I Get Scared Just Thinking About It Now
I was born in Los Angeles and when I was five months old, my father took our family back to Mexico to live. This was in 1930. He bought a truck and put all out furniture in it, including our bed, and we went through the mountains, deep into the heart of Mexico. There was not even a road, they had to cut away the brush as they went along.
My grandfather had land he farmed, while we lived there we would go to the fields every day and bring home food to cook and eat. I remember as a little girl, we had avas. It's like a lima bean but bigger, and we had lots of corn. We also had a cow, we called him Mascaria, because his face was just like a mask. Although we had maybe five or six cows we would milk every moring, and we had a horse, and some goats my would buy to butcher for meat.
When I was twelve we moved to Tijuana. We used to cross the border to work in the fields, picking cucumbers and string beans, whatever was in season. On the weekends or vacations, or anytime we didn't go to school, that's what we used to do. I always say, "When I was seventeen, I was already working, picking tomoatoes and string beans." I made thirty cents an hour. I used to get $2.40 a day, and I worked eight hours. Celery was very popular. We would pick it in the winter. We also worked in the Central Valley. It's all really hard work.
By the time I was twenty-one, I had a job at Mercy Hospital, and bought a car. I was making ninety-five cents an hour when I sarted. I saved my money, and bought a brand-new 1952 Chevrolet. Then I took a trip with mother, father, little sister and brother. I drove them all to Mexico City and then to Vera Cruz. There was nothing there but little birds and open space, there was nothing, no cars, nobody. If I had an accident, we would all be dead. We could have starved. I was very brave, but I wanted to take them back to our hometown. I get scared just thinking about it now. If I think about it at night, I can't go to sleep, just thinking about all the crazy things that I did whan I was young.
