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Chapter 17: The river providesDust bowl refugees join hispanics on Gila A Model A Ford powers a buzz saw at the Lunt Ranch, where trees were cleared for farming By Carmen Duarte The Arizona Daily Star Tightened immigration patrols during the '30s caused growers to look east for the labor needed to pick cotton. They recruited drought-ruined farmers and pickers from Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The Dust Bowl migrants headed for the Gila Valley along U.S. 70 - the southern route to California. For some, Arizona was the destination; for others, it was just a stop along the way.
Some ran out of gas and money. Some had plain old bad luck, like the family of grower Wilbur Lunt's first wife. Mada Ferris, her sister and grandparents came through Duncan about 1933. ``They hit somebody on a horse and the law held them over,'' says Lunt, sitting in the kitchen of his Duncan farmhouse, grinning at the memory. ``On her grandmother's side of the family was some pretty high-class people; a relative was the territorial sheriff of Oklahoma. They weren't scum by any means. But the Depression put everybody in bad circumstances.'' He remembers a verse from those days and breaks into song: ``Dear Okie, if you see Eric, you tell him Texas got a job for him out in Californy. Digging up gold, playing fiddle in the follies,'' sings Wilbur, his voice trailing off. Many of the travelers ended up camping in tents or makeshift shacks along the Gila River, alongside Mexican migrants. ``From time to time during the '30s, there were hundreds living around here. I've seen down under the Duncan bridge, maybe 10 camps,'' Lunt says. The mighty Gila River continued to sustain the valley. Nala's younger brother, Juan, was the river's child and an important family provider. He had been taught by his mother's brother, Tío Pablo Villalba - to be a master hunter, fisherman and turtle catcher. Turtles basking on the riverbank would plop into the water when they heard noise. Juan would walk the river with a stick, listening for plops, poking the muddy bank. When Juan hit a mass, he went underwater and dug it out. The turtles were gutted and stuffed with potatoes, hierbabuena, chile, cilantro, oregano and hojas de laurel. ``They were stuffed like chickens. Some turtles weighed up to 10 pounds. My mom would place them in the wood-burning stove oven, and the shell roasted. ``Oh, yeah, oh yeah, it tasted good,'' recalls Uncle Johnny, his mouth watering as he recalls his Huck Finn boyhood from his southside Tucson home. Often, while Juan hunted, Nala foraged for wild greens and tender cactus. Nopalitos, the tiny pads of prickly pair cacti, grew anytime. Wild spinach and verdolagas grew in the desert after the rains. The berro was a leafy plant - similar to lettuce - that grew along the irrigation canals. Nala looked for just the right nopalitos, the younger, tender ones. She whacked the plant with the knife and tossed the pieces into a pail. She ignored the thorns. They couldn't penetrate her calloused hands. Nala would burn the thorns over an open fire and scrape them off with a knife. The nopalitos were cut into pieces, boiled and then prepared with eggs, red chile, onions and tomatoes, or ground beef. When she picked wild spinach and verdolagas, Nala washed and then boiled each plant. A frying pan with lard was heated, and the greens were tossed with beans, onions and red chile seeds. All were served with freshly cooked tortillas. Nala loved to eat the nopales raw with a sprinkle of salt, wrapped in a tortilla. It had a sour taste, like a pickle. Nala's uncles, meanwhile, picked up pieces of beef and pork from the Lunt brothers, Ed and Heaton (Wilbur's father), during their slaughters. Hispanic families prepared tasty dishes from parts the ranchers would otherwise discard. Nala remembers hearing about fights that broke out over whose turn it was to get the head. The cheeks were made into carne machaca or beef jerky. The stomach was soaked, and the women would clean it of its fat and prepare it for menudo. The fat was fried into chicharrones. The tongue was fried and mixed with spices, tomatoes and onion, or chile colorado. The tails were used in stews. The family members were thrifty to begin with. The Depression made them all pinch a little more. They mended homemade clothes, including undergarments. ``Nobody wore shoes, unless you went to church,'' says Hal Empie, an Arizona artist who ran the drugstore in Duncan during the Depression. ``I sold a lot of turpentine. It was considered a great treatment for people who stubbed their toes or had cuts. ``You mixed turpentine with sugar and put it on a cloth and wrapped the stubbed toe. You used old bed sheets for bandage strips.'' People did what they needed to survive. The loaves and fishes (or the turtles and tortillas) always seemed to multiply just enough to keep the family fed. Little wonder that Mama disdains waste. When we were kids, she'd save food we refused to eat and serve it to us again. ``Carmen, no sabes que es tener hambre. Eres tan desperdiciada.'' (Carmen, you don't know what it is to be hungry. You are so wasteful.) These days, I try to clean out the refrigerator when she's not around. Otherwise we get into shouting matches about week-old leftovers. Mama's fallback position - feed the food to the birds. Yeah, right, like the birds are going to eat menudo. ``Ma, we don't live on the rancho,'' I say. ``God's creatures deserve to eat,'' Mama says. Sure enough, the food disappears and birds flock to the empty flower bed where Mama dumps the comida. She's the neighborhood St. Francis of Assisi - and my back yard has become a feeding station for homeless cats. The yard reeks of their scent. I chase them away. Then Mama dumps more leftovers. My 83-year-old Mama wins again. ``Ni modo.'' (Oh, well.)
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Ch. 1: Field of death
Ch. 18: The New Deal
Ch. 24: Cotton pickers and copper miners Ch. 27: The family doubles its size
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