Of the people I remember from when I was a child, two of them were Mr. Francisco Buentelco and Juana Cortez. We lived in Villa de Garcia in the early 1950s between 1952 and 1957. Pancho Buentelco and Juana Cortez lived on the corner of Cuauhtémoc and General Treviño streets, about two houses from where we lived at 104 Cuauhtémoc Street. There is a possibility that Pancho Buentelco was a relative of my grandfather Serafín Garza, I guess because my mom referred to him as "uncle," although I never knew what the relationship was. When I met him, Don Pancho seemed very old. Although for a child of six or seven years, old is someone over 30.
My father went to work in the United States in the years that we lived in Villa de Garcia. That happened after the restaurant he and his brother Roberto had, "El Tupinamba", was closed by them due to union militancy and social unrest in Nuevo Laredo in 1951 and 1952. I don't have too many memories of the time we lived in Nuevo Laredo, I must have been about 5 years old, but several events remain as fragments in my memory. First, it was my birthday, probably in 1952, and my mother said that she was going to bake a cake for me. I was so happy that I had my two sisters, Maria and Altagracia, singing with me in the front porch a song about "We are going to make a cake." I remember us marching all over the front porch singing over and over again "We are going to make a cake." The house we lived in was on the corner of the streets Mina and Morelos (Calle Francisco Javier Mina and Avenida Jose Maria Morelos), it was a small house, kitty-corner from a the movie theatre "Palacio" where dad would take us to escape the heat because it was air conditioned. I remember my legs would cramp up, probably because of the cold air conditioning, and my dad had to carry me back across the street to the house.
The other event I remember is when my father's car almost got smashed by a bus. I was about five years old is that my dad drove a 1947 Plymouth. He was backing out of the driveway and I was in the back seat. He asked me to let him know if a car was coming. he backed out and I never said anything and the bus had to swerve to miss the car. I remember him asking me why I did not tell him the bus was coming, I told him that he asked me to look out for cars and I never saw a car coming. The third event I remember was participating in some sort of piano event in some stadium in Nuevo Laredo. It must have been some sort of show where pre-kindergarten kids were all dressed up in "tuxedos" and pretend to play the piano in some sort of concerto. We did not actually play a piano, since we did not know how, but about 30 to 40 kids sat in front of "fake" pianos pretending to play. The interesting part of this whole thing was being measured and having a tuxedo made for me by my mother.
After closing the Tupinamba restaurant, my dad decided to go to work in Chicago with his uncle, Miguel Gaytán. But he told me that he didn't like living in Chicago. One, because he didn't like the construction work and two, because of the amount of crime in the city. After a few months in Chicago, he decided to go to work in the automotive industry in Michigan.
My uncle Roberto got a job with the government at the border crossing in Nuevo Laredo. We were very young, less than five years old, and we had no idea, and we didn't care what was happening to the adults, but I do remember being very happy.
My dad had his papers to cross, live, and work in the United States, but for the rest of the family, it took another four years to get the immigration paperwork to allow the whole family to cross the border and move to Michigan. So during those more than four years we lived in Villa de García and our grandfather, Serafín Garza, came to live with us, or, as we lived in his house, perhaps the most correct thing was that we came to live with him.
As indicated before, Don Pancho Buentelco was an older man with a very calm character. Although it is difficult to say how old he was, he was a little heavy, not fat, graying hair and walked slowly, but steadily. I'm sure he had passed his normal age to work, and apparently worked on his hobby, creating new species of oranges. I don't think he had a formal background in biology or horticulture, but he had a large orange orchard where he experimented with grafting different types of oranges.
The entrance to their orchard was about a block east of the house where they lived, approximately on the corner of General Treviño and Los Rayones streets, just after the house of Santiago and Estefana Fuentes. Santiago and Estefana's property bordered the east side of Don Pancho's and the back of their property bordered a portion of "our" property. Our property was one block deep and between 50 and 70 meters at the back of Los Rayones Street. But it averages about 30 or 40 meters on the side of Cuauhtémoc Street.
As I had indicated, I do not know if Don Pancho was a relative of my grandfather Serafin, but they looked a little similar. Below is a picture of Seraphim about the same age Don Pancho was when I met him.
Serafin Garza Garcia - my grandfather
Sometimes Don Pancho would let me enter his garden and watch as he grafted branches from one tree onto another. He would give me different oranges from different trees to try. Some were extremely bitter, more than a lemon, and some were extremely sweet, like concentrated sugar. Although the oranges looked the same from the outside, the inside was a different color. Some roses, some very dark red, many were yellow and some were white. Not all the trees were for grafting and experimentation, I'm sure Don Pancho harvested and sold most of his oranges. He also had lemons and tangerines in his garden, but I don't remember seeing him work on them. I liked going to their garden because it was a very quiet place and there was a lot of variety of birds. I always carried my rubber, but he wouldn't let me shoot any birds in the garden. I'm sorry that being so young, I didn't have the common sense to talk to him more and learn more from him.
Sometimes, when my mom had to go to Monterrey for the day, she would ask Juana Cortez to take care of us when we came home from school, as we went down Cuauhtémoc Street from the north and the front of her house looked down the street. My grandfather was at home and many times he found us on the corner. Doña Juana Cortez was a thin woman who walked with a slight hunch. Her characteristics remind me of the "wicked witch of the west" from The Wizard of OZ. She didn't look like an "ugly witch" and was a very good person, but her way of speaking was like the old lady who took Toto, Dorothy's puppy in the movie.
Doña Cortez offered us snacks when we returned from school. But his idea for a snack was chili tacos. He chopped chilies and a little onion, heated the corn tortillas, spread some butter on them, filled the tortilla with chili and chopped onions, put salt on them, rolled it and ate it as if it were a candy. He tried many times to make me eat those tacos but after I got bitten the first time I bit into one, I never ate them again. I think that's why I've never eaten chili to this day.
Don Panchos's neighbor to the east of his property was Santiago and Estefana (Estefanita) Fuentes. They were brother and sister that never married. Santiago worked an ox cart and did a lot of jobs for my mother and grandfather. He would bring us a couple of barrels of fresh drinking spring water every week from the springs east of the city. Sometimes he would carry large sacks of beans, corn and other heavy items from the store in town, he would cut and supply our house with firewood used for cooking and he would bring material for constructing and repairing fencing. I remember spending lots of time with Estefanita, she is the one that introduced us to Corn Flakes and Peanut Butter. Those two things could not be bought in the town store, but they had two brothers, Encarnacion and Carlos and one of them lived in San Antonio and would bring corn flakes and peanut butter when they visited them. Estefanita used to make us peanut butter tacos with freshly made corn tortillas. I learned to crave those things and still eat them as often as I can.
Once my parents got the passport, visa, and immigration documents, we moved to Pontiac, Michigan, where my dad was working. I don't have a complete memory but I barely remember posing for the family passport photo in Monterrey.
and Cristina. Lower row: Me (Rafael), Jose Luis and Salvador.
I also have some memories of the trip from Villa de Garcia to Pontiac, Michigan in a 1953 Plymouth car, in which we fit the six of us, Mom and Dad and the suitcases. In those days there were no highways and I remember a conversation between mom and dad where they said we were lost.
I remember seeing Don Pancho and Doña Juana Cortez again when we returned to Villa de García a year later. I don't remember if we returned because of the requirements to obtain the emigration card or if we returned because Grandpa Serafin, my mother's father, died. Don Pancho was still working in his orchard in Naranja. But I never saw them again after we left again to return to Pontiac. I don't remember them having children and I never saw any relatives come to visit them, but I think some nephews of Don Pancho kept the property after they died.
Children and many adults don't care about older people. I'm sure Pancho and Juana had many friends when they were young, but as they grew older, their friends and family died and became increasingly isolated from family and friends. Unfortunately, we are not aware of these things when we are young and do not invest more time caring for and learning from adult relatives before they disappear. I am beginning to feel this situation at my age and I am trying not to isolate myself from family, friends and society and not fade away without a trace.
No comments:
Post a Comment