| Memories
of growing up in Douglas I
was born in the old Douglas Hospital, on 9th. St. and F Av., in 1940.
Up to the time I was about 12yrs. old, we lived on 4th St., between the
Lugos( Johnny, Lydia Aurelia, Delia,etc.) and the Novoas ( Arnold,
Cookie, Tololo,Chila). Our house was between E and F Av., and these are
some of my memories while we lived there:
When I was five yrs. old my Dad's older sister, Josefa, died, and the "wake" was held in our house, as was common among Mexican families upon someone's death. As a five yr. old, I was scared to death, seeing a coffin in our front room all night long with my aunt in it. I remember not sleeping a wink all night, but constantly peeking around the door frame to be sure my aunt was still in the coffin and not moving around. Among Mexican families in those days, it was very common to have the bodies in the homes overnight. In those days I ran around with kids from the International Av.-4th St. area. At times we would play in the big, wide drainage ditch that was next to the international fence that separated Agua Prieta and Douglas. On the Mexican side of the fence would be the Mexican National kids, and we would just stare at each other; eventually they or us would make an offensive remark, and the cussing would start, eventually turning into rock throwing contests. Having the ditch in our favor to manuever back and forth without being seen, we would pop up in unexpected places and pepper them with rocks, using our homemade sling shots we always carried with us. The Acedo brothers, Fote and Fito, were probably the best I ever saw with slingshots- they didn't miss too often. Donkeys that would cross from Mexico into Douglas thru the Whitewater Creek area next to the smelter; provided us with one of our favorite past times- we would get some rope, lasso them, and we would take turns riding them all day long. Then we would get our parents' permission, and at night on a rotating basis, we would board the donkeys in our back yards, so that we could ride them again the next day. We would feed them and give them water at night. One or two of us would sleep outside, to make sure other kids in the neighborhood wouldn't come around and want to "borrow" the animals for themselves. A man who lived in the Pan American-4th st. area would print a Spanish language newspaper once a week by the name of "El Mexicano", and a bunch of us kids would sell them door to door for ten cents each- the man would give us 2 cents for each paper sold. I got a jump on other kids when I talked my older brother,"Sonny" into taking me to Pirtleville on his bike to sell my papers; I would ride on the handlebars while he peddled all the way. At first I was the only one selling them in Pirtleville, and was doing good- eventually though the other kids got wind of it and started going there also when they heard I had sort of a monopoly. I always gave my brother 50% of what I made for his efforts. Since hardly anyone in our neighborhood had TV's and the very few that did have one had trouble with the reception from Tucson, our entertainment at night was to play outside. Two of our favorite games were "kick the can" and las cuatro esquinas(the four corners). We would play till 9-10 p.m. with no worries of perverts, gangsters, etc. In addition, the parents would always be checking on everyone, as it was a real tight knit neighborhood, and they would not only look out for their kids but for everyone else's. At times, a bunch of us would go to the cemetery, which at the time had no fence or gate. We would bet each other on who could walk into the cemetery the farthest without quitting, and walking back(roundtrip in a slow walk). As guys would give up after a while, we would start howling and making strange noises, trying to make those that were still in it scared. The last guy to come back would collect his earnings from the rest. When
in 3-4th
grade at 7th. St. School (now Sarah Marley), the principal, Mr. Ollie
Naught, would take a bunch of us at times to the Elk's Club and the
American Legion to box. We were paired by weight, height, and grade. We
would box three one minute rounds and at the end of each match, the
club members would throw out money onto the mats, and each boxer would
get to keep as much of it as he could pick up. We were then seated at a
table and would get a big plate of what ever the members ate that
night.
Since Ray Young and I were the same size, weight and in the same grade,
we would always box each other.
The Y.M.C.A. club on 10th st. and Pan American also had a boxing club and once a month they would have boxing matches open to the public. I remember the crowds were good and seeing the adults wager money with each other on certain matches/boxers before each match. I also joined the boxing club there; I liked boxing as a kid. I learned to swim by myself at the Y.M.C.A. pool. I could really swim good underwater, but not a lick on the surface, for a while. When the lifeguard would take a break and leave the area, I and other kids would dive off the board in the deep end, toward the side, and would swim underwater (since I couldn't swim on the surface) until I came to the edge. This was just once in a while; I eventually learned to swim on the surface. When circuses/carnivals would set up behind the Y, a bunch of us would go and help set up the tents, rides, bleachers, etc. and our pay would be 5-6 free tickets for the rides. This one time the carnival manager told us we didn't work hard enough and that he wasn't paying us. I went home and told my Dad, and he took us all to see Percy Bowden, the chief of police. He told my Dad to meet him at the carnival. Percy told the carnival manager that if he didn't pay us, he could start dismantling everything immediately and that he could leave town first thing in the morning. Needless to say, we got our free tickets for the rides then and there. When the P.D.* store was in it's hey day in the late 40s-50s, there were railroad tracks right behind the store where rail cars would come in and deliver food, furniture, appliances, etc. The produce workers would unload the food, and we would be there with little wagons/carts to take any veggies and fruit that they would not want and would be ready to dispose of. We would then fill up our carts and go door to door in the neighborhoods, selling cantoulopes, bananas, lettuce,etc. for maybe 5 or 10 cents. Surprisingly, stuff that was given to us was not that bad, and it was edible. * The "P.D." store was a company store that Phelps Dodge had in town, along with the hospital. My Dad retired from a big copper smelter that was located in Douglas, and the store had everything you can think of; three floors of you name it. Families could go up to a window and have coupon books issued to buy anything they wanted; the amounts would be deducted from the workers' paychecks. At times after getting out of school at the Intermediate School (now Carlson) we would crawl into the gutter that drained rain water under the street, at 12th and A Av. We would then crawl underneath A Av. all the way to 4h st.where the gutter came to an opening, and we would then go home. How in the hell no one ever got bit by a snake or stung by black widows, etc. I'll never know. I guess the Lord was always with us. Another
thing we enjoyed was trading comic books. Instead of spending money for
new ones, everyone had their own
collection, and on weekends we'd go to each others houses and trade
for books we hadn't seen. Anita Dillman who lived on E Av. between 4th
and 5th, had the best collection of books, and on weekends the traffic
to her house was non-stop.
On weekends we could get a haircut for 10 cents, from a lady by the name of Mary Bojorquez, who lived on 4th st. Her "barber shop" was a little wooden shack in her back yard, and on Saturdays kids would line up all day long. She even had comic books to read while we waited. If we had a minor illness(earache, cold, etc.) Moms would send kids to the doctor by themselves. We would go the Douglas Hospital, and in the waiting lobby was a book we would sign our names into, with our Dads' smelter clock numbers. The receptionist would then call us in and the doc would treat us and/or give us meds. Moms would send kids to the P.D. store to pick up coupon books for shopping. The books came in different cash amounts and the coupons looked like stamps with amounts stamped on them, and parents could shop without any cash. The amount of the coupon would be deducted from our Dad's paycheck. My favorite movies were westerns. If Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey, Lash La Rue, Hopalong Cassidy, or Jonny Mack Brown were playing, I'd be there. Westerns were shown at the Grand Theatre on weekends, and would start at noon or 1p.m. I would usually repeat each movie twice, and then I would go home. This one time it was 9 p.m. and I still wasn't home, so my parents started looking for me and asking in the neighborhood if anyone had seen me. My mom finally went to the theatre and got permission to go in. She found me sound asleep in a seat toward the front. I had been there since about 1 p.m. On Sundays the Lyric theatre would show Mexican movies, and many Moms would take their kids with them. In those days you could take anything into the theatre, and many would take paper bags full of bologna, tomatos, mustard, lettuce, fruit, etc. with sodas. All during the movie you could hear paper bags opening/closing, and the smell of sandwiches and fruit. You thought you were in a market. Everyone should remember Willard Henry. He was mentally handicapped, but loved western movies. He would always wear a cowboy hat, western shirt and belt, toy guns on either hip, levis that were always tucked into his cowboy boots. He would sit toward the back and would always yell at the top of his lungs when there was a scene where a bad guy would sneak up on a good guy with guns drawn. He would yell something like "Roy, he's coming up behind you, turn around and shoot him". Willard had a brother who graduated from West Point. When I was 8-9 yrs. old our parents took us to Cal. for vacation. I remember we stopped in Benson Az. at a restaurant to eat. We sat down and a few minutes later two other families came in. The waitress took their orders and a few minutes later their food was on their tables, while we still waiting. My Mom then motioned to the waitress and told her we were ready to order. The waitress, in an apologetic and embarrassed manner told my Mom she was sorry, but that she couldn't wait on us, saying "I'm sorry Mam, I just work here". Being only 8-9 yrs. old, I didn't know what was happening until after we left our parents told my brother, sister and me that what the lady meant was that the owner didn't want Mexicans for customers. My Mom then went to a local market and bought things to make sandwiches and some soda and we ate on the road. MY MEMORIES FROM AGE 12-18 At age 12, we moved from 4th st. to 19th st. Some of my friends in the new neighborhood were Fote and Fito Acedo(who had moved from 2nd st. to 19thst.), Larry Prescott, John Apodaca, Max Quinonez, Bill de la Vara, and someothers. Most of us worked at the Paladium Bowling Alley, owned by "Cuzzy" Williams, Kinnear Williams' Dad. Since there weren't any automatic pinsetters installed yet there, we had to set pins manually using a hand operated rack that we would lower after putting the pins in individual slots. We made fairly good money on league bowling nights, and the tips from the bowlers were good, too. On slow days Cuzzy would let us bowl free and we would take turns setting up the pins for each other. The times we would really make good money was during the summer forest fire season in the Chiricahuas. Although the age limit for fighting fires was 18, they would never ask for proof of age, so we would say we were 18, when actually we were 16-17. The pay would start as soon as we got on the trucks in Douglas, and would stop when we returned to the office in town. After 2-3 days of being in the mountains, we would come back to some good paychecks. We would eat good too 'cause Ft. Huachuca would send mobile kitchens to the sites, and we would eat steak, potatos greens, ice cream ,etc. We would also earn spending money by selling fish we caught at the creek by the smelter. We would catch catfish and big carp (some gold colored) and bring them in big waterfilled tubs into town, and sell them to people who had ponds in their yards. We would get more money for the big goldfish than for the rest. As a sophomore in high school, I worked at the Fort Cochise Drive In Theatre. In the mornings I would clean up the parking lot, picking up trash, cups, etc. and in the evenings I would monitor the car exit gate making sure no one would try to sneak into the grounds in their cars. At the end of the evening I would help direct traffic out. This one time I told my buddies to be there at a certain time, and that I would let them drive in thru the exit gate. Sure enough, they arrived at the time specified, and I let them drive in. About 15 seconds later, Tony Bustamante, who managed all the theatres in Douglas, tapped me on the shoulder and told me he had seen what had just happened. Needless to say my career and employment at the drive in theatre ended that night. Aw, what the hell, they were my buddies. After graduating in 1959, I went to the Navy, and was sent to the Navy's Radar School in San Francisco Bay for 20 weeks. I was then assigned to a ship out of Hawaii, and that was my home for three yrs. I got to see Hawaii, Guam, Okinawa, Japan, Hong Kong, and the Philippine Islands on two separate voyages that my ship took. I now live in Tucson with my wife Stella(Encinas) from Pirtleville. We've been married 38 yrs., have four children and three grandkids (and one in the oven). In 1999 I retired as a Captain from theAz. Dept. of Corrections. Hi everyone: I did not include school activities, since most of us were classmates, and knew what activities we were involved in while in school. Many of us never knew what we did after school, on weekends, on summer vacations, jobs, etc. If any of you think this will work, please make your own bio of your memories and share them with all of us. I might not have some E mail addresses for some of you, so someone else might be forwarding this to you. Add me to your mailing list so that I will know what your memories are. I plan to make a small portfolio of each person's bio so that I'll know everyone's memories of growing up; I'm sure some of you will relate to some of the things I mention. Thanks Hector Montano
- July 9, 2006
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