Remembering My Childhood (Cecelia Coronado) - Part Four

(This is the fourth in a series of posts based on audio recordings made by my mother, Cecelia Coronado Phipps in 1983.  Here she begins to talk about her brothers.)

Doc Coronado practicing the violin

Doc and Paul

Now there was brother Doc.  How he got that name, I don't know.  Someone said they called him "Old Doc Yak". I think that was in the comics at that time.  But that name stuck with him, even after he became a sergeant on the police force. ... Doc was the one in the family who was musically inclined. He played the violin.  Then there was Paul.  He was the one brother who was more quiet and serious – the youngest of the six boys.

Frank

Now Frank was always "tee-heeing" and laughing and smiling.  There was no one to compare with Frank.  He had a constant smile on his face always, where Paul was more serious.

They tell this story about my brother Frank.  Mama and Papa were in the summer kitchen which was adjoining the regular kitchen and they saw a splash in the watering trough.  They ran out there and found Frank had fallen in.  So they pulled him out and dried him off.  He was always doing things.  More things happened to this little guy.  He was a lovable brother.

Since I spoke of my brother Frank, let me tell a few more incidents in his life.  My older brother, Dolph, told me that one time when Frank was real little, maybe two years old, he was sitting on the fence.  Across the road there was a big ball game going on.  Dolph had perched him up on the corner of this fence, because he wanted to watch the game.  Somebody hit a home run and knocked Frank completely off the fence and he was unconscious!  Dolph ran to him and picked him up and brought him home to Mama.  Mama was the all-around nurse and doctor.  What she did only God knows.  She brought him to and he insisted on going back because he wanted to see the rest of the game.  So they let him go back.  That was one of his injuries.

Frank Coronado with his mother, Louisa

In later years, Papa was taking my sister Toots and me to school in Vallejo. One day he was picking us up after school, driving us home, when we went by the high school that Frank attended.  We said, "Oh, something is happening there.  Look, the ambulance has come and somebody got hurt." Well, when we got home, we were notified that it was my brother Frank. He got hit by a ball and was taken to the hospital for a while and then they brought him home.  Poor Frankie – he has had so many injuries.

As he got older, he was going up Main Street hill on a motorcycle, and the darned motorcycle just flipped right over with him and he hit his head on the sidewalk.  That put him out for awhile.

Another injury was when he was in Nevada.  He was driving on one of the streets.  Some kids were playing ball.  Wouldn't you know that the ball came right through the window that he had down and hit him again on the head.  He had a lot of injuries to his head but we loved him dearly.  He was a terrific brother.  We had a lot in common.

This ballpark where Frankie was hit by the ball – I understand that big league games were played there.  So it was quite an important spot around that area.  Also, the first airplanes landed there.  We have pictures to show it – one-seaters with open cockpit. ... I was born in 1906 so that goes a long way back.