Memories of life in Villa
de Garcia in the early 1950s.
Springtime
weather in Villa de Garcia, unlike in Michigan, began in late January or early
February. Although there could still be some cool days in February.
The general rule was that we could not bathe in the river or the irrigation
ditch or bathe outside in months that had "r" in it. That
pretty much left only May, June, July and August. We did not have running water in the house and
bath time meant getting a bucket full of water from the irrigation pool.
My mother would warm it up with some hot boiling water, and I remember it was
pretty much a fast job; get wet, get soaped, get rinsed and get dried. I
don't remember how often we bathed, but I know it was not every day.
But
the house had a water drain from the roof that went inside the porch and
drained through a mortared stone ditch that took the rainwater outside.
So when it rained it was a time to play in the waterfall draining from the roof.
I think my mother just saw it as a bath day for us and she would soap us down
and rinse us off in the rainwater from the roof. That was a lot more fun
than taking baths with a bucket of water. In the wintertime, we went all
week without bathing. We did wash our face and neck every morning in a
water basin that was set up back outside the kitchen door. But complete
baths were less frequent. In the summer, in addition to bathing outside
in a tub, we would also go to the water hole that was in the irrigation ditch down
the road to bathe on weekends. We went to the waterhole to have fun and play
but my mom always made us take soap to wash off.
Starting
in May and throughout the summer, one of my favorite things to do was to awaken
at dawn and run to the fig tree. Figs magically got ripen overnight and
we had to get to them before the birds did. The early bird might had
gotten the worm, but I was early enough to get the fig. There is nothing quite as delicious as a
tree-ripen fig. There were always enough to eat and bring back to the
house. Of course, I had the morning chores to do: feed the
chickens, go get the milk and slop the pigs and collect the eggs when we didn't
have school.
I
remember my neighbor, Evaristo and I got the mumps when we were about eight
years old. I don't remember feeling sick, but I do remember everybody
staying away from me like I was a contagious deceased animal. In a way, I
think I was. I remember my mother was very concerned and kept asking me
if my cheeks hurt. I was worried and kept asking her if I was going to
die. She made me look in the mirror and one of my cheeks was swollen all
the way to my neck. My sisters did not have it. Only me and my
neighbor, Evaristo. His face was swollen on both sides. We had the
mumps.
Mumps
are very contagious so we could not go to school. Absolutely nothing
sounds better to an eight-year-old kid than being told he cannot go to school. I was so heartbroken - NOT! As it turned
out, not only did Evaristo have them, Bruno, a friend that lived down the
street and around the corner, also had them. Those were the best five
days off from school I had ever had. Actually it was only three days
because it was over a weekend, but I didn't have to do any chores in the
morning! We tried to "milk" the illness for more time off but
the swelling had gone down by the fourth day. I remember playing all day
under the fruit trees in the irrigation ditch in the back of the house.
We used little pieces of branches and stones and pretended they were armies of
soldiers, cannons. We also made carts
from twigs and branches and had full battles between three city-states. I
remembered I claimed a victory once because I had my helicopters (dragonflies)
help me in a battle. Evaristo (Litos) and Bruno had never heard of a
helicopter. I had seen one at the Monterrey Airport once and had to
explain it to them. But, they ended up talking me into disqualifying that
battle and having another because helicopters were an unfair advantage.
We
spent the mornings playing in the back yard and we would go to the river in the
afternoon to hunt lizards with our slingshots. We were all very good with
the slingshots. Lizards were everywhere
but they were fast and it was difficult to get too close to them. Our
shots had to be taken from farther away than was optimal but we still had some
good shots. Poor little lizards, I feel bad that we killed so many of
them. They were actually pretty
cute. We always aimed for the tails
trying to tear the tails with our shots.
We were told that they grew new tails and we always thought it was
strange to see the tails jumping around without a body for a little while. The ants always managed to come in and devour
the lizard tails in no time.
One
of our many diversions was to set two ants to fighting. We would spend hours
watching these wrestling matches. Getting these fights started was a tricky
thing because some of the ants were vicious and their sting would hurt a lot. There were many colonies of red ant and black
ants. The most fun thing was to get
a black ant and a red ant into a fight. To
do this we had to get some black ants in a jar and some red ants in a different
jar. we would then construct a little
fighting "ring." we would very
carefully take a black ant, picking it up from the back and making sure its
stinger could not touch our skin. We
would do the same thing to the red ant and we would put them together face to
face and let them go at it. Sometimes
the fight would end pretty fast and sometimes they would fight for what seemed
to be an hour. They would roll and try
to get the upper hand where they could sing the other. It seemed that the red ant won most of the
time.
The
most enjoyable activity was to fly June beetles. We would raid my mom's sewing box for a long
piece of thread and head out to the corral where Gringo or Santiago, our
neighbors, kept the cows and the oxen.
There among the cow patties, we could always find the biggest and strongest June
beetles. Catching a beetle was a trick
that required quick hands. We had to
slowly "sneak" behind a beetle and sweep our hand very fast and catch
them as they took off. We would then tie
a string around their neck, or at least the crack between the shell near his
head and the shells that housed the wings.
Holding the beetle very steady we would tie the string just tight enough
to hold them but not too tight to restrict its movement. Once they were tied we would cast them off in
the air and we could fly them around either in a large circle or have them fly
with us while we ran down the street.
That was a lot of fun. sometimes
the beetles got loose and flew off with the string tied around their neck. Most of the time, however, we untied them
when we were through playing and let them go.
They always seem to fly back to the corrals and sometimes we would find
a beetle that got away with the string tied to it.
It
got a little boring by the third day because nobody wanted us around and our
parents would not let us go to the center of town. By the fifth day, we
were glad to be going back to school. Our cheeks were back to normal and
we did not get the looks we used to get when we were all puffed up. It
turns out that many other students at our school also had the mumps about the
same time and the teachers were glad to see us back.
