juanzqui

On this day, 122 years ago, my father’s oldest sister was born near San Luis Potosí in Mexico. She died in 2003, at the age of 103. I wrote this about her 28 years ago:

Her eyes closed, she sat in her wheelchair outside her room.

“Tía,“ my sister said, tapping Tía Benita on the shoulder.

“Look who’s with me,” Luisa added in Spanish when Tía opened her eyes.

“Emilio?” Tia asked, an understandable mistake, given my resemblance to Luisa‘s son.

Once I embraced her and told her who I was, the confusion disappeared and Tía Benita spoke in a strong voice. Of how glad she was like taking the time to visit her. About how she was asleep because she’d had another sleepless night.

Benita Palomo Alfaro was born outside San Luis Potosi on April 3, 1900, which makes her 94. Even as kids, all of us were intrigued by her birthyear, and how easy that would always be for us to remember her age. But we never imagined she’d still be alive as the millennium approaches, that we would actually be contemplating having a 100-year-old aunt.

When Alejandro and Manuela Palomo gathered their children in the middle of the night and fled the hacienda where my grandfather worked, Tía Benita, their ninth child, was the oldest. Eight others had come before her – all had died.

Today she is the sole survivor. By the time the Palomos waded across the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass on a cool April day in 1920, the two youngest, Cirilo and Isabelita, had also died. 

Gertrudes died of tuberculosis in the late 1940s, leaving behind a young widow and six children. My grandmother died in 1951 and her husband died 17 years later (he is buried a few blocks from where Tía lives). Domingo, my father, died in 1984 and Adrian, the youngest, died a few years after that.

Although still strong of mind, body, and spirit, old age, arthritis and other ailments have for several years conspired to deny Tía the use of her legs, so she spends most of her time either in bed or on her wheelchair in the San Jose, California, nursing home, where she’s lived the past several years. 

That does not mean she’s been inactive. Far from it. Until the home‘s kitchen changed directors, for instance, she would often help prepare the meals. 

Not long ago she talked her granddaughter into taking her to Mexico to visit her birthplace – for the first time since the family left that country 74 years ago. 

Tia Benita spoke about the departure for the hour or so we were there. I’ve heard some of that story before, from my father and others, but she provided much more details.

All the versions I had heard earlier had my grandfather fleeing Mexico because he was in on the wrong side of the revolution, or something equally romantic. It turns out it was nothing of the sort. It was a death of a mule that led to the Palomos’ becoming Texans.

It was not just any mule, of course. It was a prized mule, one of the two that perform specialized tasks at the ranch. A mistake by my grandfather led to its being run over by a railroad car. Fearing retribution from his boss, my grandfather quickly organized the great escape. 

It was a hard trip. They had no money and almost no food. They traveled by night and hid in the mountains during the day. The final indignity came when a friend who’d been paid to drive them across the Rio Grande pocketed the money, forcing the wo wade across instead. 

They settled in Crystal City and lived in nearby farms, among them the Holdsworth Ranch, owned by a man whose daughter married a guy named Howard E. Butt, founder of HEB. It was in Crystal City that Tía Benita met MelecioAlfaro, a labor contractor who would become her husband.

It was Melecio’s relative affluence that helped our family survive during the Great Depression. And it was the Alfaros who kept our family alive in 1938. That was the year my mother almost died after giving birth to her sixthchild, and my father nearly lost his arm to gangrene after a job accident. His bosses didn’t believe it was a work-related injury and refused to pay for his treatment. Finally it was the Tía Benita who lent my father the 50 cents he needed to visit the doctor when he could no longer take the pain – and it was she, along with Luisa, who saw to the care of my brothers and sisters. 

It seemed fitting, then, that it was with Luisa‘s help that Tia was now telling me about that life so long ago. 

“Fué una vida my dura, hijo,“ she concluded. We agreed. How could it be classified as anything but a difficult life? Later, as we prepared to leave, she mused: “¿Por que me habrá dejado Diocito vivir tantos años?“

She obviously didn’t expect an answer. But if she had, I might have said maybe God intended her to live so long to bring us all a dose of humility.

Her eyes closed, she sat in her wheelchair outside her room.

“Tía,“ my sister said, tapping Tía Benita on the shoulder.

“Look who’s with me,” Luisa added in Spanish when Tía opened her eyes.

“Emilio?” Tia asked, an understandable mistake, given my resemblance to Luisa‘s son.

Once I embraced her and told her who I was, the confusion disappeared and Tía Benita spoke in a strong voice. Of how glad she was like taking the time to visit her. About how she was asleep because she’d had another sleepless night.

Benita Palomo Alfaro was born outside San Luis Potosi on April 3, 1900, which makes her 94. Even as kids, all of us were intrigued by her birthyear, and how easy that would always be for us to remember her age. But we never imagined she’d still be alive as the millennium approaches, that we would actually be contemplating having a 100-year-old aunt.

When Alejandro and Manuela Palomo gathered their children in the middle of the night and fled the hacienda where my grandfather worked, Tía Benita, their ninth child, was the oldest. Eight others had come before her – all had died.

Today she is the sole survivor. By the time the Palomos waded across the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass on a cool April day in 1920, the two youngest, Cirilo and Isabelita, had also died. 

Gertrudes died of tuberculosis in the late 1940s, leaving behind a young widow and six children. My grandmother died in 1951 and her husband died 17 years later (he is buried a few blocks from where Tía lives). Domingo, my father, died in 1984 and Adrian, the youngest, died a few years after that.

Although still strong of mind, body, and spirit, old age, arthritis and other ailments have for several years conspired to deny Tía the use of her legs, so she spends most of her time either in bed or on her wheelchair in the San Jose, California, nursing home, where she’s lived the past several years. 

That does not mean she’s been inactive. Far from it. Until the home‘s kitchen changed directors, for instance, she would often help prepare the meals. 

Not long ago she talked her granddaughter into taking her to Mexico to visit her birthplace – for the first time since the family left that country 74 years ago. 

Tia Benita spoke about the departure for the hour or so we were there. I’ve heard some of that story before, from my father and others, but she provided much more details.

All the versions I had heard earlier had my grandfather fleeing Mexico because he was in on the wrong side of the revolution, or something equally romantic. It turns out it was nothing of the sort. It was a death of a mule that led to the Palomos’ becoming Texans.

It was not just any mule, of course. It was a prized mule, one of the two that perform specialized tasks at the ranch. A mistake by my grandfather led to its being run over by a railroad car. Fearing retribution from his boss, my grandfather quickly organized the great escape. 

It was a hard trip. They had no money and almost no food. They traveled by night and hid in the mountains during the day. The final indignity came when a friend who’d been paid to drive them across the Rio Grande pocketed the money, forcing the wo wade across instead. 

They settled in Crystal City and lived in nearby farms, among them the Holdsworth Ranch, owned by a man whose daughter married a guy named Howard E. Butt, founder of HEB. It was in Crystal City that Tía Benita met MelecioAlfaro, a labor contractor who would become her husband.

It was Melecio’s relative affluence that helped our family survive during the Great Depression. And it was the Alfaros who kept our family alive in 1938. That was the year my mother almost died after giving birth to her sixthchild, and my father nearly lost his arm to gangrene after a job accident. His bosses didn’t believe it was a work-related injury and refused to pay for his treatment. Finally it was the Tía Benita who lent my father the 50 cents he needed to visit the doctor when he could no longer take the pain – and it was she, along with Luisa, who saw to the care of my brothers and sisters. 

It seemed fitting, then, that it was with Luisa‘s help that Tia was now telling me about that life so long ago. 

“Fué una vida my dura, hijo,“ she concluded. We agreed. How could it be classified as anything but a difficult life? Later, as we prepared to leave, she mused: “¿Por que me habrá dejado Diocito vivir tantos años?“

She obviously didn’t expect an answer. But if she had, I might have said maybe God intended her to live so long to bring us all a dose of humility.

Whenever I mention the 10-year-plus long distance friendship with a guy on Texas death row (Rogelio Reyes Cannady, who was executed May 19, 2010) and talk about the numerous letters we exchanged, I’m often asked what I wrote to him about. The answer is: everything, in postal cards, long letters and short letters. About my vacation trips, about work, about family, about life in Washington DC. Here is one letter I found a while ago while going through some old files.

Sunday, October 1, 2006

Estimado Amigo,

A few notes on my visit to Dupont Circle:

It’s about 3:30. I was lazy all morning and didn’t leave the house until about an hour ago. I get here just in time to listen to the last performance of a Caribbean salsa band, part of a local dance festival. There are lots of people, more than the usual Dupont Circle crowd. As I walk in search of a bench on which to sit, I notice four people dancing to the music. Four white people – two young women, one young guy and a woman in her 60s, at least. If they have any rhythm, they are doing a good job of keeping it hidden. In fact, they are the most pathetic dancers I’ve ever seen. I tell you, I think it ought to be against the law for white folks to dance Latin music. 

Thank God that is the last performance. People are gradually dispersing. Meanwhile, a lone singer, wearing sandals, a flannel shirt over a black undershirt, and a straw cowboy hat decorated with feathers, is setting up shop nearby, hooking up a battery-powered amplifier for his acoustical guitar and microphone. He’s singing mostly folk songs, but also a few other older pop songs. Some I recognize, others I’ve never heard. About the time he starts his performance, a crazy black homeless guy in green camouflage pants, black hooded sweatshirt and a black suit jacket, starts walking around in circles around the fountain, ranting loudly about white folks and capitalism, quoting the Bible and spewing words like “fuck” and “motherfuckers.”  The singer ignores him, for the most part, merely smiling tolerantly each time the ranter parades in front of him. The fact that the singer is ignoring him, and that his audience is growing with each song he sings, appears to irritate the trodder even more, and he starts hurling insults at him, calling him a white boy, in obvious reference to the black singer’s light complexion.  

“It must be hard working with all that anger,” the singer observes in between songs. “I tried that once but I didn’t like it.”

The singer’s white girlfriend sits in front of him, on the fountain steps, an adoring look on her face, and begins clapping as soon as each tune’s last note is sounded, encouraging others to also offer their applause.

It’s a beautiful day: partly cloudy, about 75 degrees. There are more than the usual number of people with cameras, shooting the singer, the ranter and everything and anything that looks halfway exciting. I find myself resenting them because I have left my camera at home. A Bible-toting white couple, trailed by a black man, arrive and slowly make their way along the benches at perimeter of circle, handing out their literature. A couple, a few benches down from me, eat heartily on a large pizza, the slices almost too big for them to handle. Another couple is sharing an ice cream bar. Not everyone is listening to the music, which is pretty good, actually. Some read – books, magazines, newspapers – while others chat and some pretend the singer isn’t there. Some write on spiral notebooks. No laptops today.

A drunken black homeless woman is now dancing in front of the singer, mouthing the lyrics, or attempting to. Her companions, two young scruffy men sitting on the steps next to the singer’s girlfriend, egg her on. When the song is over, she joins them on the steps and they begin a series of very loud conversations. The woman says something that seems to embarrass her. She covers her face with her hands, delighting her companions, both white. They all look at the singer for a reaction.

“It must have been dirty,” he finally says. “If she’s that dark and she’s blushing, it must have been real dirty.” 

This only encourages the woman more. When the singer sings the lyrics, “Give me the people that can free my soul. I wanna get lost in your rock ‘n roll,” she sings back, “Give me the people that can free my soul. I wanna get lost in your fucking roll.” Again, her companions are greatly amused. The two may not be as drunk as she is, but they certainly are high and giddy.

By this time the ranter has tired of walking around the fountain, so he positions himself about a hundred feet from the singer and continues his tirade from there. But soon he tires of that also and wanders off, muttering non-stop. Meanwhile, passers-by continue to parade in front of the singer. There’s an Indian, or Pakistani, guy in a muted yellow turtleneck, walking regally and holding a pipe in one hand and cradling book by Norm Chomsky under the other arm. An older white woman with purple streaks in her gray hair rides by on a motorized chair. Two brown-skinned kids, a boy and girl of about 5 and 6, trail behind her, with a perplexed look on their faces. A middle-aged woman, obviously a tourist, squats in front of the performer to takes his picture, then moves a bit to take another one from a different angle. And another one. Some stop to listen for a few seconds before moving on, others listen as they walk. Some ignore the whole scene. Some drop money in the singer’s open guitar case; most ignore it.

One of the two homeless young guys with the drunken black woman approaches the singer and whispers in his ear. The singer nods and the homeless guy scurries back to his place.

“This song is for Kevin and Tim,” the singer announces. “Happy anniversary.” 

Kevin – or Tim? – smiles broadly and proudly and places his arm around his companion, who blushes a bit. As the song progresses, they hold hands and take turn caressing each other’s faces. The black woman is also overtaken by the emotion of the moment and reaches out to take one of Tim’s – or is it Kevin’s? – hand. He holds it only for a few seconds before dropping it so he can concentrate on his partner. As the song comes to an end, they face each other and kiss, the beaks of their gimme caps colliding briefly, making the kiss an awkward one. It’s a touching scene, nevertheless. Somehow, I tend to imagine that homeless people don’t have relationships, but here are these two kids, acting as if they are the only two people sitting on those steps by the fountain, and that the entire world, not just the song, is theirs. They have each other and that’s all that seems to matter.

Their song over, the two homeless guys get up and walk away, leaving the black woman alone. She appears lonesome as she sits there, uncharacteristically quiet. Another homeless guy sits next to her and tries to engage her in conversation but she’s not interested. She gets up and walks away instead and finds a place a bit further down, next to couple with dachshund on a chain. She reaches out to pet the dog but, frightened, it barks loudly at her, causing its owner to pick it up and console it. Now the black woman looks even lonelier. She hangs around a few more minutes, then moves away, carrying her belongings in brown grocery store bag, a beige plastic purse and black fake leather tote bag. She once again stands next to the singer and pretends to play the guitar and sing, but it is obvious that her heart isn’t in it. 

As the performer begins his next number, Bob Marley’s “Redemption Songs,” she stops and stands still for a few seconds. She smiles at him, waves halfheartedly and walks away.

The singer continues to sing, his lips so close to the microphone that he appears to be licking it. He smiles and nods at her and sings,

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. 

None but ourselves can free our minds…

Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom? 
cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.

In the distance, a thunderstorm rumbles.

Un fuerte abrazo,

I HAD PRETTY much finished compiling this list of my favorite books of the year when I started listening to Louise Erdrich’s newest novel, The Sentence. I didn’t think I’d finish it before the end of the year, so I didn’t include it. But finish it I did (it was so good I couldn’t put it down), and I just had to place it at the top of my fiction list.

All the top-10 books are audio books. That is how I do most of my book-reading these days. I’m a very slow reader and, besides, at my age, every time I sit down to read, I am overcome with a great desire to close my eyes and sleep. Audio books, on the other hand, I can listen to almost anywhere – while cooking and doing other household chores, while at the gym or walking, and while driving. 

Altogether, I listened to 39 books in 2021. I read four. Several, like Bless Me Ultima, were books I’d read before but felt an urge to read them again.

The top-10 list’s authors include three Latinos/Latinas; one native American; three African-Americans; one Asian-American; one Anglo-American and one Italian. Four female writers and six males.

For non-fiction, Conroe native Annette Gordon-Reed was at the very top. That list (of five) includes two African-American women, one native American woman, one African-American male and one Anglo male.

The worst book I read in 2021? A Saint from Texas by Edmund White. White was for many years one of my favorite gay writers and I looked forward to his new novels. But his last two left a lot to be desired and Saint was just downright awful.

Here’s my top-ten fiction books, followed by my top-five non-fiction books. (Unless otherwise stated, the descriptions of these books are from Goodreads (online).

Fiction:

1. The Sentence                                                             Louise Erdrich

“Who among us hasn’t, in some sense, stolen a corpse and accidentally trafficked crack cocaine across state lines? That is a question you will ponder while reading Louise Erdrich’s “The Sentence,” a bewitching novel that begins with a crime that would seem to defy “relatability” but becomes a practical metaphor for whatever moral felonies lurk unresolved in your guilty heart. … A strange, enchanting and funny: a work about motherhood, doom, regret and the magic — dark, benevolent and every shade in between — of words on paper.” – New York Times

• The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois                          Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

“This sweeping, brilliant and beautiful narrative is at once a love song to Black girlhood, family, history, joy, pain…and so much more. In Jeffers’ deft hands, the story of race and love in America becomes the great American novel.” —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Red at the Bone and Another Brooklyn

• Memorial                                                                   Bryan Washington

A funny, sexy, profound dramedy about two young people at a crossroads in their relationship and the limits of love. Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson’s a Black day care teacher, and they’ve been together for a few years – good years – but now they’re not sure why they’re still a couple.

• Crossroads                                                                 Jonathan Franzen

Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now he ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.

• The Five Wounds                                                      Kirstin Valdez Quade

From an award-winning New Mexico-born storyteller comes a stunning debut novel about a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice. As satisfying as her earlier short story collection, Night of the Fiestas.

• Afterparties                                                               Anthony Veasna So

Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans.

• Gordo                                                                         Jaime Cortez

The first collection of short stories by Jaime Cortez, it is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California in the 1970s. A young, probably gay, boy named Gordo puts on a wrestler’s mask and throws fists with a boy in the neighborhood, fighting his own tears as he tries to grow into the idea of manhood so imposed on him by his father.

• The Lost Daughter                                                    Elena Ferrente

Ferrante’s most compelling and perceptive meditation on womanhood and motherhood yet (translated from Italian).

• The Prophets                                                             Robert Jones Jr.

A novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence.

1. Monkey Boy                                                              Francisco Goldman

A sweeping story about the impact of divided identity – whether Jewish/Catholic, white/brown, native/expat – and one misfit’s quest to heal his damaged past and find love.

Non-Fiction

1. On Juneteenth                                                                       Annette Gordon-Reed

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, this book provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured in the century since.

• Bad Indians: A Memoir                                                       Deborah A. Miranda

This book leads readers through a troubled past using the author’s family circle as a touch point and resource for discovery. Personal and strong, these stories present an evocative new view of the shaping of California and the lives of Indians during the Mission period in California.

• Memorial Drive, A Daughter’s Memoir                             Natasha Trethaway  

At 19, Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.

• A Promised Land                                                                  Barrack Obama

The first installment of the former president’s White House memoir.

• A Carnival of Snackery                                            David Sedaris

Sedaris being Sedaris

Here’s the rest of the fiction books I read:

Martita, I Remember You                                          Sandra Cisneros 

Afterlife                                                                      Julia Alvarez

The Shadow of the Wind                                            Carlos Ruiz Zafón

La Sombra del Viento                                                Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Remember Me                                                            Mario Escobar

House Made of Dawn                                                 N. Scott Momaday

The Prisoner of Heaven                                              Carlos Ruiz Zafón                  

The Short Stories of Ernest Hemmingway                 Ernest Hemmingway

The Sun Also Rises                                                    Ernest Hemingway

The Angel’s Game                                                      Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Bless Me, Ultima*                                                      Rudolfo Anaya           

Songs for the Flames                                                  Juan Gabriel Vasquez

News of the World                                                     Paulette Jiles

Cathedral of the Sea                                                   Ildefonso Falcones      

Give My Love to the Savages                                    Chris Struck

The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You                Maurice Arles Ruffin

La Tregua                                                                   Mario Benedetto

A Star is Bored                                                           Byron Lane

Less                                                                             Andrew Sean Greer 

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter                Erika L. Sanchez

A Saint from Texas     Edmund White

And non-fiction: 

A Moveable Feast                                                       Ernest Hemmingway

Horizontal Vertigo (Essays on Mexico City)             Juan Villoro

The Best of Me David Sedaris

IN 1992, NOT long after I had started writing a column for The Houston Post, I received a letter from a reader named Michael Dale, who was very much in disagreement with something I wrote. Unlike most of the ranting and often profane letters and calls I got (this was before email and social media) from right-wing readers, the letter struck me as a sincere person’s sane plea for dialogue.

So I responded, as I often did, by inviting him to join me for a meal, a cup of coffee or a beer so we could discuss our differences. He was clearly surprised but he accepted and we met at a restaurant not far from the Post building. 

We became friends. That friendship lasted even as I moved to Washington and back to Houston while he moved to Atlanta and New York, Baton Rouge and, finally, Austin, where he died early Wednesday morning. 

Cancer.

IT WAS AN improbable friendship. Michael was white, straight and middle-class, a son of the South (devoted fan of University of Alabama football). He was reared in the Southern Baptist Church. 

I was the gay son of Mexican immigrants, a former migrant worker who grew up Catholic and had become disenchanted with the whole organized religion thing. And I never was into college football. About the only thing we had in common was that we were both Astros fans. 

I can’t claim we were close, close friends. I never met his family or other friends, for instance, and he never met mine. We never hung out together, but over the years, he always reached out to me, and we’d get together for a meal if we could manage it. We even went to see the Astros play at Yankee Stadium once.

When he moved to Austin a little more than a year ago, we talked about meeting more often, but the only visit we managed was getting together for coffee once soon after he learned of his cancer diagnosis. 

While hopeful about his prognosis, Michael made it clear it didn’t look good. But he was not about to let his situation get him down. He had recently married, his job and financial situation were good, his family was supportive. And, above all, he still had his faith, which would not be shaken.

FAITH WAS probably the Number One topic of conversation in our chats, emails and text messages – faith, and politics and how the two had unfortunately become entwined in recent decades.

 “I call out these so-called ‘leaders’ for not teaching the gospel yet driving fear and loathing among their community,” he wrote once. “That is not who we are called to be. I have my convictions based on the faith delivered once for all and they do not include political power. The good news I have been given I want to share with others, then let God do the work, not the state!!”

Many of today’s right-wing Christian leaders are “charlatans, very wealthy ones at that, who will be judged harshly,” he said, adding, “I pray they fade into oblivion quickly!!”

Michael detested Donald Trump, calling him a creation of FOX-News, someone who is willing to exploit the sense of victimhood among middle-class and lower-income whites. He never voted for him.

I never ceased to be wowed by Michael’s insights and his ability to express his thoughts, and I often told him so.

“I find myself struggling to string together the words needed to formulate a response to your amazing email,” I wrote to him once. “At a time when shouting is the accepted form, when finger-pointing and the airing of grievances have replaced deliberate debate, you present me with this very sane, provocative and well-written share airing of ideas, concerns and – yes – anguish. That you chose me as your audience filled me with a deep sense of gratitude and humility.”

Though heartbroken about the state of today’s politics, Michael remained optimistic.

“Biden will be inaugurated,” he wrote a year ago. “Life will continue, families will enjoy their time together, people will get married, children born, some people will leave this earth yet through it all, God is sovereign.”

That, he said, “brings me such comfort, especially recently.” Meaning: since his cancer diagnosis.

That coffee-shop meeting was the last time we were to get together. He mentioned perhaps sharing a meal at an outdoor venue on one of his next trips here, depending on what the situation was with Covid.

After that, there were only a few text messages. Among them was this from September 20: “I ask you forgive me if I ever harmed you over the years. Never my intent.”

To which I replied: “I can’t think of a single time, my friend.”

I REGRET I did not take the opportunity to ask for his forgiveness in return. Typical self-centered me. Maybe I’d not done anything that would require forgiveness, but I should have been as generous as he was by giving him the opportunity to decide that. 

I am so sorry Michael is gone. I am sad I will not be able to listen to his calm, soothing voice of reason and sanity and Christian love. I am sorry I never got to see him together with his new bride (his eyes beamed whenever he talked about her!).

I once told him I was glad he had reached out to me that day in 1992, and that he continued to reach out.

And I am so happy I wrote a column almost 30 years ago, the one that raised Michael’s ire enough to write to me.

I will miss his kindness, his decency and his goodness. 

I HAVE MANY photos of my brother, Alejandro Palomo, but these four show how I choose to remember him: a man who adored his family, a man who loved to tell stories, a man who loved to dance, and a man who thrived on laughter: laughing and making others laugh.

Alejandro, named after my father’s father, died early this morning in his bedroom in San Antonio after a relatively short but difficult struggle with the ravages of Alzheimer’s. He was 87. Many people knew him as Alex; we called him Jando. Six wonderful men and women – Becky, Sandie, Alex, Mandy, Art and Eva – had the privilege of calling him “Dad.”

Jando joined the Air Force in 1952, when I was six years old, and he never returned to live in Crystal City, where we grew up.  As a result, I have very few memories of him during my early years, not the kind of memories I have of my younger sisters. Most memories are of him as an adult, a husband and father.

The one big memory I have of him was of that day in ’52 when he left to enlist. We were in Wisconsin, near Fond du Lac, living in a big old farmhouse provided to us by the labor contractor who enlisted my father for work in the nearby canneries. Because the adults were at work, there was nobody available to drive him to the nearest town where he could catch a bus, so he walked along the side of the road, bag in hand, until someone offered him a ride.

The year before that, our family had traveled to Ogden, Utah, where we lived in a Del Monte labor camp while my parents and older siblings worked in a tomato cannery. Our apartment was adjacent to one inhabited by the Garcias, a family from Carrizo Springs (12 miles south of Crystal City), which consisted of a mother, a young son and several daughters. Jando fell in love with Elida, the most beautiful of those daughters, and they were married several years later, when he was still in the Air Force.

When he left the service, Jando and Elida moved to the suburbs of Chicago, where most of her family had settled, and he began working at the post office. He later worked in the composing rooms of several newspapers. In the late 1960s, Jando and Elida decided to move to San Antonio, where he worked for the San Antonio Express-News until he rejoined the postal service. He worked as a letter carrier, a job he loved because it allowed him to make friends along his route.

As a teen-ager, Jando hung out with two boys his age, his cousin Mike Palomo, and a guy who lived on the next street. His name was Tomás Rivera.

ABOVE ALL ELSE, Jando was a devoted family man. We visited him and Elida one year on our way to Wisconsin. They lived in a small mobile home but they welcomed us warmly and gladly. He took us to O’Hare airport to watch the planes land and take off, and he took us to the natural history museum, and he took us to a movie theater downtown to see “How the West Was Won.”

Another summer, when we were living in Wisconsin, finishing up with the cucumber harvest and getting ready to travel to Minnesota to harvest onions, my father got picked up for driving while drunk and his license was suspended. He was the only driver the family and we were stuck in Wisconsin until Jando drove up from his Illinois home, drove us to Minnesota and then took a Greyhound back to Wisconsin.

He loved to travel, whether by car, train or airplane. He and Elida traveled to Mexico, Germany, China, Costa Rica, and South America, and they camped in most of the nation’s national parks. As far as I know, they visited every state but Hawaii. One summer they drove all the way to Alaska in a pickup truck with a pop-up tent camper in tow!

Jando was a teller of stories, about his growing-up years, about his co-workers and neighbors, about his travels, about his family. Unfortunately for us, he developed a strange habit of repeating his stories, especially if they were funny, over and over again. And I don’t mean several days or weeks or months later, but right away: as soon as the laughter had died down. If he didn’t repeat the entire story, he would at least repeat the punch line. (This is a trait he inherited from my mother, who also often repeated punch lines of funny stories she’d told.) It could be irritating at times (especially, I assume, to people who didn’t know him), but for the most part, we found it endearing.

Not all his stories were funny. He often spoke of the difficulties of growing up poor in South Texas, about migrant life, and about the time he was stricken with lockjaw when he was 8 years old and he ended up in the hospital for days, stiff as a board, unable to move or speak or eat. He told about how his jaws would relax periodically, long enough for him to extend his tongue only to clamp down again, without notice. His tongue was caught between his teeth until the nurses administered enough shots to get him to relax again. Most of those shots were in his upper legs, which remained numb all his life.

BUT JANDO didn’t dwell on the negative. He was a man of dreams who believed in possibilities and who sought to find good in every person he met. He loved being with people. He would talk to anybody, anywhere about anything. He once got into a conversation with a native American man in New Mexico that resulted in an invitation to join a tribal birthday party, which he, of course, readily accepted.

His favorite conversations were those he had with his children, his grandkids and their children, even if (with the young ones), most were playful. In one of the pictures shown here, he is talking to his oldest daughter, Becky, about his early days as a migrant farm worker. In the other he is talking to his grandson, giving him advice.

Jando loved his booze, especially scotch. Of all the gifts I gave him over the years, nothing pleased him more than the bottles of scotch I gave him. And he was thrilled that he didn’t have to share it with me, as I long ago developed a hatred for scotch.

He loved to dance (and was lucky to have married a great dancer), and he loved parties of any kind, particularly if they featured Mariachi music. His favorite song was “Cu Cu Ru Cu Cu, Paloma” (and he was lucky enough to have two sons-in-law who are singers – and one of them plays with a Mariachi band.)

I visited Jando Sunday. Held his hands and kissed him lightly on his forehead before I left his room to return home. I don’t know if he knew I was there, but I’m glad I was.

It was not an easy death. There was pain and anguish. And there were tears. But it is over now.

Palomo, ya no lloras.

TWENTY YEARS ago, when I turned 55, I posted this entry. I updated it and reposted it when I turned 70. Here is an updated collection of random thoughts:

1. As a kid, I would read western comics and invariably I came across the term, “old timer.” I read it as “old timmer.” I never could figure out what an old timmer was. Now I are one.
2. I often try to imagine what went through my mother’s mind 75 years ago when she gave birth to her, ninth child. Was there joy in her heart? Was there sorrow? Did she wonder, “How are we going to feed this kid?” Did she wonder what I would turn out to be like? Did she even imagine I could be anything but a farm worker, destined to live in perpetual poverty? Do mothers always believe that their newborn child is going to be the perfect child? Or do they wonder, is this going to be the president who is going to be impeached? Or the congressman who electronically exposes his thing to strange young women? Or the loser who goes to a mall to shoot a congresswoman and a judge and others? [This item became a poem, “July 7, 1946,” that is included in my chapbook, Al Norte.]
3. There are no pictures of me as a baby. Not a single one.
4. As a kid, when I’d hear my mother exclaim, “Yo creo que me voy a volver loca,” as a result of my father’s abusive behavior, I really believed she could go insane, and I feared that more than anything else in the world.
5. I’ve never been as sad as the first time I came home from school and my mother wasn’t there; she’d gone off to work. [This was the seed for another poem found in Al Norte: “They Day They Did Not Come Home.”]
6. I never dreamed I would spend almost as many years in Washington as I did in my hometown. [I left DC in January, 2013. I lived there a total of 26 years. I have now lived in Houston 18 years. I lived in San Marcos about 10 years.]
7. There was a time when I believed I would spend the rest of my life in San Marcos, a town I love.
8. I know hundreds of people; very few of them know me, and that’s never going to change.
9. Seventy-five feels no different than 70 and 70 felt no different than 60 and 60 felt no different than 50 and 50 felt no different than 40. That’s as far as I’m willing to go, although sometimes I feel as if I were 18. I don’t feel so young anymore, although I definitely do not feel old. There are still times I think of myself as a 32-year-old.
10. I am in better shape, physically, now than I have ever been. Emotionally? Ditto. Mentally: that’s for you to decide.
11. “Our bodies change,” said the old guy sitting at the next table just now, to his wife. No shit.
12. I’m a good person, in general, but I am not very tolerant of fools. There are too many fools in the world.
13. I’m not very good with people who need me.
14. I can be very superficial.
15. I’m a snob at heart and you can blame my mother for that because she always taught us that we were better than others (even though I don’t think she ever put it that way) and that was why we couldn’t do some of the things others did.
16. If I were someone else I’m not sure I’d want to spend too much time with me. I’d be bored shitless.
17. I think I can safely say that the biggest thrill of my life was seeing Janis Joplin in concert on the UT campus. The second was watching the full moon rise over the Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. The third was flying on the Concorde from London to Dallas. The fourth was the first time I put a handful of Fritos in my mouth then quickly took a swig of Coca Cola, with the salty chips still in my mouth. The fifth was when I was told by Octavio Quintanilla earlier this year that he would publish my book of poetry.
18. My first professional baseball team was the Brooklyn Dodgers. As a kid, I didn’t even know where Brooklyn was but I knew the Dodgers were always in competition with the Yankees in the World Series. The Yankees were my Tío Adrian’s favorite team, which meant they were my cousins’ favorite team. And that was enough to make me a Dodgers fan.
19. Over the years, I’ve switched loyalty a few times: The Milwaukee Braves, the New York Mets, the Astros, the Nats and Astros, and then again, the Astros.
20. I hate confrontation.
21. I didn’t learn how to ride a bike until I was 13, and I didn’t own one until I was in my late 20s, but in Washington, I rode my bike almost everywhere in town. I don’t ride my bike in Houston half as much as I did in DC. I can’t imagine my father riding a bike at 75.
22. I’m not afraid of dying and I don’t wonder what comes after death, primarily because I believe there’s nothing after we die, but I sure resent not being around to observe what happens. At the same time, I really don’t want to be around to see what’s going to happen to this world, given the way we’ve been behaving these past four or five decades.
23. Before I die I’d love to visit Berlin and Morocco and South America. And I’d love to go back to Spain and Italy and France. And Britain.
24. I’ve been to 49 of the 50 U.S. states. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to Alaska.
25. I love traveling, yet I get terribly depressed in the weeks before a scheduled trip. Once I get in the car or on a plane, I’m fine. I blame that on my mother, who believed you should only travel for work, or other necessity.
26. I’ve never wanted children and I don’t regret never having had any and I think I’d be terribly depressed if I had had some because I’d be worried shitless every single hour of the day about what bad things could happen to them. I do love kids. I love being around them, when they are happy, seeing pure joy in their smiling faces.
27. I’m a pretty decent photographer and I love street photography.
28. I’ve been intellectually lazy all my life. As a kid learning English, I’d come across a word that I didn’t know what it meant but I rarely bothered to look it up. I’d just wait, knowing that eventually the meaning would become clear. Today I look up everything. Not a day goes by that I don’t look up something on my dictionary app or my translation apps.
29. That guy I just quoted a while ago? He just said, “There is always a light at the end of the tunnel.” Yeah, so? We spend most of our lives in the damn tunnel.
30. I have the best family in the world and I have the best friends in the world and most of my working life I’ve had the best colleagues in the world.
31. The only thing I don’t like about retirement is that I don’t get to be around people as much.
32. I don’t know of anybody who hates me or even dislikes me strongly, and I really would be surprised is such a person were to surface. I like that.
33. I have evolved from being passionate about politics to being almost completely repulsed by it.
34. I would rather unclog a stopped-up toilet than watch or listen to a talk show.
35. I miss David Letterman and Garrison Keillor. A lot.
36. I used to watch every movie released and now I probably see no more than 10 or 12 movies a year at a theater, and about that many on TV or DVD. The last 3-D movie I saw was in the 1950s, at the Guild Theater in my hometown. 
37. I do not see sci-fi movies, fantasy movies, shoot-em-up movies, spy movies, adventure movies, documentaries or animated films. Woody Allen is still the best, along with Almodóvar. And I believe Hollywood should make more westerns.
38. I learned to love newspapers when my brother-in-law, who lived next door, started subscribing to the San Antonio Express (or was it The News?). At first, I’d borrow it to read the comics but then I started reading most of the paper. As a young adult I would read every newspaper I could get hold of, no matter where I was. Today, I couldn’t care less what the LA Times or the Chicago Tribune or the Boston Globe or the Dallas Morning News looks like.
39. The first newspaper I ever bought was a Sunday Grand Forks Herald (I think that’s its name); I bought it in Forest River, North Dakota.
40. I read the printed version of the NY Times daily and I read the Chronicle and the Washington Post online.
41. I subscribe to The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly and the Texas Observer. 
42. The first razor I ever bought was in a small grocery store near Wautoma, Wisc. That was the summer my father had left us to go to Colorado with his girlfriend and so I could no longer borrow his razor to shave off my wisp of a moustache.
43. I love the moon, but the stars don’t do much for me.
44. I envy anybody who can sing and/or play a musical instrument (except for flutes and harps and classical guitar: I find them irritating.)
45. I’m scared of snakes, spiders, lizards and snakes. And ghosts.
46. I love doctors, nurses, dentists and hospitals.
47. I love airplanes, architecture and bridges.
48. I love dancing and wish I could dance better than I do.
49. I do not believe anyone who says he/she can’t cook and I have little patience with anyone who says he/she is too tired to cook.
50. The first time I ever ate French fries was at Morton’s Seafood Restaurant in Green Lake, Wisc. I was 14 years old.
51. The first time I ever ate restaurant-made pizza was when I went away to college in San Marcos.
52. I do not eat sushi or raw meat of any kind.
53. My favorite breakfast place is still La Guadalupana on Dunlavy. (Chilaquiles or machaca norteña.) Its chicken mole is a favorite for lunch, although recently I’ve been going to Pico’s for my mole fix.
54. My favorite fast-food meal is Jack-in-the-Box’s Sourdough Jack with curly fries.
55. Whataburger continues to disappoint. If you want a good Texas-style burger, go to DQ. 
56. I have been unable to find the kind of great Thai food in Houston that I enjoyed in Washington. 
57. I’ve only gotten sick-drunk once in my entire life. It was on some scotch at a San Marcos school board election victory party. To this day I cannot stand the taste or smell of scotch. But I’ll take your bourbon or your rum or your gin any time, thank you very much. Or your beer or wine. Or tequila. Vodka? Meh.
58. I know very little about wine and I’ll always pick the cheapest bottle or glass of wine. Usually, it’s a red; cabernet sauvignon. 
59. Houston will always be one of my favorite cities, as will Washington, DC. I don’t care too much for Austin.
60. I’m into cheap thrills. I can’t resist taking home those little hotel shampoo bottles, and I don’t want to throw them away when I use up the shampoo. I really believe most bottles are beautiful, be they plastic or glass. I like boxes, too – especially wooden boxes. I also find it difficult to throw out Popsicle sticks and whenever I go to the Chinese take-out, I always grab an extra set of chopsticks. I have hundreds of them.
61. I once built a popsicle stick replica of the Empire State Building. I still have it.
62. I was a decent reporter and a good columnist, but I have no desire to be either.
63. Although I grieved when The Houston Post closed and my heart still aches for my colleagues who were never able to find decent jobs in journalism, the paper’s closure ended up being a good thing for me. Had I stayed in journalism and not spent 14 years flacking for the oil industry, I would be a broke, maybe homeless, ex-journalist today.
64. Had the Post stayed in business and I’d continued as a columnist, I’m not sure I’d have had the sense or the courage to quit when I started getting stale.
65. I still keep in contact with friends I first met after they wrote to me (some in praise, some not) in response to columns I wrote for The Post and I invited them to share a meal or coffee or a beer with me.
66. I always knew Santa Clause was make-believe and nobody ever tried to convince me that he was real, and for that I give thanks.
67. I rarely read books anymore; I listen to them. The only ones I read are those books given to me by friends. 
68. Even though I’m not into religion, I’m glad I grew up Catholic.
69. I love listening to the Gregorian chants.
70. I honestly, truly believe that, if there is a God, the greatest, most profound prayer anyone can utter is a simple, “I don’t know.”
71. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be a published poet, I’d have said you were crazy as shit.
72. Although I was foolish enough to list use “poet” on my business cards, I do not consider myself a poet yet. I may never be one.
73. I’m addicted to Facebook. I do not see the value of Twitter and I don’t understand the attraction of Instagram.
74. Why am I sounding like Andy Rooney? Of, that’s right: I’m an old geezer.
75. Damn it, I can’t come up with #75!

I got a number of requests for a recipe for this dish, of which I posted a photo on FaceBook. Here it is:

What you’ll need:

4-6 whole chicken thighs, or any other parts of the chicken. (I used to be a breast man until recently, when I discovered how much tastier and juicier the thighs are.)

1 chayote, peeled and sliced (more, if desired; you can also use zucchini or yellow squash)

1-2 stalks of celery, chopped

Chicken broth, about 4 cups, or more.

1 bell pepper, sliced (if you’d like the dish to be a bit on the spicy side, use chiles poblanos, or jalapeños, with or without the seeds)

½ tomato (or 4-5 cherry tomatoes), sliced

½ cup sliced onion

4 garlic cloves, chopped

Olive oil

Cilantro

Oregano

Cumin powder

1 dried avocado leaf (optional), ground up into small pieces

1 tbs flour

Salt and pepper

Fideo (vermicelli) or thin spaghetti (or any pasta, really)

Step Numero Uno:

Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper and leave it out at room temperature while you gather and prepare the rest of the ingredients, about 30 minutes. If you finish getting the stuff together in less time, pour yourself a drink and sip from it while you wait. What’s the hurry, really?

Step Numero Dos:

Place some olive oil in a large heavy skillet (one that has a lid) and turn the heat to medium. Wait a minute or so then place the chicken thighs in the pan in a single layer and cook until golden brown, 4-6 minutes, then turn the thighs and cook them the same amount of time.

Step Numero Tres:

Add the garlic and onion to the pan and cook for a minute or two, allowing the onion to become translucent. Add the bell pepper and continue to let it cook for another couple of minutes.

Step Numero Cuatro:

In about half la cup of hot water, dissolve the flour, making sure you have no lumps. Pour the mixture into the pan then add the chicken broth, enough to cover the veggies. Use more than four cups if you need to (you can add plain water if you run out of broth); it all depends on how much gravy you want to end up with.

Step Numero Cinco:

Add the tomato and cilantro and the spices. Stir well. Taste the broth and adjust the salt and spice levels to your taste. Stir some more and cover. Adjust the heat if necessary, to make sure the whole thing doesn’t boil over.

Step Numero Seis:

In a separate non-stick pan, add some olive oil and place over medium heat. Add the fideo, or whatever pasta you’re using, and stir constantly to prevent it from burning. When the pasta becomes a beautiful golden brown, dump all of it in the large pan with the chicken and veggies. Stir to mix it. (Note: I’m horrible at figuring out how much pasta is required to make the desired amount of cooked pasta, so you’re on your own here.)

Step Number Siete:

Cover the mixture with the lid and let it cook under low heat until the pasta reaches your desired consistency and until the chicken is cooked.

Note: if you want to add a bit of Italian flavor to this, add some sliced black olives.

[In the summer of 1983, I talked my Houston Post editors into letting me travel with a migrant family from Crytal City, my South Texas hometown, to the area between Grafton (where I was born) and Grand Forks, ND, where my family worked during the summers for many years. This is the final installment of the resulting series (more of a mood piece, or thumbsucker), as I filed it. I don’t really know how much of it survived the editing process. At the end is a poem I wrote, based on this piece, which was published in The Acentos Review.]

Grand Forks, ND – The Frontier Airlines DC-9 has just nestled its wheels under its wings. I am flying away from, and looking down at, my past. 

I was going to spend more time in this state, but after yesterday I decided I couldn’t go on. I had spent most of my time here working alongside a migrant family and talking to people. But yesterday I only wanted to look around mainly for things that were here when I was last here. I did not really want to talk to people, although it turned out to be inevitable.

I started in Johnstown, a sliver of a town alongside the Burlington Northern Railroad that looks as if it’s getting ready to close up shop and die. It’s probably been looking this way for a long time. The roofs of a couple of underground potato sheds, built partially beneath the ground to keep the potatoes from freezing in the winter, or collapsing.

It was near here, about half a mile down the small road that intersects County Road 1, the town’s Main Street, that we came for a number of years after I was born. There are 12 houses here, in addition to three vacant mobile homes, and the only business establishment is the combination grocery store/guest station/bar/post office in the center of town. 

In the last year the town lost three residents, but it gained three new ones, so I guess it’s still hanging on. We used to get our grocery stores, gas and mail at the store, which was built in 1886, the year the town was founded.

My father got his beer (Hamm’s or Grain Belt) here, although originally they thought he was an Indian and refused to sell him any alcohol. One of my earliest memories is of going into town with him and waiting patiently while he drank at the bar. He bought me candy to keep me happy. When he finally decided he had enough, we got in the truck and drove back home, but not before he gave me thrills by weaving in and out of the ditch is on each side of the road. 

At the end of the town there used to staid a red-brick two-story schoolhouse that generally houses only two classrooms and five grades, except for the fall when too many migrant kids enrolled and they had to call in a substitute teacher to handle a third class.

I have a good memories of that school: of trading my peanut butter sandwiches for the tomato sandwiches of a local kid named Raymond; of the clean smell of the soap in the basement lavatory – and new word for us; and of getting permission to walk down to the store right before lunch to get my bottle of pop, another new word .

The store is now run by Denise Bigelow, a 32-year-old divorcee, who waited on three customers who entered the store while I was there. One of them, a new father, came to check his unlocked mailbox – half of the 44 boxes were unlocked; it had been that way for a number of years, said Bigelow – and she told him a package for the baby had arrived with the day’s mail. The man walked behind the counter and retrieved his package.

“I suppose you could say we stay open mainly as a public service,” she said “We sure don’t make a profit, but it’s family.”

Bigelow says there isn’t much work around Johnstown anymore. For years farmers planted sugar beets but the soybeans they now grow required no hand labor. Not a single Mexican has come by to rent a mailbox this year. The government’s new payment-in-kind grain program that encourages farmers not to grow wheat has thrown others out of work. 

People are moving to town – Grand Forks – or out of state, she said. 

What kind of people live in area, I ask. 

“Oh, people don’t change,” she said. “It’s still the same stubborn, bigoted, opinionated people, people whose grandparents grew up here. These prairie people don’t travel much and they kind of have their own opinions and keep them forever. They have all this new technology but none of the modern ideas.” 

Bigelow said the last passenger train, which used to bring the mail every day at noon at 5 p.m., ceased running 12 years ago, and Burlington northern has notified the town the freight train will be discontinued this year. I drove down to see if I could find the McCartons, on his farm my family worked for a number of years.

Bigelow had told me their daughter, Mary Ellen, and her husband ran the place, so I was afraid the McCartons might not even be alive. They are. Although retired, they still live on the farm and their daughter’s family lives in the mobile home where the migrant crap used to be. If Bigelow was right about the type of people who live in the area, she was wrong about William and Elfrieda McCarton.

Actually, this is the first time I’ve known these people’s names. We always knew him as El Pelón – the hairless one – because he was bald, and her as La Pelona, even though she had plenty of hair. Of course, they remembered Domingo, my father, and the rest of the family, they said 

He was a hard worker, they all were.

They invited me in and offered me lunch over soup and sandwiches. They talked about the old times, both good and bad. About “John” – Juan Arroyo, the farm foreman for many years and a good friend of my family’s – and all the wonderful things he and the other Mexicans did for the farm. 

“There were many times I would have traded three whites for one beat laborer any day,” said William McCarton.

Added his wife, “If farmers could get the dedicated help we had, the farming situation would be different. John was like a mother to all these beets.”

William McCarton had a stroke several years ago and his hearing and memory are failing him, so she did most of the talking. When he talked, it was about the windbreaks, – or shelterbelts – the long rows of trees – cottonwoods, evergreens, ashes and plums – planted to keep the soil from being blown away. The McCartons had been awarded several soil conservation plaques for his work and he showed them to me. He was pleased I had inquired about the trees.

I told him I remember waking up in our car one autumn morning, before dawn, and seen all these strange lights bobbing around in the dark that later turned out to be workers as they harvested the sweet sugar beets by the illumination of the minors lights he had brought for them to wear on their hats.

“We had to do that,” he said. “There was snow and rain coming – everything– and we had to get these beets out of the ground.”

After lunch they invited me to join them in their car for a tour of the farm .

We drove the block or so to their daughter’s mobile home. The very white, very blonde little girl I remembered was still very white, but her hair had darkened a bit. She was as friendly as her parents and remembered me – or at least she said she did – and my sisters and cousins. They then took me to his family’s “homestead” and said one day Mary Ellen and her husband would build their farm there.

I drove on to Forest River, about four miles away, a town I was more familiar with since we were there after I had grown up some. A sign at the towns entrance said it was the home of Mrs. North Dakota, Rosemary Dakkan.

Gone was the depot, the post office-hardware store and the old restaurant. A new metal building now houses a post office and a restaurant. I tried to talk to the postmaster but he didn’t have much to say. 

The small barber shop was closed, but the River Tavern – where my father used to spend hours while I waited outside in the car – was still there, and next to it with another bar, Tom’s Lounge. The community hall where the Catholic Church held mass and school for the migrants is now the American Legion Hall.

The grocery store where we used to get our food, on credit, was no longer more. Moorewood’s Grocery – Eli Moorewood, the previous owner, died several years ago – is now Norwood’s Grocery. It also now has half its shelf space unused. “No credit” signs were posted on every wall and an unfriendly teen-aged boy sat behind the counter. I bought a soft drink and corn chips and walked across the street to a bench in a small park.

I realized I had absolutely no emotion about Forest River. I remembered it as a cold, less-than- friendly town and I sensed it hadn’t changed at all.

I had one more stop. Halfway between Johnstown and Forest River is a road that leads to where the migrant camp where we lived for about seven summers, along with other families from Crystal City. I wanted to see what was left of that.

Almost nothing was. It’s all been torn down, even the windbreak that used to extend behind the seven houses for half a mile. Only 10 trees have been left standing and, from a distance, the only sigh that people once lived there was a solitary telephone pole, its lifeless wires sagging towards the ground, and a gutted meter peering out towards the rows of sugar beets in the adjacent field.

A new row of trees had been planted. Scattered among them, half buried in the black dirt, I found some artifacts from the lives of people who once called that home: an old pink plastic shampoo bottle, a lump of coal, and a piece of dark brown glass from a Clorox bleach bottle that might have been one of the ones we used as water jugs.

I found, also, a red-white-and-blue plastic “Loopy Ball,” long ago punctured and deflated yet still boasting, “I’m different – throw me and see what I’ll do.” I remembered that ball. It would bounce funny, never ending up where you expected it to.

From two of the remaining trees hung a rusted, sagging wire. At one time it was taut and clean and held its share of a week’s washload.

But the largest, most visible reminder of our having occupied that piece of land was the bottom portion of an old Speed Queen washing machine – lying on its side with its legs sticking out from among the knee-high grass.

It stood out like a tombstone, assuring that that yes, there had once been life there.

I decided I’d had enough. Originally, this trip was going to take me to Wisconsin and Minnesota, and other places where my family had worked but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. 

I didn’t want to see anymore old washing machines.

Speed Queen, North Dakota

Halfway between Johnstown and Forest River, 

a gravel road leads to where the migrant camp 

once stood. Almost nothing remains: the seven 

crumbling cottages, summer homes for our

extended clan, long ago razed; the weathered

walls and roofs now part of el dompe – a mile

up the road – whose moldy mounds we once 

mined for toys. A windbreak stretching half 

a mile behind the seven shacks is gone, 

except for a few trees, a solitary telephone

pole with flaccid lifeless wires and 

a gutted meter gawking at the rows of sugar 

beets in nearby fields. Half-buried in 

the black earth, I come across a few 

of the things we left behind: 

A plastic Prell Shampoo container 

A shard of dark-brown glass from 

a Clorox bottle. 

A deflated red-white-and-blue 

“Loopy Ball” boasting, 

“I’m different, throw me 

and see what I’ll do.” 

A rusty wire hanging between two 

of the trees, at one time

taut and clean and strong

enough to hold a week’s

load of wash flapping in

the southeasterly breeze. 

A smooth lump of coal, as rock-hard 

as it was the day it was 

delivered to be fed to

the cast-iron wood stove.

And the tub of a rusted Speed Queen 

washing machine – upside down, 

its legs poking out from 

knee-high Johnson grass.

Like an abandoned tombstone, 

the Speed Queen assures me, yes,

here there was once life. A summer 

community existed. Families 

interacted. White smoke floated 

from stovepipes as the aroma 

of carne guizada, frijoles and arroz

wafted from behind screen doors. 

Mothers brought newborns here from 

the hospital in Grafton. Baptisms were 

celebrated with a keg of Hamm’s Beer,

cheese enchiladas and the tinny sound 

of Juan Guerrero’s accordion. News and

gossip arrived on the noon or 5 o’clock train.

Faraway deaths were mourned with a sob 

or a sigh. At dusk, grown-ups treated 

drained bodies to blessed rest after 

12 hours with a hoe as children played 

hide-and-seek – squealing, scurrying, 

seeking sanctuary behind trees or 

in the still-green fields of wheat. 

I smell the smoke, savor the food.

I hear the accordion and the slap-slap

sound of sore hands shaping tortillas. 

I see Tío Adrián’s turtle-shaped Pontiac

and a child, shoulders sagging 

under the weight of two silvery buckets 

of water from the rat-infested well. 

I feel their weight as I pick up the lump

of coal and slip it into my pocket.

Sometime ago I was asked to speak to a class about opinion writing. This is what I told them:

1. Have something to say and don’t force the reader to wait until the last paragraph to find out what it is.
2. Decide who you are speaking for. (Yourself? A group? An institution?)
3. Decide what you want to accomplish. (Educate? Entertain? Motivate? Change minds?)
4. Don’t take a poll to decide what you’re going to say
5. Don’t take a poll to decide how you’re going to say it.
6. Feel strongly about what it is you want to say, but not so strongly that you let your emotions overrule all other instincts.
7. Don’t be afraid to show how strongly you feel about what it is you want to say, but be aware that a person who yells all the time is very likely to be tuned-out by most people.
8. Say what you want to say in a way that touches people’s hearts and souls.  
9. There is no better way to touch the readers’ souls than by baring your own soul.
10. You can persuade by reason, but you can only motivate through emotion.
11. Talk about your personal experiences but only to help you get your points across.
12. Be willing to make a fool of yourself but, for heaven’s sake, don’t make it a habit.
13. Don’t be afraid to antagonize enemies or friends, but do it for a good reason, not just to antagonize.
14. Beware of facts: they are a good opinion writer’s worst enemy and a mediocre opinion writer’s best friend; they should be used sparingly and with caution.
15. Quoting other people is good if it strengthens your argument, but bad if you quote others to keep from expressing your own thoughts.
16. It is not your job to comfort the powerful; it is your job to inflict as much discomfort on them as possible.
17. Your goal should never be to embarrass or cause pain to private citizens, no matter how stupid they may seem.
18. Don’t let yourself believe that politicians, entertainers, sports figures, etc., are your friends.
19. Be passionately in love with the language and don’t be afraid to show it.
20. Keep it simple.
21. Each sentence should logically follow the previous sentence and each paragraph should logically follow the previous paragraph.
22. Reading a column should be like following a trail from the starting point to the end. It should be a smooth and simple path, free of obstacles, detours and roadblocks.
23.  When you are wrong, acknowledge it right away and apologize profusely and sincerely.
24.  Mejor un loco y no dos. Always strive to be the voice of reason, the voice of maturity.
25. Don’t do it if you don’t enjoy it; there are plenty of others who want to do it.