I was having a conversation with a gentleman who was visiting our facility and the conversation found its way to his mother’s childhood. He was bragging about how she prevailed over adversity and not only survived the “projects” of south El Paso, but made a name for herself as a successful local realtor. His childhood experience was not unfamiliar to me because similar experiences have been shared with me over the years; however, such experiences are not very common. I shared with him my similar childhood experience and while speaking with him, I knew that I had to put my memories into words.
I was born in El Paso, TX, a city situated on Texas/Mexico border, a mostly Mexican-American community that is representative of the broader Mexican-American population in America; and by that I mean that the local community is mostly poor. Such it was for me and my family. I’m not sure exactly where in the city I was born, mom said I was born on Grama St and she has said I was born at 4,000 Bush St, in south central El Paso. However, my earliest recollections from my pre-school days were on Dailey St and I tell folks that I grew up on that street.
It’s not exactly true that I grew up on Dailey St because we moved often in those days: I remember living on Dailey, in two houses on Mauer; on Colfax, two houses on Chelsea, and on El Paso Drive – all before I was in the sixth grade. We were renters. Nonetheless, I claim Dailey as the neighborhood where I grew up.
I’m not sure how old I was when we moved into that neighborhood on Dailey, but we moved out when I was about 5 years old. The neighborhood had single family homes and a few single story apartments. We lived in one of the apartment buildings. Most of us were Mexican American, with one black family in a yellow house in the middle of the block. At one end of the block was the San Juan Catholic Church with a small convenience store, Las Hormigitas, across the street. At the other end of the block was a busy street and a grocery store called Leo’s.
I guess there was less than a dozen apartments in our building, immediately north of the apartment building was an alley and on the east side of the property was a large open space where residents parked their automobiles. There were a couple of trees, no grass.
Our dwelling was an apartment on the street side of the complex that had about 10 units. As I recall
The units did not have indoor toilets; there was a wooden outhouse by the alley that had a porcelain commode. All residents used that toilet and everyone had to take their own paper. This posed challenges in cold weather and at night. For children, a dark, cold alley was not only uncomfortable, but it was chock full of imagined dangers such as “la India” our version of the boogey man. My sister, the eldest, had polio and she was easily frightened. I remember her making me accompany her to the toilet to stand guard outside the privy. This also caused another “condition” inside our home. We had a bucket in the corner that doubled as a toilet for those times when going to the alley was not acceptable and the bucket was covered with a piece of wood to contain the emanating odor.
As long as I’m talking about plumbing, we had an indoor cold water faucet, no hot water at the sink. There was no bathroom sink, or tub in the apartment. We had a gas pipe for the gas heater, but no gas for a water heater or a stove. Cooking was on a kerosene stove and we had to walk to the corner store to buy the kerosene. I remember carrying a glass jug to the store where they had a 55 gallon drum with a hand-cranked pump. They would pump the kerosene into the glass jug for us.
The kerosene stove was used for cooking and to heat the bath water. Our baths were in a galvanized metal tub that also doubled as the washing machine. When I first heard the expression “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” I knew exactly what it meant. I was the youngest of five children – the baby. My bath always came last. It was much too laborious to change the bath water for each individual bath so we shared. I was always last and I remember the water being a white bluish tint when it was my turn to bathe; the water was NOT clear for my bath.
Our apartment was one long room. In that one room was the 'kitchen' sink, the stove, the heater, the front door and our meager furnishings. Our parents’ bed was toward the rear of the room. The room was partitioned with a large canvas curtain. Mom and dad slept on a bed in “their room” and all the kids (5) slept on one bed in the front room. I guess we looked like a plate of rolled tacos.
There a few characters in that apartment complex. Dona Rocha was a scavenger who lived in the rear apartment and she had a wooden enclosure. The enclosure's wall were roof high and she had a pad locked door to protect her belongings. As I said, she was a scavenger. She would walk around pulling a wagon, the Radio Flyer type of wagon, and she collected metals, mostly tin cans. This was late 50's and aluminum cans had been invented yet. She collected copper wire and other metal objects. Her belongings were stored in that wooden enclosure, presumably to sell to salvage yards. There was one on Beacon St., one street south from out street. My older brother of a some of the neighborhood hooligans would climb on the roof of the apartment building to steal some of her booty so they could sell it to the recycler on Beacon St for some spending money.
Then there was Dona Severa. She was a small woman with very long salt and pepper hair. I recall seeing her wash her hair outdoors, with water and dirt. She lived alone for whatever reason I believed her to be childless and never married. We all thought she was a witch. One time I entered her small apartment. It appeared neat and orderly but there was a peculiar, and unclean, smell in that place. I've since spoken to a couple of people who knew of her and we all had the same impression.
Dad was living with us in these early years. He had a car, black, I recall, and the door handle on the passenger side was broken off. Once I cut my hand on that broken handle and my father wrapped my in his hanky. We had a black and white television and record player. Dad worked in the municipal garage and mom worked at the pant manufacturing plant a few streets south from us.
