Being Scalded with Hot Coffee

Memories of life in Villa de Garcia  1954 - 1960 

As a child, life in Villa de Garcia was a paradise.  The whole city was our playground.  Well, at least a couple of square miles in the southeast corner of the village.  We could go play in the orchards, go play in the river (that carried very little water most of the year), swim in the pools of the irrigation ditches, “hunt” with our slingshots, push a metal hoop up and down the streets, compete in games of marbles and tops, enjoy any fruit and vegetable in season from figs, pomegranates, oranges, peaches, strawberries, avocados, tomatoes, grapes.  They were all easy picking and free for the taking.  The only limits to paradise were our home chores, our time in school and the time we had to spend in church.

My daily activity in “paradise” was to get up a little after 5:30 a.m. to go get the milk.  My Mom would wake me up, I would put on my shoes (I slept in my pants and shirt), I would grab the two pails from the kitchen and set out to where the cows were being milked.   They were not our cows, we didn’t have cows, and the owner lived the equivalent of about four blocks away.  But at that hour, it seemed like fifteen to twenty miles.  However, I’m sure the round trip was less than half a mile total distance.  I did not mind the early morning walk or carrying back about two quarts of milk in each pail, what I did mind was having to walk by the caved-in house where they would tell us that the ghost pig “La Marrana” would appear.   I remember I would walk the extra distance across the small intersection to be as far away from that house as possible.  I had no precise idea of what a ghost pig could do to me if I ever encountered it, but I could imagine excruciating pain while being dragged through the pits of hell.  So I tried to avoid facing “La Marrana” any way I could.

The walk at “o dark thirty” in the morning had other perils that I tried to ignore without much success.  One was that Dracula could be waiting for me in some irrigation ditch and would want to bite my neck and suck my blood and turn me into a vampire.  The other fear was being chased by a wild dog.  The street I had to walk to get to the milk was lined with nine-foot adobe walls and there was no place to run or escape if a wild rabid dog would come after me.  My imagination always did double duty on my way to get the milk.  The way back was much calmer.  Dawn would always break on the way back and there was enough light to see.  Most importantly, I knew that the ghost pig did not appear in daylight. 

I remember one day coming back with the milk, I noticed that the milk would stay at the bottom of the bucket when I swung the bucket back and forth.  At seeing this, I wondered if it would stay in the bucket if I swung it in a complete circle.  About halfway back to the house I put down one of the buckets and began to swing the bucket back and forth, keeping my eye on the milk, until I had almost had a complete circle and the milk was still at the bottom of the bucket at all times.  I kept swinging and soon had the bucket going in a complete circle.  Unfortunately, stopping the swing was not as easy and I managed to spill almost half the milk or about one of the two quarts.  When I got home I told my mother that I had tripped and had spilled some of the milk.  She thought nothing of it and just told me to “be more careful.”  Unknown to me, however, Juana Cortez, the wife of one of my mother’s uncles, was up early in the morning, and since I had stopped up the street from her house to do my “experiment” with, she witnessed the whole episode.  She recounted the story to my grandfather sometime later and as I got home from school one day, the first thing I felt was the switch striking my legs.  I started to cry and all I can remember was him telling me “that’s for playing and spilling the milk a few days ago, don’t do it again.”  I guess karma does catch up with you when you least expect it.

Getting the milk was not my only morning chore before school.  I had to go out and feed the chickens and collect the eggs.  There was a chicken coop to the side of the house, also made out of adobe.  The chicken coop had a door facing the house and an opening on the side with a fenced-in area where the chickens went during the day.  There were about forty chickens and a couple of roosters.  Poor roosters, the chickens always produced both chickens and roosters but we always ate the roosters first.   I collected anywhere between fifteen to twenty-five eggs every day.  Sometimes, when we had too many eggs, they were sold to the neighbors and sometimes to the store in town.   We had to clean the coop every once in a while, more often in the summertime because it would smell very bad after a couple of days.  I don’t know how the coop managed to have so much shit in it. The daily routine was to take in the eggs to the kitchen where my mother was preparing breakfast and then I would go out to wash up and get ready for school.  To get washed, I had to get a bucket and fetch water from the water storage pool in the back of the house.  The pool would be filled with irrigation water every couple of weeks when the field and fruit trees were irrigated.  It was not potable water, but it was used for washing clothes, dishes, watering potted plants, bathing and washing up before breakfast and going to school.

Breakfast consisted of an egg punch that was made by blending boiled milk, cinnamon, sugar and one raw egg in a glass.  After drinking that we had a cup of instant coffee made in hot milk and a pastry.  After that, we started our walk to school, a walk that always seemed ten miles long, but I’m sure the school was less than half a mile from the house. 

One morning, I was collecting the glasses from the egg punch we drank to take them back to the kitchen.  I got to drink a whole glass but Cristina and Altagracia shared a glass between the two.  I had taken the three glasses and had begun to walk into the kitchen through the small door that separated the kitchen from the dining room.  The floor of the kitchen was slightly below the level of the dining room and there was a slope, that I’m sure used to be an earthen step at one time.  I was hurrying to the kitchen and I tripped.  At the same time, my mother was coming up from the kitchen with a pot of hot coffee made from the recently boiled milk.  I bumped into her and the pot of hot coffee spilled all over my chest.  I got a severe burn, and when they took my shirt off I could see, through my tears, the boils forming on my chest.  I thought I was going to die and I remember asking my mother if I was going to die.  I could not wear a shirt for several days and as a consolation price, I did not have to go to school for a couple of days.

For a kid between six and nine years old growing up in the village, our whole world was limited to just about two square miles.  Once in awhile, we would take a trip to Monterrey or I would go to help plant corn in fields some miles away or on some holidays, or when we had company, we went to the Garcia Caverns a few miles away.  But outside some special occasions, our whole world was bounded by the road to Monterrey on the East, Morelos Street on the North, Zaragoza street on the West and the river on the south.  We did not need to know about anything else and never cared about any other place.  I know my father worked in the United States, but I could not imagine what the United States was, all I knew was that it was north of us.  I knew where Monterrey was, and hour and a half bus ride and I had gone there many times, sometimes by myself.  But for all practical purposes, my life was in the center of Villa de Garcia.

We lived in the southeast corner of the village and the Church, School and plaza was the center of town about a kilometer away.  That is how far we had to walk to school, although it seemed like the the distance was over ten miles when we were kids.

I remember that my life and the life of all other grade school kids my age was very structured and dominated by four things:  School, church, chores and play.  I really thought that my parents and my grandfather thought that my only purpose in life was to go to school and do chores.  The priest and the nuns thought that my only purpose in life was to go to Mass, go to Rosaries, clean the church and pray.  The teachers thought that my only purpose in life was to study, learn multiplication tables and make sure that our hands and fingernails were clean.  Also, the male teachers also thought that my butt was to practice their paddling and I am certain the nuns thought that my hands were to practice their swing with the ruler.  In retrospect, the nuns and the male teachers were very sadistic in trying to bend me to their will.  Of course, I was not an angel or model student, but I did not think I deserved all that abuse.  Of course, I thought that my whole purpose in life was to play and I always try to maximize my playtime.  I did that to a point where it got me in trouble.  Life was rough for any kid in the 1950s, especially in Villa de Garcia.  Although I do remember some wonderful times, some fun times, excellent adventures, great friends and a good family life.  But even with all that good living, I don't ever want to go back to that time.