good or bad things associated with its presence. It seems as though the number 47 exists in the mediums for the sake of existing; not good luck and not bad luck.

This collection was funny, especially because the Informant had a seemingly endless list of examples to share with me. I couldn’t get him to shut up about it. Because of this, I was shocked that there hasn’t been recorded examples of the unluckiness of the fateful number 47.

Let it be

Nationality: Indian American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/27/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Telugu, Hindi, Spanish (kinda)

Kaani

కానీ (pronounced Kaani) is the Telugu word that literally translates to “but,” however, the Informant said that the word takes on an extended meaning in her family. When she was little, the Informant and her little brother would often stay at their grandparents and, in typical sibling fashion, they fought a lot. Whenever the two were caught fighting, their grandparents would shout “Kaani!” which, to them, means “let it be.”

The fluidity of language is fascinating. We spent so much time in education simply learning the rules of language only to spend our entire lives blatantly ignoring them, bastardizing spelling and grammar. A language is supposed to be a shared method of communication, but I wonder if another Telugu speaker would understand this altered meaning of Telugu until told by the Informant. This is seemingly a folk definition.

Mystery Mixture: A Folk Drink

Nationality: Indian American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/27/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Telugu, Hindi, Spanish (kinda)

Okay so -um- for the yew year in like -um- in Indian cultu- so this is actually like a regional thing for -um- like South India and -um- they- the New Year and y’know how there’s like Persian New Year and like Chinese New Year like it’s not exactly like January 1st it’s like the Spring equinox-ish? So, -um- what they do is like you have like it’s mo- it’s more of a cultural thing than like actual religious, but like you do like- you do like a prayer and then -um- you drink this -um- this juice and like- ugh it’s so gross oh my God I haaaate it.

 It’s -um- my Mom makes it every year and like I was at someone else’s house this year and like they fed it to me and I had to drink it -um- and like so there’s like the five tastes in it.

 Basically, it’s like supposed to represent how your- your year won’t totally be like sweet or sour so like it’s just like -um- so you drink that and like it’s supposed to represent that your year will be like have like good, bad and like happy, sad. Yeah.

When I asked the Informant if she had any special foods or recipes she could share with me, she through her head back and scrunched up her face. She immediately told me that “there’s this terrible drink!” She began to tell me about Ugadi pachadi, a holiday drink invaluable to Telugu culture. The drink combines the flavors of sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy and umami. When she showed me photos, she quipped that it looked like something that comes up from your stomach rather than goes down. I agreed.

As the Informant said, he Mom makes it for their family every year and every year she suffers down a gulp. The flavorful concoction, called pachadi, is a mixture of mango, neem flowers, jaggery, tamarind, chili powder, and salt and is part of the celebration of Ugadi, the Indian New Year. These ingredients provide a mixture of all five tastes and the drink is believed to have predictive powers. The first taste to meet your tongue is said to be a metaphor for the upcoming year. Hope for a sweet taste. Because of this, it’s common for mothers to tweak the recipe or pour the drink to make sure the mango is the first to touch the tongue.

For all the awful things the Informant had to say about the flavor and appearance of pachadi, a smile never left her face as she told me about the drink. It was clear that the good memories of the experience with her family outweighed the sour taste left in her mouth. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. I wish my own culture had a ritual such as this. Instead of a fun fortune-telling drink to maintain a love-hate relationship with, the New Year in my culture is celebrated mainly with alcohol – which I would guess most people also have a love-hate relationship with. That being said, drinking Ugadi pachadi seems like a wholesome family-oriented tradition akin to the way my family spent the night before Easter dying eggs.

Clicking Sticks: A Folk Dance

Nationality: Indian American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/27/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Telugu, Hindi, Spanish (kinda)

This is like a dance slash game -um- it’s from like Indian Hindu culture actually like it used to be Hindu, but it’s kind of becoming more of like an Indian thing now -um- and basically you have these sticks. Each person has like two sticks; They’re called Raas (pronounced “Ross”) R-A-A-S -um- and like you, you just go around like hitting your sticks with other people’s sticks and it’s like you, you just like dance around all night like hitting sticks with other sticks and like you’ll make like patterns with your friends and like different complex like dances.

 So like if I have these two sticks and you have yours we could be like 1, 2, 3, turn (gesturing to alternating sides with each count and then spinning around with sticks touching your partners) and then there’s like two lines and they go like opposite ways and like so like I’ll go like… so we both move to our, our left so like after we, I hit your stick three times and turn or whatever then I’ll go to like the person next to you and we’ll do the same thing and we’ll keep going. It’s kinda like a circuit kind of.

Yeah and it’s like it’s around the time so that this whole um dance party thing is called garba -um-… G-A-R-B-A. Um- so -um- yeah and it’s usually in like October November it’s like uhh fall harvest type of thing. Yeah. 

The Informant, one of my classmates, shared the dance of Raas after discussion section. The dance is commonly performed during the Navratri festival alongside a similar and simpler folk dance called Garba. The festival is celebrated to pay respect to the Mother Goddess of the Hindu religion, Shakti. The performance of the dance celebrates the nine incarnations of the goddess.

The Informant told me that she doesn’t remember a time where she didn’t take part in the festivities of Navratri, including the folk dances of Raas and Garba. They’re a part of her life. She doesn’t know who taught them to her or when she first danced. One of the Informant’s favorite parts of the dance is the color. She said it reminds her of Holi, the famous Indian “festival of colors” in which people smear each other with color. By the end, everyone is a vibrant hue. In Navratri, the people begin the festival wearing colorful and vibrant Garba garbs. The dance is rather simple. There are no official steps, but performers click sticks to keep rhythm.

Raas was a traditionally male dominated dance, but has become more inclusive over the years. The two things prominent in Raas are vigor and force, however, a one of passion instead of violence. Raas and Garba are both fast-paced energy-filled dances comprised of two circles, one rotating clockwise and the other counterclockwise.

I loved this account of some of the folk dances cherished in India, but I loved the backstory even more. The fact that these dances have been a part of her life so long that she can’t remember a time that they weren’t present is, in my belief, a true marker of a folk dance that is massively culturally important.  This act is a merging of three areas of folklore. The dance itself, the festival at which it’s performed, and the mythology it celebrates.

For more information on Raas, Garba, and the Navratri festival, see here.