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Carol, From what you say, my intuition may be right about why my folks ended up near Kansas and working on the railroads. Also, my father, after the railroad work and doing farm labor for others, settled in Brush (Snyder, actually) and raised wheat and sugar beets! He must have done that work, why else we he choose to settle down and do that? In what census did you find all those Mexican families in Texas? Were there any Olague (my father's surname), Tinajero, Alvarado, Garcia? What immigration papers did you research? At my mother's request (she was an American citizen) my father became a naturalized citizen and all I have is the naturalization papers from 1941. As far as I know, the government did not track him. He immigrated from Mexico through the El Paso checkpoint in 1916 and he died in 1966 in California, but I found no immigration papers other than the naturalization papers, a copy of which I obtained from a courthouse in Denver. Emilie
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Hola alguien tendra información sobre
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face=Tahoma> ranchos@yahoogroups.com Emilie: It was the "pisca" - you go My fondest memory Except for two of Esperanza |
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face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> Emilie: It was the "pisca" - you go where the next harvesting is needed - at least that is what my grandparents did - they also traveled throughout the US - all the way to Washington state before ending up in the middle of Michigan. My aunts/uncles/mom never shared their hardship,except for bits and pieces - the stinging hands from picking peppers, the potato sacks converted to dresses/shirts, etc.... My fondest memory was from my oldest uncle Alfred - he always wanted to have his own piece of land to harvest and grow crops, and he was able to meet his goal in Carson City, Michigan - they were the only Mexican family there as well. Except for two of their siblings, the rest of the 10 siblings settled in Detroit - also not very populated with Mexicans - but at least they did have a torillera. Their preparation of food had to be accommodated to existing and available ingredients - so for example, they made enchiladas out of chile powder and flour - not bad tasting, but not the same as made with chile ancho. Esperanza
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Carol, My story could have been very much like yours. You see, I was born in Brush, Colorado, in Morgan County, way up in the northeast corner by Kansas. When WWII started, my father got a job working in the shipyards in Richmond CA and sent my mother, my sister and I to my mother's relatives in southern NM near El Paso TX, then after the war he sent for us and we settled in what is now known as Silicon Valley. My father was brought to Colorado from Jerez in 1916 at the age of 13 by his father who I believe arrived earlier. In the census records, I find no other Spanish surnames. When my husband was helping me search census records before they were all online, he kept telling me, "No hay ni un frijol aqui! [I don't see a single beaner here!] Why did your folks end up there?". I often wonder why they ended up way up there; maybe you can tell me why some Mexicans ended up so far north then (we are all over now). My father surprised me one day when he told me he had been to Wyoming as a young man. We had been talking about why he and my mother never went out to eat, and he said he didn't like restaurant food, that my mother fixed everything just the way he liked it; but he said there was one place in Wyoming (I wish I had asked where and what took him there) that served excellent "chile". I imagine it was what they later called chili con carne, or just "chili". He said he and some fellow workers would go there and just say "Chile!" (I don't think they could speak much English if at all) and they would be served a bowl of delicious chili with crackers. He said he loved it and would never forget it, that he wished he could have some right there and then. So I hope you can shed some light as to why some Mexicans so early in the 20th Century went directly way up to northeast Colorado and Kansas, rather than to Texas, NM, CA, AZ. Maybe they didn't go there directly. I think perhaps they got jobs on the railroads in Texas after crossing over (they came on trains from Mexico and maybe inquired about jobs) and perhaps it was railroad jobs that took them so far north. I do recall my father telling me that he had once worked in a railroad roundhouse (where they clean and service locomotives) and that it was the hardest work he had ever done in his life and he left that work as soon as he could. Emilie Garcia Port Orchard, WA -- style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> |

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