Living Your Dream
When I was around 12 I was out on my own, living in Texas. My mother had to go back to Mexico so I told her I was going to stay here and go to school.
The people I first stayed with were not abusive toward me in any way, however I was over worked. At age 12 and 13 on the weekends I was putting in as much as 18 hours a day, working in their restaurant for them. Then I also picked cotton, because these people gave me room and board, but that was it, there no wages involved. So I picked cotton for two summers, in the Texas heat.
In the cotton fields there are no trees, because every bit of land is planted. We would pick between May through July or maybe August. The hardest part is that those are such harsh memories, I really don't want to remember them, and when it was. But I do remember the heat, and the rows of cotton, which are long. You pick cotton in a sack that's wide, long, maybe as long as eight feet, ten feet long. Really long. Maybe it wasn't quite as long because I was such a little kid. But they are long. People pick cotton together - you are on one side of the row and someone else is on the other, both of you pulling the sack. You're pulling that sack together, all the time. It gets heavier and heavier. And, yes, I'm only 12, 13. I weighed about 75-80 pounds. And cotton is prickly. It opens, like a flower, but it is sharp and shaped like a triangle with a point at the end, like a thorn. And so you have to be very good at picking. You pick it between these sharp thorns or you hurt yourself. You have to be very careful otherwise you get pricked.
You can also buy gloves, but it's very hard. You cannot pick cotton with gloves. Some people do; they cut off the tips of the fingers of the gloves. But at this time I didn't money; I could not afford to buy gloves. So, you know, I did the best that I could. And at the time, I would have to pick about a 105 to 120 pounds of cotton in order to make $1.25, $1.30. Picking cotton is not pretty. I didn't make more than maybe a couple of dollars a day. Of course, you could buy a lot more then, this is back in the 1950's, early 1960's. I think gasoline was, what, 15, 16 cents per gallon.
While I still had a mother, even though she was very, very poor, I didn't work for anybody and she took good care of me, I was in good hands and she bought clothes for me, even if it was very modest clothing. But after she left and went back to Mexico, I had to take care of myself, which meant washing dishes, mopping floors, cleaning toilets, picking cotton, whatever it took.
My story is the story of all immigrants: I wanted a better life for myself and my children. I wanted to get beyond the poverty into which I was born. And … my story also includes my early years without a mother, or father, or grandparents to support and guide me. This is why I sympathize with the kids at Casa de Amistad. It's wonderful to have an extended family, when you have it. But when you don't have it, it's terrible. Sometimes the kids that come to Casa do not have the wonderful privilege, or good fortune of having grandparents, their Elders, to love them and to help raise them. It is my hope that Casa can give them the kind of mentoring that I didn't have.
