The story of growing up on culturally unsettled ground. A Northern New Mexico Chicano by birthplace and at heart, an Anglo by DNA. With an Anglo father born in the middle of the Cherokee nation ten years before the Great Depression and an Anglo mother born in her grandfather's adobe house in the heart of Hispanic Northern New Mexico in 1926. I did everything I could do to be recognized as Chicano, or at least Coyote, during the great Hippie migration of the late sixties and early seventies, but there's only so much a guy can do, you know? It wasn't really that hard, generally speaking, to pull off being a Chicano, because for the most part, there was no acting involved; we were living the Chicano experience every day. Beans and tortillas with every meal? Check. More time hoeing a garden than watching TV? Check. Spanglish spoke "Ah -Makina," around the dinner table? Check. Water from Rio Grande running through my veins? Check. It all sounds easy enough, this passing myself off as what I was, and am, in my heart, a Chicano. But there were some outstanding differences. Big green eyes and features straight outta Scotland? Check. The most American sounding name since George Washington? Check. A mom who smoked a pipe in public and a dad whose left eye would scare a rattlesnake when he was mad? Check. A not insignificant aspect of this story is the time period in which it played out; 1965-1980. When I was starting school, Chicanos were fighting for a return of their ancestral land by the USFS, Hippies were fighting for an end to the war in Vietnam, and Gringo kids like me were fighting to stay alive! From my earliest memory of Reis Tijerina and the TA Raiders carrying out a raid on the Rio Arriba county courthouse to the humiliation of bilingual education. Life as an outcast was filled with fear and shame. as i got older and found my place, I fought and played and felt the pain of a broken heart like only an eighth grader can feel. As an unprepared adult, finding acceptanc