IMAGE: Some of us with our mother in a photo taken for a local crossing permit. Circa 1950s.
There were no triple walls then, in 1962, the year we crossed the border between Mexicali and Calexico in our way to a place that promised us a better future. Triple walls are abundant now in myriad spots along the geopolitical line that defines where Mexico begins and the United States ends. And vice versa. There was only an eight-foot chain link fence there in the fifties and early sixties, with rolled barbed wire on top, protecting illegal entry to this country. The pervious barrier extended its presence three or four miles to the west and just as many miles to the east of the border crossing.
Permanent resident visas were fairly easy to get that year. It was for us, anyway, because our father already had one. He had gotten it in 1945, the same year the big war ended. The hard part was saying goodbye to Mexico. It was a time of trepidation, especially for me. Before us stood an uncertain future in a foreign place. But we eventually got over it and once we accepted the reality of moving to the United States, our minds began to envision a fabled world dominated by the English language and light skinned people, and with plenty work and opportunities for us all.
We liked what we imagined, but we were also saddened by the forthcoming trek to the north. It was especially tough saying goodbye to our cherished home in Mexicali’s Colonia Cuauhtémoc. We had struggled financially there, but we had also thrived in that abode. We had our own house on a big lot with fruit trees and other greenery, a throng of animals raised for profit, and plenty space for playing and running around. Besides, most of us were going to school there and had friends and family in that valley. Leaving Mexicali was really hard on us all.
Our mother had made the decision to go north. She was tired of the grim winter months when we repeatedly had a hard time making ends meet. Our father drove tractors on the U.S. side. He had plenty work just prior to spring, in the summer, and during part of the fall, but was usually unemployed in the time between. To earn a few dollars in those times of dire straits, our dad would go to Imperial Valley and give rides to folks that needed them and that he found along the roads. He used his old beat-up car as a taxi. We also chipped in. We sold shoes and other goods on credit (house to house). I did it on a bicycle; our mother and my oldest sister sold the wares and collected payments from steady customers from the back of a 1952 Ford station wagon. I also sold newspapers and shined shoes. In a sense, we did well, well enough to pay for the vehicle, but not sufficiently enough to maintain a family of eleven.
We were no strangers to the local U.S. area, by the way. Prior to getting our permanent residency, we had a border-crossing card that allowed us to visit the United States for shopping and other needs, as long as we remained within a limited regional area for no more than seventy-two hours. We all came across often, mainly to buy groceries and other consumer goods. We also went to the U.S. side to visit our dad at his workplace. After the crops, we would go there to pick up leftover melons and vegetables before they were to be plowed and buried underground. We always wondered why such waste took place.
Mexicali, our hometown, was no stranger to Americans either. For all purposes, it was developed and farmed for the first time by a company controlled by the publisher of the Los Angeles Times and his son in law. In 1902, Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler and their Colorado River Land Company received a concession from the Mexican government (and a man named Guillermo Andrade) to raise cotton in what was to later become the Mexicali Valley. It was before the beginning of the revolution of nineteen ten. Much of Mexico’s economy had strong ties with foreign enterprises at the time.
Once the Colorado River Land Company began to farm the land in that valley, instead of using Mexican workers, it used Chinese immigrants. Go figure. They were mostly “Coolies,” laborers that had been imported from China to help build the railroad lines and other governmental projects in California and other western states. Once they completed their gigs north of the border, they were to return home to China, but most didn’t. A few went to Mexico. Besides the Coolies, there were other Chinese men that ended up in Mexicali after landing in the port of San Felipe with the intent to cross the border into California and other points in the United States. Some died in the desert during their trek north from the port; some stayed in the valley and worked for the Colorado River Land Company.
Over time, once Mexicans were hired to work the land, most Chinese laborers and their families moved from the farms to the city where they built a Chinatown near the border crossing. It was called “La Chinesca.” They soon founded stores, bars, and restaurants to serve the needs of the growing Mexicali population. The area thrived for years and added a rich cultural element to the city. The ethnic richness infused by the Chinese immigrants to the region remains today.
THE BEGINNING OF OUR TREK NORTH
Once we had our permanent resident visas, our mother wanted to leave right away for the United States. Our father wanted to wait. It was in August, a time when he had plenty work. He thought it would be best to save some money before embarking on the impending trip. Our mother felt differently and said that not much would be saved if we waited. She also felt that we would miss precious opportunities to pick fruit in northern California, so we ended up leaving right away.
One morning, the eleven of us piled in the 1952 Ford station wagon with a few belongings and took off for the U.S. immigration office in Calexico. We only had twenty dollars with us, but we weren’t bothered by it. The plan was to find work quickly and make plenty money soon. Lots of work would be waiting for us, we thought.
Processing the paperwork at the border’s immigration office took a couple of hours. It was still early. I don’t know if it was preplanned, but we spent the night at the house of our father’s cousin and his family. They lived in Westmorland, a little over thirty miles north of the border. The following morning we took off for Los Angeles and beyond.
Most cars were pretty big then. Our station wagon was, anyway, but it wasn’t big enough for the nine of us kids, two adults, plus our personal belongings. We had to tie down our wares on top of the vehicle. Most of them were stored in boxes, but someplace close to Indio, part of the cargo got loose and flew out and landed all over the highway. Our father stopped the car and got out to pick up the stuff. I got out too and helped. It was dangerous. There were blankets, sheets, clothing, and can’t remember what else, spread out on the asphalt and one side of the road. We picked up most of it. It was embarrassing. Once the cargo was again secured, we continued our journey.
Nothing much of significance took place on the trip after the cargo mishap, except, I must admit, I was a little scared riding in the car once we got on the freeway near Riverside. There were tons of cars and trucks moving fast on several lanes next to our station wagon. It was scary. The only nice thing worth enjoying on that crowded and surrealistic road was looking at the oranges hanging on the trees that lined the freeway. It was one orchard after another. A few miles north of Los Angeles, we stopped at Canoga Park to look for work picking green onions. We knew of the place because a neighbor in Mexicali had worked there as a “bracero” (temporary worker) and had mentioned that he always made good money working at that farm. It was backbreaking work, though, he had warned us.
The owner of the farm was of Japanese descent. That’s what our father said. The farmer gave us work and told us what to do and how much he would pay. I can’t remember if he paid by the bucket, by crate, or by weight, but the bottom line is that we didn’t earn much that day. We made a little over ten dollars for about two hours of work of all of us combined. I guess we weren’t used to that kind of work. One had to bend down over and over again to pull the stems and the onions from the soil. It really got tough after a while. No one worked more than an hour except me. I was the oldest boy and I had my pride and didn’t want to quit. After a while, though, our dad went to the farmer and told him that we were done. He paid us and a few minutes later we were on our way to California’s central valley.
Our green onions picking experience had taught us a couple of things. For one, we learned that farm work wasn’t easy. We also learned to appreciate any kind of work. Two days later, we were wishing we were back at Canoga Park picking green onions.
Right after that failed attempt doing farm work and prior to going over the Grapevine and the Tejon Pass, we stopped at a small grocery store and gas station in Castaic. We bought gas for the car and bread and cold cuts for us. The twenty dollars we had brought from Mexico were now gone and so was part of the ten dollars and cents we had earned working for the Japanese farmer. We had plenty opportunities to eat on the road, though. Every so many miles our dad had to stop to let the car cool off. It kept overheating. To make matters worse, one of the younger girls kept getting car sick and throwing up. It was tough going over those mountains.
It was late by the time we got to Bakersfield, the next place where our dad wanted to look for work. We spent the night in the car, in Oildale, next to highway ninety-nine and several one-arm, hammer like oil pumps. It was difficult to go to sleep with all the noise made by those pumps in eternal motion. Early in the morning we drove to the farm employment office in Bakersfield. There was no picking work available, we were told, but were advised to try the next big town to the north: Delano. It took us about an hour to get there. We were all hungry, but for some reason food no longer mattered much, especially for those of us that were older. We wanted to find work.
The local farm employment office in Delano gave us the name and address of a Mexican labor contractor that needed grape pickers. It was the address of a house, we later found out. He wasn’t there when we got to the place, but his wife was. She wasn’t very nice. She told our dad in Spanish that she didn’t know how to get hold of him and that our best bet would be to return later that day to try to find him. We waited near a gas station, not far from the contractor’s place. We were there for a long time. We kept looking towards the house, hoping to see someone arrive, but no one did. Late in the day, our dad and I returned to the contractor’s place and were again met by his wife. She was still in a bad mood I could tell. She also looked mean. She told us to return the following day, but our dad insisted on seeing him as soon as possible. He told her that we needed work. That didn’t seem to matter to her, though, but to get rid of us, gave us the address of the field where her husband had a crew picking grapes and told us to look for him there the following morning.
Our dad drove to the field. It was easy to find. He had looked up the address on a large map pasted on the inside wall of the gas station. We were all hungry. With the money we had, our parents bought a couple of cans of beans and bread at a grocery store next to the gas station. After parking the station wagon by the grape field, our mom opened the cans of beans and spread the contents on slices of bread. Once we ate we went to sleep. The contractor arrived early in the morning, before sunup. We were ready to go to work. I was with my father when he went to talk to the contractor. He looked Mexican.
He told us that we needed to have scissors to be able to work. They were table grapes, he said, and required to be cut with scissors. He wasn’t nice either, just like his wife. Our dad tried to ask him if we could borrow the scissors, but the man didn’t let him talk.
“No scissors, no work,” he said and turned around and left.
Our dad looked sad and dismayed. By the time we returned to the car, he looked pale. He got in the station wagon and told everyone about the scissors and that we would go farther north, to Fresno, to look for work. No one said anything. We had no food, no money, no work, and the car was running out of gas. Before getting on highway ninety-nine towards our new destination, our dad stopped at a ranch. He knew ranches well; he had worked in many of them in Mexicali, in Imperial Valley and other parts of California. He pulled a couple of pipe wrenches that were lodged next to the spare tire, took them with him, and knocked on the front door of the house at the ranch. Soon thereafter a man came out. We couldn’t hear what our dad was saying, but after a while he handed the tools to the man at the door. He got back into the car and drove to a fuel pump next to a shed. The man walked there and filled the tank of our car with gas. He then waved goodbye and smiled at us. He was tall and light skinned.
It was quiet inside the car; no one said much. I felt good, though. Exchanging the tools for fuel made sense to me. Our father’s quick thinking had turned a bad situation into one of hope and positivity. There was a sense of relief, too, inside of me. We would eventually find work, I told myself. I think others in the car felt the same.
It took us over two hours to get to Fresno and its farm employment office, but it was still early, way before noon. There were several postings on a board on one of the walls of the place. People were needed for different types of work, but were for picking crops two or three weeks into the future. There was no current work listed. The clerk at the counter told us about a contractor that was looking for families to pick figs close to Herndon, but that the work wouldn’t start until a week later. We were okay with that. He gave us a slip of paper with the address of the camp and the name of the contractor. It was on Bullard Avenue, not far from Highway 99.
It took close to an hour to get there, but when we got to the farm, the contractor was already waiting for us. He had been told we were coming by the employment agency, he said. He seemed happy to see us. It was a small camp with a few metal sheds converted into houses. Six of them at the most, maybe eight. They had metal roofs too, but were protected from the heat by the tall fig trees in the orchard. No one was living in the site yet. We got out of the car and welcomed the shade and the breeze. There were figs on the ground that had fallen from the trees. They looked good. We wondered whether we could pick them up and eat them. We were very hungry.
The contractor was slender and tall and had blue eyes. He was very nice to us all and talked to us in broken Spanish. Our father could speak English well and eventually they both conversed in that language. He told our dad that we could stay at the camp, but that work wouldn’t start until a week later. Once our father told him that we were willing to wait, but that we had no money and hadn’t eaten much the last two days, the contractor told our dad that we could go to a small country store in the center of Figarden and get some essential groceries and gas for the car to carry us over until we started working. He also mentioned that he would go there beforehand and set up credit for us. We couldn’t believe it. A perfect stranger trusted us and made us feel welcome.
It felt good having a place to stay and knowing that soon we were going to also have food to eat. We selected the house that was next to the entrance of the camp. They were all the same, though. It had an elevated large bedroom with a wooden floor and a small-attached room with a concrete floor and open windows that served as a kitchen. It had a wood stove. There was a set of restrooms (for men and women) and showers in a small building in the center of the camp. They had running water. That was good, too. In Mexicali we had an outhouse and only cold water for the shower.
I don’t remember picking up figs and eating them that day, but we probably did. We were really hungry. Besides, there were lots of them all over the ground. Once settled in our new home, our dad and a couple of us went to the store. It was next to the railroad track, on Bullard Avenue, the same road that ran next to the camp. I remember it well. It was a narrow and straight road with miles of fig trees planted on both sides. The owner of the small store already knew about us. He told us what kind of stuff we could buy. We picked up a sack of flour, a large bag of pinto beans, potatoes, lard, eggs, butter, some meat, milk, and a few other things. The car still had fuel left, but our dad decided to top it off, just in case we needed it. Once back at the camp, our mother cooked beans, potatoes and meat and made a huge pile of tortillas. I think she used a long, empty glass bottle to roll the dough. Several of us helped. We had an unforgettable meal later on that day. The food tasted great. Cooking on a wood stove in an open kitchen, among fig trees, gives food a peculiar flavor. Our mother prepared the beans the same way she had done it before in Mexico, but those beans had a particular scent to them. They were really good. The tortillas were good, too. I ate a lot of them. We all felt tired and full after the feast.
The week went by fast. We had a chance to explore the orchard and other areas close by. We ate a lot of figs and met other migrant families that arrived at the camp after we did. They were all Mexican. One of the families was from Brawley, in Imperial Valley; another one was from Coachella, but was made up of only the father and his four sons. The rest of that family had stayed back home, they said. Both groups had been coming to Figarden to pick figs for several seasons. At night they would get together and talk and play songs on their radios. I learned a lot about our new country from them.
THE FIG PICKING SEASON BEGINS
On the first day of picking figs, the wife of the contractor joined us, so we could learn the trade, working right along with us. She gave us tips on how to do the work efficiently. She was very nice and spoke some Spanish. She was about thirty years old, had blond hair and blue eyes. I was surprised to see someone like her involved in such hard work. Although we used ladders to reach the fruit in the trees, we spent part of the day bent down picking up the figs that had fallen on the ground.
I really liked the contractor’s wife; there was a welcoming quality to her too, just like her husband’s. I asked her where she was from; I was curious. She said she was an “Arkie.” I didn’t know what that meant.
“From Arkansas,” she explained in Spanish. Once we learned the ropes, she left us and wished us good luck. She was very nice. I will never forget her. I wish I could remember her name.
On the same day that we started working picking figs by hand, I was offered a chance to become a helper on a contraption that swept up the figs off the ground. It was late afternoon when a man working for the grower came looking for me at the orchard where several members of our family and myself were still learning how to do our job. The man had met me before at the camp, where he had mentioned, in passing, the possibility of needing a helper for one of the two fig-picking machines the grower had. He had heard that the previous worker, a local man who did the job the year before, was probably not going to return. But he still had to confirm it. The job involved hard work, he said, but thought that I was big enough physically to handle it. I think he was just trying to build me up so I would take the job if available. It made me feel good, though, to know that a perfect stranger would think that I was fit enough to do a man’s job. I was only sixteen.
Once offered the opportunity, I accepted it. It paid a dollar an hour and I would work directly for the grower. Our mother and father liked the idea of me working by the hour. So far that day, we hadn’t made much money picking figs by hand. I met the other three members of the crew the following morning, my first day as a helper. All three spoke Spanish and were all of Mexican heritage. I was assigned to work with Billy, the operator of one of the two tractors. I can’t remember the names of the other driver or his helper, but they were both from Arizona. From Tucson. They spent part of the year in central California following different crops.
The contraption consisted of a tractor with a sweeper and a trailer behind it. It moved up and down each row in the orchard and picked up figs, besides dirt and all kinds of trash lying on the ground. A conveyor belt brought the mix from the sweeper to the trailer and deposited it in wooden boxes that I had to place under an opening at the end of the belt. It was dusty back there. I don’t remember using a mask or gloves, but I probably did. The opening had a rubber and canvas flip cover that prevented the mix of figs and other stuff from flying in different directions. The boxes filled quickly. Once full, I had to push them to the left and place an empty box under the opening. The task was made easier by a metal rack with rollers on it and on which I could place up to five boxes: two empties, two full ones, and the one being filled up. Whenever I had an opportunity I would pick up the loaded boxes and stack them on the back of the trailer. The empty ones were stacked on the right side and next to the rack, where I could easily grab them.
It was hard to keep up with the flow during my first day. Besides, it was difficult to see sometimes. There was a lot of dust blowing into the trailer and under my face as the boxes were filled up with the mix. There was also dust coming from the sweeper, which also diminished the visibility, not only in the trailer area, but all around the contraption. Towards the end of my first day, I was really tired. It was tough lifting those boxes filled with figs and trash after a while. Each one, I heard, weighed an average of seventy pounds. Every so often we had to unload the cargo on a pre-selected spot. It was sort of a break, but not really. Stacking those heavy boxes on the ground was no picnic either. No wonder I was told it was hard work.
After doing the job for a few days, it got easier. My body adjusted and grew stronger. Besides, I felt good being part of that crew. Billy and the other two men told me that most helpers didn’t last long. Most of them quit within a few days they said, because they couldn’t handle the workload. Hearing that made me feel important. I hadn’t quit yet and wasn’t about to do so. After a while, Billy showed me how to drive the tractor and allowed me run it for a couple of rows. He would climb on the trailer and do my job so I could do his and take a break. It felt good driving the tractor and resting for a few minutes.
One Sunday I visited him at his home in Highway City, just a few miles south from our camp. He was married and had a couple of children. He invited me so I could see some old photos that were taken when he served in Korea with the U.S. Army. Billy had a lot of pictures. They were of him and his Army buddies. Most of them were Mexicans, I could tell, maybe Puerto Ricans. At work, Billy was always talking about his time in the Army and about the number of jumps he had made as a paratrooper. He was really proud of having served in the military. He also talked about his two brothers. One of them had also served in the Army and had made over six hundred jumps. That was big, he said. His other brother tried to get in, but wasn’t accepted. He was flat-footed.
Working as a helper on the fig-picking tractor did a lot for me. More than anything, I felt good about getting a check each week. Every Saturday I would ask my father to take me to the small store in Figarden so I could cash it. I usually bought a soda and an apple turnover, sometimes other things. One had to buy something to get the check cashed. By the way, I really got to like those turnovers. They were tasty. I had seen them at the store the first time we went there to get food essentials on credit. I really wanted one then, but I knew I couldn’t have it. It’s weird. Sometimes you want something you can’t have.
GOING ON STRIKE
The helper work gave me confidence too. It was like a test, sort of like jumping off airplanes, like Billy did when he was in the Army. Not everyone could do it. I think my parents were also proud of me. One evening, I overheard my mother telling someone else at the camp about my job and about how tough I was and that I hadn’t quit. It made me feel good. Besides, I really liked my job. One day, though, I thought I was going to have to go back to picking figs by hand. It had been less than two weeks since I had started working on the tractor when Billy told me that we were going on strike. It surprised me. It had to do with demanding a raise for us two helpers, from one dollar to a dollar and a quarter an hour. The tractor operators were paid a little more than that and were fine with their pay, but both decided it was time to pay the helpers more money. My counterpart wanted it; he had been making only a dollar an hour for several years.
When the foreman, who was also the son of the grower, came by the orchard to check on us, he found us sitting down by the tractors. The operators told him about the work stoppage and the reason for it. They stated their demand for higher pay for us, the helpers. My English skills were very limited then; I just understood a few words. One word said by the foreman stuck in my head, though. He called us “bastards.” Once the son of the grower left, I asked Billy to translate the word for me.
“You don’t want to know,” he said. I later learned what it meant, though.
We went back to work soon after the tractor drivers talked to the foreman. He agreed to talk to his dad and to be back later that day with a response regarding the raise. I felt good going back to work right away and liked the possibility of getting a raise. Close to quitting time, the foreman returned and told us that his father had agreed to raise the pay from a dollar to a dollar and five cents an hour. He added that if we didn’t like it, we could leave. We stayed. Just before leaving the orchard, the foreman called us bastards again.
That was a memorable summer. Besides learning about strikes, I also learned how to drive Billy’s car in the orchards’ dirt roads. Billy showed me how to shift gears and how to apply the clutch. His car had a standard transmission. That’s what most cars had then; there were very few automatics. It was fun driving the car. One day, though, I hit a short pole that I hadn’t seen as I was backing up. I felt really bad. The pole made a big dent on the rear, left fender. Billy just laughed when he saw it and told me not to worry.
I also made some progress learning English, not from Billy and the other two workers, but from a big guy that would come by to help pick up the boxes we filled up with figs and other junk. He was young, around twenty years old. I exchanged a few words with him and found out that he was going to Fresno State College and that in the summer he worked for the grower. He didn’t know Spanish, but when he spoke to me in English he pronounced the words very slowly to help me understand them. I was surprised; I was able to comprehend most of those words. Maybe it was the way he said them or the way he tried to explain things with his hands. It’s amazing how we can communicate with others with the aid of body and facial expressions. I don’t recall his name, but clearly remember the way he picked up a one-gallon jug of water with his forefinger and drank from it. He was big. He worked hard and fast too. He would pick up those heavy boxes like they were nothing. Sometimes he would pick up two at the time and hand them to another man whose job was to stack the boxes on top of the bed of the truck.
Author: Pedro Chávez