PRUNES, CHERRIES AND A HOT MEXICAN POTATO

I am from the land of prune orchards and cherry blossoms blanketing a green valley with gentle rolling hills - a fertile nest for my running brown feet. My California birthplace of Santa Clara Valley is now known only for silicon. The blooming trees and tilled earth are gone. Simple cottages and victorians, churches and ranches replaced by hi-rise luxury condos to house the execs, pack em in, pack em in. Endless processions of slow moving beemers and mercedes suv's clog the 8-lane arteries. Slab offices abound. Where are the sweet-smelling breezes?

I am from Kyrie Eleisons, genuflecting, and rosary beads. Candles and incense and waiting in the backseat of a two-tone Chevrolet with my toddler sister, waiting for my mom to stop yakking with my Tia Petra so we could drive home into the night. How could they possibly have so much to talk about?

I am from people who worked the land, worked hard. My mom as as teen picked grapes and cotton in the fields of her birthplace Wasco California in the 30’s and 40’s. Not an immigrant, she was a bright English-speaking educated girl who lived in a time and place where that was what was available to Mexicans in this agricultural area. Hard times. Depression. Her momma died at 35. She was the eldest. This was how she helped her father bring in more money.

My grandfather Natividad cried like a baby when his 3 sons were sent to war. Jesus, Natividad Jr, and Matilde. They went overseas to fight the Germans. They made the Wasco paper. My Uncle "Chewie" (Jesus) came back from war with a tapestry that they say came from a church. He was always a renegade. I remember that tapestry had heavy golden thread. It hangs dim in my memory on the walls of my Tia Lupe’s house. They were all infantry. Why do they call them "infants" when they are on the front lines, doing hand to hand in the streets of europe, sniping from alleyways? War stories. Too close. I don't want to know how many they killed. Yet how do you witness and ignore atrocities at the same time?

I come from a long line of warriors, standing tall and dancing on the nasty bloody edge of life. I come from people standing low to put food on your tables. I come from a woman who refused to be downtrodden, who fought the odds when life got tough and she was left to raise her own family alone – Juliana Torres Garcia. Refused to accept welfare when illness took my father. Refused to be labeled a lazy Mexican. She was a fighter, she fought an unknown face who thought her family didn’t belong in lily-white Santa Clara. She fought this lady with love, the bigot became her friend. Amazing.

Potatoes. I know my momma picked potatoes for your momma's casserole. I know where I come from mostly from my mom's memories. My dad was too ill and mentally unavailable to tell me his stories. The house of my mom's youth is now an empty lot filled with weeds and bordered with a cyclone fence. This hellish town called Wasco is now known for its fields of roses and its brand new super-penitentiary. You pay penance by living in Wasco. Its HOT.

I remember Wasco in patches from my youthful summers we spent there. There’s an aroma that rises from the mingling smells of cooling pavement, asphalt, and exhaling earth at night that was somehow soothing. the crickets would sing in relief, signalling its safe to come outside and play under the stars on a creaky wooden porch. I remember the lush growth of strawberries and roses everywhere, and the delapidated model T we used to climb around on like a jungle-gym. I remember this landing place for the Torres family, the family of towering beings who learned to bend low to survive the heat, the times, the war, the depression, bigotry. Who put their blood into the earth so it would be fertile ground for me to grow, to feed the white folk.

I am rooted deep into California. A crazy mix of ocean breezes, redwood trees and tidal waves of cement and people. I am from a rich stew of spices nurtured by blood, sweat and chile. I am from all this and men with rich baritone voices singing to guitar around the nightfire while my Tia Angelita danced like a wild spanish dancer by a river in the rolling hills of my memories. Arriba, arriba, I declare to the snap of my laptop. Where is my lime?

Originally written Saturday, April 21, 2001 10:06 AM