The Three Uncles

Memories of life in Villa de Garcia in the early 1950s.

I remember my uncles Moreno (David), Serafin and Rufino, my mother's brothers would come and visit us from Monterrey as often as they could.  At least once a month.  Each one had different personalities and interests and I learn to expect different things from each of their visits.  Uncle Moreno was the oldest in my mother's family and seemed to be quieter and reserved in his relation to us, little kids.  He would let me follow him around when he went around fixing things or when he had people fix things around the house like the chicken coup, the pig pens, the irrigation ditch gates, the fences, the doors of the house, the roof and the water spouts. 

I learned from him how to get up to the roof, and in the process discovered uncounted treasures in the loft of the porch that I later went to explore many times when no one was looking - the storage crates where my grandfather and grandmother kept the family treasures.  Well, maybe they were not exactly treasures and just storage of stuff they no longer used but didn't want to throw away.  It was in old chests, and trunks and old leather suitcases full of old things they stored, but for a seven to an eight-year-old kid they were invaluable treasures.  I remember that when we moved to the United States, I brought some of those things with me that I still have and treasure after sixty-five years.  Uncle Moreno would not talk to me unless he was telling me what to do.  In many ways, I think he was much like his mother, my grandmother, Pilar, who had recently died.

Uncle Serafin did not come to see us as frequently and when he did he came in the morning bus and left in the evening bus.  Every time he came, however, he always seemed to be on a mission and always wanted me to help him in every way.  I remember him telling me that I was his assistant and wanted to teach me "things."  The first thing he would do is check the charge of the radio battery, a dry cell that had to be changed every couple of months.  One of the projects I remember was getting the ice cream freezer working.  It turns out that my grandfather had a large ice cream freezer that he used to make ice cream and sorbets.  the ice cream freezer had fallen into disuse over the years and the mission for one of the weekends was to get it repaired.  The ice cream freezer was large, almost as tall as me and I was at least three feet tall.  The ice cream my grandfather made was absolutely delicious.  I remember my uncle getting it fixed but I don't remember what happened to it.  It was either sold or he took it back to Monterrey with him.  What was left in the house was the cart that the freezer was on.  We later put that cart to good use by transforming it into a wagon and a speed cart.  But that is another story.  

Similar to the one uncle Serafin was building

I specifically remember a couple of trips he made on Sundays.  The mission at the time was to build a wind generator to charge a car battery and power the radio and maybe an electric light.  I helped him with the construction of the small tower and the windmill.  I use "helped" him in a very loose way since I only help in carrying stuff to the base of the chicken coop.  He got the tower built and constructed the windmill with a car generator.  I don’t quite remember how he got the windmill blades attached to the generator, but he must have had a mounting bracket welded to the generator pulley.  He carried all this stuff from Monterrey on several trips. 

He had the small windmill all set up, but we never seem to have enough wind to turn the generator, every weekend he was there, we had a calm and sunny day.  Although he was not an engineer, Uncle Serafin had the curiosity of a scientist and the “let’s make it work” attitude of an engineer.  He might have been the influence for me to study science and engineering since I have always given thought of the things he tried to do.  In retrospect, and knowing what I know now, the wind generator would not have worked.  He needed a gearing mechanism, a larger windmill and a lot more wind to generate the rotational speed to produce the power needed from that generator to charge the battery.  But he was almost there and that has always impressed me.  I hated that he died so young, I really liked him and could have learned a lot more things from him.

Death of a relative does not have the same impact on an eight-year-old kid as it does to an adult.  I remember when we were told that uncle Serafin had died.  My mother and grandfather were first incredulous, then overcome with grief.  I don't know where he had gotten the car, but my uncle Rufino came for my mother and my grandfather and they left for Monterrey in a car.  We stayed in the care of our neighbors, Gringo and Celia.  The first thing that happened when they got back from Monterrey, was the organization of a novena of rosaries every night and many of our neighbors came to pay their respects and pray the rosary.  I saw it as a big inconvenience because we had to pray a rosary after school and then another in the evening at home. 

During the next several months, and for at least every two weeks, and sometimes once a week, We would travel to Monterrey with a bag of food for my aunt Tomasita, my uncle Serafin's wife, and their kids.  Many times I had to go by myself and I remember the bag of food I carried, a "red" (a bag made out of hemp), was heavy.  My mother would send tortillas, eggs, chorizo (when a pig was slaughtered) and vegetables and fruits in season.  I would leave on the bus on Saturday morning, deliver the bag and come back on the bus in the afternoon.  It was at least a six-hour trip, about two hours each way on the bus from Garcia to Monterrey and another half hour each way on a local bus.  For an eight-year-old boy traveling by himself, that was a long tiring day. 

Unlike uncle Moreno and uncle Serafin, uncle Rufino was a care-free soul who enjoyed life.  He loved adventure and would try anything.  He would come to visit us in Garcia and wanted me to get involved in everything he did.  Two of his three loves were hunting and fishing and his third love were games of chance.  Since we did not have anywhere to fish in Garcia, he concentrated on hunting.  He would take me rabbit hunting, fox hunting, bird hunting and on the way to all these excursions, we got to shoot quite a few rattlesnakes and many cacti around Garcia were well ventilated with holes made from our target practice.  He had a single shot 22 rifle for me to use.  He taught me the rules of shooting.  Nowadays I would never have given a gun to any of my kids when they were seven to eight years old. 

One of the memorable episodes happened when the town of Villa de Garcia put a bounty on woodpeckers.  I believe the offer was ten cents for any woodpecker killed.  There was no way that uncle Rufino was going to miss this and I'm sure he took off from his work in Monterrey to be in this hunt.  Villa de Garcia's was an agricultural town producing a variety of agricultural products from oranges, pomegranates, avocados, corn, beans and a variety of vegetables, but the main product was pecans.  There were pecan orchards everywhere, every house had a least one and sometimes more large pecan trees.  During the pecan season, I remember seeing many trucks loaded with pecan sacks drive out of town.  I suppose that someone decided that woodpeckers were causing damage to the pecan trees and somehow got the town to put a bounty on them. 

He gave me two boxes of 22-short cartridges and we set out to the orchards between our house and the river.  The hunting regions must have been pre-decided because we were the only ones hunting in this area and other people stayed in large orchards in different parts of the town.  Next to our house was the Martinez-Martinez house.  They had a corral on the south side of their house where they kept their oxen and cows.  Although most of the corral was fenced with barbed wire, the part bordering the street was a wooden fence with three or four horizontal beams about 3 inches diameter.  The gate plus the fence was about forty feet long.   When we had shot about ten woodpeckers each, we would carry them back and line them up on the wooden fence. 

My shooting got better throughout the day.  At first, I would only get maybe two for every ten that my uncle shot.  But after a couple of hours, I was shooting as well as uncle Rufino.  There must have been a great infestation of woodpeckers in town because I could hear constant shooting at the distance in several orchards.  We ran out of bullets by mid-morning and my uncle went out a brought several more boxes.  By late afternoon we had had the four rows of horizontal beams on that fence completely full of woodpeckers.  I remember my uncle saying that we had over five hundred.  I later heard stories of other people having hunted comparable numbers.  In a way, I felt sorry for the birds and I wondered how so many birds could live in Garcia.  It was not like they migrated in, the land around Garcia was dry semi-desert and there were no trees outside the town for them to live on and hunt for the insects they ate. With five hundred birds he probably got about 50 pesos for them, not enough to pay for the bullets we used.