Chapter 2

Sam Bari

My mother and father met in Chicago Illinois in 1953. My Dad was studying at IIT, working towards an electrical engineering degree, and my Mom had just finished high school at Immaculata, a prestigious Catholic school run by nuns. My mother’s family was not at all happy with the arrangement: how could a nice American girl marry a no-good Mexican! On the other hand, my Scottish/Irish grandmother, Margaret Frew (a descendant of the royal Stuarts), who was the main opposer of this union, had already committed the "sin" of marrying an Italian crooner, Salvatore Schembari, who later changed his name to Sam Bari for artistic purposes (he shared the bill on a number of gigs with Billie Holliday, no less!), and came from a Sicilian family. (My mother has recollections of Frank Capone, sharing soup with her and my grandparents.)

Sam and "Mimi"

            It turns out Margaret or "Mimi" as I always called her, had had a stint as a "torch" singer herself when she met my grandfather at a Chicago nightclub. Then again, my father wasn’t your ordinary, run of the mill "wetback"; he also came from a "nice" family, and brought the Olivares and Riva Palacio surnames and pedigree into the deal. My parents finally married in Chicago. He at 21 and my Mom at 18. They decided to move back to Mexico City because, due to the recently ended Korean War, the draft was still in effect, which made my father’s joining the Armed Forces almost obligatory. As a young struggling couple, they had little money, so my dad, always the ingenious and resourceful type, found this guy who hired drivers to bring American cars down to Mexico.

            Enrique Jorrin's Cha-cha and Perez Prado's Mambo were all the rage when they arrived to Mexico DF on April 17, 1955. All of my dad’s friends were jubilant and my father himself was as proud as a peacock for having married and brought back a beautiful young "gringuita" from the States. My mother’s first years in Mexico were very difficult; she had only turned twenty, didn’t speak any Spanish, had left all her relatives in the USA and had to live with my grandma "Chayo" (Rosario Riva Palacio de Olivares) and my Father’s younger brother Efrén, so she found herself in a very difficult and isolated situation.     

Lalo, Pat and Lalito

            Little by little she adapted to a new country, a new culture, and started to learn how to live, speak, read and write in the Mexican fashion. Patricia Bari de Olivares got pregnant shortly thereafter.

Eduardo Olivares Bari
(This is the last full-text fragment Lalo left)