My dad worked hard all his life, but the mines paid just enough for a large family of eight to get by. Mom would have to work too at times, either at one of the local restaurants in town or at the dry cleaners up the street. To make matters even more challenging, Dad loved to gamble at the dog races. He usually came home empty handed, which always created tension between him and my mother.
One day however, in the summer of 1965, his luck changed and he “struck it rich”. I can still remember him rushing into the house, saying, “Josefina, gane’, gane’!” (Josephine, I won, I won!) Soon after, he bought us new bedroom furniture, and had carpeting installed throughout the house. He even bought us a “new” family car, a 1964 Chevy Nova station wagon, just like the one shown below.
At the time, my sister Becky was in her senior year at Tucson High School, and my brother Rudy was a year behind her, while my other brother Fred and I were both in grade school. My sister Irene was busy being a wife and mother, and my brother Charles was about to complete the first of a four year commitment with the Navy.
We took a couple of extended trips in that car, including a visit to Flagstaff in the summer of 1965, where the big annual Pow Wow was held. (I’ll write about that trip another time.)
The following summer we went on another excursion, this time to California to visit my dad’s and mom’s relatives and to see my brother Charles, who was stationed in Long Beach a the time.
There were six of us on that trip–dad, mom, my cousin Yolanda, Becky my sister, my brother Fred and me.
Rudy stayed home.
We drove through the Arizona desert for what seemed an eternity. I’m sure we stopped at various places to eat and whatnot along the way, but I don’t remember exactly where. I do remember, however getting my mom to buy me this postcard. It’s a miracle that it’s survived all my moves over the years and that I still have it. I loved this picture!
We finally made it to our first destination, Needles, California. My parents had lived there for a short while after World War II, and my dad had two brothers who lived there, his older brother Val, who ran a concrete/construction company, and his younger brother Ralph or Failo as we all called him, who worked for Pacific Gas and Electric. Both men had families and were married to some very nice ladies, my aunt Vera and my aunt Armida. Val’s children, Gabriel, Sylvia and Richard were all around the same ages as my older brothers and sisters, but Uncle Failo’s kids were around my age.
We stayed with Uncle Val and his family.
Uncle Val’s kids had left home by the time we visited, but he and Vera raised one of Vera’s nephews, whose name was Richard. His mother, aunt Vera’s sister, had died at a very young age. We got along really well with him.
We also visited Uncle Failo and his family. Our cousins Dante, Clarissa and David were all around our age, and we had a lot of fun playing with them too.
Needles is in the middle of the Mohave desert and in the summer it is brutally hot, but the Colorado River runs through the region, and the locals love to go fishing and boating there. When we visited, we spent a day at the river, and I remember catching my very first fish, which we later cooked and ate. Freddie caught one too. I didn’t go too far out into the water. The undercurrents were deadly, and years before, my mother, sister and Aunt Corina almost drowned there. It scared the living daylights out of me.
From Needles, we headed up north to San Jose and San Francisco. My dad’s sister Josie lived in San Jose and my mom’s sister Dora lived in San Francisco.
Aunt Josie had six kids, Armando, Anna, Theresa, Debbie, Steve and Vicki. At the time, she was married to Joe Rubalcaba, whom she’d met in Tucson in the 40s. By the early Sixties, however, they had settled in San Jose. It was fun getting to know my cousins. Steve is closest in age to me and Fred, and we spent a lot of time with him.
We stayed a short while with Aunt Josie, and soon headed up to South San Francisco, where my mom’s sister Dora lived with her husband Armando and her four children, Margie, Richard, Tish, and Susie.
Aunt Dora and Uncle Armando had a house with a garage, and I clearly remember they had a small back yard. She was a bit stricter than my mom. I remember once that I wanted, after eating a nice cool popsicle, one more, and not getting it because she said no, in a very firm voice. I was used to getting my way and was not a happy camper. Oh well. My mother spoiled me, I suppose. I was always crying.
My cousin Susie was my age, and we had fun playing together. I remember seeing a certificate on my aunt’s wall that was given to her for perfect attendance in the first grade. I was impressed because I was always sick!
I also remember that Becky and Yolanda stayed up all night once playing Monopoly with our cousin Ricky and that he had all of the Beatles albums and more. Wow. We were in awe of him.
Our tios took us into San Francisco one day to see the city. We went through various parts of town including Chinatown and also to the Haight Ashbury district to see all the young people hanging out. My parents referred to them as “esos heeppies cochinos”. All I remember is a lot of long hair and dirty feet. They weren’t very clean looking to me either. The photo below doesn’t quite capture what I remember seeing, but its from the era. The district was clogged with cars full of people just like us, coming to the Haight Ashbury to gawk at all the kids.
Later, my tios took my parents out on the town. The rest of us didn’t get to go, because they were going to a “topless” place and we were much too young for that. My dad couldn’t wait!
My sister Becky sent my brother Rudy this postcard. I’ve kept it all these years. It’s a relic of the times!
After a few days, it was time to head south to go visit our brother Charles, who at the time was stationed in Long Beach. Becky, who had just graduated from high school, had also recently broken up with her boyfriend Eddie. She needed a change of scenery, so my mom and dad let her stay in San Francisco with my aunt and uncle. It was a major life change for her and for all of us, but she was eager to experience life in a different place. She found a job in the city and lived with my aunt and uncle for over a year. She remembers seeing the members of the Grateful Dead practice in a garage up the street from my aunt’s house, and seeing Janis Joplin at the Avalon Ballroom. She got to experience all kinds of great stuff while she lived there. She was lucky, for sure!
I don’t remember a whole lot about our trip to L.A., except that we had a heck of a time finding lodging along the way. We drove for hours before we found a motel that had any vacancies.
Once we were settled in L.A., we also had to figure out how to get to the naval post in Long Beach. We had trouble finding the right turn off on the freeway and we were late, but luckily, I was the one that spotted the street sign that we were supposed to turn off at, and we finally made it. Carlos was not happy, because we were so late, but at least we got to see him.
While in the L.A. area, we went to Culver City to visit my Aunt Vera’s sister and her husband. My Uncle Val and Aunt Vera met us there, and we stayed for a day or two. I remember tasting bottled water for the very first time while there, and that the houses had no fences. The back yards seemed like a giant sea of green grass. I remember too listening to the radio a lot. Songs like “Lil’ Red Riding Hood”, “Summer In The City”, and “Sweet Pea” were very popular at the time.
We didn’t go anywhere else after our stop in Culver City. Disneyland would have to wait. I remember that the drive home took forever and I also vividly remember hearing the news on the radio that eight student nurses had been recently murdered in Chicago by a guy named Richard Speck, the same day, July 14, that my sister sent the above postcard to my brother Rudy. I was a little kid and stuff like this made me very scared.
It felt good to finally be back home. This was the only family vacation that I ever got to go on with my parents, and I’ll always remember it fondly.
As I look back on this time in my life, I realize that I was just a child, with a child’s world view. My life was consumed with spending time with my nieces and friends and consisted of toys and games and bicycles, with playing at the local park and going to school. I didn’t have a clue about what was happening in the world at large. I never thought about why our country was at war in Viet Nam or about the struggle for civil rights and the racial tensions in the American south. I didn’t know why America’s youth were rebelling, or why my brother Charles joined the Navy rather than wait to be drafted. It never occurred to me that the Navy was considered a safer branch of the military than the Army or Marines. Why didn’t he stay in college? These questions were not for me to ask, much less have answers to, and I suppose I’m grateful that I was allowed to be a kid at the time and that my parents took care of me in the best way they knew how. I’m grateful that Charles made it through those four years of the war and that Becky was able to “do her thing” as a young woman. We all managed to survive these years of turmoil and tension, experimentation and change, and I’m forever grateful to my parents for taking us on this little trip. For a seven year old kid like me, it was the trip of a lifetime.
