Grandpa was the flyin' monkey in” The Wizard of Oz.”
I used to watch him every year as I was growin' up.
He'd fly down,
scoop up Toto,
bounce around a couple times,
then fly off to deliver the mutt to the witch.
Many times in my life I told people of this.
Mostly their retorts were the same.
"I see the resemblance," a lot of them said.
It wasn't funny the first time I heard it.
It wasn't funny the 134th.
It wasn't funny the last.
I am always sure to tell these people how unoriginal they are.
The monkey died of cirrhosis of the liver.
He drank a lot.
I asked mom how much and she said,
"Before work, at lunch, and all night long until he passed out."
Drinking seems to be as much a part of my family history as anything else.
The Monkey was full-blooded Italian.
He starred in lots of Hollywood movies.
I looked him up on the Internet recently and saw his filmography.
His roles read like this:
"Little Mexican,"
"Bell Boy,"
"Jockey,"
"Jockey,"
"Buss Boy,"
"Winged Monkey."
I guess Hollywood was a tough place to be for Italians in that era.
Grandma was an "Andrews Sisters" type showgirl.
She was full-blooded English.
She sang in a group that consisted of a redhead, a blonde, and a brunette.
She met grandpa in New York and they fell in love and got married.
They had three daughters and then he died.
Mom was half English and Italian.
In her younger years she looked more Italian.
As she has gotten older the English has come out more.
Nevertheless,
when she was twenty-six,
she met my dad and had me.

Dad's dad was a dead-beat dad.
(Though I don’t think the term was around back then,
nor the government agency that track these dads down)
The only thing I know about Dad’s dad was that he was a full-blooded Mexican.
I've seen pictures of him and he surely looks like a Mexican.
I'm not sure if he was married to my grandma or not.
He's still my grandpa regardless.
Grandma was Hungarian and very sad.
She drank herself to death on Gin.
Dad doesn't speak of this much,
So I don’t know much about her either.
Dad went to live with his Grandma and she raised him.
Her name was Elizabeth and she was from the old country.
She would raises animal that my dad thought were pets,
only these pets ended up as dinner more times than not.

Dad joined the Navy and met mom in Jacksonville, Florida.
She was a widow by this time.
Her first husband had been killed drag racing with a friend.
Mom and her first husband had a child.
The child is now my brother.
They met at a gas station.
He was pumpin' gas and she was buyin' it.
A dollar a day, everyday.
They fell in love and got married and had me.
My dad adopted my brother.
We lived in The South most of our lives.

I am a quarter Hungarian,
a quarter Italian,
a quarter English,
and a quarter Mexican.
My last name is Vargas but I talk with a Southern accent.
(This confuses the Mexican girls in my Algebra class.)
I have a brother who is as white as a sheet with brown hair and blue eyes.
His name is Vargas too.
I have an equally white mom.
I have a dad who used to have the nickname "Smokey,"
but drives a pickup truck and talks the talk of a Southern man.
I was born in San Diego but raised in The South.
People ask me what nationality I am and I just say,
"I'm American"