|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 22: Uncle JohnnyUncle Johnny grew up tough — and needed it
Uncle Johnny's talent for drawing and painting netted him a trip to Nice, France, when he was in the service. Here, he entertains granddaughter Ellen Gilbert.
By Carmen Duarte
Mama's little brother Juan Téllez Uncle Johnny to me was a wild boy in more ways than one. Part Huck Finn and part vato loco, Uncle Johnny hunted, fished, fought, stole and charmed his way through life. He can laugh about anything, except for some of his World War II memories. Uncle Johnny grew up fast during that war. He faced death and he found redemption.
In his boyhood, Juan was truly the river's child. "I love the Gila River. In the summertime, I and my younger brother, Chilo (Isidro), and my nephew Ambrosio (Castrillo) would tell our parents that we were going to the river and not to worry. "They knew we would be all right. We would take off for two or three days. We'd live in the river like savages. We were free and happy. We'd camp out. I didn't have to worry about my mother hollering at me." Juan's fishing pole was a stick with a cord and hook attached to the end. He'd hook a worm, cast the line and soon catfish and suckers would be frying over a campfire. The boys ranged along the 12-mile stretch of the Gila from Virden, N.M., to Duncan. They knew every nook and cranny and where the fishing was best.
"The Mormons used to raise turkeys (along the river). They turned them loose in the winter, and by summertime there would be a big flock of turkeys. Sometimes, we'd kill a turkey or two and roast it up. That's how we lived. It was good eating. "I'd go down and ask Mormon families if I could take vegetables from their gardens. They'd say, 'Yeah, you can get all the tomatoes and cucumbers you want, just don't trample on the plants.'" On the last day of their adventure, they would go home loaded with fish and turtles. Sometimes they took home a turkey. Juan had a reputation for knowing how to handle a slingshot something his Tío Pablo had taught him. His pockets were always filled with rocks. He hunted quail, doves, rabbits and, according to him, even roadrunners. The game was made into fine soups, mixed with potatoes and vegetables. Juan's slingshot skills scared him one time. "I was bringing a cow back home. I wanted the cow to climb out on the right side of a ditch, but she was climbing out on the left side. I got her by the horns and twisted her head, but that didn't work. The cow made me mad. "I got my slingshot and let a rock rip. It hit her between the horns and she went down. She started shaking. I ran all the way home, about a mile away." "Dad, you better come and bring a knife," Juan told his father. "Why?" asked Don Juanito. "I think I killed a cow," said Juan with a gulp. "No," said Don Juanito. "You go back. She'll be up." Juan ran back, wondering if his Papa was right. While he ran, he prayed to la Virgen de Guadalupe. The cow was fine, and Juan took her home. When he wasn't escaping to the river, Juan liked the escape of the serial movies that played at the Duncan Theatre on Saturdays. Juan had a routine. "During the day I'd catch one of my mother's chickens, and I'd hide it in a canyon that was nearby. Juan would pick up the chicken on his way to the movies in the evening. "There was a man named Trader Martin, and I'd sell my mother's chicken to him for 10 cents. "I'd go to the movies and sit anywhere I wanted to. The Mexicans sat on one side, and the Anglos sat on the other. Those kids knew me, and those kids were afraid of me. Nobody bothered me. There was nothing that I didn't tackle." After the movie, Juan would walk back to Trader Martin's place in search of Dolores' chicken, and steal it back. "He had a lot of chickens. Sometimes I wouldn't catch the same chicken I dropped off. "My mother would see the chicken and say, 'Where did that chicken come from? That chicken doesn't belong here. Juan, do you know where that chicken comes from?'" "Yo no sé," (I don't know) Juan would reply. During the early 1930s, Juan went to work picking cotton, or gathering potatoes and onions.
It was their life, plain and simple. The children missed school when their families found it necessary, and Juan became another statistic when he dropped out in the seventh grade. Juan earned a bigger reputation when word traveled that he'd beat up one of the growers who kept putting off paying him $7 for seven 10-hour days of hoeing and irrigating the cotton fields. One day, Juan picked up a piece of wood. "You are going to pay me now, or you'll wish the hell you did," Juan told his boss. Juan began swinging and cracked two of the man's ribs. In the end, Juan received $10, not $7, for his work and never returned to that farm again. When kindhearted Don Juanito heard what his son had done, he scolded Juan for turning violent. But it all worked to Juan's advantage. Other growers sought him out as his reputation as a good laborer grew. And they paid him on time. Eventually, Don Juanito could only say: "You sure made a name for yourself, Juan." Juan stood out. He wasn't afraid to be different. He believed God created all men equal and those who felt they were better were in for a surprise. He even made stealing work for him. On one weekend trip to Virden, N.M., to visit his grandparents, he was sent to the store by his Nana Leonarda. While there, he picked up a handful of nails and put them in his pocket. When he returned, he went to work and built a wheelbarrow. "Where did you get the brandnew nails?" Tata Florentino asked Juan. "I got them from the barn, Tata," Juan replied. The following day Tata Florentino did not get the plow ready to head for the fields. He prepared the buggy and told Juan to accompany him to the Virden store. There, he made Juan apologize to Mr. Orson Merrell for stealing the nails. He left him there to work off his penalty. Merrell had Juan clean out a chicken coop. He liked Juan's work and asked him to clean a second. Merrell paid him 50 cents for about four hours' work. "Juan, I want you to come every week and clean the coops, and I'll pay you 50 cents." When Juan got home, he told his grandfather of his good fortune. "Tata, wasn't that good that I stole them nails?" "No, it's not good," said Florentino. "You lose a dollar before you steal a dollar. You are not to steal nothing from nobody." Juan put his head down. He knew stealing was wrong, but he also knew that good luck followed him. He asked God to forgive him that evening during the rosary. In his teen years, Juan hung around a bar called the Bonnie Heather Inn in Duncan. He was hired to keep the pool hall clean and to rack balls. He watched and learned, and practiced the game. In time, Juan earned a reputation for playing pool. In addition to earning $1 a day running the pool hall, Juan earned another 50 cents playing pool and winning. Unbeknown to Juan, he was being watched by one of Duncan's leaders. James Luther Teague Watters, a native of England who moved to the valley in 1884, saw that Juan had a knack for billiards. Watters served as the town's postmaster, justice of the peace and was a U.S. land commissioner. One night Mr. Watters told Juan to play a visiting pool hustler. "We tossed, and I got the break," recalls Juan. "When I got the break, I did pretty good. I made about 45 billiards. You have to make 51. I missed and the man took over and made about 48. It was my turn again, and I won the game. We played about six games, and the man won one. He became angry and took off." Afterward, Mr. Watters handed the boy $250. "What's this for?" Juan asked. "These are your winnings. That's your share. That's what you won. I'm keeping the other half," Watters told him. Juan felt real, real tall that day. "I went and bought my dad, I bought him three sets of clothes. I bought him all kinds of clothes from underwear clear to the top. I bought my sister (Florencia) five sets of clothes. I bought my brother (Isidro) five sets of clothes. I bought myself five sets of clothes." Juan put $175 into the bank. Don Juanito allowed Juan to work in the pool hall because he was earning good money.
As the Depression deepened, work, even hustling, was hard to find. Juan and his good friend Eduardo Córdova decided to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the federal job programs created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They were sent to a camp in Prescott on a bus that stopped at Safford, Willcox, Benson and Tucson to pick up men. Some 150 men were on board when the bus arrived at the camp, just outside the city of rolling hills and pine trees.
He says he also made about $5 a week playing pool. "The camps were about one-fourth of a mile out of town, and us guys would walk into town to the dance halls. All we wanted was to have a girl at our side," Juan says. In no time, Juan found a steady girlfriend named Nancy to be his date at the dances. "I used to meet her in town. One time, her grandfather was waiting for me while I was bringing her home. I dropped her off near a church. I never walked her all the way up to her house. I had drunk a couple of beers." "I want you to pick up Nancy at the house and leave her off at the house. You are not to meet her down the street," Nancy's grandfather said to Juan. Juan got smart with him. "Well, young man, I think I'm going to have to learn you a little lesson. You need to be more polite to your elders," said Nancy's grandfather. Juan said he thought, "This little jerk. I'll knock him on his butt." "So I hit him, and he didn't budge. Oh, he hit me, and I couldn't see where he was hitting me from." The elderly man walked home and Juan made it back to camp. A few days later Nancy persuaded Juan to walk her home and talk to Grandpa. While waiting in the living room, he heard a familiar noise: "Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta." Juan followed the noise to the family's back yard and saw the old man hitting a speed bag. When the old man saw Juan, he stopped his workout. "So, you finally come to the house, young man. If you ever want to see my granddaughter, you come here and pick her up at home." "Yes, sir," Juan replied. Juan stayed in the CCC camp for six months. At age 18, he returned to the Gila Valley and moved to Morenci, where his mother had just moved with his siblings, Lola and José. Dolores ran a boardinghouse for miners. Copper was booming again. Juan went to work in the mines, earning $3 a day for 10-hour shifts, seven days a week of backbreaking work. Young Juan spent his days using a pickax to break rock to lay railroad tracks for the ore cars going to the smelter. He graduated to powder man, drilling holes to hold the dynamite for blasting. In that job, Juan earned $4 a day. He gave it his all working, and he gave it his all playing. He truly lived the life of a vato loco, like so many others. After his shift at the mine, he joined the guys at dance and pool halls, some weeks raking in up to $8 playing billiards. He loved the brawling, drinking and dancing. As America headed for World War II, Juan was young and carefree. But he would grow up quickly. He married, had a child, enlisted into the Army and was shipped off to fight the forces of Nazism in Europe. Juan left a wife and a son who was just learning to walk. He vividly remembers the troop train to the East Coast. When he got off at one stop in Texas to buy a bottle of whiskey, another man took his seat. Juan told him to move. "We're first before Mexicans," said the man in the seat. "Mexicans don't mean nothing here in Texas." A stranger intervened, telling the man: "Well, you better get up, get off your ass and let this Mexican take his seat." "Who do you think you are?" asked the Texan. The stranger pulled back his jacket, and pinned to his shirt was a badge. The Texan kept his mouth shut, got up and walked away to another seat. The lawman walked up to Juan and asked: "Are you going overseas to the war?" Juan had been told not to reveal that information. "No, we are just going to Maryland." But the lawman knew where they were headed. Juan and the other soldiers settled back in their seats. Juan took a swig of whiskey, passed the bottle to a friend and marveled at the difference a uniform makes. Juan took in all he could along the way. He saw the Mississippi River overflow its banks. He saw the great city of New York. And in Europe, he saw and did things he would like to forget. "I remember Kassel, Germany. It was a railroad center (in the Alsace region of France). "The (Royal) Air Force bombed the area, and everything was destroyed. There were lots of platoons, and the American troops had to go through the bombed town and check for German soldiers. If there were any German soldiers alive, we had to kill them." In the rubble of a bombed building, Juan found "a baby , his leg cut off and part of his stomach out. He was crying. "I couldn't take him with me. He was suffering and all alone. Sometimes I think about him. I took my pistol and shot him in the head. To this day I remember that baby. He was about 10 months old. God forgive me." The story does not surprise Lynn McGuire, who served as a sergeant with Uncle Johnny's regiment the 276th Infantry and has written a history of it. McGuire says the bombers had knocked out the air-raid sirens on their first pass over Kassel. Nobody had a chance to take cover. "Thousands and thousands of civilians were killed. You could smell that city from miles away," he says. Immediately upon landing in Europe, Uncle Johnny's regiment had been positioned to defend against the last German offensive on the Western front, Operation Nordwind, along the German border in northern France. It faced the highly trained and experienced German 6th SS Mountain Division. "We were your basic cannon fodder," says McGuire. The 276th joined the fight on New Year's Eve 1944. "It was hell," says McGuire. "We took 56 percent casualties in 86 days." Juan camped out in foxholes. It was much different from the campouts he and his brothers and nephews had along the banks of the Gila River where they enjoyed their boyhood. The war was "the only time I went hungry," he says. At one point, Juan thought all was lost. Sitting in a shallow foxhole blasted from frozen ground, Juan was surrounded by German forces and under heavy fire. "I started praying to la Vírgen de Guadalupe, and I saw her. She came to me. She spoke: 'Juan Diego, are you afraid to die?' "No, I am not afraid to die. I just want God to forgive my sins," Juan told la Vírgen. The brown-skinned beauty "reached her hand out to me and touched my forehead. She then disappeared. "A miracle occurred. American troops started coming. There was reinforcement. The troops pushed the Germans back, and the American troops were able to get out of there safely," says Uncle Johnny, his face overtaken by an expression of amazement. He made a promise to la Vírgen that when the war was over and he was sent home, he would make a trip to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and light candles at the church there. He did, and he gave the priest all the money he had won playing poker and dice on the ship back to the states. The priest and Uncle Johnny knelt together and prayed. "He blessed me, saying: 'Vaya con Dios.' (Go with God.) After Germany surrendered, Juan toured France, Germany and England as a boxer and as an entertainer in a USO show. His talent? He was an artist. He could draw upside-down, and he could talk a blue streak. "They used to call me Chief, and the captain came to my room one day and said: 'It's time to get up, Chief. I'm sending you to Nice, France. " 'They are having an entertainment contest, and you are going to win it." He packed and flew off to Nice. He watched the other acts from backstage. "There were guys playing guitar. They were good. Guys singing. They were good. And then they had guys tap-dancing. I was the fifth one." Juan took a swig of cognac before he walked onstage holding a chalkboard. "God, I must have seen a million people. Christ, it scared the hell out of me. I couldn't even talk." It felt like minutes before Juan opened his mouth. "Ladies and gentlemen, I come from a family of five girls and five boys. My mother liked the name Charlie so well, she named all her boys Charlie, except Jack. She named him Juan. That's me," Uncle Johnny recalls of his act. "All this time I'm drawing upside down and backwards. Oh, everybody was hollering with laughter. I'm drawing rabbits, a squirrel, names and fancy letters," Uncle Johnny says. After about five minutes, he walked offstage and took another swallow of cognac. "The people are hollering 'More, more.'" Juan did an encore, and he won first prize. Uncle Johnny has a God-given talent for drawing and painting. When I was a young girl, he would paint our mailbox silver and write our last name in fancy letters in royal-blue paint. For years, he did the lettering on signs for President Fruit Stand on South 12th Avenue near West Ajo Way he'd paint vegetables and the name of the business. He also painted houses, and when he retired he painted the exterior of my house out of the kindness of his heart. And for years, when his health permitted, he painted countless times over graffiti scrawled on my backyard wall. Over the years, I've spent hundreds of dollars on paint for my wall. It would be so great if these kids were as persistent with their schoolwork as they are in flashing their penmanship throughout the 'hood. I'll never forget reading a 1998 story in the Star when the Sam Hughes Neighborhood, east of the university, was hit by taggers. A Crime Prevention League work crew almost immediately charged into the neighborhood to paint over the messages. In my barrio, near Pueblo High Magnet School, many homeowners have to save their money to buy the paint to cover up messages. It's either that or wait for the graffiti-abatement program to catch up to your request. Uncle Johnny never complained about the graffiti. He'd just come over when it appeared and paint over it. When he was still driving a car, he'd come by every Sunday after Mass to visit Mama, whom he and Uncle Joe would lovingly call carnala a term of endearment for sister. Uncle Johnny shared his stories for decades each Sunday. I loved to sit and listen as he put on a performance. Dios, como me reía. (God, how I laughed.) As we talk this time, on a hot July afternoon, my 78-year-old uncle is refreshed by a powerful swamp cooler directed at his head. These days, Uncle Johnny's blood pressure gives him a bit of trouble. In 1971, a stroke paralyzed his left side. Uncle Johnny exercised for years to regain his strength by squeezing a ball in the palm of his left hand. When I saw him during his recovery, he would squeeze my hand with his weakened one and make me wince in pain. Then he'd smile and say: "See, I've got my strength back." Uncle Johnny still draws. He enjoys showing off for my Mama's grandchildren and his own. He's a retired civilian employee of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. During the Cold War he painted missile silos. He no longer drives, bowls, plays pool or fishes. He hasn't gotten into a fight in decades. He has even stopped helping out at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, where he volunteered as a St. Vincent de Paul Society worker and as a church usher. He was a sight on Sundays, wearing checkered polyester suits and colorful ties that Bob Hope, I'm sure, could have used in comedy acts. These days, he reads and watches ballgames on television. And he prays the rosary several times a day. He is still thanking "la Vírgen" for saving his life 56 years ago.
|
Ch. 1: Field of death
Ch. 18: The New Deal
Ch. 24: Cotton pickers and copper miners Ch. 27: The family doubles its size
|
