PREJUDICE NO OBSTACLE TO LOVE.

Byline: BETTIE RENCORET Senior columnist

LANCASTER - Joe Avila talks about the rattlesnakes someone put in his car while he was dating blond Joanne Butters in high school to show the prejudice that existed against Latinos in the Antelope Valley of the 1940s and 1950s.

Avila was driving to pick Joanne up for the prom when he realized there was something moving around in the car. He reached down to find a rattlesnake.

He threw it out the window, then discovered more snakes in the car.

Scared and shaken, he drove the car into a drainage ditch and fell out the door into the dirt.

After he got all the snakes out, he looked at himself and saw he was a mess but he didn't want to stand Joanne up so he drove on to her place anyway.

Joanne and her parents were appalled at the potentially deadly prank. They cleaned Joe up as well as they could and the young couple went on to the dance.

Joe and Joanne decided not to mention the snakes at the prom, but wait to see if anyone there looked really surprised to see them. Nobody else mentioned it so they let it drop, but Joe didn't forget it.

Fifty years later, when they attended a class reunion the subject finally came up.

``One of my former classmates came over to me and said, 'Aren't you Ivan Avila? Aren't you the one that had snakes put in your car on prom night?' I just looked at him for a minute. Then I asked, Are you the one that did that? He quickly said, 'Oh no! I just heard about it,''' said Joe.

``But I knew. I might have done something about it earlier in my life but I just figured it was 50 years ago, I might as well let it go now,'' he said.

Prejudice wasn't all one-sided, he said. It was generally taboo for anyone in his family to date a non-Latino, so he kept quiet about Joanne.

When he went into the Army in early 1955, Joanne began to write to him. He hadn't reckoned with her ability to charm the prejudice out of anyone.

``I started getting these letters that I couldn't believe,'' he said. ``In one of them she wrote, 'I met your parents today and they seem really nice.' Then there was another one, 'I drove your father to the doctor today.' That was followed by one from my mother: 'Joanne was here today. She's a really nice girl.' I read those letters over and over before I could bring myself to believe it.''

Joe and Joanne were married on Sept. 6, 1955 in Las Vegas with his family's blessing, when he finished Army basic training.

Serving in the Army gave Joe a new sense of who he was. He found the camaraderie of other Latino soldiers taught him to be proud of his heritage and gave him a resurgent confidence in himself.

While he was stationed in West Germany in 1955, things kind of came together for him. He became a boxing coach, a drum major and taught hand-to-hand combat. He found he could make a real contribution.

After leaving the Army, he went to work for Northrop Aircraft, then for Douglas, Serv-Air and Philco/Ford, all NASA contractors, from 1957 to 1970.

He later worked other jobs, including as manager in the service department of Mark C. Bloom and as a Spanish interpreter for the Lancaster courts.

He owned and operated a karate school until he was injured in an automobile accident.

After that it was hard for him to get a job. He applied at Desert Haven, the training center for mentally retarded persons, and went to work helping them build solar panels.

``That kind of broke me again and so I was once more unemployable, but through it all we had begun to buy up houses and turn them into rentals. We still have those,'' he said.

He's a lifetime member of the Lancaster Elks Lodge and still participates in the lodge activities, but these days he concentrates most on making wood toys and weight lifting. He and Joanne used to dance and go bike riding but now they spend a lot of their time on the rentals, the wood business and just trying to help people. Their lives are full.

Menus for the week at the senior life nutrition sites in Palmdale and South Valley have been announced. All meals include bread, margarine and coffee, tea or milk for the suggested donation of $2.

The Lancaster site will be closed until after Thanksgiving while the senior center multipurpose room floor is refinished.

Monday: Tuna casserole, peas and carrots, three bean salad, pineapple juice, tapioca pudding.

Tuesday: Barbecued pork, parsleyed potatoes, green beans, creamy coleslaw, chocolate pudding.

Wednesday: Turkey with dressing, mashed potatoes, Normandy vegetables, cranberry and orange salad, pumpkin pie.

Thursday: Holiday.

Friday: Holiday.

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Photo:

Prejudice couldn't derail the love of Joe and Joanne Avila, who were married on Sept. 6, 1955 in Las Vegas, Nev., after he finished Army basic training.

Bettie Rencoret/Staff Photographer