Then, a few weeks later, school was over and I was off for the summer. This also happened to be the year that my parents broke ground to build a new home for us on the ranch. I’ll never forget as long as I live the big, old white-haired man who ran the construction site for us. His name was Englebretson and one day at lunchtime I saw him take his teeth out of his mouth and put them in a glass jar full of water and I took off screaming for home. He laughed and laughed and all that summer I watched them cut down trees and dynamite their trunks, blowing big pieces of stump some fifty yards away.
This was when I first learned that my own dad had worked as a professional dynamite man up in Montana with some Greeks in the copper mines, and that he still had his dynamite license. I loved what dynamite could do, so I paid close attention to everything my dad did to set a charge. Hell, with dynamite I could really do some big damage to anyone if they ever picked on me again, like they had in kindergarten.
One day, I’ll never forget, I was with my brother Joseph when these two men drove up in a truck and put up tripods and set lines. I asked my brother if he knew what they were doing. Joseph explained to me that they were surveying. I asked what surveying meant and my brother explained to me that surveying was how you measured land, and that right now, these surveyors were giving instructions with their lines for the grading of our new home site. I still didn’t understand, but then, when the big bulldozer arrived a couple of days later, suddenly everything started to make sense.
The big dozer climbed off the flat bedtruck and went right to work following the lines that the two surveyors had laid out. This was so fantastic! I could suddenly see what the word “grading” really meant. It meant that all the houses and streets of Oceanside had been surveyed first, then cut to grade, so that the rains would drain in the direction that you wanted them to go. This was fantastic!
I watched the bulldozer operator follow the survey lines with his great big steel blade, cutting at the soil for two days, and little by little, I began to realize that my parents were going to build the biggest damn house in the whole town! I was shocked!
“Are we rich?” I asked my brother.
“Yes,” he said.
“We are? Then why do I always wear dirty, old work clothes?” I asked.
“Because we’re ranchers,” said my brother. “We’re not city people.”
“Oh,” I said, “then it’s okay for us to be dirty?”
“We aren’t dirty,” he said, laughing. “To be dirty means you never wash. We wash our clothes and take baths all the time. It’s just that people that live on a ranch get dirt on themselves.”
My eyes went big. I’d never thought of this. My brother was really smart. So this was also why so many of my Mexican friends came to school with dirty shoes and pants. Their parents worked in the fields. Boy-oh-boy, my brother was a genius!
This was also about the same time when I noticed that my brother Joseph, who was eight years older than me, could talk to the different workers on the construction site in English and in Spanish as easy as you please. He seemed to understand everything they were doing. He actually ended up helping the surveyors do some of their work. And one afternoon, I heard one of the surveyors tell the other surveyor, when my brother wasn’t around, that Joseph was a real fast learner for being a Mexican.
I don’t know why, but suddenly my heart was pounding. It was like, well, I was back at school, and once more, we, los Mexicanos, were being considered dumb, stupid, slow learners. I felt like getting a stick of my dad’s dynamite and blowing these two surveyors’ truck to smithereens! They would have never spoken like this about a gringo.
I began to dream about dynamite. I loved the stuff. Just the sound of the word itself, I loved! After all, I was big now. I’d completed kindergarten. And so this morning I got up real early so I could help my father with his dynamite work. We were now clearing an entrance to our new home. First we dug a little hole at the bottom of the huge tree stump that we wanted to blow up. Then we went to the tractor barn where my dad kept half a case of dynamite. He never liked to buy too much at a time, because dynamite could get very nasty, he explained to me, especially when it got old and started “sweating.” After we got the half case from the cool dry place where we kept it deep inside of the barn, we went to the house where he kept the dynamite caps and cord. Because it was never a good idea, he’d told me, to keep the caps and cord stored right along with the dynamite itself.
Getting everything, my dad and I got in our old ranch truck and drove back over to the stump that we were to blow, which was about fifty-some yards away from our home site. This morning, my dad decided to use a few extra sticks on this huge, old stump.
Boy, it was a good thing that we used a long line and we got ourselves a good ways back, because when this big old stump blew, it blew to SMITHEREENS, then came falling down in big pieces just right in front of us, knocking the hell out of Englebretson’s old truck. I mean, the roof of his big old pickup totally caved in and his windshield burst into pieces!
Englebretson came racing out of the construction site, yelling so wildly that his false teeth fell out of his mouth. I had to run and hide, I was laughing so hard.
“Calm down! Calm down!” my dad was telling the big, old building contractor. “Damnit, I know! I know! It’s my fault! I should’ve had you move your truck! I just wasn’t thinking!”
“You-you-you DAMN RIGHT, you weren’t thinking?” yelled Englebretson the best he could. His teeth had fallen in horse manure and he had to wash them before he could put them back in his mouth. But this didn’t stop him from trying his best to keep talking.
“Slow down! Take it easy,” my dad kept saying. “I agree with you. A real professional don’t have no accidents. Every man I ever saw killed in the mines, it was because he was in a hurry and wasn’t thinking. There can be no rushing with dynamite. A good hombre a las todas is always thinking ahead and doesn’t make stupid mistakes like I just did.”
I was shocked. I’d never heard my father tell himself off like this before. But I could also see that he was right to do this, because we really should have had Englebretson move his truck, and also, by my dad saying all this, the old contractor was finally beginning to calm down.
Then I couldn’t believe it, that very same afternoon, I got to go with my dad and old man Englebretson to downtown Oceanside, and I saw my dad pay cash to Ben Weseloh for a brand-new Chevy truck. Englebretson couldn’t stop thanking my father enough. He’d never expected a new truck. He promised to make our home the best and strongest house that he’d ever built. He’d put 2 × 6s where the plans only called for 2 × 2s. He’d put extra cement in the foundation. He told my dad that he’d never had a brand-new truck in his life, and that this was wonderful!
Later, I heard my brother ask our father why he’d been so generous. “A man can never be too generous,” said our dad, “when he’s generous to a good, hardworking honest hombre, because that man will then break his back to do all he can for you. But…you be generous to a relative or a lazy, no-good worker, and they then think you’re a fool, lose respect for you, and start thinking you owe them something, especially always-looking-for-a-shortcut people.”
I watched my brother nod up and down as he chewed over our dad’s words. “I think that you’re right, papa,” said my brother Joseph, “and also the cost of that truck is probably small compared to what Englebretson can now save you on building our home.”
“Exactly!” said our dad with one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen him give. “You got it a lo chingón, mijito! Generosity is a good investment when you know who to be generous with, and also, who not to be generous with.”
“And how do we know who and who not to be generous with?” I asked.
Both my dad and brother turned and looked at me, and I could see that they were very happy that I’d been paying attention.
“That’s the million dollar question,” said my father. “And to learn how to do this, you watch, mijito, thi
nk, figure, and smell. Then, also, you don’t get bitter and lose hope on people when you make mistakes. Because you can bet your boots that I’ve made my share of mistakes in the past on this one, and that’s okay. This is how we learn, by making mistakes. And big ones, too!” he added.
I nodded. I was glad to hear this about making mistakes. “And big ones, too.” I could now once more see that my father was real smart. He’d turned his terrible dynamite accident around, making it into a very good thing. Boy, had I been dumb to let my teachers at school ever convince me that my dad was a fool.
My brother Joseph started hanging out with Englebretson’s son Chuck and this other Anglo boy named George. Both of these boys had horses and were just about my brother’s same age. I watched these two guys change my brother’s name from José or Joseph, to Joe, and my brother say nothing about it, because I could see that he really wanted to fit in with his new friends. After all, we didn’t live in the barrio of Carlsbad surrounded by Mexicans anymore. No we were living in South Oceanside where there were mostly Anglos, except for our family on the ranch. And also, the year before my brother had started going to the Army Navy Academy in Carlsbad, and there were no Mexicans at that school, as far as I knew.
This morning, Chuck and George and my brother were dragging huge, thick, old railroad ties by horseback from the valley below us up the hill to the adobe wall park across the way from Pozole Town. They were helping to build an arena for a rodeo that was going to be held after the Fourth of July parade. And I wanted to help them drag the railroad ties with my own horse Caroline, but they told me that I was too little and my mare was too small and old.
Well yeah, maybe I was little and my mare was small and old, but I was sure “thinking ahead” enough to see this other accident coming way before it happened. They should never have tried to just keep yanking and pulling those damn railroad ties across the tracks like their leader Max Tinch was doing.
And I tried to tell my brother that this wasn’t safe, and a good man a las todas was always thinking ahead, like our dad had told us, when he’d had that accident with the dynamite, but my brother didn’t want to be left behind by his friends. So I watched him just keep trying to muscle tie after tie over the rails as fast as he could and wham—this time, the old tie got caught on the rail and my brother’s old lariat stretched out all it could. Then the tie suddenly came flying off of the rail and hit my brother’s right stirrup, mashing his foot.
The pain was so bad that my brother José turned white. I had to ride home as fast as I could to get someone to bring out the truck to take “Joe” to the hospital. I watched my brother’s two cowboy friends laugh and laugh, saying that a real cowboy had to learn, one way or another. I almost pulled out my Red Rider BB gun to shoot Chuck and George. “You damn fools!” I felt like yelling. “Being stupid and in a big hurry has nothing to do with being a cowboy a las todas, pendejos!”
For over a week, my brother was laid up in bed and I ended up dragging over a dozen ties up the hill to the adobe park wall, but I first made myself a little ramp to get my ties over the rails.
That Fourth of July, eight of us from our rancho grande rode in the Oceanside Parade. My father rode his mare, Lady, a big Morgan Horse, my brother rode Lasote, a sorrel stallion, and I rode my little old bay mare Caroline. Two family friends and three of our ranch hands rode our horses with us. We were a big hit, the Villaseñor outfit, all dressed up like Charros de Jalisco, then afterward we all went to the adobe wall park to do the rodeo.
We, the little kids under seven, got to ride first and I was put on a squealing pig and rode that pig so well that they decided to put me in with the older kids to ride calves. I didn’t want to do this, because I was still little and I could get my head kicked in, but Chuck and George and my brother—who was now walking about on crutches when he wasn’t on a horse—kept telling me that a cowboy had to be tough.
“Tough, okay!” I said. “But not stupid!” I added, remembering what had happened to my brother when he’d been pulling those railroad ties.
But they wouldn’t listen to me, so my big brother and his teenage friends put me in with the big ten-year-old kids and I rode a bucking calf clear across the whole arena, not getting bucked off once. But then I got thrown against the far fence and went facefirst into a pie of fresh cow shit. Then when I lifted my face out of the pie, I got kicked in the back of the head.
I was crying and crying and telling them that it had all happened just as I’d seen that it would happen inside my brain! But my brother and his two friends just kept laughing and wiped the shit off my face and told me that I’d won the event against kids almost twice my age, so I shouldn’t be crying—I should be happy.
“Happy, hell!” I said. I was pissed and hurt and still crying. “Cow shit tastes awful! I’m never going to ride in a rodeo again!”
They told me I’d never be a real cowboy with that attitude.
“Good!” I said. “I don’t want to be a real cowboy if you got to eat cow shit and get your head kicked!”
“You better tell your little brother,” George said to my brother Joseph, “that if he keeps talking like this, people are going to think that he’s just a little girl.”
“Good!” I yelled. “Let people think I’m a girl! Girls are ten times tougher and smarter than boys!”
“Who the hell ever told you that one?” said Chuck, laughing, too.
“Tell him, José,” I said to my brother. “Our dad told us that he saw our Indian grandmother rise up in the middle of the Mexican Revolution and save our whole familia! That she didn’t fall apart and start drinking and die like our grandfather. Women are tougher and smarter than men, and they got to be! Because all life comes from between their legs! That’s why the most important thing any man can do in all his life is to know how to choose the right woman for his wife!” I added.
But I could see that my brother was embarrassed with me, and George and Chuck thought that I was the funniest thing on wheels. Then when it was their turn to ride, they didn’t do so well, and this wasn’t funny to them, but it was sure funny to me. Both Chuck and George got their asses bucked off right at the start. My brother didn’t ride in the rodeo because of his hurt leg.
It was from this day on that I began to notice a real difference between our vaqueros on the ranch from Mexico and the gringo cowboys. The American cowboys always seemed so ready to act rough and tough, wanting to “break” the horse, cow, or goat or anything else. Where, on the other hand, our vaqueros—who used the word “amanzar,” meaning to make “tame,” for dealing with horses—had a whole different attitude towards everything.
To “break” a horse, for the cowboys, actually, really meant to take a green, untrained horse and rope him, knock him down, saddle him while he fought to get loose, then mount him as he got up on all four legs, and ride the living hell out of the horse until you tired him out, taught him who was boss, and “broke” his spirit.
To “amanzar” a horse, on the other hand, was a whole other approach that took weeks of grooming, petting, and leading the green horse around in the afternoon with a couple of well-trained horses. Then, after about a month, you began to put a saddle on the horse and tie him up in shade in the afternoon for a couple of hours until, finally, the saddle felt like just a natural part of him. Then, and only then, did a person finally mount the horse, petting and sweet-talking him the whole time, and once more the green horse was taken on a walk between two well-trained horses.
“You see,” my dad told me, “for our vaqueros from Mexico, the whole idea is to make friends with the horse and for that animal to never buck. Not once. Sure, it takes longer, but you be patient and easy with a horse and he’ll, then, end up trusting you and accepting you as his best amigo. Horse training is a courtship of amor, mijito. No different than bringing flowers to a girl and serenading her with music and dance. Capiche? This is how you show respect for the animal’s heart and soul, recognizing that God is in every horse, burro, goat, pig, c
ow, and plant and rock.”
I nodded. This, I understood. Then, also, on that Fourth of July, I found out that our vaqueros could ride bucking broncos with the best of the gringo cowboys if they wanted to. In fact, our top hand Nicolás, a real tall, lanky guy from Zacatecas, took first place at the rodeo.
It was the greatest learning summer of my whole life, but then came the fall, and I was told that I’d have to go back to school again.
“NO WAY, JOSÉ!” I screamed, because I now knew that at school they were trying to “break” us, not “amanzar” us. “I get a whole year off!”
“Who told you that?” asked my mother. “You only get off for the summer, mijito. Come on, we need to buy you some new clothes again.”
But I was so angry with the thought of having to go back to school, that this year I refused to go to Penney’s—my favorite store—to get new shirts and pants like I had the year before.
On my first day of school, I wore my old ranch working clothes, but I didn’t care. It felt to me like I was returning to prison. My whole stomach hurt. To my surprise, this year they didn’t scream at us right off the bat, because, I guess, most of us Mexican kids were now speaking quite a bit of English. Even Ramón. But he was a changed kid. There was a darkness in his eyes like a horse that had just been beaten one too many times.
This year we were given books to hold in our own hands and we were put in little circles to take turns reading. But first we were tested orally to see if we’d finished memorizing our alphabet over the summer. Hell, I hadn’t even thought about school all summer, much less tried to memorize anything.
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