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The interviewer is Carol Cribbet-Bell. So, if we can just begin with the very, the very first question, What years did you live in?\r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  0:21  \r\nBarrio Viejo, oh I lived in the Barrio from the time I was born, which is 1928 until I got married and left in 1954 That, of course, included growing up in Carrillo, studied at Tucson High, and one year at the University before I went to work, I wanted to experience college life. Then the Korean War started, and off I went. So I was gone from late '50. The war started in June, and I was in by September, so I didn't. I got back in July of '52 but without exception, was pretty much at home around on that short period. When I was 1946 I was also gone for about six months. The war had ended, World War Two, but apparently there was still a shortage of the men to work the railroad and do things, and they were hiring 16 year old kids that I applied, and I started on my 16th birthday. I went to high school, went from home, got changed, went off to work, and then, of course, they asked me to go to California, Dunsmore, California, near the Oregon border, and then I worked there. The only condition my parents insisted on was that if they found out that my older brother, who was in the South Pacific in the war, was coming home, I had to be home and in school as he expected. So, as soon as they found out he was coming home, I guess he wrote or called him from San Francisco someplace when he got here and I hurried up and I left that same day and I was got registered and he showed up the next day.\r\n\r\nCarol Cribbet-Bell  2:07  \r\nSo, what are some of your fondest memories of living in this barrio?\r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  2:15  \r\nProbably the thing that makes me sentimental and missed the barrio was the tranquility, there was a sense of peace, and and you felt secure for some reason, because in those days not only your parents watched for you, watched out for you, but all the neighbors knew everybody's kids, no matter what family they were from, and if you did something wrong, they'd correct you on the spot, and they would advise our parents, especially my grandmother. And so you had this great sense of belonging any place you went, you know, you go to any house, it seemed like, and I felt very much at ease. \r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  2:59  \r\nI think there was also kind of a rural feeling to living in the barrio. We lived on Wood Street, which was the last street next to McCormick. If you went down El Paso, you went like Simpson and McCormick, and then Wood Street, and behind us there was a, I guess you would call it a mesquital, just a mesquite, a bosque mesquite trees. Literally, it was a forest. It was, we'd hunt there, you know. We hunted  when we were kids with BB guns, you know, lizards. And also, I remember that there was kind of a dense mesquite forest, in that I recall Indians used to go there, apparently. In those days, discrimination was worse for them, and they would go there to drink. They get somebody to buy them liquor or wine, and they'd go drink there. And, of course, us kids in those days, the Depression. My brother and I would get our little red wagon, we go in there and pick up all the empty bottles, because we'd get paid for them, y'know, at the store. So, anyway, so that was to me as an experience to go into. You felt like Tarzan or somebody. It was just a great place to play cowboys and Indians and stuff like that, because it was all there was a ditch that went through it, and dirt, and it was great, because you could run through there, you could hide from other people, and just like a big wooded area that we could use. \r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  4:39  \r\nAfter that, there was a lumber lumber yard, I recall, and a couple other buildings still in the corner of Congress and Main, and where the railroad hospital was located, and just before you got to the hospital area, there was a. I guess you would call him like a blacksmith assayer, more. It was part of an assayer, Jacobs, I recall, and I think they moved to South 12th or something like that. It might be the same family, but I remember going there and watching the men work on these heavy things, and it was very interesting.\r\n\r\nCarol Cribbet-Bell  5:21  \r\nUm...\r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  5:27  \r\nAlso, we were downtown, we had a big advantage. Other barrios, you know, they have told me about this, and so forth, and I would say, you guys live out in the sticks, I said, we live downtown, you know, we've got flush toilets, you know, and you guys still have privies, you know, because I'd help them dig and stuff like that out there, but as, but as I was the youngest, the earliest memories that I have, because we had the privies too, I don't know how old I was was before water lines and everything sewer system went in, but it was still a privy system when I was, say, five, six years old, you know, but we got modernized a lot quicker than they did in Barrio Libre, and so forth, and I kind of just kind of teased them about it too, from this way\r\n\r\nCarol Cribbet-Bell  6:21  \r\nwe've got the modern stuff here.\r\n\r\nCarol Cribbet-Bell  6:23  \r\nWell, you talked about playing in this mezquital, and I'm wondering if what else you did for fun when you were a child. Did you have toys and games? \r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  6:37  \r\nWell, the street in front of our house is Wood Street, which was actually a cul-de-sac, in a sense that Wood Street did not go all the way east onto Main Street. It was a side sidewalk, a regular curve, and there was a broom, a broom factory on the on the north side of that corner. It was an old abandoned building, as I recall. I don't know, I don't recall sometime when I was there, I think there was still working, or something like that, on it, but I don't recall in later years that it was still functioning, but the building was there, and then it was a slope coming down on the on the south side of that intersection was a church, and I believe it was black church, if I'm not mistaken, and but then that slope came down, but you couldn't drive up the slope. You could walk, or you could push a bicycle up, or you'd come down. Well, for example, we used the slope to do crazy things like get inside a tire, then have somebody roll you down the slope until you hit a tree or something crazy, and of course getting on top of a bicycle, and somebody helping you balance yourself on the seat, and then going down the slope. It's kind of a steep hill when you're seven, eight years old. You know, it was kind of my older brother, of course. He was the daredevil, and he would get up on the seat, and he would extend his arms out and ride that thing all the way down until it crashed, and so we still became a field, also for us. We could play, I guess you could say, a limited game of football there, you know, and throw the ball around baseball hit, you know. You had to be careful, ball didn't hit the first house on the south side, coming at the base of the slope, and then there was a string of apartments that belonged to the Royal family, and we couldn't hit a ball into her yard. If they did, she called us. She was, would really get on our case. Her son, however, my little bit older than us, and we could ask him. He was very good, he'd go get the ball for us, because we didn't dare. \r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  8:44  \r\nAll the grandmothers had gardens in front. My grandmother had, I still call it when I give talks about growing up in the Barrio, I mention our front yard, which was that flower, lot of flowers and plants, and so forth, and that's also what's kind of like a forbidden place, you couldn't go in there either, unless an adult took you in there, because my grandmother ran a very tight ship there. She lived in the front house. We had three houses in our lot, good sized lot, because we had three houses on it, and we still had room for well, as I recall, as a kid, we had a chicken coop way in the back against the back fence, I guess most houses did at that time, for the chicken and the eggs, of course, they got from it, and anyway, on the north side, the very first building was also a renter, I think there were three apartments there, and we knew the people, you know, we'd meet, I think, kids our age, they would play with us, and so forth. We played games like Paredes, walls, you know, I don't know if you've ever heard of that, and it was, you have to touch a wall, you have to run across without being touched, or else you had to, you had to go try to touch somebody, before they made it across, and the object was across from one side of the street to the other, but, of course, tops were very popular, kites, marbles, there were just a lot of things, you know, we all had bikes, we all had BB guns, slingshots, it was just totally different era. No TV, which is great, and it was just a lot of family time. Picnics. So they could walk on Dia de San Juan or 24th of June. The families would go down to walk, we'd walk, because it was, you're close to the old Southwest Railroad, because it was just a field of plants and overgrown just grass and things like that, wild, that was growing wild, but you'd walk through that, and we'd be up the river, just on the other side of the railroad was the Santa Cruz, and so we would go swimming in the irrigation ditch, for one thing, and I recall ditching Carrillo Elementary when I was in about the third or fourth grade, and that was the only time I did, by the way. Kind of proud of myself, anyway. \r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  11:16  \r\nThe, I recall it was May, I guess it was starting to get warm, and somebody said, 'Let's go do this, and so forth, and apparently he knew that he was there. He must have been a fifth grader or something like this, so he knew the system pretty well. So we went, you know, and lunchtime we took off and went swimming like that. That's where Mr. Meyer is the truant officer catching us there. That's where he drove. It was very brilliant of us, you know. We would go to the place where he knew we'd be. Everybody would go swimming over there, and I recall this water was cold as could be. And I recall there were four of us, and one other young man my age. We were leaning against each other because we were kind of like shivering it. Then all of a sudden, a lasso fell over us, and we looked, it wasn't pulled anything, but the lasso rope came around us, and we looked back, and there's Mr. Myers walking with a rope, he's rolling it out, and there was one kid ready on, we had a rope from a tree branch, and we would swing and put finger tires in, and hit the water, try not to hit the sides of the irrigation ditch, and he says, \"Are there? And you, that kid, was killed on the rope, you get down off the tree and get over here. And then the kid, or the middle one, behind the tree, it was his turn next. He took off into the corn fields that were fields in the back at that time, and I think that was a Carrillo farm anyway, and so he just crossed mr. Morris, just put one foot on the, on the, I guess you would call him like a levee or something like that, where they would allow the water to come through or not at different levels, and anyway, so he just stepped on that, and he was over, and he takes off after that kid, and the other kid came across, sat down with us. We sat there and wrote it, because he caught us fair and square, you know. He didn't run away, you know. And we just sat there, and he, three minutes from us, there he comes back with a kid under his arm, puts him down, and stuff. They get across, and the kid did what he did, and that was too loud. \r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  13:22  \r\nThen we went to his pickup, and it was like a chicken wire arrangement, so the kids wouldn't fall out the back of the pickup, and he made a little door, opened the door. We all knew that, you know, this older guy, the fifth grader, probably knew the door, so he just quickly jumped in, and we jumped in too, and then he came over to the side, and he said, although they killed me a la casa. He spoke perfect Spanish. Everybody spoke Spanish in those days, our doctor, our dentist, our baker, every place you want to, you know, when to buy shoes at Las Tres Bs, Three Bs, and they spoke Spanish. Everybody spoke Spanish on Myer Street, all the merchants, all the Chinese groceries, and so forth. And, of course, the Pharaoh has Howard Escuela, please, mr. Meyer, because we killed it. He took us over, so we go there. We call mr. Young. mr. Meyer says, mr.\r\n\r\nUnknown Speaker  14:19  \r\nYoung, I've got four swimmers for you, and instead of four, and he says, \"I'll take care of them, and meanwhile he's got some cupboard open, he's putting out a pattern, so he says, \"Okay, and I didn't know better about why he could lecture this a little bit, but we got caught, and we could get punished, that was understood, so he said, \"Okay, let's be first. Then the leader went up to the desk, because we, I think, the other three of us were rookies, but the first went up there and leaned over the desk, and mr. Young then proceeded getting a humongous paddle, and then he says, \"Okay, young man, mrs. Such and such, we'll give you a pass to class. Who's next? So we just do the drink out of there, took your punishment, went to school, hot seat. But it was just, there were so many things to do, you know. We'd ride our bicycles 30 plus, we would go just 22nd swimming pool for 22nd street way near the railroad track past fourth avenue, we could swim, you know, where they'd go to Rio a lot because it was, you know, swimming the summer, but there were other pools. There was one mission, I believe, an al would even go to what moist, but there it was, usually on in a car we'd go and put picnics, Sabina Canyon? It was an all-day experience. They would tell us the day before. Dad would say, 'Okay, we'll go to Sabina tomorrow morning, so you kids get everything you need put in the car right now. Because when I produce, when we leave, we're leaving early, and you're not going to have time, you know, so we go get our swimsuit and fishing pole, or whatever, that take, you know, and put it in the car, load it up, and we're ready to go, and next morning Mom would give us a very quick breakfast, and off we would go, like seven, maybe six in the morning, and of course the speeder was not paved, you know, the northeastern part of that, I think, country club, maybe country club, or Tucson Boulevard, and then I recall he would drive all the road and the corner of what is now Wilmot and Speedway, and the Ponds Castle, if you will, was there on the on the east side, and on the west side, the only thing was there was a service, little service station. Now there's it's all built up, of course, you know, buildings, and mr. Molina was the owner, I think, for the Casa Molina family. There was no Casa Molina at that time, and because my dad had, he, he would come over and they gassed the car, they put gas in it, they checked the water, oil, tires, it was like a trip, like you're stopping in Yuma today, you know, and my dad and mr. Molina would talk, and we all got on knee high, I recall they had orange and strawberry cream sodas, and so he would get a soda pump, I recall from a big ice chest that he had near the door. It was great, and then you continued our trip, and same thing coming back, you know, it's just a long, long for you. By time you got home, it was dark, it was night, falling asleep,\r\n\r\nCarol Cribbet-Bell  17:44  \r\nWell, you had talked earlier about your red wagon and collecting the bottles and turning them in for money. Did you get to keep the money or did you have to do something else with the money that you got for the most bottles?\r\n\r\nJoe Alvarez  17:58  \r\nAll the money went to my mother, she controlled the finances, and to buy groceries, no matter what money we made, which, we, everybody hustled in those days. Everybody worked like we'd go camping to pick bellotas, acorn, and my brother and I would load up our little red wagon, and we put the bellotas in there in a coffee cup, and we would go from door to door and sell the acorns, you know, to make money. We would also go behind stores and get cardboard boxes, and you could take those to Stonecypher, which is in the corner of Sixth and Sixth, the northeast corner, right next to the corner, and I think there's something else right in that itty bitty corner, but then there you would take them to the side, they would take the box and give you a little ticket, and then you went around the front of the Stonecypher Bakery. they're a commercial bakery that they had service grocery stores and markets, but they also had had, they would sell retail bread, is probably a day old day old bread, but you'd go around the front with the tickets, and for each ticket you would get that number of pieces of bread, you know, might be four donuts or something like that, or five donuts, but you would, so we would always get bread that my mother, you know, like French bread and stuff, a loaf of bread for the family. We get my brother, Max, and I would do that, but we also managed to accidentally include some cinnamon rolls and stuff.\r\n\r\nCarol Cribbet-Bell  19:30  \r\nJust happened to fall in...\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  19:33  \r\nBut, but any monies went into the family treasury, you might say. My brother was a messenger, I recall since he was a little enough to do that. It was like that messenger server, not Western Union work, what the number was, but it was a number, like 54 or something like that. And I went to work when I was in Carrillo, I guess, in the fifth grade, I got. Job at Lee Tan on the corner of Ochoa and Meyer on the southeast corner as a grocery store, Lee Tan's, and I would sweep in front of the store every morning, I'd have to get up early, go over there, sweep in front of the store, roll down the.. I think I washed the windows, also had a big squeegee, I could do the windows, then roll the awning down, and then I'd go back home to get ready to scoop, and then I'd come to Puerto Rico, and then in the afternoon I'd have to go back to work, and I would look at the shelves that were getting long, tomato sauce, I'd go down into the basement, that's where all the cans, cases of storage area, then I'd bring whatever was needed to fill up the keep the shells full, and just different help people carry out like a carry out boy, you know, and stuff like that. \r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  20:57  \r\nSo, in the money that I got, I think he paid me like $2 a week, or maybe less, anyway, that all went, but then again, in those days, Mom would give you 15 cents, and some of your stuff get 15 cents at hamburger, you know, you'd come back with a chunk of hamburger enough to feed the family, so but the money went to her, and but then they would bail out money on Sunday for us to go to movies or Saturday and Sunday and stuff like that, and I remember a return, just a fine journal, his son Johnny went off to Rome. I never know what happened, you happened, he was a voter, of course, but Friday nights, I think it was my cousin Amelia would come and wait for me just before I got off work, and that was payday. He would pay me, but I wouldn't spend hardly any money, maybe 15 cents or 20 cents that I would spend, but he would get us, he'd fill up a bag of fruit for us, and also candy on top to take that to the movies that we had fit and read, and similar thing he was all trying to fatten me up. I used to take a piece of meat, throw it into a pot, and just boil it, I mean, just until it was nothing but almost like juice, and then he'd strain the juice out that he got, he said they broke it, and I used to hate that he said they don't make you strong.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  22:32  \r\nYou talked earlier about San Juan, Dia de San Juan, and I'm wondering, when you went down to the river for Dio de San Juans, what all did your family do? How did they celebrate that? Yes,\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  22:45  \r\nyou would go down there, and it seemed like the majority of Hispanic, Mexican-American people would be there on the 24th Hardly ever rained, it was supposed to rain that day, but hardly ever rained, but you'd go down there and people would picnic under these huge trees, you know, they were just, just, just huge trees lining the park, because there was so much water in the Santa Cruz, that I mean, maybe not on the surface, it might be only an inch deep or two inches deep in the center small stream, and but Alamos, you know, anyway, they had these big Alamos are going on both sides, and people you put over there, and there'd be people there with guitars, and there would be also maybe the next two trees over, there'd be somebody that had a radio with four batteries and had music, Mexico music, of course, and then we would take our little, like, an ice chest. I'm sure it wasn't a regular ice chest, but something to keep my dad's beard cold and soda pop for us and stuff like that. And we would walk over there, because, like I said, we were close enough, we got to drive and take a shovel with us. Always took a shovel, and we'd walk over there, and Mom would say, okay, this, this one's, she would just tell my dad, my daddy put the blanket out on a shade, they will make a picnic site out of it, and and then they tell her we want to swim, so he'd go down, he'd walk down to be from here to the front door with, you know, the slope, but then he would dig us a small hole, about maybe two three feet, maybe square, and but only about a foot deep, and then he would fill up with water. He took a shovel full of sand out, water would come up, and and then he put the strip the shelf. Okay, guys, but it was that that's not enough water to jump in and wrestle in and do funny things. Oh, it isn't. Well, I suggest you make it, you know, whatever size you want. So my older brother Max would start and bigger and bigger, and then I was second, the second eldest I. They just went down the line, then Gilbert followed me, and then Albert, if he was old enough, but Pee Wee, but something actually got into that, Peters was way too small, there was five brothers, and but we would make it good size and deep, so we could literally jump in, you know, and wrestle in there, and stuff like that, there was just almost music and food, and just, you know, just a festive sort of atmosphere\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  25:26  \r\nsounds wonderful. So I'm wondering if you ever participated in Las Posadas at Korea School. Well,\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  25:34  \r\nthey created La Posadas while I was here at Carrillo. I must have been a second grader, I think, and I think that's the age group I think that Mrs. Miss Collier was aiming at getting volunteers from there, and I, and they told us to tell her parents about it, and I told them, but I told Mom and Dad I didn't want to do it, and she didn't want to do it. They both thought it'd be a great idea, Mom says, especially Mom. I think I'll be a lot of fun and all honest, and she didn't convince me, so I just didn't start with a boot, and of course I was. I did go see it. Okay, do you\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  26:19  \r\nhave any memories of El Tiradito, the wishing friend?\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  26:22  \r\nwas there, of course, you know, and we call, you know, many stories about it, you know, probably the old stories of some Bali myths, but it wasn't really that significant to us, other than because we didn't think of it as that, as that ultra religious site, you know, where you had to toss yourself, you know, or kneel there and pray. Of course, maybe there were people that would, you know, of course, especially it seemed like older women would come there and light a candle, but it was there was not in very good shape. It was kind of torn up pretty bad. It was old, I don't think nobody in charge of maintenance for it, you know, just somebody, some maybe some people around here because they live close to it, they go clean it out, didn't clean out any trash papers and things like that, you didn't mess around with, you didn't go in there and knock things over, though, you know, a few candles and glasses and stuff like that, we just kind of looked at it, but it wasn't significant to us. And normally I went down El Paso Street, going home. I didn't go on Main once in a while, I would go down Main, because my aunt, my aunt's house was on corner of Simpson, it's still there. The house is still there, Simpson and Maine. So I would stop there, and she'd give me a cookie or something like that, you know, lemonade or milk or something, you know. And I had to cut two cousins, Edmelia was very.. is it one that would wait for me at the movies to go to every, he was only about three years younger than I was, I think, and so he was very intelligent young man, and he, for example, I recall when he was a freshman and sophomore in high school, I could have maybe junior high, he converted his bicycle into a motorized bicycle, he put little motors. I don't know where he got the little buddy. When got a little motor, and he put it up, fixed it up, and that didn't work. Just as amazed, you know, I couldn't believe that it worked.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  28:36  \r\nDid you have, you have any memories of what was on this site, the corner, the little bird, the little park is\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  28:48  \r\nright across the street, morning, because I think you can get the aroma of tortillas freshly made, and stuff like that, but because Trujillos was the place, Elysian Grove, that was the get out candies and stuff like that, you know, and sometimes you were felt, you know, say about 10 years between sixth grade, and I started having a few cents in my pocket, maybe walk over, go up to Cuatro Skines, four corners, and buy a Simarona, or something like that, you know, or go to La Concha Dragon by stuff like that, and just walk down Myers Street. Yes, and Spence had an uncle, was a baker, and he worked for Meyer. I forgot, there was one of the bakers, Earl Meyer, before he got to McCormick, was\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  29:37  \r\nthat Ronki, yes,\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  29:38  \r\nI don't recall the name of it, just a little square point. La\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  29:44  \r\nConcha. You said La Concha was a drugstore. Okay,\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  29:51  \r\nof course. Don't forget, no talking to a whole person.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  29:54  \r\nI know that you left the neighborhood in 1958 So you left really before urban renewal, but I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on the urban renewal of the 1960s that changed everything.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  30:11  \r\nI do have very blear thoughts about it. We'll talk about the body was growing up in Tucson in the 30s and 40s and given handouts of all the battles in the city, not all of them, but about 20 of them, because there were quite a few, and I always mentioned the what they called urban, you know, they call it urban destruction, of course, and I explained to them why I'm so bitter about it, and of course, Hispanics at that time, but even today I think we don't have the political pull that's commensurate with our size, the numbers, the people, and I think a lot of it is because I think Democrats have taken Hispanics for granted all these many years, and I remember that come election time, even by now I'm, you know, like 1819 20, when I came back from Korea, that come election time you would have all these politicians, these political cotton burger, as I recall, and other people, you know, they would come, they'd have like an open house or something like that, and maybe they'd rent a hall beer hall someplace, and then they would just provide beer, and they'd get up, and they would say a few words in Spanish, amigos, and so forth. He said that's all they had learned for that, but it was to come up, you know, get the vote, and that was about it. So nothing, nobody said anything seemed like all you did. No, we did. We complained about what money was going to be given to my mom for the property, and my eldest aunt had passed away, and my mom was next in line, and she and her brother, my uncle, younger brother, younger than she, accepted the money, but I heard him. I remember them talking about how little it was, you know, that they were being paid. Do\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  32:26  \r\nyou recall the amount? Do\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  32:29  \r\nyou recall how much more it was a lot of property, and it was well, it was the big front house where my grandmother lived with her son Robert, my uncle Robert, and Robert's family lived there. And then it was a huge place. I mean, it was really nice. It was a beautiful home, beautiful garden. We got fruit trees up and down the driveway. It was kind of a long driveway, me, a lot of fruit trees, but everything, pomegranates, grapes. We have grape, huge grape arbor, about the size of this unit, you could drive under it, and then we had all just corns, we had, I think, even peaches, and just a variety of fruit, fig trees, of course, stuff like that, and the back of the main house, there was room enough for a pool. We had a swimming pool, little swimming pool. It wasn't huge. It was probably almost as big as this room, but that's about it. It probably was kind of narrow, I would say, like about maybe 12 feet wide, and maybe 2020 feet long, and it wasn't big, so it was a pretty good property we had, but I know they, they didn't get hardly anything going.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  33:51  \r\nAnd where did your mother go after\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  33:54  \r\nthat? I was married by that time when I had left, and my mother went to, from Wood Street, she went to 13th Street, and she was El Carroll. And then I guess they sold the place, and she was never very happy with it. Was the east of, east of the Broadway underpass, you know, the tunnel, and I guess she felt kind of isolated, because there in Wood Street, I recall there was always people there, she had a lot of comadres and friends, were kind, I'd walk in and there'd be all these ladies, and so forth, you know, talking and laughing, and had music going on to wreck the machine and stuff like that, and and my daughter had gotten married, my youngest daughter, she's the very youngest one of those, there's six, six kids, if you will, and and she moved to the south side, she and her husband were, I think, renting first, then they bought a house, and my mother went, was living with her, she went to live with her. She'd been living, my brother's daughter, and had all the rest of us by that time. I think maybe Pee Wee was still at home there, but he doesn't want to be there long. But he was in the service, and I forget what the story was with Pee Wee, and but anyway, she moved to the South Side, and she lived in the South Side until she passed away, you and\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  35:24  \r\ndid you grow up with some stories like Yat La Llorona dance, of course,\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  35:32  \r\nused to start us with stories like that, you know, of course we did get Lauren, we got that pretty much in a way, and and I think they used it, and we, when you're that age, you know, believe all these things. So she would, I recall, if we stayed out there playing too long, then it started getting dark, and she would, mothers would start coming out and following it at us, and then, of course, she's getting it. You don't let your own, it's going to come out. It's about the time for it, so we rush in, you know. When you're literally just think all this.. I don't know if it's excitement or what, but you, of course, later on, you get older, you realize all these stories, there were many of them, you know. I don't recall, was predominant, I think. Even we heard, you know, stories about a headless person who was killed there, and he was, and always these stories about this girl that wouldn't listen to her mother dance with a devil or something, scary stories, you know, you didn't go out hardly at night when you were a little kid, nobody, you know, you were, I think you probably were 1213 years old before you started straight out, you know, but so they pretty kind of, I don't think they really needed the stories, because they pretty much controlled us and didn't hurt me at all. I mean, it hurt physically, possibly at the moment, like that spike, but I think mentally it didn't develop. I didn't develop a psychosis over it, you know, like so many people say, well, I had a very bad child of it. That's why I murdered those seven people. Come on, I wonder if you have\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  37:28  \r\nany advice for young people today.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  37:32  \r\nWell, of course, my number one piece of advice would be, is go to school, stay in school, schooling is probably the best way for Hispanic people to come out of the situation they're in right now. So many people are unemployed and they can't get jobs because they lack the education for it, and and I recall I was the first one in my family to go to university and graduate from the university, and then I recall the initial, I think that the attitude at the house wasn't so much just my house, but just the general feeling that I could feel was, why are you still in school? You know, you should be working, helping the family, you know, but I did work, you know, as a matter of fact, I worked all through high school, like I started working on my 16th birthday for the SB. Before then, I was a bus boy at a different place on Carlos Cafe, the Bowden Alley on Stone Avenue, Santa Rita Hotel, and I can't believe the name, I forgot the name of Mexican restaurant was in Broadway, belonged to mrs. Flynn, they located El Charlo,\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  38:48  \r\nEl Charro, I was the best\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  38:50  \r\nwaiter, in fact I was working at that place when I turned 16 because I was a waiter, they had told me I was the youngest waiter in Tucson, I was 15 years old and so my brother worked all through school, and I, you know, but education pounding that into kids, and I think everybody realizes that almost everybody, there's still some people that they just want to get have things now today, you know, instant gratification, sort of thing, and they don't believe in saving, and I was, I saved, you know, I think my, my mother's, you might say the way she handled the money, and so forth, made an impression on me, because I save money, but you know, I bought a car when I was 15, even though I was not old enough to do it. I had my cousin sign for a car, but I paid cash for a car when I was 15 years old, and I couldn't wait to be six seats, I could drive to school to somehow stuff like that, you know, education is. Has got to be that if all Hispanics pushed education the way other people do, you know, they'd be, they'd be just really fine. No, they don't realize that being close to the border, and I realize that a steady influx of Mexican immigrants in here is also going to be a problem, because most groups of people have come - German, Italian, Jewish people, any ethnic group - anyway, they have come and they've experienced a period of discrimination here, but they went into, as they accomplished things, they got into the mainstream, then the next group comes in, and the same thing happens. Hispanics, there's always going to be people coming in that are maybe some of them are not trained in Mexico, maybe they're also didn't get a lot of education in Mexico, so that's going to be a problem, but Hispanic, I maintain a Hispanic today that's educated can do very, very\r\n\r\nSpeaker 7  41:07  \r\nwell. Is there anything else you'd like to add to this? I'm\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  41:10  \r\nvery proud of the fact that I think Hispanics are very, very patriotic. I think we don't, we may not like, necessarily, war, but nobody does. But all five of us served, and you know, served all five brothers at one time or another. We were all in uniform, and I'm very, very proud of the fact that that was a general feeling, you know, that you owe something. I don't know if it's still there. I don't know if it's so prevalent. I think a lot of them say no, no, I'm looking out for number one, you know. But there was always that feeling when I was growing up. I know that I was too young for World War Two, but soon as the Korean War started, I could have stayed out because I had already had a year at the university, and I was in a reserve unit. I was in Navy Reserve, and my draft came in, and I recall being at the draft board over there, and one of the questions, first of all, was to disqualify any of us that were members of a reserve unit or were in school. All you'll do is raise your hand, and you wouldn't go in and draft draftees, I guess. Historically, is where the infantry fills up. That's that's what they need more, because volunteers go in and they have something in mind, and if it's peacetime, especially, and they train for something, and they, not infantry, you know, as a rule, but the infantry people usually come from the people that get drafted, you know. It's personal studies about it, and one interesting thing, and I want to show to you about the teacher that was my first teacher here at Korea when I started school, and I didn't know any English other than what I had heard, little bit of English that I'd heard, I guess. Thank you was the first English words I learned, and but anyway, in 1c which was that first year, as you probably know, I recall being found to death by this woman that was going to have us there all day, it seemed like she was a tall redhead, tall skinny redhead, and her name was Evelyn J, and I recall just being frightened to death on her because she towered over us, and her Spanish was very almost comical in a sense, that she was from Arkansas, I later found out, and she had learned Spanish in Arkansas, and so she spoke Spanish somewhat funny when she wanted to correct us about something she would, she knew that much Spanish, but she's only taught us English and first year, and she did a very good job, and because we all then did very well later on, second grade, they pounded English and math into you, and you did well, and I was studying the champ here at Carrillo, and I recall that the toughest competition I had was from other Hispanics from the city of Tucson, from Lakefield or Roscoe, or not Roscoe Mansfield, stuff like that, any, any, then usually we did very well, because they, they had learned English correctly, you know, we didn't bring all mistakes to the table, because we didn't know any English, so we learned a proper way to, you know, stand out a word, how to spell a word, and stuff like that. Anyway, to make a long story short, many years later, like about maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago, I was, I was giving a talk simple. This club, up some sort, I forget what it was, and I was talking about the need for the libraries in the city of Tucson. I wasn't, I was a library board member, the city, in fact, I was the president, and as such, I was responsible for extolling the virtues of libraries, and so I got through giving my pitch about our dire need for libraries in the city, because we had nothing on the east side. It seemed like there's nothing, hardly certainly nothing on the far west side, but southwest part closest one was a made library down on Sixth Avenue. You know, it was ridiculous, you know. And anyway, I got to giving my pitch, and as crowd left, I'm picking up my notes. This little lady comes up to me about, she's about five, six, I guess, gray hair, and so forth.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  45:49  \r\nAnd she says, \"Young man, where did you go to school? And I said, \"When primary's going to elementary I said yes. Who was your teacher? Oh, that was Miss Evelyn J. This is, and your Davis wanted. I said, yes, ma'am. This is you and my students. She says I'm Evelyn J, and I'll be done with a little lady, and I thought she was this tall lady, so we kind of talked, and then from then on we became lunch buddies. Once I heard that caller, and we would go have lunch together, I figured out to run someplace, and we would talk just anyway, one day I just accidentally noticed in the paper, this is - you can tell it's all it's yellow, but Miss J here was the green one, apparently, of the Bordeaux parade, and that's Miss J right there on this side of family, she was 88 years old for the 66th annual Road Road. There for Ray,\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  47:06  \r\nI have to get a copy of that. So, this was your teacher.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  47:09  \r\nYep, she was my one seat teacher. Her first teaching assignment, she was, she was telling me I was as scared of you kids as you were.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 8  47:19  \r\nShe said it was horrible. She's here to tell me worse. I said, \"What have I gotten myself into? We're great prizes of talking about so many things,\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  47:34  \r\nand that, plus I think with education, like I say, I'm very pleased with what I've been able to do, been on boards, commissions, and so forth, but it's.. it just seems like I used to suffer from not being able to say no to different people, and so it seemed like every organization I belonged to, I was always either like at the Westerns, I became the sheriff, was it nine years, eight years, I was president. I wasn't nine years, couldn't get people to go to Chicago in January. That's the reason you know the president always went to Chicago for the Library Board Association\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  48:20  \r\nand the\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  48:22  \r\nmilitary, the same thing. I went to Korea. I was a pilot, just like all these other draftees, and I get over there, and I was a jeep driver, and we called the company formed. They moved us up behind the line, about two lines, two miles made from the front line, and we pitched our tents there, and the ice and snow, and next day the first sign says that we're gonna have a company mass, and I don't mean church, so I'm talking about getting the whole company together without platoon, one for two, your first lieutenant, second one, two would be all bunched together, and he was going to explain why, and he said our company commander decided we're not going to combat as we have been. He's removed, we moved the company around, so now everybody's going to have different positions. And the first sergeant was one of that, one of the person that, not he hadn't been the first time, you know, he was just a he'd been with platoon sergeant, something was kind of sharp. Became first sergeant, and then they started with the first platoon, and I was a member of the first platoon, he said, with the first platoon scout section, first one scout leader, squad leader Alvarez ran up, and you had to hire, you went up to position and you'd hire your name, Joe Howard. So I grew up there, I said, \"What's going on here? You know, and then they gave, they filled in members of squad our assistant squad leader, some corporal, and then a couple of sergeants and some PFCs and a private or two like. My ranking, and after the new company has informed us to the company commander, says that's the way we're going to combat tomorrow, and he says if somebody gives you an order and you outrank him, it doesn't make any difference, you do exactly as you're told, you know, he says that person is speaking on my behalf, and he does like I said, I've got Captain Mars, and he says also, besides, how did he phrase it? Besides, he says, I don't want to see a stripe on anybody in the next five minutes, you get all stripes off, so we didn't want somebody having stripes, because I guess he was thinking somebody that Chinese would target that person, that she had, and so forth. This way would all be equal opportunity, but shot at stuff like that. And we see the Korean War veteran association here with three became commander of the darn thing. They just historical society, you know, with one joint, these friends of mine taught me to join the historical society, and become.. I became a person. Okay, sure enough, I became president.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 9  51:11  \r\nI think he's led a pretty remarkable life, actually, an\r\n\r\nSpeaker 2  51:15  \r\naverage life, but it's a good life. No complaints, you know, with my life at all, I thank God every Sunday for all the blessings He's given me.\r\n\r\nSpeaker 1  51:29  \r\nI thank you that you shared your life with me. Are these particular memories of us of real pleasure?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3761/collection_resources/174045/file/313469#t=0.0,4230.0"}]}]}]}