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Chapter 31: From picker to maidMama found ways to beat poverty
By the time I was in seventh grade in 1968, the cotton-picking machines had taken over the fields. At age 50, Mama searched for a new occupation. Tucson's face was changing. Subdivisions and shopping centers sprouted and eventually gobbled up the farm fields where barrio families had long labored to eke out a life.
Picking was Mama's life. She had grown up doing it, and I don't think she ever figured she deserved better. It was difficult for her to imagine a better job, since she could not read or write well. She felt like la burra, the beast of burden, who did the sweaty jobs for others who made her feel inferior. Mama's pollitos inherited some of those insecurities. I remember having to fight off those thoughts in high school. I was ashamed of being poor, and I felt inferior around those who were financially better off. Mama never wanted our friends to come to our house. We were too poor, she'd say. ``If friends came over, they had to sit outside,'' my cousin Raúl recalls. ``If they wanted to go to the bathroom, tough. (We said) there was no bathroom here,'' he says, laughing. I shouldn't have cared. The barrio was full of poor compadres and comadres. Maybe some were better off than us, but they knew poverty, too. I can laugh about it now, but back then it did a whole number on my psyche. I was angry about being poor, and poor Mama was the brunt of my anger. I can't count the times I told her that I should have never been born. Mama just put her head down and prayed to God and her santos. He had given her the strength to survive this life. Certainly he would give her strength to survive six teen-agers - their mouths and their moods. Mama, meanwhile, found work as a maid at the Pickwick Motel on Benson Highway. She walked to and from the motel, worked hard and left rooms spotless. She earned $1 an hour, some weeks making less than in the fields. (Next time you stay at a motel, for God's sake leave the maids a generous tip.) But Mama had a knack for managing what little money the family had. She also had a knack for making great meals from government surplus food. After we took in my cousins Raúl, Irene, Jaime and Richard, the social workers told Mama to go each month to a building west of North Fourth Avenue, not far from the railroad tracks, to get the family's allotment of food. We stood in line with the other poor families. We came home with rice, powdered milk and eggs, peas, white beans, blocks of cheese, peanut butter and canned meat. The canned meat was similar to corned beef, and Mama would make chorizo with it, using Mogen David wine and red chile. Sounds odd, I know, but it was delicious. Mama also made the fluffiest scrambled eggs from the powder, mixing in papas, tomate and chile verde. She had the most trouble getting us to drink the milk. ``There are hungry people in the world,'' Mama would say. ``Don't waste food. God will punish you for being wasteful.'' Yes, Mama. She brainwashed me, and that's why to this day I usually clean my plate, even when I'm stuffed. We thanked God for Nestle's Quik chocolate and strawberry flavors to help the milk go down. In eighth grade, I got a job. Sister Esther Marie, a wonderful teacher at St. John the Evangelist School, asked me one day if I would like to work as a receptionist on Saturday at St. John's rectory. I talked it over with Mama and I went to work. At age 13, I earned the same $1 an hour Mama made. I began each Saturday at 8 a.m. and brought home $8 a week. Mama let me keep the money, and I learned to save and buy clothes. When I went to Pueblo High School, my rectory job helped me through business courses. I practiced my typing on letters for the priests and filling out baptismal, confirmation and marriage certificates. On Sundays and in the summers, I went to help Mama at the motel, which changed names over the years to Sage & Sand and The Lazy 8. She'd make the beds and clean the bathrooms, while I dusted, vacuumed and emptied the trash. I'd come home with aching muscles and wonder about Mama's strength. It was not of this world. Mama could have gotten rich at the job if she were more felonious. Tucson has long been a gateway for drug activity, and Mama would find the leftovers - guns, cocaine, marijuana and money. She just turned it all in to the manager. Once, she forgot and came home with a bag of white powder in her dress pocket. I freaked. I could picture my poor Mama getting busted. Mama laughed and brushed my fears aside. ``Don't worry,'' she said, and flushed the powder down the toilet. She seemed to always know what to do. As we grew, we kids pitched in more and more. I worked at the rectory. Cousin Jaime became a bag boy at the Lucky supermarket at Southgate Shopping Center. My brother Raymond worked at the Dairy Queen on South 12th Avenue, and cousin Richard made the football team. Mama kept reminding us to do well in school and graduate. It was too late for teen-agers Raúl and Irene. They had already quit school, married and left the home on West President Street.
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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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