RIP Memo Licona – The Joy of Living

“Life loves the liver of it.  Maya Angelou

Memo Licona passed away the same day that Michael Jackson did.  Michael was 50 years old and I mourn for  him because I sense that he never really got to live life to the fullest.  No matter how much he enjoyed performing, his childhood was taken away from him and he tried to regain it all his life.  Memo was 86 and he squeezed every little bit of enjoyment from every moment he lived. He made everything fun and in a booming voice and with a hearty laugh, he bullied, cajoled, demanded that everyone he was with have fun too. Like my mother he was like a John Deere tractor and no one dared say no to him. His word was the law. He was a gorgeous man with sparkling green eyes and usually a big smile on his face…or a scowl.

The quality he most admired was that someone have “huevos” (balls) to not let anything or anyone (including  him) stand in his or her way. He hated weakness and could make someone feel like a worm or bring him to the top of the world with rare praise. Of the six children, my best friend Elisa is the only one that went through adolescence and young adulthood mostly unscathed because she was the model child: smart, pretty, on the student council , cheer leader, Miss Congeniality, Most Popular, considerate, loyal and completely in awe of her father until his dying day. I was the exact opposite but curiously never felt jealous of her and was perfectly happy to live in her reflected glory. But unlike most people, I could and did stand up to her father and in a way that leveled the playing field.

Elisa and I have known each other since we were babies and have been friends since we were little –sometimes more than others. We first became really close when she was 13 and I was 12 and in imprisoned in boarding school. He’d go spring me from school and drive me to the racuous Licona household of 3 boys and 2 girls with another girl to come later. Until his older years and probably only because he successfully fought cancer of the esophagus, he never communicated in a normal voice, it was always in a loud voice.  Siempre gritando (always screaming) orders. I was impervious to it.

At that time Memo had the concession at the El Paso Coliseum and he recruited me to help Elisa run it on game or performance nights. There she was with her perfect duck tail, crisp white sleeveless blouse, pedal pushers of pastel-colored checks, and I’d be wearing a shirt dress. We’d sell hot dogs by the dozen, popcorn with lots of butter, root beer floats and cherry cokes, snow cones with blue coconut flavored syrup. Best of all, we had the joy of seeing the magic of spinning sugar turn into Mexican pink cotton candy. You had to move fast and Elisa and I were a good team. Sometimes he’d come in screaming because there was a napkin on the floor or we were taking too long and I’d tell him to leave us alone and he would.  Perhaps that job was the genesis of my love of the food service industry.

He was a “junk”man, un yonquero, who bought and sold surplus material.  When his friend was going to open an ice cream factory he scoured the United States and Mexico until he found the used equipment and drove cross country to get it. If someone needed a rare part for an outdated machine he’d find it. He’d buy the contents of foreclosed businesses and sell them. He was successful in his business despite his terrible lack of organization.  At least that’s how it seemed to me when he asked me to help him with his income taxes one year when I was 15 or so. My job was to go through paper bags and shoe boxes full of receipts and put them in order. One day he came in and started shouting at me and I told him to stop at once or I’d leave. He laughed with all his might and told wife: “See Dorothy, that’s the way you have to talk to me! This girl has balls.”

He had the same  friends since he was 12 years old and they got together frequently, and, because he told them that  he didn’t want to around a bunch of old people, the one with the walker pushed it aside and stood up straight  and the one with the oxygen tank could suddenly breathe. They did not want to disappoint him No one did.  Such was the force of his personality. He was incredibly generous with his friends and poor people but not as much with the family.  He wanted them to make it on their own and they have.

But while he was tough on his family, he also tried to teach them to love life and tried to make everything fun, an adventure.  When they were little he’d put them all in the car and drive them to Paisano drive to have “la mejor agua fria.”  It was only iced water, all he could afford , but made it special by his enthusiasm. That was one reason he was so loved.

When he left his wife for another woman, the family fell apart for a while and it’s not my place to discuss their story only to say that it deeply affected and embittered Elisa and she pulled away from everyone and we drifted apart.   I was in the process of moving to New York and it wasn’t until a few years ago that we reconnected and formed an even stronger friendship.  I did not see Memo until recently after he had left his second wife and I asked him if he’d had a happy life and he said “Hell, yes!” But he was busily, almost obsessively trying to make amends and reunite the family.  He achieved his goal. As he lay dying they were all together and he went in peace.

It brings to mind the last verse of Amado Nervo’s poem

“En Paz”

“Ame, fui amado,

el sol acaricio mi faz.

Vida nada te debo,

Vida quedamos en paz.

In Peace:

I loved and was loved.

the sun caressed my face.

Life you owe me nothing,

life I am at  peace.”

Hasta luego, Memo, te quiero mucho y te extranare. May your soul go into little baby Cruz and make him strong and your spirit give him the tools to fight.

To read his obituary go to