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Interview with Teresa Hernandez Schwartz
Interviewer: Nora Murphy
Date of Interview: October 6, 2019
Length of Interview: 72:42
Location of Interview: Home of Teresa Hernandez Schwartz
Transcription Completion Date: January 15, 2021
Transcriptionist: Emily Raymond
Teresa Hernandez Schwartz (Interviewee): The – the, the houses of La Yarda. Um –
Nora Murphy (Interviewer): Oh.
THS: I’ve got it upside down. That was taken –
NM: It’s all water.
THS: Yeah, there’s a – there was a fence there, and that was, a farmer planted corn right behind
there. Was pretty close to the bottom – to the back end of the – of one of the rows of houses. The
other, where we lived over there, they didn’t have any fence or anything.
NM: So, you lived, like, over here, and this is the edge of the river, or…?
THS: No, we lived, now this is where all the, the men used to plant their gardens.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Uh-huh. And, are – the houses are right here.
NM: Oh, where the water is now?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: See, all that was full of water. Uh-huh.
NM: Oh, so they took the photo after the flood.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Well, I think that one was taken when it was filling up with water, because you couldn’t
see any of the – of this after.
NM: Oh, wow.
�THS: It was filled up.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Yeah. When we came – went in the next morning, we – our road had – had washed out, uh,
right away when the water started coming in, ‘cause it was coming in so bad that it just, the road
just caved in.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Where we used to come in and out. So, we had to go around that way, and of course when
we went around that way, that was when all the water was coming across there.
NM: Oh, dear.
THS: We had to go around there when my dad and I went to get the chickens, because my
mother wanted her chickens out. So, we put ‘em in a cage and he got up in front. He’s a big man,
so, you know, um, he was able to hold on and – and, uh, I was in the back, and the cage kept
going sideways and he kept saying: “Hold on, do not let loose,” because the water was rushing
over [murmurs].
NM: Oh, gee. Scary.
THS: Everything was just full of water.
NM: Where were your other – your brothers and sisters?
THS: Um, my brothers and sisters, they used to live there, at one time or another. My sister and
her husband, and then he was drafted into the service, World War II. And so, he left her there,
you know, because of my folks being…
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then my – my brother lived on down to the other – of the other end from where we
lived. My sister was across from us, and, uh, so my brother lived over there with his kids, and
then he got a job at the – at the shops in Topeka.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Instead of working out on the railroad, you know, in the cold winter and everything. My,
uh, my dad used to say that, uh, when they came, we got ready for lunch, they would build the
fire. But he says there, that – we called them tacos, ‘cause you know, just the tortillas with beans
in it –
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: And pepper.
THS: And he said they was so frozen that you couldn’t eat them.
NM: Oh.
THS: Move ‘em, you know. They had to put ‘em on the fire to get ‘em thawed out before they
could…eat any lunch at all, yeah, ‘cause they carried it in their lunch pail. And they was out on
them little, the kids called ‘em pushy cars, but they really wasn’t. That was some kind of a little
deal that they, uh, had a motor on it, and they would go up and down the railroad tracks.
NM: Yeah. Well, let’s start at the beginning, as though you’d never told me anything about La
Yarda. Like, did you say that you – you moved there when you were two years old?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Where did you move from?
THS: We – I was born in Topeka.
NM: In Topeka.
THS: In Topeka they had the – the Santa Fe houses. My dad worked for the Santa Fe there. Um,
he worked for the – for the Santa Fe and they had little houses, but they was made out of wood
and the ground would, I mean the floor was dirt.
NM: Mm.
THS: There was – I remember my mother used to get up in the morning with a little pan and
water in it and sprinkle it so that all the inside of it, so that it wouldn’t get so, you know, uh…
NM: Dusty?
THS: Yeah, dusty.
NM: Oh.
THS: Mm-hmm. Because, you know, it would get real dusty and so she put water on it, and that
way it would kind of settle down.
NM: And you remember that?
THS: Yeah, mm-hmm. I was two, you know. I could remember. Them talking about it.
NM: Well, when was your birthday? Which year?
�THS: January the 6th.
NM: January 6th. What year were you born?
THS: 1930.
NM: 1930.
THS: Yeah, I’ll be 90 in Dec – in January.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But anyway, so this was better housing over here.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So my dad asked for a transfer, and he came up – we came over here, I was two years old.
You know, I – there was so many kids in that little space, that you got to learn a lot of talking
and everything from all them little kids. ‘Cause it was just…kind of a circle. And – and once in a
while they would put water all over that dirt so they could have a dance there.
NM: Are we talking about La Yarda here?
THS: No, we’re talking about –
NM: In Topeka?
THS: Topeka.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Before we moved down here.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Uh-huh. And they used to, uh, have dances right there.
NM: Oh.
THS: They would fix Mexican food, you know, just like a fiesta, only it wasn’t quite a fiesta
‘cause there wasn’t very much room, yeah. [NM laughs] But I learned to talk from them little
kids there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: I was going on three years old, really, when we moved down here. I was still two, but then
we moved to La Yarda because they had, you know, the houses down here was concrete.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, uh…there was two rows. And after we moved there, they – we just had been built
not too long before then. Uh, we…Mr. Romero, which was my sister-in-law, that’s her right
there, she married my brother Jesse. They was the ones that passed away here in January.
Anyway, they moved from Quenoma. They used to live in Quenoma. NOTE: Possibly she means
Quenemo, which is southwest of Baldwin? He worked for the railroad, too.
NM: Where is Quenoba?
THS: Quenoma is –
NM: Quenoma.
THS: Way up on the other side of Baldwin somewhere.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Uh-huh. But that’s where they moved, because they had better housing down there, too. I
don’t know what kind of housing they had over there, but they had eleven kids in their family.
And so, each one of us got four – four rooms.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know, and – and –
NM: Each family got four rooms?
THS: Each family got four rooms.
NM: Okay.
THS: There was three – three, four rooms on one side, and three or four rooms on the other, so
they got, you know.
NM: Like two rectangular buildings facing each other.
THS: And then the Ramirez moved in there. And then the Garcias moved in there. And we
moved in there. And, uh, let’s see, who else? My brother Pete moved in there with all his kids.
And then like I said, Lucia moved in there. And, uh, let’s see who else…uh…oh, they kept
moving in and out. But the Romeros and us were the only ones left in La Yarda when the ‘51
flood came.
Formatted: Spanish (Spain)
�NM: And you’re the Hernandezes.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Okay.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And the Romeros. All of the rest of ‘em had already moved and got houses on New Jersey
and Pennsylvania.
NM: Yeah, uh-huh.
THS: But the Romeros, they had eleven kids, so, you know, it was hard for them to get out and –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, and my dad never even thought about moving. He just, you know. Actually, I was
the only one left. All the rest of ‘em had already moved out, you know, the girls.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: We had three girls and, uh…four – four boys. Three girls and four boys.
NM: In your family?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Mm-hmm. And were you the youngest?
THS: I was the youngest.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
NM: So when you moved to La Yarda, um, um…there were, like, seven other families living
there?
THS: Uh, they wasn’t all full yet, ‘cause they had just built the – the Santa Fe yards –
NM: Uh-huh.
�THS: Not too long before that. So, they started moving in, coming from different little towns,
you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And they all worked for the railroad.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know, so, when they moved for the railroad, they could get transferred wherever they
wanted to go.
NM: Right.
THS: So, when they seen that, uh, they got the houses there, uh, they decided that they wanted to
move to, you know, here to Lawrence, so –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Um, I think it was us and the Romeros that moved in there first. And then came the
Garcias, and then – there’s a bug going in there [laughter]. Let’s see, what, I don’t want to do
that with that – with that deal, because –
NM: Oh, this bug here?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh. Want me to just put him outside?
THS: Just throw it out. Fritz will eat it [laughs].
NM: Want me to give him to Fritz?
THS: No, just, no, just throw it on the floor.
NM: Okay.
THS: He’ll pick it up. Yeah, he’ll pick it up. He – the minute I get up, because I have problems
with my hand since I broke it. And, uh, the minute I get up he’ll run over.
NM: Oh.
THS: Pick up all the crumbs that I’ve dropped on the floor.
NM: The crumbs.
�THS: He does it no matter where I’m sitting. And he can’t see very good, he’s – he’s going
blind, he’s a diabetic.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And he’s got cancer.
NM: Oh, gee.
THS: In two places, so –
NM: Wow.
THS: They only gave him three months to live, but he’s already lived over the – he doesn’t seem
to be –
NM: Must be something in the water.
THS: Must be.
NM: Pretty good.
THS: But anyway, getting back to –
NM: Yeah, to La Yarda.
THS: Yeah. Okay, then.
NM: So, were you all from Mexican families, like was your dad from Mexico?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Or your mom from Mexico?
THS: Yeah.
NM: And how did they get here?
THS: My mom, my dad…my dad’s dad, he – he was…he owned the – the hac – the hacienda, I
guess. Um, that’s what they call it. A farm.
NM: Okay.
THS: You know. He – he had 300 men working for him.
NM: In Mexico?
�THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Wow.
THS: That was my grandfather.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, my grandmother, my mother used to say she had a – a maid for the birds, the
canaries; a maid for the kids; a maid to cook the food; a maid to clean the house; a maid to, uh,
water the outside, you know, the dirt. He – they – she had a maid for everything.
NM: Gee.
THS: In the fall when the harvest came in, uh, my mother said she used to sit and, uh, um…for
three days, and divide all these, um, food, all this corn and – and beans and everything that they
had grown.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Divide it among all the workers.
NM: Wow.
THS: Besides, they got paid, you know, every, so many – every so, I don’t know how often, but
they did get paid.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Anyway, then my grandfather died, and my dad, since he was the oldest, he had a younger
sister and a younger brother. But since he was the oldest, he was left in charge of the hacienda.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: When the government was changing governments, and they was coming through, uh, they
could – my mother couldn’t remember, or my grandmother, if it was Zapata or Pancho Villa, or
which one was coming through, and they was killing all the men that – that owned anything at
all. So, they decided to come to the United States, and they sold the hacienda where they lived.
NM: Mm.
THS: They sold it and buried the money. And they came to the United States. So then, after
everything had settled, my grandmother said that they went back to – to Mexico, to dig up the
money. But the money wasn’t any good any more. It had already changed –
�NM: Oh, devalued? Oh, wow.
THS: So, since they didn’t have anything, then they moved back to the United States.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, my aunts, three – my aunt had two girls and her, but they wouldn’t let ‘em come
across the border, because they didn’t have no means of taking care of themselves, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Nobody working, so that they could have money.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then, um, my dad brought ‘em over. He says he didn’t want to leave ‘em up there. So,
he brought ‘em over as his daughters. So, he brought over five daughters, ‘cause there was two
of – of my sisters that was, you know, had been…
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Um, in Mexico. Anyway, um, so, but when he – they went back to Mexico, it was just my
– my mother, and my dad, and all them, you know, the two girls, my two sisters and my brother
was the only ones that went back. Well then, when they went back, they had my other brother up
there. And then they came back and they had my brother Joe in Kansas City and then they had
us, my brother Jesse and I in Topeka.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So, they came back and they – they didn’t have anything, I mean, they just had to start over
again.
NM: Oh, goodness.
THS: ‘Cause everything was already gone.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh –
NM: So, they got jobs in the railroad right away, your dad did?
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah. He got a job right on the railroad. And then my – after years, after my,
uh, before my brother-in-law went into the army when they drafted him, World War II, uh, they
was all – they moved here through Lawrence, my brother and my brother-in-law.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, they was working for the railroad, and then they got a better job in Topeka
working at the Santa Fe shops. So, they moved back to Topeka.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So actually, during the ‘51 flood, there was only us and the Romeros left in there,
Everybody had already bought houses on New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
NM: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
THS: But not all the Mexicans that lived on there lived in La Yarda. No.
NM: Where else did they live?
THS: Like the Chavez, Chavez didn’t. Now Peter Romero and his family all lived there.
NM: They lived in La Yarda.
THS: They were still there when the ‘51 flood came.
NM: Mm-hmm. Were there people living in the boxcars?
THS: Mm-hmm. Well, when – when my, uh, folks came over, even though they had a – a…oh,
uh, passport to come across,
NM: Mm-hmm?
THS: They came in a boxcar.
NM: They came in a boxcar, but they didn’t live in the boxcar when they –
THS: No. Well, in Kansas City they did.
NM: Oh, they did?
THS: When Joe was –
NM: In La Yarda there?
THS: And my uncle lived in, uh, in – in Pauline. He lived in a passenger car. Yeah. ‘Cause I
used to go visit him, you know. They had a daughter just about my age, and she passed away
years ago in California, but…they lived there till they moved to Topeka.
NM: Now, why would the railroad have somebody living in the passenger car?
�THS: Well, because they didn’t have any houses for them to live in.
NM: Oh.
THS: Uh-huh. So, that was the closest thing they could find, so I remember going through there
and they had curtains. They had a room and then they had curtains. Then they had another room
and curtains. And that’s the way, mm-hmm. But I remember going to visit ‘em, ‘cause their
oldest daughter was the same age.
NM: Was their car on the tracks, or was it off in the bushes somewhere?
THS: No, it was in the bushes.
NM: Oh, in the bushes. Oh, okay. So just an extra –
THS: They had just taken it and pushed it off the railroad tracks.
NM: An extra car, that –
THS: But it wasn’t a boxcar, it was a passenger car –
NM: That wasn’t being used. Okay.
THS: It had a lot of windows in it.
NM: Uh-huh. Interesting.
THS: So, um, but…no, it – it was…wasn’t very good, so when we – in the ‘51 flood, we got out,
Like I say, the Romeros, uh, Raymond Romero and them, their dad and mom let the – let the
Romeros go down and stay in their basement of their house. And next door lived their son, and
Raymond, and he told my dad that he would, uh, rent the upstairs. He says that we had some
people living up there, but they moved out, and it’s all clean and everything. If you want it you
can go ahead for $60 a month, you can go ahead and move there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So, we moved up there, up there, for about three months, then my dad decided we needed
to get out of there. And so, he bought that house over on Rhode Island Street, and that’s where
we lived –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Till they left for a nursing home in St. Joseph, in Kansas City, so…yeah.
�NM: When you were at La Yarda, did you have to pay rent to live there, or was that just housing
for the workers?
THS: No, no.
NM: Okay.
THS: The – the bathroom, the toilet, was about from here to, uh…the, field, house over there.
NM: Wow.
THS: And you talk about going out there in the wintertime. You know. Oh, it was so cold. You
know, they had one for the men, and then one for the women, and over on the other row of
houses they had the same thing.
NM: Uh-huh. Did they have showers there, too?
THS: No, we had to take – we had to [laughs] we had to go out and there was a pump that sat in
the middle of both, over here, towards the front.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Not in the middle, but in the middle of both houses. There was a pump there, and we had
to go pump water out of there, and then we had to warm it up on the stove to take a bath.
NM: Wow.
THS: And in the summertime, we could see snakes down in there. But we didn’t have much
choice but to drink that water; we didn’t have anything else. We – I mean, we – we kids could
see ‘em down there, you know, and – and we’d ask the people – I mean, the parents to get ‘em
out, they didn’t want to get out.
NM: It was at the bottom of the well? These snakes?
THS: Yeah. Not too, you know, not too many, maybe we see a – a snake and some frogs, you
know, jumping around down there. Oh, yeah. And we had to drink that water, ‘cause that was the
only water. Well…this down here, see, that’s one of the toilets.
NM: Oh, right. Uh-huh.
THS: And this down here was a slaughterhouse. And they had a house there to live in, that’s
what the Romeros lived in, and then their dad worked on the slaughterhouse, cleaning the
slaughterhouse.
NM: Oh.
�THS: And, uh…So, uh, like I say, I mean, you know, we lived there and we thought it was very
fortunate. We had concrete –
NM: Yeah.
THS: On our floor, you know, instead of dirt.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, then when we all got a little bit bigger, then we went to pick potatoes for the – out
for Heck, over north of town.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: We all went. He’d come and pick us up at six o’clock in the morning in a big truck, and
we’d all get in the back of the truck. And then, uh, he’d take us up there and then he’d bring us
back at six o’clock at night. We picked potatoes, a 105 out in the heat.
NM: Dig ‘em up out of the ground?
THS: No, they’d take ‘em and plow; they’d have a tractor plow ‘em.
NM: Oh.
THS: And we’d pick ‘em up and put ‘em in a wire basket, and they’d carry the wire basket up to
where the trucks go to pick em’ up and then sack – put ‘em in a sack and –
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: They would come – uh, one of ‘em, two guys on the truck, one of ‘em would pick ‘em up
and throw ‘em, the sacks, on the truck, and the other one would, uh, write how many.
NM: Okay.
THS: ‘Cause we got ten cents a bag.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: A hundred pounds of potatoes, for picking ‘em. That’s what we – they paid us, ten cents a
sack.
NM: So, a bag was 100 pounds?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: And you had ten cents?
�THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So, at – at the end of the day, about how much did you make?
THS: Not very much [laughter], but it made enough. It made enough that we thought we had a
lot of money.
NM: Nice. Now, are you talking about when you were this age, like maybe you’re, uh, fourteen,
fifteen, something like that?
THS: Yeah.
NM: And these girls would all go with you?
THS: Oh, yeah.
NM: Do you know – do you remember their names, who these girls are?
THS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s my sister-in-law Jenny, that’s Mercy, that’s me, and that’s Carmen.
NM: And they’re all Hernandezes?
THS: No.
NM: No?
THS: No. A Romero, Garcia…
NM: Oh.
THS: And, uh, a Ramirez.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: [Murmurs] Oh yeah.
NM: Did you say that’s you?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Aw. You’re looking right at the camera.
THS: [Murmurs] all the rest of ‘em. And I didn’t want to take pictures, but they insisted.
NM: That’s a cute picture.
�THS: But anyway, my daughter probably has one or two more. I told – she talked to me last
night, told her to start checking the – papers.
NM: Oh, good.
THS: And see if she could find some more. Or if she could find somebody that lived in La Yarda
that had pictures that wasn’t in the flood that they might have around.
NM: Yeah, that would be great. Wow.
THS: No, Peter was – Pete was in the flood, yeah.
NM: Mm-hmm. Pete Romero?
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah. They was there.
NM: He was there that day?
THS: Yeah.
NM: I see – I see him every so often; he comes to the fiesta meetings.
THS: Yeah, does he?
NM: Yeah, he’s very busy with fiesta. Mm-hmm.
THS: He’s, uh, he – he was – he, that’s his sister right there.
NM: Oh.
THS: Which was my sister-in-law. Yeah, they took off and got – her and my brother took off to
Topeka and got married at 17.
NM: Oh, really?
THS: Yeah.
NM: So you’re mar – you’re – you’re related to the Romeros, then?
THS: Well, just by –
NM: By marriage.
THS: Yeah. By marriage. Mm-hmm.
�NM: Now, did you – when you were moved here and you were two years old, um, do you
remember your dad going off to work every day? Did he –
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Was he – did he get to stay home most nights, or did he have to go travel?
THS: [Laughs] You know, this is something that I never could figure out. During the floods,
‘course, between here and Lecompton, the – the water used to come over the railroad. Well, if
there was water on the railroad, the trains couldn’t go through.
NM: Mmm.
THS: You know, so they made a stop down here to Santa Fe.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Railroad, here. Uh, so they would take one of the men down there, and leave him there, all
night long. They’d –
NM: To guard the train?
THS: To – to see if the water was gonna come over the railroad.
NM: Oh.
THS: How in the world they were supposed to – to notify the Santa Fe depot, what I can figure
out, we didn’t have phones back there with – I mean, they sat there all night long with a fire
burning, you know, making sure. But the water didn’t get over the tracks, ‘cause if it did, the
trains would have to stop down here.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Well, down here at the Santa Fe depot, was underwater too.
NM: Mmm.
THS: You know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So they couldn’t –
NM: So, this – did it flood periodically? This ‘51 flood was a really big one, but –
THS: That was a big one.
�NM: But every so often it would flood?
THS: Yeah, it would – well, that’s the reason that my dad and Mr. Romero said – they – a guy
from, a bigshot from Santa Fe came down and told ‘em: “Look, let’s move you out, there’s a big
flood coming, you know – ”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: “And we’ll send trucks to – to load all your things up.”
NM: Oh, they knew?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Okay.
THS: “And – and, uh, move you out.”
“Oh, no, no, no. It’s gonna come up to the sidewalk, and it’ll go back down.” Well, it
came up to the sidewalk but it didn’t go back down this time. And that’s the reason we lost
everything.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Because they could have put it on trucks and taken it out.
NM: Oh.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So, they had seen floods come and go –
THS: Oh, yeah.
NM: And they were not consequential.
THS: We used to – we used to get out there and fish, great big old fish. [Laughter] With a string
and – and a stick.
NM: Yeah.
THS: A stick off the – the trees, you know.
NM: Uh-huh.
�THS: And we tie a string on it; we thought we was fishing. [NM laughs] Great big old carp about
that big would come, you know, the water would bring ‘em back, and –
NM: Right, they would get landlocked.
THS: If it got a little bit higher, we’d get out there and swim in that dirty water.
NM: Oh, gee. Dangerous.
THS: It’s a wonder we didn’t get sick.
NM: Yeah, yeah.
THS: Yeah. We – we – we done it all. I mean, you know. And, I gotta tell you about this. This
Mr. Romero that lived in the slaughterhouse?
NM: Yeah?
THS: He was – they used to have a sale barn down here at the corner. Right on 11th Street, you
know, where that – that trail is.
NM: A barn?
THS: Right up on that hill, you know.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: There’s houses on this side, and there’s where Allen Press is, way back there. That used to
be Stokely’s, where they canned, uh, food, you know, beans and all that stuff, back there. Well,
they used to have sales every Saturday night. And Mr. Romero, he was no relation to any of the
Romeros. He used to go up there, he’d take a little – a little goat, or a little cow, or something,
you know. Not a cow, but a calf, you know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And then he – he’d come by with a – a sack [laughs]. He’d tell us: “If you kids don’t say
anything, I’ll give you some meat after I cook it, okay?” [Laughs] He would tell us, of course we
wasn’t gonna say anything, ‘cause we didn’t eat meat that much, you know.
NM: Yeah. So he – he stole the calf from the slaughterhouse?
THS: Yes.
NM: Oh, gee.
�THS: Up here on the hill, there on 11th Street, where they had that – they had the sale every
Saturday morning.
NM: Oh. So, they were selling the cows and –
THS: The calves and everything.
NM: And he just snuck one out.
THS: He wouldn’t get the big cows, he would get the little calves, you know –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Or the goats, you know. Then he, the goat, he would come down, dig a hole and – and, uh,
put some rocks down in there. And then he would put a – wrap the meat of the goat [laughs] and
put it down in there and then put ashes on top of that, and cook it all day and all night. And he
would say: “If you kids don’t say anything, I’ll give you some.” Well, we wasn’t about ready to
say anything if we was gonna get some meat, you know. But he used to do that quite a bit. And
then the, uh, the guys from…from the sale barn would come the next day, and they’d say: “Did
you kids see any – any, uh, we lost a goat.” [NM laughs] “A baby goat, did you kids see
anything?” “No, we didn’t see a thing.” Cause we knew that if we told them, we wasn’t gonna
get anything.
NM: How funny.
THS: And that was extra meat to eat, you know.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Like I say, my mother cooked a chicken every Sunday. ‘Cause she raised chickens after a
while, after we was there. She’d cook the chicken every Sunday, the…uh…oh, the people that
came over would eat the chicken, if there was Sunday chicken left, we would eat it. If not, we ate
the soup off the chicken.
NM: Mmm. So, she had company?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Every Sunday we had company, and she’d kill a chicken, ‘cause she – she raised some
chickens in the back, and so, uh, she’d kill a chicken.
NM: Now, you guys – did you all belong to St. John’s Church back then?
�THS: We went to St. John’s, when we had to sit on the three pews on the left-hand side. And we
had to pay a dime. They wouldn’t let us sit anywhere else in the church. We had to sit in the last
three pews.
NM: They had three pews set aside for the Mexican children?
THS: Uh-huh. In the back.
NM: Or Mexican-Americans, yeah?
THS: In the very back of the – of the church.
NM: In the back of the church.
THS: On the left-hand side.
NM: And you had to pay. Did other people have to pay to use the pews?
THS: I don’t know. I was too small, you know. I remember that – that my dad, on – when the
snow was so high, and it was so cold, he would carry me. But, you know, the men always walked
in front of the women. They’d never walk with them.
NM: Really?
THS: Uh-huh. That’s the truth.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah, the men walked about three paces ahead of the women, and the women walked back
there.
NM: Hmm.
THS: And I always asked my mother how come they done that. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said,
“they just always done that.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Mm-hmm. They never walked together.
NM: Just the custom.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Did you grow up speaking Spanish?
�THS: Uh, yeah.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Yeah.
NM: And –
THS: I didn’t – I didn’t know any English till I went to school. I went to school at New York
School.
NM: New York School.
THS: Uh-huh. And they had a reunion there; I would have loved to have gone. A couple of
weeks ago, they had a reunion. I had – I went to that, uh…oh…that, uh, deal they had in Topeka,
you know, for the family. Uh, trying to think of the name. I’ll remember it pretty soon.
NM: Yeah.
THS: It was uh, you know, for all the family. So, I really wasn’t planning to go, but the girls
wanted to go, because they wanted to see, you know –
NM: Oh, a family reunion.
THS: A family reunion.
NM: Oh.
THS: Yeah, they had it in Topeka, in that church basement, in the church building over there.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And so we went, but Andy said the only way he would take me would be in the – in the
wheelchair. And I knew he meant it. So I went, but he did take me in the wheelchair.
NM: Yeah. That’s fine.
THS: I don’t like to ride in the wagon – the wheelchair.
NM: Oh, you don’t? Does it make you nervous?
THS: It was my sister, my daughter-in-law’s wheelchair that had Huntington’s. And he still has
it. And so, he’ll bring it over and he’ll say: “I’m only gonna take you if I can take you in the
wheelchair. Or else we’re not going, Mama.”
NM: Well, I think it makes sense for you to go in the wheelchair.
�THS: Oh, it does to him, but not to me.
NM: Because then you get so tired, and dizzy, so, that way you can relax.
THS: I get really tired, too, them seats up there. And then they had this display of [murmurs]
cousins’ pictures on the table, but they was mostly from our – from my side of the family, you
know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: There was hardly any pictures from the other side of the family.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So –
NM: So, you knew everything. You saw everything that you already knew. You were looking for
new things to see.
THS: Yeah, the girls was, uh, took me up there, you know: “Mom, do you know who this is?”
Sure, I knew – [NM laughs] I knew ‘em all, you know. We grew up together.
NM: Sure.
THS: And, uh, when, um, uh, we went to, uh, pick potatoes, my, uh, cousins from Topeka and
Pauline came over
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: To earn a little money, ‘cause Mexicans wasn’t hired back, way back then.
NM: The what?
THS: The Mexicans, they wouldn’t hire ‘em.
NM: Nobody would hire you?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Oh.
THS: And we went to eat, the only place we would be able to get a hamburger or a Coke would
be up at the bar. At the – even at the dime store. That’s – we couldn’t sit in a booth and – and eat,
they wouldn’t let us.
�NM: Really? And was it just understood, or was there a sign or…?
THS: No, they would tell you.
NM: Oh, they would tell you.
THS: They would tell you: “We will sell you food, but you can’t eat in in here. You’ll have to
take it with you.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Real quietly, you know, where nobody would hear.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But that’s what they did. I remember Leo was, he – he was in Louisville, Kentucky. And
he hitchhiked home, so he could save money. Uh, he helped his mother pay the gas bill. She
owned a house there on Tennessee Street. 1321 Tennessee. And she rented it to Chinese people.
NM: Oh.
THS: And so, um, he always – she never had enough money because they didn’t pay very much.
But they did feed her. [Laughs] So Leo always, uh, he used to shine shoes in the service for other
guys to earn extra money.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So that he could help his mother pay the gas bill.
NM: Oh, mm-hmm.
THS: And so, he hitchhiked home, and they met him up at the TP Junction. And just coming
down north, that north street, there was a place there, a restaurant that they called Deluxe.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And – and so he stopped there, it was in the – it was hot. And he said, he stopped there and
he had his uniform on. He stopped there to get something to drink. She says – the lady came over
and said: “We’ll sell you the drink, but you can’t drink it in here.”
NM: What did she have against Leo? He wasn’t a Mexican.
THS: Eh, no, but he – he looked like one.
NM: Oh.
�THS: [Laughs] You know, he’s dark-complected.
NM: Oh, my goodness.
THS: And so, she says: “We’ll sell you the drink, but you can’t drink it in here.”
And he said: “I had my uniform on. I said, ‘Lady, you can keep your drink. I don’t need it
that bad.’” And he continued to walk down to his mother’s house on Tennessee Street. But he
always remembered that, that they told him…
NM: Wow.
THS: But, you know, we was used to it. Now, um, I remember my brother came home one day
and – and he told my mom, he says: “Mom?” ‘Cause my dad didn’t make very much money on
the railroad, no. They paid him the least they could pay him, you know? And they worked him
all day in the hot sun and in the cold wind and the cold – cold winter. Anyway, um, they,
uh…um, Leo says, he used to shine shoes for the other soldiers so he could earn enough money
to send to his mother to pay for the gas bills.
NM: Yeah.
THS: So, but he said he was happy that the Chinese fed her. [Laughter]
NM: They’re good cooks.
THS: She wouldn’t – she wouldn’t have been able to get out and – you know, she was kind of
crippled too.
NM: Yeah.
THS: So, she wouldn’t have been able to get out. Now, there was some stories that, you know –
NM: Well, when you were at New York School, were there a lot of Mexican kids there?
THS: Oh, yeah.
NM: And did the teachers treat you okay?
THS: Yeah, they treated us really good.
NM: Were there white – or whiter Americans, I don’t know what the other people were called?
THS: There was a – there was a few colored kids too, because, you know, we all lived down here
on the east part of town.
NM: Uh-huh.
�THS: You know, we didn’t live on that part of, any of that part of town over there.
NM: So, the teachers just taught you…
THS: Yeah, they taught us just like they did the rest of the kids.
NM: That’s where you learned English?
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
NM: Did you start in kindergarten –
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Or did you start in first grade?
THS: No, kindergarten.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah. We all did.
NM: Yeah.
THS: We went on clear up to junior high. We went to junior high when junior high was on
Kentucky Street.
NM: Oh.
THS: There was three buildings.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: One on each side, you know, on…
NM: Yeah, that’s where Langston Hughes went to school.
THS: And you had to cross the street; when there was too many cars, you was late to the other
deal. And you had – we had gym on the third floor of the one over on that side of Kentucky
Street.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: So, if we was over there on – on that side of Kentucky Street, we’d have to cross the street,
run all the way up the stairs to gym, and if we didn’t make it, we’d get wrote up. We didn’t have
to come up and say, but everybody did, you know.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But all them stairs, you had to run up them stairs to get up to the gym [NM laughs].
NM: Now, when you went to that school, what was that school called; do you remember?
THS: Um…they called it, well, it was Central.
NM: Okay.
THS: Yeah, Central.
NM: Alright. And, um, so the Pinckney kids came into that school also? Were there kids from
Pinckney school and New York School, and – ?
THS: They all came up –
NM: Maybe some other school?
THS: Till they – till they, uh, moved the high school, Lawrence High, to the big high school.
And then they made that a junior high.
NM: Mm.
THS: Yeah. Up to that time that – we was there.
NM: And were you okay there? I mean, were the teachers nice to you then, too?
THS: Uh-huh. The teachers was good to us, and – and so was the kids.
NM: Yeah?
THS: I remember we had – well, I don’t know, but you know [murmurs] and Miss Six. She was
an older teacher. She was the nicest teacher you ever did see. There was quite a few colored kids
and they put us up there on the top of this – the one on – on, uh, the east side. The building on
the – there was one on the east side, one on the west side, and then one on the north side. There
was three buildings, yeah.
NM: Okay.
THS: And that was junior high. Okay, so you go in one building, you had a class there, and
maybe you had to go clear over to the other building to get there, to go to the other class.
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: Well, like I say, if you had gym, clear up to the top of the north building, and if you was on
the east building, you wouldn’t make it there. You got wrote up and you had to go stay after
school.
NM: Right. Yeah.
THS: So, um – I had a sore there.
NM: Oh, dear.
THS: I think – I think it has to do with that cancer I got on my nose.
NM: Oh.
THS: Yeah. And they took that one out, and I think it’s come back again.
NM: Mm.
THS: They took one out about that big on my cheek. And I had just had surgery for my eye,
because it was swollen shut.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And they just went to get the stitches out, and they sent me to a dermatologist.
NM: Oh, boy.
THS: He said they’d have to take that out. So now my eye is going shut again. But I’m not gonna
have to [murmurs].
NM: Oh, dear.
THS: But, no. But…and – and, Miss Six over there on the top of the – of the south building over
there, yeah, the south building, um…most of them was colored kids in there. Yeah. I don’t know
if they divided ‘em because of that, or – or what. But, there was about three of us Mexicans in
there with all these colored kids.
NM: Oh.
THS: Well, she couldn’t handle the kids. They’d get up and sing, and dance, and just carry on,
and she – she would say: “Now, kids, if you behave yourselves, I will give you an A!”
[Laughter] Well, we’d get an A too, ‘cause we was right there. Oh, it was so funny.
NM: So, what did Mrs. Six teach? Was she an English teacher?
THS: No, history.
�NM: Oh, history. Okay.
THS: Said: “If you behave yourself, I’ll give you all an A.” We all got an A, every one of us.
[Laughter]
NM: So, were you – were you the same kids all day, or did you change; switch around?
THS: No, we would change, because some of the kids took, uh, some kind of, uh, subject and the
others took another, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm. Right.
THS: And like the boys, they would play basketball or anything like that, so, you know, they
would change, they would go to – the girls would go to gym all – all at one time.
NM: Oh.
THS: Not at one time, a certain hour, and then the boys would go at a certain hour.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But never together, you know. But, no, it was – it was real fun to go to school there. Then
when we went to high school, then it was a little bit different.
NM: Oh, was it?
THS: We didn’t, uh, we was just mixed in with everybody, and everybody treated us like
anybody else.
NM: Okay, well, that’s good.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: That kind of surprises me.
THS: Yeah, it does. But, uh, the church, and if you ever go to the cemetery, you will walk behind
the – the garage –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And you see, most of the older Mexican people are buried back there, because we wasn’t
allowed to be buried anywhere else in the cemetery.
NM: You had a certain area of the cemetery, yeah.
�THS: The back of the garage.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And we had to dig our own graves.
NM: Gee.
THS: And they had to make their own stone.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: They made it out of concrete and they wrote the names on it.
NM: Mm-hmm. Are your parents buried back there?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah.
NM: In the Catholic church?
THS: But, when Leo and I went to get our lots, I told him, he says: “Where do you want to go?”
I said: “I want ‘em over there by the lake.”
He says: “What for? You’re not gonna be able to see anything.”
I said: “I don’t care, I want…” So our – our tombstone’s just as you come in the gate.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And then, uh, he said: “I want a vault.”
I says: “What you want a vault for, you’re gonna go to ashes anyway.”
He says: “I don’t care. I want a vault.”
NM: He said he wanted a vault?
THS: So he got his vault and [laughs] I got the –
NM: And you got the spot that you wanted.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Yeah, that’s great [laughs].
�THS: But, you know, most of it, it was because, we was, were – was able to, you know, be
buried anywhere then.
NM: Yes, yes.
THS: We didn’t have to be buried back – well, my folks are buried out there. Back there,
so…but Mrs. Mitchell’s buried – uh, she – she was a colored lady, she’s buried right next to
them.
NM: Uh-huh. So, did the colored people get buried in the – in the same area that the, um,
Mexican people did?
THS: When, uh, when Father, I think it was Father Larry, or one of ‘em, Father O’Neill, I can’t
remember which one it was, but that’s when we got, uh, and then of course when Father Tao
came, he was more or less, you know, for the whole. Uh, all the people in the church.
NM: Which one? Father who?
THS: Father Tao.
NM: Tao?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Oh.
THS: He was Monsignor Tao, I guess.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: I don’t know if he was here before, um, when he was still…yeah, he – he married us,
Monsignor Tao, yeah.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Uh, I was in high school and my dad had been in the hospital for three, uh, three weeks in
Topeka. And there was no income coming in. And so, uh, Gladys Romero used to clean house
for Mary Tao. That was Monsignor’s sister. And so, she had to quit for so – well, she had breast
cancer. And she had to quit, and so she asked me if I wanted to go take that job over there. So
Mary, she hired me right away, you know. And – excuse me – and so, uh, she had me taking the
flowers off the altar and – and, uh, cleaning the – the house, you know, and
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And uh, uh…ironing, you know, tablecloths for the altar and all that. Oh, I done it all.
Yeah.
�NM: So, you kept the church clean.
THS: Yeah.
NM: And the –
THS: Well, they –
NM: Parish –
THS: They had people come in and clean the whole church, but –
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Uh, she had me wash and iron the – the table – the altar cloths.
NM: Oh.
THS: Uh-huh. And the – the altar boys,
NM: Oh, the albs?
THS: ‘Cause at that time they didn’t have no girls, you know.
NM: Sure.
THS: Just boys. So I ironed all of them, so then when Leo and I got married, they had pictures
taken of her – him and I together with Monsignor and her.
NM: Oh.
THS: Oh, yeah. We got pictures, and then I asked her if she would stand up when we had Andy.
We was married three and a half years before Andy was born.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And she said yeah. So her and Leo’s brother stood up for Andy.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah. Well, she got to where she was liking me real well, you know, she would just leave
me at the house and say: “Answer the phone, do whatever you want to do.” You know, they
would go somewhere and, so that’s what I did. And, uh, then I went to work in the laundry for
$12.50 a week.
�NM: Oh, I remember you working at the laundry. Yeah, where was the laundry?
THS: At Independent. Independent Laundry, right across from the seniors’ place, over on
Vermont.
NM: On Vermont, across from where the senior center is now? Okay.
THS: No, it’s across the street from there.
NM: Oh, okay. Across the street.
THS: Yeah. It was right next to the Brand building, where they had the W.R.E.N., it was right
next to it.
NM: Okay.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So, what was that like? Was it all Mexican girls working there, or a whole bunch of
different girls?
THS: No, they had others. They had colored ladies working, and Mexican girls, and they had
white –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: White women, but at that time, you know, we was kids, and everybody just took us under
their wing, you know, they just –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: [Murmurs] Thought it was just a bunch of kids that just loved to work [laughter]. You
know.
NM: Well, it’s hard work, ironing all day.
THS: We worked from six…6:30 in the morning till 5:00 at night, mm-hmm. In that heat.
NM: And seven days a week, was it, or did you get Saturdays off?
THS: Ah, no, we had Saturday and Sunday.
NM: Oh, nice. Okay.
THS: Unless we – unless they was behind, ‘cause we had to do all the sheets of the – and the
pillowcases of the fraternity houses and the sorority houses.
�NM: Oh.
THS: And all the Memorial Hospital sheets. We had to do all the, I mean, Jenny and I used to, I
mean, leave piles of sheets, you know. But of course, they had some ladies put them in baskets,
you know –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then put their names up. But yeah, we done all of ‘em. All the fraternity and sorority
houses.
NM: Did they have big washing machines to wash ‘em?
THS: They had a big [unintelligible] Tommy. I think they had five of ‘em [unintelligible],
Tommy. And then they had, uh, women on that – they had another room. And then they had the
office upstairs. And the women in the other room, they sorted out all the clothes. Except the
hospital ones. And, uh, Tommy had to just throw ‘em in the washer like that.
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: But you never know when – what you’re gonna find in that hospital.
NM: That’s what I’m thinking.
THS: He used to take it, take stuff and throw it clear over [laughs]. Make us jump. I learned how
to do it all, I learned how to press shirts, I learned how to fold clothes, I learned how to put
tickets on them, I learned how to separate things.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah. I had to.
NM: I just gotta get one more story. I – I love that story you have of Christmas and how you’d
go to church, and then your dad…
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Would invite everybody home. So, tell me that story again.
THS: Yeah, um, we used to make tamales. My mother would get up at 3:00 in the morning, and
she would be on her knees with a metate, which is a rock, and then another rock, a big rock about
this – did you ever see one like that?
NM: Uh-uh.
�THS: Okay. It’s a big rock, about that wide, and about that, and it kind of slants down. And then
she used to have a – another rock about this – it was only about that wide. And it was about that
long. And so, she put the corn in there, and then get that rock, and rock back and forth, and back
and forth, till she got all that masa just right.
NM: Mmm.
THS: Okay. She’d get up at 3:00 in the morning, 2:00 in the morning, and be out there, uh –
NM: Outside?
THS: No, in the house.
NM: Oh.
THS: Yeah, they would cook the – the corn outside.
NM: Oh, they cooked it outside.
THS: Yeah, in great big old cans, about that big.
NM: Okay.
THS: Yeah, they built a fire –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And cooked the corn. Then they would bring the corn in, and, uh, she would grind it. And
then they would take their hands and work with it, after she grinded it.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, then she had all the rest of the family come in and you’d take that spoon and you’d
put that corn on them corn shucks, you know, you spread it out just so-so. She had to have ‘em
just so-so. You talk about being young and trying to get that on there.
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: You’d put it on there, it’d come back in your fingers. Then she would took – take a piece
of meat, and then she would fold ‘em so, and then she would stack – she would put a little
wooden thing, about that big, that my dad made with three – with…uh, four, uh, little doodads
about that big, just like a star.
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: Only it had one more than a star. And then, um, she would stack the tamales in that bucket
just so-so.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Because you had to have this, the steam – you can’t cook ‘em in water. You have to just
cook ‘em in steam. So, you let the steam go out –
NM: In between.
THS: And that’s what cooks the tamales.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: She would make two or three cans, and the cans was about that big, that used to be flour
cans.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Okay. And then, after – then we’d have to pray the rosary, and my grandmother: “We got
to pray the rosary before we go. You can’t go till we pray the rosary.” Well, it’d be alright if we
prayed the rosary, but after we’d prayed for John because he was sick, and – and Joe because he
was sick, and this and that, and us on our knees. She: “You have to get on your knees,” on a
concrete floor. You know.
NM: Cold floor. Mm-hmm.
THS: Then after that, we gotta lay the Baby Jesus down before we go to church. Okay. We gotta
lay the Baby Jesus down, and my dad would go to the store and he would buy bags of mixed nuts
and bags of hard candy, and they would have this great big old dish, and they would fill it up.
You can’t have any of that till after you lay the Baby Jesus down. Okay. Then we were allowed
to go and get a handful. [Laughs]
NM: After all those prayers.
THS: Then after, we’d go to Mass. Then after Mass, my dad would stand on – on the – on
the…steps of the church, after church. “Come on to the house for coffee and tamales. Come on
to the house,” my mother would say. They would set this great big old table in the kitchen and,
uh, so that’s…
NM: And that would be an afternoon Mass, or a – or a – ?
THS: No, midnight Mass.
NM: Midnight Mass?
�THS: Oh, we had to go to midnight Mass.
NM: Oh.
THS: We had to lay the Baby Jesus down.
NM: Oh.
THS: Before we went to midnight Mass. Oh, yeah.
NM: Ah, so it would be like…one in the morning by the time you were home.
THS: Yeah, by the time everybody left, it’d be six o’clock in the morning.
NM: Oh, goodness.
THS: And, uh, everybody would come in for coffee, my mother would make pots and pots of
coffee.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: For coffee and tamales, and of course, they start talking about way back in Mexico and
pretty soon it was six o’clock in the morning and [laughs] you know, but that was Christmas.
NM: What a party. Yeah.
THS: That was Christmas, and everybody always looked forward to it.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Not everybody came, you know, but we always had a houseful.
NM: Great story.
THS: Not just of our family, but…
NM: Yeah.
THS: You know, yeah. And my grandmother used to come, and she’d spend one month with –
with us, one month in Topeka with my aunt, and another month in Pauline with my uncle. And
then she would start over again. She said that way they won’t get tired of her. [NM laughs] So,
and she come over here, my dad would buy her a dress, and maybe shoes, or something like that.
Then she’d go to Matt’s in Topeka, and they’d do the same thing. ‘Cause way back then, you
didn’t get no Social Security or anything .
NM: No, there’s no –
�THS: So that was the only way that she could make it. Of course, when she lived there with ‘em
for that month, they would feed her and – and all that, you know, so…but no, she came, and
they’d, uh, I mean, coming from somebody that really owned so much stuff and then – it was
hard on her.
NM: Had to have been very hard, mm-hmm.
THS: But…they made it.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And still they’re – she’s – she’s gone. She passed away. In fact, they’ve all passed away.
Actually, I’m the only oldest one out of the whole family.
NM: Mm.
THS: I mean, um…my dad’s and – and my uncles and my aunts, yeah.
NM: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
THS: Yeah. Everybody else has passed away.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So…but no, we had – we had some good times.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, we – we played – we didn’t have to go out and find somebody to play. It was
always the boys against the girls. [NM laughs] Well, that’s because they would just push us
around and everything. Yeah, okay. “We’re gonna play football. We’re gonna play us against the
girls.” [NM laughs] “We’re gonna play baseball. Come on, girls. We’re gonna play against you.”
You know, and: “We’re gonna play basketball,” well, they – we had a – a basket that they had
cut the bottom out of it.
NM: Oh.
THS: And hang it up. And that was –
NM: That was your basketball.
�THS: It was always the boys against the girls, ‘cause there were so many. See, the – the Romeros
had eleven. Uh, we had seven. Uh, the Ramirez had, uh…ten, I think. And the Garcias had
eleven, too, I think.
NM: Gee.
THS: Yeah. They all had a big family, so –
NM: Right.
THS: We didn’t have to go out and – we – we just got pushed around. We didn’t have to go out
and find somebody to play with. [NM laughs] And then until we got a little bit older, and then
the Ramirez moved on New Jersey Street, right across from the Holy Rollers Church. [NM
laughs] The day that the Holy Rollers was gonna have church, we was all up in that porch, the
Ramirez porch, waiting to see them carry the people out. They would sing –
NM: Yeah?
THS: So much, that they would have to carry ‘em out.
NM: Wow.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: They would faint?
THS: We had a lot of fun. But, you know, we – we went to the movies, we had to sit way up
there in the balcony.
NM: You had to sit in the balcony.
THS: Yes, we wasn’t allowed to sit anywhere else in the movies. We did get in for ten cents, so
we had to save up fifty cents [murmurs, laughs]. And they had chapters, and we would go every
Saturday morning, to see the Lone Ranger and Gene Autry and Will Rogers and –
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: For ten cents, but, yeah. We – we enjoyed it, and like I say, La Yarda, they had, you know,
bathrooms, but, oh, it was so cold [laughs].
NM: Oh, goodness.
THS: And, uh, in the house, uh, we had wood stoves.
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: And if the wood stove went out in the middle of the night, you were out of luck. You’re
gonna freeze to death [laughs].
NM: Did your dad try to keep wood in there all night?
THS: My dad did, mm-hmm.
NM: Oh.
THS: Yeah, he tried to keep it… ‘cause, you know, I still had one of my older sisters at home
with us, and then my other sister, she was married, but he was in the service, so she lived right
across from us.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: In the other row of houses.
NM: Did you help your mother cook and do all the chores?
THS: They did.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: I didn’t have to do it.
NM: You didn’t have to, ‘cause you were the youngest?
THS: Mm-hmm. The others always griped [unintelligible]. My mother always said: “Leave her
alone. She’s – she’s too young to get in here.” And so I didn’t learn how to do anything.
NM: Oh.
THS: No. Mm-mm. I didn’t have to, ‘cause, both the girls was –
NM: Well, how did you become such a great cook?
THS: I don’t know.
NM: Just experience.
THS: I just experienced – I didn’t know how to cook one bit when I got married to Leo. And he
knew how to cook.
NM: Yeah? ‘Cause he’d been in the army.
THS: Uh-huh. He knew how to cook real good, but I – I didn’t.
�NM: How funny.
THS: But I learned, mm-hmm.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And a lot of it, you know, I couldn’t remember what my mother used to tell us. ‘Cause she
used to sit me down with the other two [laughs] and tell us what we were supposed to do and
how we were supposed to do it.
NM: Uh-huh. But you didn’t remember.
THS: I was – I was always the youngest, so I didn’t have to. They did.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Yeah. And then in the summertime, like I say, we picked potatoes. Then we’d went to
California. My mother had an aunt up there. That’s where my sister got married. My dad was so
mad. [Laughs] He couldn’t find her, they took off and hid in – along the trees along the road.
And, uh, we used to, uh, the boys, well, they’d take me too, but they would take me till we got to
the peaches and apricots, because –
NM: Oh. Are we talking about California now?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Okay.
THS: They say that they made more money because they would be picking up, and they had little
buckets about that big.
NM: Yeah.
THS: So, all I did all day long was carry little buckets back and forth. The women was cutting
the apricots in half, and laying ‘em on this tray, my mother did it.
NM: Oh.
THS: To dry.
THS: And then they’d put ‘em in the oven.
NM: Oh. Now, when was it that you went to California?
THS: [Laughs] In the summertime.
�NM: Oh, in the summer. Just one summer, or different summers?
THS: No. Different summers.
NM: Several summers you went to California.
THS: We would go in time to – to work on the apricots.
NM: Oh.
THS: And then we worked on the peaches. We lived in a tent there. My mother cooked outside
in the pot.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: But the boys says: “Mom, we’d make more money if she carries them little buckets back.”
Well, you know, carry the – I was old enough to go to school, though, they made me go to school
in Cucamonga, and I’ll never forget that. I didn’t like that.
NM: The what?
THS: Cucamonga.
NM: What’s that?
THS: It’s a town in California.
NM: You went to school there?
THS: Where I went to school.
NM: Oh, so it was like a migrant children’s school, or…regular ?
THS: No, it was a mixed school, uh, but I didn’t know any – anybody. There was a row of
houses, great big old row of one-bedroom houses, I mean, it reached for about a mile.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Where they’d hire all these – where the let all these people live, to work on their grapes.
NM: Oh, on the grapes.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Oh.
�THS: So, we would go and work on the – on the apricots, and then the peaches, and then we’d
come back over to this little town, and the boys would work in the grapes.
NM: Oh.
THS: Well, the more grapes they picked, the more money they made.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: I must have been about eight or nine. Maybe not even that. I don’t think I was there…
Anyway, the truck would come and drop off all them little wooden boxes about that big.
NM: Right.
THS: Well, they didn’t want to stop picking, because the more boxes they would, so they
would…
NM: So, you were the go-fer, huh?
THS: I went to get them little boxes, I carried two, one in each hand, you know, and get over
there to ‘em.
NM: Were they cardboard or wood?
THS: Huh?
NM: Were they cardboard boxes, or wood?
THS: No, it was the wooden boxes.
NM: Ugh. Heavy.
THS: And so, I’d take one in each hand and then take ‘em to one, and then go get two more and
take ‘em to the other, and…
NM: Right.
THS: The other – my three brothers was working in the area [murmurs].
NM: Now, did you take the train to California, or how did you get there?
THS: We took the train.
NM: Oh.
�THS: See, my daddy got a pass, so we could go anywhere as long as the train ran.
NM: Right. And so, you knew people there that got you these jobs, and…
THS: Well, uh, my aunt, she – well you didn’t have to know anybody, you just go there. There
was plenty of people to –
NM: Oh.
THS: You know, they had to pick that before it would ripen.
NM: Right.
THS: And so then, when we went over to this other place after we got the peaches and we went
in the grapes, oh that sand was so hot, though, on your feet. But the boys would say: “Mom,”
‘cause the truck would dump the boxes clear out there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Well, if they had to quit picking to get the boxes, then they made less money.
NM: Mm-hmm. There you go. So they got their little sister to help.
THS: Till I had to go to school, they told me I had to go to school. They told my mother she had
to send me. Well, she put me on this bus. I don’t know anybody on the bus, ‘cause none of the
people there was very friendly, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: They all kept to themselves. She puts me on this bus, and we go all the way about from
here to Eudora on the bus.
NM: Mm.
THS: Maybe a little further. Then the bus goes in this place, the gates open. Great big old fence
about as tall as this house. The bus walks – drives in, they close the gate. There I was, standing in
the hallway crying, I didn’t know anybody there; I didn’t even know what class I was supposed
to be in.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know, she just put me on the bus and she says: “Go to the school.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And the gates didn’t open again until you got to go home.
�NM: Like a prison.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Wow.
THS: It was. To me it was a prison, anyway.
NM: Did – did anybody help you?
THS: No.
NM: No?
THS: Finally a teacher came over, and she asked me where I was from. And so, she took me
under her wing and took me to this grade, and, uh – uh, you know, told the teacher there and –
but none of the other kids ever talked to you. No.
NM: So strange.
THS: They wouldn’t even sit with you when you had lunch, because you’d go out in – in under
these trees, and they had –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Picnic benches out there. None of ‘em would talk to you. They was Mexicans and white
kids there too.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But they… oh well [murmurs], oh well. I made it. Then we’d come back and we’d go to
Minnesota to work in the potatoes, the carrots –
NM: Gee whiz.
THS: And the onions.
NM: Hmm. And you took the train out there?
THS: No. Raymond put us in the back end of this big old truck. Four families back there. And it
was cold back there, too.
NM: Oh, yeah.
�THS: In the wind, you know. And so, we’d go out there, and we’d sit – we’d live in the garage
on a dirt floor.
NM: Gee.
THS: One in each corner of the garage, you know. We all slept in the same garage.
NM: Ooh.
THS: We just had to, you know, and then the women cooked outside.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then the man had some peach trees out there. And apricots. [Laughs] And, of course,
you know, we being kids, we’d go over there after dark and pick ‘em.
NM: Sure.
THS: Then the next morning he would come and he’d tell my – our mothers: “Would you please
keep your kids off of there.” Oh, we was hungry. You know, living in a place like that and
nowhere, you know. They’d take us to town on Saturday nights to watch a movie, you know, and
they wouldn’t let us off the truck, because they was afraid we’d get lost. So we sat in – on – in
the truck.
NM: A drive-in movie?
THS: Well, it really wasn’t a drive in, ‘cause all you got to see was the movie. You couldn’t –
they didn’t have no things to –
NM: You couldn’t hear it?
THS: Mm-mm. But we seen the movie. [NM laughs] Then they’d take us, uh, twice a week to go
take a bath in the – in the lake.
NM: Oh.
THS: Great big lakes in Minnesota.
NM: Oh, that’s the cold water.
THS: Yeah. Yeah. That’s where we went and got…
NM: And it – was that summertime, it was fall or…?
THS: It was fall, yeah, because that was the time we picked.
�NM: Oh, gee.
THS: But we made money, enough for the kids to come back and go to school.
NM: Yeah.
THS: You know, the boys. That was the important thing, that –
NM: Why did it cost money to go to school? Just for school supplies, you mean?
THS: For school supplies, mm-hmm.
NM: Did you have to wear a uniform to school?
THS: No.
NM: Okay.
THS: No. We – we wore just any…
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Any, uh, thing we wanted to. Of course, we didn’t look like the other kids did, but we was
dressed, you know, had shoes on.
NM: Sure.
THS: We didn’t have to go barefoot. Yeah, we done all that when we was in La Yarda. We
walked to school from the Santa Fe yards clear over to New York, and then to Central, and then
to the high school.
NM: That’s a walk. That’s –
THS: We didn’t have no rides. We just had, in the wintertime it was so cold.
NM: I bet. I’m trying to think, it must have been two miles to Central, a mile and a half maybe.
THS: Well, it was all the way on the other side from La Yarda, way back here, all the way on the
other side of Massachusetts Street, on Kentucky, and then high school clear over there where
Central was at.
NM: Yeah.
THS: So…but, we made it through, and we got, you know, things, after a while things got better,
like I say, we was able to sit anywhere in church, we was able to be buried anywhere in the
cemetery, and –
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, we was able to go anywhere and eat, you know, without saying: “No, we can’t
serve you.”
NM: Mm-hmm. That must have been hard for your parents, then, when they got here.
THS: It was. But, they didn’t go anywhere except to church, you know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: I don’t think my mother in her life ever went to the grocery store.
NM: Really?
THS: No.
NM: Did your dad go to the grocery store?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh.
THS: My dad went every two weeks, and bought pork chops. That’s…the only time we got to
eat meat, we didn’t have to [murmurs, laughs]. He brought a whole bunch of pork chops for us,
and then he brought back some fruit. Apples, oranges, bananas and everything. I always
remember he’d bring it, and my mother would divide each one of us a banana and an orange and
an apple, you know. ‘Course, the girls couldn’t eat theirs all. So what’d they do, we had no
icebox. They’d put it on top of the icebox. You know, they would eat one or two, and put the rest
of ‘em up there. What do you think, with three boys it’s gonna stay up there? No.
NM: It didn’t last.
THS: There would be arguments going on all the time because: “You ate my apple, you ate my
orange.” Mom says: “Well, you should have ate it, or you should have hid it instead of putting it
up there where the boys could – ” ‘Cause there was three boys, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, but…that was the times that we had down in La Yarda, and like I say, we did play
a lot of games, but it was always the girls against the boys. They beat us every time. [Laughs]
And then of course we had, uh, places where we’d get to go out and dig caves on the side of the
–
NM: Oh.
�THS: Yeah, it was sandy ground, you know.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Where the flood has – had been before.
NM: Right.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: And so you dug caves.
THS: So we used to dig caves.
NM: Oh, good.
THS: We had a lot of fun. We didn’t have to go out and find anybody else to play with.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Till later on, but…it was fun.
NM: Yeah. Well –
THS: I can remember all of that, and if there’s anything else you want to know, I’ll be more than
glad to –
NM: Well, I think I should probably let you go now, because we’ve been talking for, like, an
hour. I don’t want to wear you down.
THS: Oh, that’s alright. I’m not planning to do anything, no.
NM: Well, I’m thinking I’ll come back maybe next Sunday. What do you think?
THS: Sure.
NM: Yeah?
THS: Sure.
NM: Alright. Well, I’ll give you a call, see what’s a good time.
THS: Yeah. You still working?
NM: I work part-time.
�THS: Part-time.
NM: Mostly Mondays and Fridays.
THS: In Topeka?
NM: No, um, I’m doing home health now.
THS: Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I thought you was still working for the, uh…
NM: St. Francis? No, no.
THS: For the…oh…
NM: Oh, Democrats?
THS: Democratic.
NM: Yeah, well, I worked there for a while, and then there was a whole turnover, so I left with
the other people who were leaving, so…yeah, but I liked working there.
THS: Did you? Yeah, I know you said you did.
NM: Mm-hmm. [Laughs]
THS: Yeah, that’s what happens. They, you know, have turnovers.
NM: Well, your, uh, neighborhood’s changed. [Papers shuffling] I haven’t been here for a while.
THS: We got a church – [tape cuts off]
END OF TAPE
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Text
Interview with Teresa Hernandez Schwartz
Interviewer: Nora Murphy
Date of Interview: October 13, 2019
Length of Interview: 47:30
Location of Interview: Home of Teresa Hernandez Schwartz
Transcription Completion Date: 2021
Transcriptionist: Emily Raymond
Teresa Hernandez Schwartz (Interviewee): So…
Nora Murphy (Interviewer): So, um, did you know Father John Cousins got installed?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Yesterday.
THS: Uh-huh. That’s what Monty said.
NM: It was very beautiful, yeah.
THS: Says the archbishop was there.
NM: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
THS: So, yeah.
NM: The church was packed, full of people.
THS: Was it?
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah. He said it was at the 4:30 Mass.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah. Did you go to it?
NM: Yeah, I don’t usually go to 4:30 Mass, but, um, I just wanted to support Father. He’s not a
spring chicken, you know, he’s…
THS: That’s what that – that’s what Monty said. Do you know he’s been there at Haskell before?
I thought that I had heard about him.
NM: Oh, yeah.
�THS: Yeah. ‘Cause he said he was at Haskell for a while.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So. But…he’s – he says he seems to be real nice.
NM: He is really, really nice. I wish you could – could meet him.
THS: Yeah. Well, maybe one of these days.
NM: Yeah.
THS: But Father, uh…what was his name that was here before, he lives up on the hill now.
NM: Oh, Father Curtis?
THS: Ah, yes.
NM: I’m gonna move this closer to you, ‘cause the machine is going.
THS: Okay, yeah. I – I’m sorry, but this goes on some Sundays, as you know, just –
NM: It’s a busy day.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Did your son come today, this morning?
THS: Yeah. And my grandson was here, too.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know, they just popped in and out.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And so, she came to some – think she only comes every other Sunday.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then Anita was gonna have to work 12 hours today, but she decided she didn’t want
to, because she’s already worked. She worked 12 hours and then she – she got, well, she went to
work at 4:00, got off at 11:00, went back to work at – before 7:00, and then got off at, uh, 3:00
and then worked four more hours, so…
NM: Gee whiz.
�THS: Yeah. So…
NM: How many kids do you have?
THS: Four.
NM: Oh, four.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So there’s Anita, and –
THS: And Andy, Anna.
NM: Andy. Anna. They all start with “A”?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Who’s the fourth one?
THS: Well, except Richard. Richard.
NM: Oh, Richard [laughs].
THS: Yeah. He doesn’t, uh, start with “A”.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah, he called me yesterday and he says on November the 12th he’s gonna have a knee
replacement.
NM: A knee replacement. Oh, that – he’s not that – he’s not very old, is he? Is he in his –
THS: Oh, yeah.
NM: In his 50s, maybe, or…?
THS: He’s, uh, Andy’s 61. And Richard’s 18 months younger than he is.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: So yeah, they’re – ‘cause the girls are gonna be 55 in December.
NM: Oh, really?
�THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Okay.
THS: Yeah. Anita’s thinking of retiring.
NM: Well, she’s young enough; she could have a second career doing something else.
THS: Yeah. She wants to go get a job, where she can have insurance.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But Monty said today that if she went ahead and, uh, took disability, well she – she can.
She’s got that, uh, um, myasthenia gravis.
NM: Oh, she does. Oh.
THS: And so she – he said if she wants to take it, she could get, uh, her retirement from Frito
Lay and then get retirement, you know, disability.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So, I don’t know. She’s – he’s gonna talk to her and see.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Sorry, I started to put a tablecloth on the table this morning, and this is as far as I got.
NM: Oh, yeah, well, it looks just fine.
THS: Well, everything is stacked up there. I’ll clean it off before I [unintelligible].
NM: So, what, did you have any more stories for me today?
THS: Well, um…did you hear about the – of the…prisoners of war that was right – right there?
NM: Visitors of war?
THS: The prisoners.
NM: Prisoners?
THS: They had – there was prisoners, a camp right there.
NM: Oh, prisoners’ ward. Oh, no, I don’t know anything about that.
�THS: Yeah. Well, it was right in front of the railroad tracks. And, of course, we was down that
little hill from the railroad tracks. We used to sit there and watch ‘em play basketball and ping
pong and all that. They used to be out there, yeah. They had their barracks and they had a fence
clear around it; it’s right there, just at the end of 11th Street.
NM: Oh.
THS: That’s what that was.
NM: Now, was this during World War II?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: And these were Germans?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Oh.
THS: German prisoners.
NM: Uh-huh, but you could just see them through the fence?
THS: Yeah, we used to sit on the railroad. Not all of us, just, you know, certain ones that wanted
to see. Sit on the rail – rails.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And watch ‘em [NM laughs] play ball.
NM: What do you know?
THS: And then we used to, um, watch the circus come in.
NM: A circus.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Where did that set up?
THS: Uh, it would come in on the rail – on the – on the railroad.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: You know. I mean, not the railroad, but yeah, the railroad. And, uh, we could watch ‘em
unload the elephants and all these fancy-looking girls and –
�NM: Oh.
THS: You know, and all that stuff. Yeah, we used to sit on the rail and watch them whenever
they came to town. Yeah.
NM: Where would the circus set up; where would they set –
THS: Right up here.
NM: Really?
THS: Where I had to pick rocks up for years and I’m still picking, now I don’t get out there
anymore.
NM: In your yard?
THS: Mm-hmm. That was a parking lot.
NM: Oh, your yard was the parking lot for the circus, and the circus was a little bit north?
THS: No, it’s right up there.
NM: Oh, a little bit east?
THS: Yeah, where the park – next to the park.
NM: Really?
THS: You know where that glass house is?
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Well right on the other side of the creek.
NM: Oh.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So, you really haven’t moved very far.
THS: No, uh-uh. No. It’s – it’s, um, we used to…well, when we moved here, Leo started to
plant, so there was rocks – I have picked rocks up just since the last couple of years, when I
haven’t been able to. Used to pick boxes of ‘em, and then Andy would take ‘em up to his house
and put ‘em in his driveway.
�NM: Oh, really?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Big rocks?
THS: Well, no, you know what they put in the parking lots.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Mm-hmm. About that size.
NM: Just gravel, uh-huh.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So, there was all these rocks because it used to be a driveway. Oh.
THS: No, it used to be a parking lot.
NM: A parking lot, I mean. Yeah.
THS: Uh-huh, right there.
NM: Uh-huh [laughs].
THS: So, yeah, the garden was full of ‘em. Leo plowed the ground up, and you could see ‘em
[murmurs].
NM: Oh, isn’t that funny.
THS: Mm-hmm. But, um –
NM: And did you ever go to the circus when you were a kid?
THS: Uh-uh.
NM: No?
THS: We didn’t have any money.
NM: Oh.
THS: Yeah.
NM: How much did it cost?
�THS: Ah, I can’t remember.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Just – we never went to it, because we couldn’t afford it.
NM: Right.
THS: We could sit far away and watch ‘em, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: We could sit over there just as you get off the railroad tracks coming down 11th Street.
NM: Yeah.
THS: We used to sit up in there somewhere and watch ‘em.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But we, of course they had a big tent, we couldn’t see anything.
Anita: Mom, are you cold? Do you want your jacket?
THS: Uh, no. [Murmurs]
Anita: I’ll bring it to you.
THS: Yeah. Um…any – would you like to have something to drink?
NM: No, I’m fine.
THS: Okay.
NM: Thank you.
THS: Yeah, there’s water, and –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And Dr. Pepper.
Anita: [Murmurs] Excuse me.
THS: What’s the matter? Oh.
�Anita: No, I’m just waiting for the thing to [murmurs].
THS: Oh. Anyway, uh, we used to do all of that, yeah.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: I mean, you know, the circus would come park their car – the rail cars right in front of our
house, so we would see all the elephants, because after they got ‘em off, they would go to
Massachusetts Street and have a parade.
NM: Really?
THS: And so, we used to watch – watch ‘em unload the elephants, and all these fancy girls with
their feathers on and everything, you know. Yeah.
NM: Were there big crowds of people to –
THS: Not –
NM: Come to the –
THS: Not – not when they was here, ‘cause we didn’t go to Massachusetts Street.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: We – we watched everything just off of sitting on the railroad track.
NM: So, but, was there, like, a tent where people would come to see a show, or was it…?
THS: Well, there was a tent, yeah, down here.
NM: Did they get a lot of people to come to the tent to see the show?
THS: Well, if you had money.
NM: If you had money [laughs].
THS: Yeah, we didn’t have any money.
NM: Right.
THS: So, we would just sit far away and watch people walk in. We couldn’t see any of the – of
the tricks or anything that was going on.
NM: Yeah.
�THS: You know, but we did see them unload all the – everything. Their wagons and –
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And the clowns, and everything, we…
NM: So, when you were talking about the, um…the prisoners of war, and you were saying they
were over there, were – are you – are we still talking about your parking lot here? Like outside
your house, or were they –
THS: No.
NM: They were further down.
THS: I’m talking – I’m talking about in front of La Yarda.
NM: In front of what?
THS: La Yarda.
NM: Oh, La Yarda.
THS: See, there was two rows of houses like this; they faced each other.
NM: Yeah.
THS: The water pump sat right in the middle. And, uh, then the railroad was here. It was just
about from here – wasn’t even as far as from here to the Fields house.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: It was closer than that. ‘Cause it just went up the hill.
NM: Oh.
THS: We used to slide down that hill when we got back from school, instead of going clear
around.
NM: Ah.
THS: A lot of times, we didn’t do that too much because we would dirty our clothes.
NM: Yeah.
Formatted: Spanish (Spain)
�THS: So we didn’t, uh…but no, we used to see the prisoner camp. You know, you come down
11th Street
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Do you know where that path is? Where that – you ride your bicycles and walk?
NM: Right.
THS: Okay. When you go to the end of the, uh, there’s the [unintelligible] – there’s the City
garage there.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Okay. You just go that way, and, uh, there’s buildings right in there. Just right off the 11th
Street.
NM: Right.
THS: That’s where the – that’s where they, uh, put their, uh…they built fences. Real tall fences,
you know.
NM: Isn’t that something.
THS: And they would bring ‘em in on a – on a – on a, not a boxcar, but they’d bring ‘em in on a
regular passenger car.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: The train, and then they would unload ‘em there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: There was quite a few of ‘em.
NM: Hmm. Gee.
THS: We thought it was kind of fun, you know, sitting up there watching ‘em playing ball.
NM: Very unusual.
THS: Well – ‘cause we knew that they was prisoners of war, you know.
NM: Uh-huh. Now, how old were you then?
THS: I was, uh…oh, my, let’s see. Well, it was during World War II.
�NM: Right.
THS: And I was born in 1930.
NM: Okay. So you’re, like, in your teenage years.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Yeah, some –
THS: Did you know anybody that had to go to war?
THS: Yeah, my brother did.
NM: Your brother?
THS: And my sis – and my brother-in-law did. And then my other brother, but he didn’t go to
war. He just joined the Navy.
NM: Oh.
THS: Uh, but my brother Joe, he was up there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And my, um, brother-in-law, he was, uh…he was right in the middle of the – of the
shooting, and they shot him in the leg, and he fell, he couldn’t – couldn’t move, you know, he
was there. And the – he said the Germans was coming with their rifles and their bar – bar –
NM: Bayonets?
THS: Bayonets, yes. And they would, uh, stick ‘em to make sure that they was – that they was
dead, you know, and he said he heard ‘em coming. So what he did, he said, he pulled one of ‘em,
a dead one, over on top of him. So, he says they came along and – and, uh, stuck the one on top
of him. And that’s the only way that he got saved, and he was able to get out of the war.
NM: Wow.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: He came home.
THS: Yeah.
�NM: Did Joe come home?
THS: Joe came home, yes. Um, they both came home. Joe – Joe was, uh, in the Air Force. And,
uh, he was on the ground crew. And, uh, he said that, uh, the Germans was coming. And, uh, the
commander told ‘em to all go up, you know, with their rifles, you know, and fight. And he said
that they was just young kids in his, uh, in the squad…uh…
NM: Squadron?
THS: Squadron, yeah. My mouth isn’t just right today. And so, he says that the commander told
him, he started to run back. And he says the commander told him to shoot him.
NM: Oh!
THS: And he says, he told my mother: “Mom, I couldn’t shoot him. So, he told me, he said: ‘If
you don’t shoot him, I’m gonna shoot you.’” ‘Cause they didn’t want ‘em to run back, you
know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: They wanted ‘em to go forward.
NM: Right. And it started a panic if somebody runs back.
THS: And he says: “I wasn’t,” so they put him in the brig for six months because he didn’t – he
wouldn’t do that.
NM: Wow.
THS: And we didn’t know where he was at. We – we thought maybe he was dead somewhere,
‘cause we hadn’t heard from him. He used to write all the time to Mom, but he hadn’t wrote for
quite a while. And so my mother got, uh, this lady that was Spanish, she was [laughs], you know,
Mexican, that knew how to speak English.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So, she went to her and asked her if she would go to the Red Cross and find out, you know,
something had happened to him. And so, she went, and, uh, then, uh, they got – they got – he got
permission to write to my mother and tell her that he had been in the brigs for six months.
NM: Oh, gee whiz.
THS: ‘Cause he wouldn’t have shot that – he wouldn’t shoot that –
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: Young kid. But he says: “I can’t [murmurs] shoot him or anything.” I mean, he said: “I felt
like running back.”
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: You know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: You’re scared.
NM: Oh, of course.
THS: You see all these people coming after you.
NM: Right. It seems so immoral to shoot one of your own.
THS: But he wasn’t hurt. When the war was over, he came home.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And my brother-in-law came home too, but he was hobbling for quite a while after that.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Wasn’t able to do that, but yeah. [Murmurs]
NM: Do you remember any shortages during the war, or things that were different? Did you have
to get those coupons, or…?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Yeah?
THS: Mm-hmm. We had a coupon book for sugar.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And coffee was really hard to get.
NM: Oh.
THS: You know, they would just give you one, I think, every month.
NM: Oh.
�THS: But of course, we wasn’t used to drinking coffee. We drank milk all the time.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: We got it from the farmer down here at the corner. Down 11th Street at the railroad. He had
some apple trees, so we got the apples too.
NM: You did? [Laughs]
THS: In fact, he said: “Don’t pick my apples. I’m selling ‘em.” [NM laughs] But that didn’t
make any difference till he put a bull in the pen.
NM: You did what?
THS: He put a bull…
NM: Put a bull?
THS: A bull – a bull.
NM: Oh.
THS: Mm-hmm, you know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Not a cow, but a bull.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: In with the apple trees?
THS: Yeah, well, we had to get in there to get to the apple trees. [NM laughs] So he put him in
there so that, uh, we would stay out of there, but you know, we’d get in there anyway. And then
when they got after us, we would just run as fast as we could. [NM laughs] And jump over the
fence, yeah.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: We went to get milk there, from the farmer. And he used to say: “Don’t pick my apples,”
you know. On the way home, we used to fill our pockets with apples.
NM: Oh.
�THS: Mm-hmm. But that was a lot of fun.
NM: Yeah.
THS: You know, he didn’t want us – he said: “I sell my apples.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know, there – oh, and Peter, his folks moved from Quenemo to Lawrence to the La
Yarda, and they lived there for a while. And then they moved back to Quenemo. And they lived
in Quenemo for a while, and then they moved back to Lawrence.
NM: Now, who was Peter?
THS: Romero.
NM: Oh, okay. Pete Romero?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Oh, he went back and forth to Quenemo?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Okay, and is that the same village that your parents came from?
THS: No.
NM: No.
THS: My, uh, parents came from Topeka.
NM: Oh.
THS: His parents came from Quenemo.
NM: Oh, yeah, okay. Sorry.
THS: Yeah. That’s alright.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: I can’t talk today anyway, for some reason [NM laughs]. My mouth is…sticking together.
Anyway, uh, yeah, they – they didn’t live in La Yarda all the time.
�NM: Yeah.
THS: In all them pictures that you see, um, all them people – did you ever make it to Watkins
Museum?
NM: Um, you know, I went over there, but I didn’t see the pictures of – I got distracted, so I’ll
have to try it again.
THS: They said they were on the third or the fourth floor. I don’t know, though they’re not on
the first floor.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But all them people that are there…
Anita: Here’s those, Mom. Some of ‘em are originals, and I have copies of – that’s the one that’s
in the Watkins Museum.
NM: Oh, oh. This one?
Anita: Yeah.
NM: Yeah, wow.
Anita: And some of these are originals, but I do have copies of most of ‘em.
NM: Mm-hmm.
Anita: Um…so, um, I mean, if you want to take a copy, that’s fine; I wouldn’t take the original.
But, like, that’s 1951, when the – when it flooded.
NM: Yeah.
Anita: And…
THS: Is that where La Yarda was?
NM: In the –
Anita: Yeah.
NM: Are those the boxcars?
THS: Yes. Yeah. Them are the boxcars, mm-hmm. Them are pile of they call ‘em ties. They’re
the ones that they put on the railroad tracks –
�NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Underneath the rails.
NM: Right.
THS: That’s what my – my dad and all them used to do. Um…
NM: Wow. So, here’s one with houses in it.
Anita: Okay, here you go.
NM: So that’s north of 11th and Haskell, 1951 flood.
THS: This is a…[murmurs]…it goes this way. Hmm. [Long pause] This is right here on 11th
Street. Uh…this goes like that [murmurs]. I don’t really know what that is, right there.
NM: The building?
THS: The building, yeah, but that’s the boxcars.
NM: Oh.
THS: And this is
Anita: Isn’t that Poehler’s?
THS: Poehler, no, uh-uh. No, I don’t know, really, what that is. Um…well, these I don’t
remember. Oh –
Anita: And then there’s some more.
THS: We had it upside down. That’s where the German camp was.
NM: Oh.
THS: See? We had it upside down.
NM: So…
THS: See, there’s another –
NM: Are those the buildings the barracks where the Germans lived?
THS: Yeah.
�NM: Oh.
THS: See, there’s more buildings on there too.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: I think there’s the same ones.
NM: Uh-huh. What do you know?
THS: We was looking at it upside down, that’s why.
Anita: I’ll look through the other ones, Mom, to see if there’s…
THS: Okay. I don’t know what she’s got there. That’s my sister’s house. And this is…this is my
mother’s, my mother and my dad.
NM: Now, is that at La Yarda, or a different place?
THS: No, that was on Rhode Island Street.
NM: Rhode Island? Uh-huh.
THS: Yeah. And this was too – that’s my mother, my sister, and, uh…that’s my – this is my
niece, my brother’s daughter, when she made her first Holy Communion. And that was my
mother and dad.
NM: That’s you, there?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh.
THS: Most of these pictures I think are from Rhode Island [murmurs].
NM: You’re so cute. Wait – Rita Hernandez, Avery, and Grandpa and Grandma.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh, so – that’s Rita.
THS: Oh, that’s Rita?
NM: It says –
THS: Oh, I guess it is. I thought it was –
�NM: On the back, it says Rita Hernandez and Avery.
THS: Yeah, it was Rita. I – I remember that.
NM: Awful cute.
THS: It was Rita. [Long pause] Let’s see…that’s my niece. That’s my…that’s my mother. And
that little lady was blind. She couldn’t see anything. But she could make it over to my mother’s
house and, um, visit my mother. I think this is – this is my dad and my grandmother, here.
NM: It says the little girl might be you, but I don’t know. Do you think that’s you?
THS: No.
NM: No, you were bigger than that in the Rhode Island house. Yeah.
THS: No, that’s not me. Mm-mm.
NM: Maybe it’s a different little girl.
THS: This is my sister, my other sister, my two cousins; one of them was a nun. This one was
the one that was a nun, right there.
NM: Oh.
THS: She went on to be a nun. This is my folks, this picture.
NM: Oh.
THS: I don’t know – did she show you something in here about –
NM: Um, there was a picture of a group of people from La Yarda in that book.
THS: Oh. Okay, then she knows, ‘cause she… [long pause, murmurs]
NM: You’re not in this picture, Teresa?
THS: No.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: I was too young.
NM: A wedding or something.
�THS: Mm-hmm. See, the ‘51 flood, um…see the railroad?
NM: Yeah.
THS: That’s where the men used to sit and watch to make sure that the water didn’t get over.
NM: Oh.
THS: For the trains to go in. And this is, uh…hmm. [Murmurs]. This is the Santa Fe depot.
NM: That’s –
THS: It was an old Santa Fe depot, and they knocked it down and they built a new one.
NM: Oh.
THS: After the flood, because they couldn’t leave the other one, ‘cause of that water all inside of
it and everything.
NM: Right. Yeah, the one that’s there today is, like, 1950s sort of architecture.
THS: Yeah. We used to play across from there. We used to play in the sand piles. They had sand
piles there, and we used to get up and – that’s the only pleasure besides, you know, we used to
go up on the great big old sand piles and jump all the way down. [NM laughs] Mm-hmm. Yeah,
so…but, uh…I didn’t realize that that was, you know, some – but that’s, you know, boxcars,
there. Just right across from La Yarda.
NM: Yeah. Anita showed me a picture of some girls, and…let me find it.
THS: She did? Okay.
NM: Yeah.
THS: I don’t know where she got that book.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Ordered it or something. She’s always wanting, uh, you know, to go back into history.
Then I lost the paper with the DNA. Now I gotta go talk to [Roger Rachel?] and have her send –
I thought I was a Mexican, but we was – we’re Indians, wasn’t it?
Anita: Yeah, but they were –
THS: Mexican-Indians.
Anita: Mexican-Indians. They were from the United States side.
Formatted: Spanish (Spain)
�NM: Oh.
Anita: And then when they took Texas over, then they got pushed back. There’s – those are the
only last of the originals that I got, Mom.
NM: Oh.
THS: Okay.
Anita: So, those…
THS: Yeah. That’s me.
NM: Oh, that’s you as a baby.
THS: Yeah.
NM: The baby picture, or the girl picture?
THS: Both.
NM: There’s two pictures. Oh, they’re both you. Let’s take a look.
THS: Did you find that one about the – the girls in the –
NM: Yeah.
THS: She’s looking for – oh, you found it. Yes. Oh, yes. Uh-huh. She’s got the little boys, see
the water? They told us that the bridge – they had this old bridge, and if you got on it during the
‘51 flood, you could stand on it and you could – it, you could, uh, feel it moving back and forth.
NM: Oooh.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Oooh, that sounds creepy.
THS: See, all of North Lawrence was flooded. And so, um…and so first we was being girls, we
had to go and see. We get on this bridge and –
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Feel it swinging back and forth. We got off of it in a hurry.
NM: You went and got on there, wow.
�THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Look at this adorable baby picture, that is so cute.
THS: Yeah, that’s me. [Laughter]
NM: Looks really cute.
THS: Yeah, here we are – all are. And that’s Jenny, Mercy, Alberta, um, Gladys, me, and Toni.
Yep. The boys was – I think they was the Romeros. You know. Yeah, but, um, Peter and them,
they – they went to – they moved to Lawrence and then they moved back to – to, uh…is that
different from the – from the Santa Fe depot.
NM: Oh, yes, very.
THS: It was a lot different then.
NM: Different, yes.
THS: Yeah, they had to knock it down, ‘cause there was water all over the inside of it. Mmhmm. But, um, [murmurs]. I [murmurs] my next-door neighbor, Leroy Grummett. He had to go
in to get people out of North Lawrence, ‘cause North Lawrence was completely flooded.
NM: Wow.
THS: I mean, and people, you know, they told ‘em to get out, just like they told us, and –
NM: Right.
THS: And they wouldn’t get out. And so, he had a boat, and he would take the boat across and
he would get across all right, but on the way back, it would take him halfway to Eudora.
NM: Just the current, huh?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Wow.
THS: So, anyway, uh…but he – he volunteered to do that and for the longest –
NM: Now, who was that? Who did that?
THS: Leroy Grummett.
NM: Leroy Grummett.
�THS: And for the longest time, his picture was at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, before they put
that other front in.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Where the – where the pond, or the fish in there, the kids used to call it fishing. [NM
laughs] But, where you throw a little money in.
NM: Yeah.
THS: So they built that.
NM: So his picture used to be there, like, in honor of him for doing all that brave work?
THS: Yeah. Yeah, his picture was in there for a long time.
NM: Huh.
THS: But, uh, you know. It’s…it was fun, you know. Like I say, we didn’t need to go out and
find somebody to play with.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Or somebody to walk to school with. We – we always had a big crowd.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So.
NM: Tell me again, what were the names of all the kids in your family?
THS: In my family?
NM: Yeah.
THS: Okay. Um, the…there’s my sisters. In California.
NM: Okay.
THS: And, uh, this is my other sister. And them are two of my cousins. That one’s the one that
was a nun.
NM: Now, what are your sisters’ names?
THS: Um, this one’s named Carmen.
�NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And this one was named Soledad.
NM: Soledad.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Wow.
THS: And then, uh, I have, uh, Pete and Joe and Chino and Jesse.
NM: Chino?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: What, is that short for something?
THS: Yeah. His name was Gabriel.
NM: Oh.
THS: But he had such curly hair, everybody called him Chino, which means curly hair in – in
English.
NM: Oh, it does?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Okay.
THS: He had real curly hair.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, everybody used to call him that because it was so short –
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Instead of calling him Gabriel.
NM: Yeah. Did you have a nickname?
THS: Uh, no, my – my, um, brother that, uh, you know, was two years older than I was, uh, he
couldn’t call me Teresa. So, he called me, uh, “Chita.”
�NM: “Chita.”
THS: Uh-huh. ‘Cause my mother…and, you know, when I said the other day that – about them
sprinkling water all over? My grandmother used to keep us up on all that.
NM: Mm.
THS: Even when we was real little.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: She used to sit us and – and pray the rosary, and tell us what used to go in, you know.
What used to go in that little place where we used to live in Topeka. You know, where my
mother got up and watered the floor every morning –
NM: Yeah.
THS: And all that, yeah. My grandmother kept us up on that when we got a little bit older. Then
we didn’t, you know, where we came from.
NM: She told you how it used to be?
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
NM: And she told you about old-time Mexico and the hacienda?
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
NM: Those must have been good stories.
THS: Yeah, it was.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh…you know, other than that, I don’t, uh, but anyway, that was her.
NM: Wow.
THS: That’s my dad and that was my grandmother.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Um, he brought her over. He would not leave her when he came to the United States, and
he would not leave my aunt and my two cousins. He brought them over as his daughters.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: It’s a wonder they didn’t think that he had too many daughters all the same age. [NM
laughs] You know, because they was, you know, they was just about the same age.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And there was four of ‘em, you know. All them four right there.
NM: Uh-huh. Yeah. And so then you were born here.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Uh-huh. And then, um, who else was born here; any of the boys?
THS: Uh, Pete and Carmen and Chole was born.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: In Mexico. Then they came to the United States when – when, uh – said that they had lost
the hacienda.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Because they was coming through and killing all the – all the men that was any – anybody
at all, you know. And so then, uh, they came back to the United States and Joe was born in
Kansas City. And then they went back, because they thought that they’d go and dig the – the
money out, but there was no digging money up, because it wasn’t worth the paper it was printed
on.
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: So then, uh, Chino was born in Mexico, so there was, uh, Carmen – it was Pete, Carmen,
Chole, and Chino. And three of us was born here. Joe was born in Kansas City, and Jesse and I
was born in, we call him – well, we called him “Nutty” all the time, for Natividad.
NM: Oh.
THS: Till he went to work at the schools, and then the teachers refused for the kids to call him
that.
NM: Nutty. [Laughs]
THS: Yeah. They didn’t – they didn’t like it. They told ‘em that they – they had to call him
Jesse.
�NM: Okay.
THS: Or Natividad, ‘cause his name was Jesse Natividad.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: But, yeah, there was a big history, but…
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: It’s, uh…I didn’t know that that was Rita. I guess it was Rita. Huh. And that hasn’t been
too long before my mom and dad passed away.
NM: Mm.
THS: ‘Cause, um…she’s married. I mean, she’s married on – on this – yeah, she’s married to –
you can tell that, uh…
NM: That’s a cute picture.
THS: I mean, she wasn’t married there in the picture –
NM: No.
THS: But she – she was married later on.
NM: Right.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So, when did your mom and dad pass away?
THS: My mom and dad passed away, let’s see, the girls was, uh, in junior high.
NM: Oh.
THS: One in high school.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Um…they asked me – my dad had – my dad was always falling. He had high blood
pressure. He was falling out in the yard, and the neighbors would call me and tell me, you know:
“Your dad has fallen, Teresa.” So, I kept getting in the car and go right up there and get
somebody to come pick him up, and – and, uh, he kept telling me: “Put us in a nursing home. Put
us – ”
�NM: Oh.
THS: I said: “I can’t do that.” I would go in the morning, give my mother an insulin shot, and my
dad would fix ‘em some – for them too, he would fix ‘em some eggs and toast for breakfast. And
then my sister-in-law, Jenny, would take lunch, and then I would take supper in for her. And, uh,
uh, put my mother to bed.
NM: Aww.
THS: You know, she was always in bed anyway, but I mean, you know, got her ready for bed.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And, uh, he kept telling me, he says: “Put us in the nursing home.”
And I kept saying: “I can’t do that. I can’t do that.”
He says: “You got four kids. You can’t. And your husband’s working. You can’t
not…leave ‘em all the time and come over here every day, day after day.” You know, they was
living on, uh, Rhode Island and –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So finally, I went up there one day, and he says: “Look, I have asked you and asked you to
put us in the home. And you don’t listen to me.”
I said: “I can’t do it.”
He said: “Yes, you can. You can do it.” And so, my – my brother in Topeka, his wife had
a sister that’s a nun, and St. Joseph, uh, nursing home.
NM: Oh.
THS: In Kansas City.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, he was over that afternoon, and – and they told – and my dad told ‘em:
“See, we keep telling her to put us in the nursing home. She just won’t listen to us.”
He said: “You know, [Aunt?] Rita works in the… ” Her – her, uh…her name really
wasn’t Rita any more, ‘cause she was a nun, you know, and they change their names.
NM: Right.
THS: And so, he said: “I’ll call her.” So he gets on the phone and calls her. Within an hour they
was over at the house [NM laughs] Her and another nun.
NM: Problem solved, huh? Wow.
�THS: And so, they signed the papers. He – my brother was there too. They signed the papers and
they said: “We’ll be ready for ‘em tomorrow.”
NM: My goodness.
THS: And my brother said: “Alright, I’ll bring ‘em down.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So, I was gonna drive, and he said: “No, I don’t want you to drive.” He said: “I’ll drive.”
So, him and my sister-in-law drove us, and then we took my mom and dad. Two weeks later, my
– well…a week later he – my dad had a stroke.
NM: Oh.
THS: So they put him in Providence Hospital.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: And then, uh, they sent him back to the…to the nursing home.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, he died a week later.
NM: My goodness.
THS: Two weeks after.
NM: Wow.
THS: Mm-hmm. So, I got the feeling that he probably knew that he was going, and he wanted
my mother in a…‘cause I had had her here when she had broke her hip. I had had her here for
about a month and a half, here at the house, and – and she didn’t want to be here, because she
says: “You’re taking the kids’ bedroom,” you know. We only had three bedrooms, you know, the
boys and the girls and then ours. And, uh…we, uh – Leo says: “We have to bring her home from
the hospital.” Him and I slept out on the back porch, next to the birdfeeder. It was so cold.
NM: Oh! So that you could talk privately.
THS: Yeah. Yeah. So that my mother wouldn’t be worried that we was – that we didn’t have a
place to sleep. [NM laughs] Anyway, he – he died two weeks later. We was all there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: Except my brother, he – my sister-in-law was a diabetic, and she forgot her pills, so he was
on his way home when we called him and told him that Dad had passed away.
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: He felt bad, so bad, because we had been there all night. We went in there about two
o’clock in the afternoon, stayed there all night. All of us, you know. There was no chairs, there
was two chairs in there. The rest of us was – sitting on – on…my mother’s bed, where she was
laying, on the opposite bed.
NM: Oh.
THS: You know. And, uh, some of ‘em was…uh, leaning against the windowsill.
NM: Yeah.
THS: You know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And the – the boys, some of ‘em was sitting on the floor.
NM: Oh, goodness. Yeah, yeah. A full house in that room.
THS: Mm-hmm. And so then, when he passed away, I asked my mother, I says:
“You want to go home with me? I can make room for you now.”
And she says: “No. They take me to Mass every morning; they take me to the rosary
every afternoon.”
NM: Uh-huh. Was your mom a religious woman? Mm-hmm?
THS: And she says: “I don’t want to go home.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: She didn’t know – speak English, I mean, a word of English. She just – all she learned how
to say is: “Nurse, bedpan.”
NM: Oh.
THS: She was a diabetic, and so, you know, that’s all she learned.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Uh-huh. But, uh, Rita would go over and see her, pretty near every day.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then, um, you know, they would let us know. And when she got real sick, they let us
know. We was all there in the end, you know, when she passed away.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Um, the doctors told us: “She’s got pneumonia. If we go ahead and clean her lungs out,
she’ll last two weeks. If we let her go, uh, she’ll be gone in three days.”
NM: Mm.
THS: And, uh, so then the kids says: “Well, you’re the one that took care of her. You make up
your mind what you want to do.”
NM: Oh, brother.
THS: I said: “Well, we’re all family.”
They said: “No, you – you talk to the doctor. You tell her what you want to do.”
I said: “You know, I can’t do that.”
They said: “Yes, you can.” So, I went in and I talked to my mother; she was still talking.
She said: “Let me go. Your dad’s already gone. Don’t do anything to me.”
I said: “Mom, I can’t do that to you.”
She said: “Yes, you can. You got your kids, you got your husband. Go ahead. Let me
go.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So, I told the doctor, I said: “She wants to go. She doesn’t want to stay.”
He said: “Well, that’s fine.” She was gone in three days.
NM: Wow.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Just like he said.
THS: Yeah, just like he said. She was gone in three days.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So then we sold the house, and we used all the money for…to pay for both the funerals.
NM: Mm-hmm, sure. And were they buried through St. John’s?
THS: Mm-hmm.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Both at St. John’s.
NM: Where – where did you meet Leo?
THS: Uh…he used to go to church. And I didn’t think much about it, because he was in the
service. And I always thought he was a [laughs]. He – he was – I always thought that he was
really thought he was really some – somebody, because his shoes was always so shiny. [NM
laughs] You could see yourself in them, you know? And he caught up with me. We used to go
every Saturday; a whole bunch of us girls used to go to the Meadow Acres in Topeka.
NM: Meadow Acres. Uh-huh.
THS: That’s a – that was a nightclub.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: And it was close to Forbes Fields. So, all the guys from Forbes Fields used to go over
there.
NM: Oh.
THS: And we would dance all night long, and about a half an hour before we left [unintelligible],
the dance was over, we would sneak out and go.
NM: Okay.
THS: Yeah. And get out, and – well, then they’d – our folks says: “You gotta go to Mass.” So
went to Mass and he caught up with me, and he – he started making a conversation. I didn’t want
to listen to him [laughs]. I was tired; I wanted to go home and lay down, ‘cause I had to go to
work on Monday.
NM: Oh, no.
THS: And – and so he says: “How would you like to have a cup of coffee?”
I said: “No, I don’t wanna have a cup of coffee. I wanna go home.”
So he said: “Alright.” So then the next Sunday, it happened again. Then the third Sunday,
I thought: “Gosh. If he – if I don’t go have coffee with him, he won’t leave me alone.” So – oh,
sorry.
NM: That’s okay.
THS: Anyway, uh, we went to have coffee, to the Deluxe Café there on Massachusetts Street.
And so then he asked, you know, he started asking me questions:
�“Do you work? Where do you work? How long have you been there?” And all this stuff,
you know. I was so tired, I didn’t even care what I was saying. Well, Monday morning comes. I
come out with my friend Jenny to go across the street to have coffee on our coffee break. And
who should be out there [NM laughs] but him and his friend Gene.
NM: Oh.
THS: He says: “We came to take you for coffee.”
I said: “I only have fifteen minutes.”
He says: “Well, it won’t take long.” So the next day, he was there again. With Gene. The
third day, it was him by himself [laughs]. Gene wasn’t with him. [NM laughs] Anyway, then, uh,
the next day, he was there, till they changed shifts when he – when he had to go on days, he
wasn’t there, because he would change shifts every other week.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Mm-hmm. Midnight shift, and then the 4:00-12:00 shift, and then day shifts, so, um…then
every day he was out there, and the ladies down where they was sorting the clothes out in that
big room:
“Guess who’s out there? Guess who’s out there?” [Laughs]
“I don’t know who’s out there,” you know? [NM laughs] So, then finally we decided that
we, you know, we started going together, and when we went to the Meadow Acres, we went
together.
NM: Oh.
THS: Yeah, we took all the rest of the girls, but we went together.
NM: Did Leo like to dance?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: He did?
THS: Yeah. He was a good dancer.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah. And so, you know, uh, then after that it was just…you know, you never got married
way back then. I guess you – you know, I was a Mexican.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And he was German, you know. You didn’t get married out of your race.
NM: Mm.
�THS: Way back then.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know, it was – it was hard. You should have heard my dad.
NM: Really?
THS: Yes. But Leo had a way that he – people most – most people would like him, you know?
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, after that, Dad – Dad began to where he was pretty good with him. And then, uh,
when we moved out here, Dad used to come out and help him, you know, clean weeds, the
weeds out of the garden and all of that.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah. But…we was married 57 years.
NM: Oh, my goodness.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: A good long time.
THS: It is. It’s a long time.
NM: Well, I’m gonna have to get going.
THS: I’m sorry, I – you don’t – I was talking so much, I don’t know what you can use out of
there or not, but, yeah.
NM: Oh, yeah. That was great. I enjoyed hearing your stories. I – I can’t come for the next
couple of weeks though. I’ve gotta go do something else, so…
THS: Okay, that’s fine.
NM: Maybe in November I’ll swing by, see what you’re up to.
END OF TAPE
�
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246ded44ee1bee713df4b33af15b5355
PDF Text
Text
Interview with Teresa Hernandez Schwartz
Interviewer: Nora Murphy
Date of Interview: October 13, 2019
Length of Interview: 7:31
Location of Interview: Home of Teresa Hernandez Schwartz
Transcription Completion Date: 2021
Transcriptionist: Emily Raymond
Teresa Hernandez Schwartz (Interviewee): …Them all up after I got married. With my mother
and all the rest of the older women. We used to go to the basement to make that hot chocolate,
stirring it from 5:30 in the morning till eleven o’clock at night.
Nora Murphy (Interviewer): Oooh.
THS: I mean, till 9:00 in the morning.
NM: Wow, four hours?
THS: And then we’d rush up and go to Mass.
NM: Gee.
THS: We used to do that every year for our Lady of Guadalupe Day.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then of course we’d dance, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, um…you, know, uh, the women. Because when the – when the women from the
church had a – a…
Unknown, possibly Anita: A dinner.
THS: They wouldn’t let us out in the – where they was serving.
NM: Oh.
THS: [Murmurs] The Mexicans stay in the kitchen washing dishes. So Miss DeAmber, Miss
Adamson, Miss Greeley, and about three more ladies. They felt – I guess they felt bad for us,
‘cause they told us that they wasn’t going to, uh, they wasn’t going to…um…they wasn’t going
to let us be treated like that.
NM: Oh.
�THS: So they started the group, where they had all these Mexican ladies. Started a group for the
ladies. And then, uh, we had a colored lady, Mrs.…oh, I can’t think. She’s been – she’s buried
next to my fath – to my folks up there Mt. Calvary. She came in our room. And we used to have
[murmurs], so way back then was when they started the Mexican fiesta.
NM: Oh.
THS: Uh-huh. Way back then, because we was all young enough that we couldn’t – all of us
girls was in there. And, uh, Mrs. DeAmber used to say – she used to be something else – her
husband took pictures here in town for people. You know, wedding pictures and –
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Anyway, she used to say: “I don’t like the way they treat you. They won’t let you in their –
in their, uh, groups. So we’re gonna do a group ourselves.”
NM: Oh.
THS: Okay.
NM: Now, she wasn’t Mexican, right?
THS: No.
NM: Right? Okay.
THS: No, uh, Mrs. DeAmber, Mrs. Greeley, Mrs. Adamson, none of them was – was Mexicans.
But because they treated us so bad, they decided they was going to form their own group with
the Mexicans.
NM: So, did they form a group for the – the mothers, too, or just for the children?
THS: No, for the mothers.
NM: Oh, for the mothers to get together.
THS: Yeah, that was for the mothers, yeah.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, then this when they started – this was way, way before then.
NM: Right.
THS: But that’s when they started making the – they started the Mexican fiesta, too. Uh, way
back then, Loretta used to run it – Loretta Chavez.
�NM: Loretta? Uh-huh?
THS: She used to –
NM: She’s still there [laughs].
THS: Does she – does she still work there?
NM: Yes, she’s still cooking.
THS: I didn’t know if she did or not.
NM: She’s the lead – she’s the head of it.
THS: Oh, is she?
NM: I mean, she – ‘cause she has all – everything in her mind, like how everything has to go,
and how many…how many beans and how many pounds of pork and…she has that all
memorized, so…
THS: Yeah.
NM: She’s kind of in charge, yeah.
THS: I know what it’s like, ‘cause, see, uh, we used to clean all them peppers, Leo and I.
NM: Oh.
THS: Forty pounds of peppers.
NM: Oh.
THS: And the beans. Oh, my. We used to sit out on the back porch, Leo and I cleaned all the
peppers and all the…
NM: For the Mexican fiesta?
THS: The next morning he would say – he would say, you know: “My fingers are kind of hot.”
NM: Oh.
THS: I said: “That’s because you’re not a Mexican.” [NM laughs] Yeah, we used to – we used to
do that.
NM: The ladies told me they used to make the tortillas from scratch.
�THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Yeah, now, you know, they buy the tortillas now.
THS: I used to make that bread from scratch, too.
NM: Oh.
THS: And, uh, they – one year they told us, they says: “Well, we’re gonna let all the…all the
good women make the bread, and all the people that – and all the women that don’t know too
much make the cookies.”
NM: Oh, for Our Lady of Guadalupe?
THS: So they looked at me and they said: “You make cookies.” [Laughter] And then, uh, the last
year I went to help, uh, they went to put me to, uh, make burritos. I know how to make burritos.
Anyway, somebody – somebody went and told Loretta that I was too slow.
NM: Oh.
THS: So, I said: “To heck with it; I’m going home. You do ‘em.” You know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And they told Joyce Mace too, Monty’s wife, [murmurs], they told her the same thing.
NM: Oh, no.
THS: I mean, you know, they says: “You’re too old. You – you can’t make ‘em fast enough.”
But we could do everything else fast enough.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Like wash dishes.
NM: Oh.
THS: In the kitchen.
NM: Sure.
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We could do all of that, but…
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Oh, well.
�NM: Well, you know, they didn’t do Our Lady of Guadalupe last year.
THS: Because, uh, I asked them – I was gonna make cookies, believe it or not. [NM laughs] I
had everything ready to make ‘em.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And they decided that they wasn’t gonna make ‘em, because the other group that goes to
church…had their own Our Lady of Guadalupe deal.
NM: Oh, like the New Mexicans.
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: That are –
THS: And they don’t really associate with these other women.
NM: Oh.
THS: I mean, you – you notice that when they – they used – if you ever went to the basement
[murmurs] hardly see any of them people down there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: It was all the Mexicans that had been here for a long time.
NM: Right.
THS: So then they decided, I guess Loretta did, ‘cause she’s always been in charge of it, that
that, you know, they’d make theirs at midnight, and it was too soon to make it – make it the next
morning for us, but we used to go in there at 5:30 and start a batch of [unintelligible]. You
couldn’t burn it.
NM: Mm.
THS: You know, you had to be really careful.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Stir, and you couldn’t stop it, you know?
NM: Wow.
�THS: My sister-in-law done that for years and years. And I used to pick all the older Mexican
people, like her mother, my mother, Mrs. Garcia, all of ‘em.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And take ‘em up to the church, so they could start making the chocolate. Mm-hmm.
NM: Wow. That’s a labor of love.
THS: Yeah, it was [murmurs]. But that’s the reason – I said: “Oh, me. And here I got all this
stuff to make the cookies, and I won’t get to make ‘em.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: I’ll make some for my family this year. Still here, you know.
NM: It’ll be another good Christmas. [voice overlaps with THS]
THS: Yeah.
NM: Yeah. I’d better get going now.
END OF TAPE
�
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63fa2d2777c594cd066b0ccea01a102a
PDF Text
Text
Interview with Teresa Hernandez Schwartz
Interviewer: Nora Murphy
Date of Interview: November 14, 2019
Length of Interview: 65:25
Location of Interview: Home of Teresa Hernandez Schwartz
Transcription Completion Date: January 29, 2021
Transcriptionist: Emily Raymond
Teresa Hernandez Schwartz (Interviewee): Mashed potatoes and gravy. Uh, Andy always comes
and has dinner with me on Sunday.
Nora Murphy (Interviewer): I hope you’re not doing Thanksgiving dinner by yourself.
THS: No. [NM laughs] Andy’s cooking the turkey and ham. Yeah.
NM: Oh, good.
THS: And I’m, uh, I’m just gonna help the girls.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: But Anna showed up with, um, breast cancer.
NM: Really?
THS: Mm-hmm. So, she’s going on chemotherapy.
NM: Oh, my gosh.
THS: I don’t think she’s gonna be much good for us, but, uh, and then I’m supposed to go on the
12th and get this taken out, the cancer. They hope they can get it all out.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: If they can’t – if they can get it all out the first time, I’ll be there and it’s just no time at all,
but if they can’t get it out, then I’m gonna have to stay for about four hours –
NM: Oh.
THS: Till they get everything checked and make sure, and then go back in again and see if they
can get some more out, but…oh well. That happened before with this.
NM: Oh, the skin cancer, yeah.
THS: They took one out about that big.
�NM: Really?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Wow.
THS: That hasn’t been a year [murmurs].
NM: Where do you go for that?
THS: I went to Overland Park.
NM: Oh, you did? Oh.
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, now, this time I’m going to Topeka.
NM: Oh.
THS: They said I could go to Overland Park or go to Topeka.
NM: Oh, okay. I’d rather go to Topeka, it’s a lot closer.
NM: Right. Yeah, me too.
THS: Andy’s going – Andy will always drive, but it’s so much closer than – than Overland Park.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Then you gotta walk in and you gotta go clear down this hall, and he insists on taking me
in a wheelchair. He will not let me walk. And so then we get the elevator and go, I don’t know
how many floors.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So…but, I’d rather not go, but –
NM: Well, you –
THS: I ain’t got much choice.
NM: Gotta get certain things done.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Taken care of. Right?
�THS: Uh-huh. Right.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But I – you know, I still – I still do laundry and cook and –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: I don’t cook every day, ‘cause Anita, the – she likes salads and stuff like that. She’ll rather
eat salad. [Telephone rings] Excuse me.
NM: Oh, sure.
[THS has telephone conversation until 3:17]
THS: I have an appointment with – excuse me.
NM: Yeah, sure.
THS: With internal medicine at 10:30 on – on Friday, and then I have one with Dr. Costello, the
heart doctor, at one o’clock, so…
NM: Oh, the same day.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Which will work out really good.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Because Anita’s off on Fridays. So, she’ll take me.
NM: Oh, that’s perfect. Yeah.
THS: When she can’t, then Andy will take me, but…
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Uh, he’s so busy out of town all the time. He –
NM: Is he the one that fixes the electrical transformers?
THS: Mm-hmm.
�NM: Boy, he must have had a busy year.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Storms everywhere.
THS: Yeah, he won’t go anymore.
NM: Oh, he won’t.
THS: Mm-mm. He told, well, he’s been there since he graduated from high school.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And he’s going to, uh, retire in four years.
NM: Really?
THS: So he’s – he’s pretty much on his own, you know. They let him go ahead and – but he told
‘em, he said: “I don’t wanna go anymore – ”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: To all them places where the electricity, they need to work on it. The last time he went
was, uh, to South Dakota, I think. And before that, he went to New York. But he said: “No more,
Mom.” It’s – it’s, you know, the conditions are so bad. And you work clear down into the night.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: In the cold and the rain and everything.
NM: The worst weather there is – there he is.
THS: “So I told ‘em, I said: ‘I’m not going.’”
I said: “What are they gonna do, fire you?
He said: “No, they said ‘Alright.’”
NM: Okay.
THS: I says: “So you’re getting big enough now that you can make your own schedule.”
He said: “No,” he said, “I just told ‘em I didn’t wanna go anymore, you know. I’ll stay
here and do the works.”
NM: So he – they let him use – do the local work?
THS: Mm-hmm.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Yeah. Kansas City, and I guess right now he’s working in Topeka.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But he does go to Wichita and Dodge City and all of them, but going out of this – and
Kansas City, you know, Missouri and them, but not far away anymore.
NM: Yeah.
THS: But –
NM: Well, I’ve been thinking about La Yarda.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: And I’ve got a question for you.
THS: Yeah?
NM: So, I read something about La Yarda, and it said – it suggested that, um, if you were, like, a
laborer on the railroad tracks, you’ve probably lived in a – a – what do you call ‘em, a boxcar
that moved back and forth with your family?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: But if you were more of a supervisor, or a foreman, then you stayed in these, uh, like, La
Yarda. Is – was your dad, like, a foreman or a supervisor?
THS: No. No, he was just a railroad worker.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Um, I was born in Topeka, and in Topeka they had these little houses for the workers. Uh,
they called them the Santa Fe houses. They was just little shacks made out of wood and – and
dirt floor. My mother used to say that she had to get up every morning and water the – the floors
so they wouldn’t be so dusty.
NM: Ah.
THS: Mm-hmm. And I remember her telling me that when I was born, we didn’t even have a
bed.
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: She put me in a cardboard box. [NM laughs] And she said one night I got to crying real
bad, and she didn’t know why, but when she picked me up, there was a mouse running in the
box. And she said I had blood on one of my fingers.
NM: Oh. Oh, no.
THS: So, when my dad got a chance, they had just built these La Yarda.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And there – there was brick houses, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, you know, the floors was concrete and all that.
NM: Concrete.
THS: And – and so, um, he got a chance to come down here. And so, he jumped at the chance.
NM: Oh.
THS: But, no, he just worked. And in the wintertime they drove them little [laughs] – I – I can’t
remember what they called ‘em in English, but there was this little deals that they all sat in the
thing to go fix – they didn’t even have a thing over ‘em or anything.
NM: The things where you pushed down and the other guy pushed down, and you went back and
forth like that?
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh, I don’t know what those things are called, either.
THS: They – they, uh…so he got a chance to go, come down here, and, uh, then we had a better
house. I mean, we had a better place to live than live on the dirt floor in the little old shack.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Made out of wood, you know, and…but that’s how they all lived. So then when my dad
got a chance to come down here, then my brother came down with his family.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then my brother-in-law came down, him and my – my, um, sister.
�NM: Your brother was an adult by then, and you were still a kid?
THS: My – my brother, he was already married. He had a bunch of kids.
NM: Oh. You were, when you were small –
THS: That was the oldest one.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Yeah, that was the oldest one.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Uh, so, they came down with – with his wife and his kids, I can’t remember how many
kids he had. He – he probably had about four. Something like that. And my sister and her
husband, they never had any kids, so…
NM: Oh.
THS: So they, uh, all came down, and they all worked for the railroad. And then my brother-inlaw was drafted into World War II.
NM: Mm.
THS: So, he had to go fight in Germany.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then my brother had – not the one – the oldest one. Uh…he was the fourth one. He got
to go, he went into the Air Force.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And – and, uh, he was, till the – till the war ended, and then they came home.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then my brother got a job in Topeka, in the Santa Fe shops. Somebody told him about
that. So, he got a job there, and, you know, he advanced himself.
NM: Mm.
THS: And, uh, they bought a little house, a one-bedroom house. They had fourteen kids.
NM: Oh, they did?
�THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Now, which brother was this?
THS: My oldest brother.
NM: What’s his name?
THS: He was the oldest. Uh, Pete.
NM: Oh, Pete. Okay.
THS: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, um, then they went back to Topeka, and then my brother-in-law,
when he came back from the service, he got a job up there, too.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: So, he went on back ‘cause it was better to be working inside the shops than it was out on
the cold, you know, winter. ‘Cause it was – my – my dad used to say to my mother, would they
all fix them a tortilla with beans on ‘em, you know, and – and, um, my dad used to say it was so
frozen, you couldn’t even bend it. He said they made a fire to try to warm ‘em up to get
something to eat, ‘cause they was out in the middle of nowhere, you know.
NM: And doing hard work.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Yeah.
THS: So, but – we all survived. And I was gonna tell you about that fountain. I think – we still
think one of them guys threw that little snake in there [NM laughs] because there wasn’t much
water. It was just drain water. They had a floor underneath it, and then the pipe went clear down.
NM: Yeah.
THS: I don’t know where – unless the water we drank, the one that went clear down, but we
think them boys for orneriness threw. Yeah.
NM: Threw a snake down there.
THS: Well, it was just a little bitty snake about that big [NM laughs], and a little frog, you know,
so…something that they could catch. They wouldn’t catch a big one, you know. But anyway,
there was just about that much water, ‘cause there was a board underneath there in the tin.
NM: Oh.
�THS: So, it kept the rainwater up in there, but…it, the pipe went down deep.
NM: Funny.
THS: Oh, they was just ornery boys, yeah. They was wanting to play football, always wanted to
play against the girls [laughs]. They didn’t wanna have girls on their team.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: They just beat us around [laughter]. We got to where we wouldn’t want to play with them.
NM: [Laughs] Well, what would you girls play?
THS: Huh?
NM: What did you guys like to play, with the girls?
THS: Well, they either, uh – we played basketball, we played, you know, we played baseball.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: You know, and all that. Yeah, all the kind of sports, but we always – they always wanted
us to play, and they always wanted us to have our own team, not – not with them in it, you know.
NM: [Laughs] They wanted to win.
THS: Yeah. So…but, we – we walked to school. Uh, we went over to Central at, uh, 9th and
Kentucky.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: It was three buildings there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And we – that’s where we – we went to, we went to New York School and then we went
on up there.
NM: Were there other, um, well, that was Liberty Memorial High School then, right? Were there
other high school – there was no other high school in town.
THS: Yeah.
NM: So, everybody in town went to that one high school.
�THS: Yeah, the one over on, uh, Massachusetts Street. But this was junior high school.
NM: Oh, that was junior high.
THS: Uh-huh. Yeah. We had a building in each corner of the – Kentucky, 9th and Kentucky.
NM: Did they call it Central Junior High then?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Yeah. And when we – when the bell rang, we had to rush if we was upstairs on the second
or third floor. We had to rush all the way down and get across the street to go to another class.
NM: That sounds a little dangerous.
THS: If there was – if there was cars coming, we would be late, and then we’d get in trouble.
NM: Oh.
THS: Yeah, ‘cause we was late. To gym, we had to get down that other building, we had to – this
was one building, and on the other side was another building, and then on the other side was
another building.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: They wasn’t even close. I mean, you had to cross the street for all three.
NM: Right. That’s a strange configuration.
THS: And gym was clear up on the very top of, uh, one of the buildings. Uh, that was the one on
the north side. The office was downstairs, and you – when the bell rang, you had to run to get up
there, ‘cause if you was late, you were in trouble.
NM: Mm.
THS: You had to stay –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: After school, and do what – what they was gonna do that day in gym. Yeah.
NM: Well, thinking back on your childhood, did you have a favorite teacher or, were there
different grades?
�THS: We had [laughs] Mrs. Six. We – we was the only class – I don’t know why they done this,
but we was a class where the Mexican kids and all the colored kids was. That was history.
NM: Oh, history.
THS: We was, uh, on the very top of the building on this side. Uh, and we had a lot of colored
kids in our class.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Well, they would get up and dance and sing, you know, kids. Get up and dance and sing,
and she would say: “Now, listen. If you kids will behave yourself, I’ll give the whole class an
A!” [Laughs] Them kids would do that every time, so they could get an A. [NM laughs] She was
an older teacher. Her name was Mrs. Six. She had a son named Fred Six here in town.
NM: Oh.
THS: He done a business of some kind.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: But, yeah. She was – she would tell us.
NM: Oh, isn’t that funny.
THS: We – we – us girls never, you know, we had a couple of boys, but they didn’t, you know.
But you know how them colored kids will be dancing and singing, and they would be doing all
that, and then she – she’ll pound on her desk and she’ll say: “Now if everybody stays still, don’t
make any noise, I will give you an A.” [Laughter] And she would! We all got A’s in her history
class. I always remember her. She was – she was such a nice teacher. Like I said, she was an
older teacher and –
NM: Mm-hmm. What about in elementary school? Did you have a favorite teacher in elementary
school, in New York School?
THS: Uh, Mrs. Dawson. She was a sixth-grade teacher at New York School. We all went to New
York School, ‘cause –
NM: Sure. Yeah, you were in the neighborhood.
THS: So, but yeah. Mrs. Dawson was the one that was –
NM: She was your favorite?
THS: Mm-hmm.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: ‘Cause she – she kind of looked after us, you know, you can tell.
NM: Yeah.
THS: You know. She was an older teacher, too, and she – she lived – actually, she lived there in
the – in the New York School area. I think she lived on Connecticut Street somewhere.
NM: Oh, so she was in the neighborhood.
THS: Mm-hmm. She was in the neighborhood.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But, no, we went – then, of course, then they made, uh, Cent – they made…Well, after
they – they, um…they did away with them three buildings on Kentucky Street. Then they moved
Lawrence High up there.
NM: Oh, right.
THS: Or Lawrence High was a…yeah, Lawrence High was used to be there.
NM: Right.
THS: And then they moved it to high school. And then, uh, they put, uh, Central in.
NM: So, when you went to high school, did you go to Massachusetts Street, or did you go to –
like, Lou –
THS: I went to Massachusetts Street.
NM: Oh, you did. Okay.
THS: That’s where Central – that’s where Lawrence High was at.
NM: Right, that’s – yeah. Okay.
THS: And that’s where I – that’s where I went. That’s where most of the kids went. And then of
course, then there was – they moved it up there to – to where it’s at now.
NM: And did you have a favorite teacher in high school?
THS: Uh, not – not really, you know, um, it was so big.
NM: Yeah.
�THS: That you didn’t have a chance to – to, uh, ‘cause, that’s where the high school was at, you
know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So you didn’t really, you just, well, at Central we used to change every hour, too. But up
here we didn’t have to, because it was all in the building.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: We didn’t have to cross the street to go to Central.
NM: That was a very odd configuration, crossing the street. Preteens.
THS: There was three or four of us girls always late. We had to run up them stairs. Oh, to get
there in time. And if for some reason there was too many cars coming down Kentucky Street, we
was out of luck.
NM: Oh, yeah. Hmm.
THS: But, no. We, uh – we all went, and [laughs] we went to, uh, high school, there where
Central is at. And we all took Spanish, because we thought it was gonna be an easy, [NM laughs]
an easy class to take, you know. We was sure we’d get an A.
NM: Sure.
THS: But, when we got – when we started there, we found out that it was an entirely different
Spanish. It wasn’t the same Spanish that we was talking – that we was taught, you know, to
speak. It was a different – it was a high-class Spanish.
NM: Like what they speak in Spain, that kind of Spanish?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Oh, that’s very different.
THS: Yeah. And so, um, only one girl, and that was Lupe Chavez, she was the only one that
passed that class.
NM: Oh, no.
THS: All the rest of [laughs] you know –
NM: The Mexican kids…failed Spanish?
�THS: They would make us get up there on top of the – in front of the class and speak Spanish.
Well, we used to speak Spanish the way we was taught as kids.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Not the – not the way they wanted it out of the book.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: So they would tell us: “Now, if you don’t speak it the way we tell you to, we’re gonna
flunk you.”
NM: Oh, my goodness.
THS: Mm-hmm. But they did, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: We never got past that.
NM: Now, did you speak Spanish at home?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: And did you speak English at home as well?
THS: No.
NM: No?
THS: I didn’t speak English till I went to school.
NM: Really?
THS: Till I went to New York School.
NM: Really?
THS: None of us did.
NM: And how did – how did you do?
THS: Well, we had to –
NM: Must’ve been a struggle.
�THS: Yeah, we had to learn Spanish – I mean, English.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: One thing about it, though, [rustling, NM moves recorder closer] the teachers was very, uh,
they had a lot of patience with us because they knew that. And they helped us out the best they
could.
NM: About how many kids in your class were, um, from La Yarda? Were there a lot?
THS: Uh, well, there was all different classes because, like, us, now, I was – me and my brother
Jesse was the only ones that, uh, you know, was old – was young enough that we had to go to
school.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Now the others had already grown up. ‘Cause see, my mom and dad came to the United
States, and then they – they went back to Mexico. So, um, let’s see that was…They went back –
they came; he brought the whole family with him. Then they went back to Mexico, because they
had sold the hacienda that my grandfather, um…
NM: Yeah.
THS: And, uh, then they buried the money because they was coming and killing all of – all the,
uh, I don’t know whether it was Pancho Villa or – or one of the others, was coming along and
killing all the men that had any – any, uh, property – that had any money or anything.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: So what they did, they sold it when they heard they was coming, and so they buried the
money. So they came to the United States, and then when everything was settled, they decided to
go back and dig the money up. But the money wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.
NM: Oh.
THS: Because it had changed government.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, uh, they came back – they went up there, and they had – they had Pete, Chole,
Carmen. They had three kids.
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: And my dad left ‘em up there. He came down – he came down, back to Topeka, with my
grandmother. And so, he left my mother up there with the three kids. Well, he never sent them
any money to live on or to eat on.
NM: Wow.
THS: My mother said that the only way they got to live, ‘cause in Mexico they have a – well, all
the Mexican people [murmurs], which I don’t.
NM: They did what?
THS: You – you go visiting and they give you something to eat.
NM: Oh, yeah. Sure
THS: You know, bread, or they give you, uh, something, you know. Whatever they got in the
house, they’ll give you, you know. And so, my mother used to take an apron and they would give
her a piece of bread, a little loaf of bread, or – or some avocados or something. She – she
wouldn’t eat it. She would put it in her apron.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then she’d take it home to the kids.
NM: Feed the kids, wow.
THS: That’s the only way they got anything to eat. And my oldest brother Pete, oh, he was so
mad all the time because Dad had left them up there. He said he went to work for this farmer one
time, worked from sunup to sundown, picking watermelons. And at the end of the day, he
thought they was gonna give him some money. They gave him a watermelon. Oh, he was so
mad.
NM: Oh, my goodness. Wow.
THS: I said: “Well, Pete, at least you had some watermelon.” [Laughs] Oh, he was mad. He was
always mad at my dad because he’d done that.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: You know.
NM: Your dad thought he would return with all this money, so –
THS: Yeah.
NM: Your dad probably thought he was doing a great thing.
�THS: Yeah.
NM: Yeah.
THS: But he didn’t. He left ‘em up there for a year.
NM: A year?
THS: Yeah, and so my, uh, other brother was buried – I mean, was born up there.
NM: Mm-hmm. Topeka?
THS: No, in Mexico.
NM: Oh, in Mexico.
THS: Yes. See, they took three kids up, and then they came back to the United States. And then
he decided to go back. Well, that’s when he left my mother up there, and she was pregnant, so
she – she had Chino up there, and then they came back. Well, during the time they was here the
first time, they had Joe. He was born in Kansas City. And then they went back and then they
came back a second time, and then, uh, Jesse and I was born here in Topeka.
NM: So, when you dad left your mom, he left her where, in Mexico, or in – ?
THS: Mexico.
NM: In Mexico. Oh, ‘cause when you said up there, I thought you meant Topeka.
THS: No. No, he left her in Mexico.
NM: Oh. Oh, okay.
THS: Without sending her any money or anything.
NM: And where did he go?
THS: If you get hot, we can turn that down.
NM: Oh, I’m fine. Where did he go when he left her in Mexico?
THS: My dad was – well, all the men in Mexico, think that they’re something big, and – and they
all run around on their wives, you know.
NM: Oh.
�THS: Every one of ‘em does that. I – I always remember when I was, you know, real small, my
dad would come home from work. One thing, he worked every day.
NM: Yeah.
THS: He never missed a day. But on Saturdays, he would come home, take a shower, eat supper,
and off he would go.
NM: To go partying?
THS: I – we don’t know where he went.
NM: Wow.
THS: Till eleven, twelve o’clock, he’d come home.
NM: Oh.
THS: My mother stayed home. She never once said anything about where you go, but it
basically, when we grew up, we knew that all these men, Mexican men, run around, you know.
NM: Oh, uh-huh.
THS: But my dad did a little more than run around, I guess.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, um, when he went – when he went, they went back to Mexico and he left her up
there, well – he was just here with my grandmother.
NM: He was here in Kansas?
THS: In Topeka. In Topeka.
NM: Oh, he came back to Topeka.
THS: Yeah, they came back.
NM: And he knew that they didn’t have the money.
THS: Yeah.
NM: And he didn’t send your mother any money.
THS: No.
�NM: Wow. That’s stressful.
THS: Yeah. Eventually he, uh, after a year or so, then he sent her some money. And then she
came back with, uh, three kids.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: My oldest brother Pete, he was so mad.
NM: Mm.
THS: Because he said he left ‘em up there without anything.
NM: Mm-hmm. But nobody said anything to him?
THS: No. My grandmother was with him.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: My dad’s mother. Yeah.
NM: And you would think she would say something, but didn’t. They just accepted it. That was
the way men are.
THS: That was the way men…
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Mm-hmm. And my – my, uh, when they first came down, my aunt’s husband had left her
up there with two girls. And they wouldn’t let her across the border, because she had no means
of taking care of herself.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know. So, my dad brought ‘em over as, uh, my aunt and the two girls as – as his
daughters. They’re on the passport as his daughters. He brought ‘em over. So, then they all
settled in Topeka.
NM: Did you have an idea in your head that you wanted to marry outside of the Mexican
community? No? It just happened that way.
THS: It just happened that way.
NM: Mm-hmm.
�THS: Mm-hmm. We used to go – a whole bunch of us girls used to go to the Meadow Acres in
Topeka dancing every Saturday night with the Forbes – the Forbes Fields was just right down the
road from there.
NM: Oh, okay. Forbes Field, yeah, yeah.
THS: And all them Air Force guys used to go to the, uh, Meadow Acres. It was just a block or
two from the Meadow Acres. So we’d go, a whole bunch of us get together in the car, and we’d
go up there. Just to dance, you know, and about a half an hour before the dance was over, we all
– we would sit over close to the door. We would all disappear. You know, they was up there,
drinking on the – at the bar, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, we would all disappear. We’d –
NM and THS: Go home.
THS: So, we was tired when we got home. So, one day I was walking across the park from
church and Leo caught up with me and he said, uh, he got to talking. He was really a talker. He
got to talking, and then he said:
“Would you like to go have a cup of coffee?”
I said: “All I want to do is go home and go to bed.” I mean, I – we had been out till one
o’clock in the morning, you know, and then get up and go to church at 9:00.
And so I said: “No, I don’t want a coffee.” I said: “I want to go home and go to sleep.”
So the next Sunday, then, there he comes again.
I said: “No, I want to go home.” [laughs] “I’m tired. I don’t want any coffee.”
So then the third Sunday, he came again and I thought: “Well, he’s not gonna leave me
alone till I – you know – till he really knows that I’m not going.” So he started, you want a cup
of coffee and I thought: “Oh, gosh. Maybe if I go have a cup of coffee, he’ll leave me alone.” All
I wanted to do is go home and go to sleep, you know.
NM: Right.
THS: ‘Cause I had to go to work the next morning. I mean –
NM: On Sunday?
THS: On Monday morning. No, Monday morning.
NM: Oh, Monday. Sure.
THS: So, he said: “Well, what – you don’t want to go to the drugstore there.” The Rainey’s was
there at the corner.
I said: “No, I don’t want to go to the drugstore.”
He says: “Well, how about going to the Deluxe Café?”
�And I says: “Well, all right.”
So we went over there and then he started asking questions: “Are you working?”
I said: “Yes.”
I said – he said: “Where do you work?”
Big mouth me, I said: “Right behind here, at the Independent Laundry.”
He says: “You do? How long have you been working there?”
I said: “Oh, I been working there for a couple of years.”
NM: What was it called where you worked?
THS: Independent Laundry.
NM: Oh, Independent. Oh.
THS: Uh-huh. Yeah. I worked with Jenny Garcia folding sheets. We could really fold sheets. Oh,
my. We could – and it was so hot in there. You know, so the next morning I come – ‘cause I had,
you had to come through the room where – to go across the street to drink coffee, to where they
sorted out all the clothes.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: There was a couple of older women back there. And the minute I stepped to the door to
come through the big deal, they said: “Ha, ha, ha, guess who’s out there?” [NM laughs] I didn’t
know who in the world they was talking to, ‘cause there was a bunch of us, you know, going
over there for coffee. Well, who should…there he sat. With his friend Gene.
I said: “Oh, gosh.”
He said: “I come to take you for coffee.”
I said: “I only got fifteen minutes.” [Laughs] So, ‘course Jenny and I and all them girls
was going over there for coffee anyway, you know, so we went over, him and Gene went with
us, and we had coffee. And they paid for the whole bunch.
NM: Nice.
THS: So, then the next morning, there him and Gene was out there again. So, there we go for
coffee. Then the third morning, he was there by himself, ‘cause they worked shift work at – at
the Color Press. And Gene had to stay over, ‘cause the guy that was supposed to come in didn’t
come in on time, so he had to stay.
NM: Where were they working?
THS: At the Kansas Color Press.
NM: Kansas Color Press. Okay.
THS: It was right there on Haskell.
�NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Uh-huh. So, from then on, he was there every morning till he changed shifts. Then when
he changed ‘em he says, I told ‘em: “He’s not there today.” Well, the ladies would let me know:
“He’s not there today. You know, he’s not there today.” Well, we knew – I knew he had changed
shifts to days, ‘cause they had to be at work at eight o’clock to four, so…
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Then after –
NM: Now, did he go to those dances out in Topeka?
THS: Then he got to –
NM: Is that when he originally saw you?
THS: No, uh-uh.
NM: No? How did he happen to see you then, if you, ‘cause you said you were coming from
dance –
THS: He went to church.
NM: Oh, oh. So, you went to Mass –
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: And then you went –
THS: Yeah. We used to sing up in the choir.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Yeah.
NM: Oh, you went to church. And is he in the choir too?
THS: No, he didn’t.
NM: No, but he saw you.
THS: Uh-huh, yeah.
NM: Oh, okay.
�THS: Yeah, just the Mexican people.
NM: Oh, I thought maybe he bumped into you at that dance.
THS: No.
NM: Okay.
THS: No. He had just gotten out of the Army.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: I used to hate [laughs] he used to have his shoes so polished, you could see yourself in
‘em. I thought that was just…oh, gosh. How can he do something like that, you know?
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And his uniform was just so – so clean and so nice, you know.
NM: Did he still wear his uniform?
THS: Um…well, yeah, ‘cause he was still, um, in Fort Riley.
NM: Oh.
THS: Uh-huh. See, he went into the Army at, uh, in Missouri. Can’t think of the name. And he
was there for quite a while. He was in the Korean War. And then from there, they said they
needed him over in Louisville, ‘cause Kentucky and the U.S., and the…um…oh, 101st Airborne.
NM: Oh, okay. 101st Airborne.
THS: Yeah. So they shipped him over there, but he wasn’t in the Airborne. He was – he went
into the Army.
NM: Oh.
THS: And then they shipped him over there, and then he came back. They shipped him, after a
year’s time they shipped him back to, uh, Fort Riley and then he was there at Fort Riley for quite
a while.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So then –
�THS: But this – but this was before we ever started going out.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: I used to see him in church with his uniform, you know [NM laughs]. I – you know, I
didn’t know who he was or anything like that, you know, so…
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: But anyway…I think we got married about a year and a half later.
NM: Mm.
THS: And, uh, one day he drove up and he said: “We’re gonna go to church.”
I said: “Oh, we are? What are we going to church for?”
He says: “You’ll find out.” Well, he had made arrangements with Father Tao and Mary
Tao, that they were supposed to bless the engagement ring before he put it on my finger.
NM: And you didn’t know?
THS: I didn’t even know he had it.
NM: Wow.
THS: He didn’t tell me. He said we were just going to church. And I used to work for Mary Tao
at the parish house.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: I used to clean the – the house.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: And put – take flowers off the altar and, you know, I did a lot of work there. When I was
still going to high school.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And so, um, that was quite a ways back, you know.
NM: Right.
THS: Before I went to work in the laundry. Yeah, I worked for her for years and years. Uh-huh.
In fact, she kind of took me under her wing. She just, you know, uh, do a lot of things for me.
NM: Right.
�THS: You know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And, uh, eventually there for a while I worked after I left high school. I worked there for a
couple of years, you know, in the daytime.
NM: Oh, really?
THS: Till I went to, uh, work at the laundry.
NM: Were you, like, the parish secretary or something, or – ?
THS: No, I just cleaned the house and –
NM: Uh-huh. Took care of things.
THS: And done – done errands for her, you know, and for Father. And, uh, she used to pay me
real good. So then when, um, when I went on to church, I didn’t know, but my parents was in
there. My mother and dad was sitting in there, and so was his mother. Yes. So I – I walked into
the church and Monsignor flagged at us to come on up, and so we went on up. I still didn’t know
what we was there for. Anyway, he takes the engagement ring out, and Father blesses it. Then he
puts it on my finger.
NM: Wow, with everybody watching?
THS: Hmm? Yeah.
NM: Goodness.
THS: Well, just, there wasn’t anybody there in church. Just my parents and – and, uh…
NM: And his parents.
THS: And his – and his mother. His dad was already gone.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Just his mother.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And his younger brother, ‘cause he drove his mother around everywhere.
NM: Uh-huh.
�THS: They lived there on 1321 Tennessee.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: So, they was pretty close to the church.
NM: Yeah, it’s right – right next door, yeah.
THS: But anyway, uh…that’s why – and I still got the paper that Father –
NM: Oh.
THS: Father, uh, Tao wrote, you know.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: To get the – now, I didn’t even know where he’d got the engagement ring or what. I mean,
he put it on my finger and Father blessed it.
NM: Isn’t that great?
THS: You’re talking about being surprised.
NM: Yeah.
THS: You know.
THS: But, anyway…
NM: That’s a good story.
THS: About a year later, then we got married.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: ‘Course, my mother didn’t like him.
NM: No?
THS: My father didn’t like him. And his mother didn’t like him. His mother said he had to marry
me because I probably – he got me pregnant.
NM: His mother didn’t like him, or his mother didn’t –
THS: His mother didn’t like me.
�NM: Oh.
THS: His mother didn’t like me.
NM: Was it a Mexican-German thing? German-American?
THS: Well, not really.
NM: No?
THS: Us, ‘cause she didn’t have any money. She – she ran that – the way it happened was that
his father, uh, passed away; he was forty-some years old. He had a heart attack. They lived in
this great big house on the road to Leavenworth. It had fourteen rooms.
NM: Oooh.
THS: A maid’s room. Yeah, she had a maid. She had a maid for the kids and a maid to do the
cooking.
NM: Gee.
THS: Uh-huh. Fourteen rooms they had in that house. And, uh, it was on the way to
Leavenworth, just going from Basehor on down. Uh, so, um, she – she went around and told –
telling everybody that he had gotten me pregnant. We didn’t have – we was married three and a
half years before Andy was born.
NM: Oh.
THS: You know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: It – but…I just, you know. Anyway, when – when his father passed away at 47, Joe was
going to St. Benedict’s. He was the oldest.
NM: Oh.
THS: So, he came right home and took over the farm.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: He just, I mean, he actually took it over. I mean everything, you know.
NM: Yeah.
�THS: And so, he used to tell the workers, cause he had quite a few workers.
NM: Yeah?
THS: Yeah, for him. Um, used to tell the workers that him and – and, uh, Leo was partners. And
two brothers was partners.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Well, then Leo finds out that, uh, he paid the far – the helpers more than he paid him.
NM: Oh, no.
THS: And then he finds out that he was keeping him out of the Army because he wanted him to
stay and work at the farm.
NM: Oh.
THS: You know.
NM: Yeah.
THS: At that time, if you had – if you was a farmer, you didn’t have to go into the service.
NM: Mm.
THS: You know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Or if you ran something that, you know, you was – had to do with – with not being able to,
you know, people. You know, like –
NM: Somebody depending on you, yeah.
THS: Yeah. Anyway, Leo got mad, and he went and enlisted in the Army.
NM: Oh, gee. I bet his brother was mad. [Laughs]
THS: He was. Joe was mad. And then, he sells – he sells the farm.
NM: Really?
THS: Yeah. Well, him and this guy from, a lawyer from Kansas City, was in it together.
Uh…one of them owned all the stock, and the other one, the house, and the thing. Whatever they
�had on the farm. Anyway, Joe goes and sells everything. And, uh, of course he had to give half
of it to the guy in Kansas City.
NM: Yeah.
THS: But, uh, you know, they had got the money from to buy this – this farm.
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: To begin with, his, uh…his grandfather gave his dad money to marry his mother.
NM: His grand…Oh, okay. Okay.
THS: She – she was, she had polio.
NM: Really?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Okay.
THS: And so, he gave him enough money to buy a farm.
NM: Wow.
THS: His dad, Leo’s dad, that was married to his mother.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Gave him enough money to buy a farm.
NM: Okay.
THS: ‘Cause he was rich. He – he was one of the first representatives in the state of Kansas. His
picture’s in the courthouse.
NM: This is Leo’s grandfather? Wow. Okay.
THS: Anyway, um, can you imagine him marrying that little old Mexican from La Yarda? [NM
laughs] Anyway, uh, Joe goes and sells all of this. He builds himself a new house, buys himself a
new car, buys himself a milk truck to deliver milk around there. Leo, nothing. Then he gets
$1500 and moves his mother to Lawrence and, uh, pays $1500 for that rooming house on – on
Tennessee.
NM: The poor mother must have been –
�THS: Yeah.
NM: Devastated.
THS: And, uh, that was it.
NM: Wow.
THS: So, about, we was married about five years, I think, when all his sisters came down and
asked Leo if he would go with them to court, to sue him.
NM: Oooh.
THS: Because that money should have been divided equally among the girls. There was, uh,
three girls.
NM: And to the mother.
THS: And to the mother.
NM: Gee.
THS: Leo was supporting his – he was shining shoes on the weekend in the Army to make
enough money to send her, so she could pay her gas bill.
NM: Wow.
THS: In that big rooming house.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And Joe was sitting up there in Basehor.
NM: What a selfish man. Wonder what happened to him?
THS: I don’t know. But he was buried. He was not buried, he was married, you know, he
married Anna, I mean, Edna up there.
NM: Oh.
THS: And when we got, Leo and I got married, he wouldn’t let her come.
NM: Really?
THS: He would not let her. He came.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: I don’t know why, because him and Leo didn’t get along.
NM: Was he the brother that came to see the engagement ring?
THS: No.
NM: A different brother?
THS: Uh-huh.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: Yeah. Yeah, his younger brother.
NM: Oh.
THS: In fact, they still come over.
NM: Really?
THS: Him and Ruthie.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: She’s got money left and right.
NM: Really?
THS: You know, when she – when she comes – they came this summer. They had – they came,
and the girls had a picnic up in front; they invited the neighborhood.
NM: Uh-huh?
THS: You know, everybody has a good time when they do that, you know. And so, um, but he
came, the girls came, and they was here for – on a Sunday afternoon talking to Leo. They was
outside. I didn’t know what they was talking about. I – I didn’t care. I thought they had –
NM: Sure. Yeah, his sisters.
THS: None of my business. Anyway, when he come in, he said they wanted to take Joe to court.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And sue him for that money. Cause it should have been divided equally among all of them.
�NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: All the girls, and it wasn’t.
NM: Right.
THS: But Leo told ‘em no.
NM: Really? Said forget it?
THS: They – they wasn’t very happy with him, but he said he wasn’t. He said: “I got my house.”
He said: “I got my kids. I don’t need any more. I don’t need anything he’s got.”
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Was what he told ‘em.
NM: Yeah.
THS: So…but then after a while, they kind of all when Mary died; she left him some money.
And, uh, then [murmurs] passed away here not too long ago, just a couple years ago was when
she passed away in Emporia. But, uh, you know. It happens, I guess, with families.
NM: That rooming house thing’s very strange.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So, she was in charge of the rooming house and she had to run this thing, and – ?
THS: No, she charged ‘em, but they were Chinese.
NM: Oh. [Laughter] You have so many twists and turns in your story.
THS: They – they was all Chinese.
NM: Oh, okay.
THS: That she rented to.
NM: Okay.
THS: Yeah, Leo had a room upstairs, you know, where he slept and stuff.
NM: Yeah.
�THS: Ed slept on the couch down in the dining room.
NM: Oh.
THS: And Clara slept in the bedroom with her mother, you know, different beds, but they slept
in – yeah, so she could rent ‘em up there. But the only reason that they didn’t give her so much
money was because they fed her.
NM: They fed her? The Chinese food?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Wow.
THS: And she couldn’t get around very good, you know. She did get around –
NM: Right.
THS: ‘Cause she come one day, went out with Leo and picked strawberries out there, you know.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Yeah, she could get around, but not that good. And – and so, uh, they – they would feed
her. They would cook. They didn’t have a stove upstairs, so they cooked down on her stove.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And they would just make enough food for her, too.
NM: And where did all these Chinese people come from? I mean –
THS: They were going up to KU.
NM: Oh, they were at KU. Okay.
THS: Students.
NM: They were students. Interesting.
THS: And of course, they didn’t have very much money, either.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: You know. And one time, they sent her a whole bunch of stuff from China.
NM: Oh.
�THS: You know, their mothers. I guess they told her that she was so nice about [murmurs], so
they sent her some good luck charms and stuff like that, you know.
NM: Uh-huh. Oh, that’s really funny. Good story.
THS: But no, they cooked, ‘cause she was the only one in the house that had a stove downstairs.
NM: Sure.
THS: So, they came down and cooked, and while they was cooking, they knew she couldn’t get
around very good, so they – they fed her.
NM: Made enough for her, too.
THS: Mm-hmm. And then, of course, then they was students, so they didn’t have much. I guess
their parents did, up in China, but, uh…
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: You know, whether they send ‘em money or not, I imagine they did. But they wasn’t
gonna tell her that.
NM: Yeah.
THS: You know. They was glad they was getting a place to cook and all that. And they would do
the dishes and everything.
NM: Yeah. Huh.
THS: They would go to the grocery store. Of course, Leo did too. Leo went to the grocery store
for her.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But, uh…and he helped to pay for the gas bill, ‘cause the gas bill was terrible.
NM: Oh, it must have been terrible. Those big drafty houses.
THS: There was – it was…
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: But anyway, um…that’s the way things… You know, like I say, we never had – we was
pretty near going crazy ‘cause we thought we was – he wanted kids, and I wanted kids. I wanted
ten kids.
�NM: Oh.
THS: [Laughs] He wanted that many, but then after I had the girls, the doctor said, you know, he
says: “You’ll either – ” He called us both in to the doctor’s. He says: “You’ll either lose her, or
lose the baby.”
NM: What did you say?
THS: He, Dr. Herman called us both in, after I had the girls.
NM: After you had the girls?
THS: Yeah, and he told us, he said: “Leo,” he says, uh, “if she doesn’t have a hysterectomy,
she’ll – if she gets pregnant, she’ll either die or lose the baby.”
NM: Oh.
THS: “So which would you rather have?”
NM: Wow.
THS: Leo says: “We’ll just go ahead,” at that time you couldn’t; you wasn’t supposed to have a
hysterectomy.
NM: Yeah, it was unusual. How old were you?
THS: I was probably about 27.
NM: Oh, no. Oh, that’s too bad.
THS: I had the boys. The boys are eighteen – eighteen years apart. And – I mean, not eighteen
years, but four. And I say eighteen – eighteen months apart.
NM: Eighteen months apart.
THS: Then the girls – the girls was four years apart.
NM: Four years apart, okay.
THS: And Richard.
NM: Well, you have a great family.
THS: Yeah. But that was it.
�NM: Uh-huh.
THS: But, you know, we – we had the two boys, and we had the two girls.
NM: Yeah, you had two matched pairs. That’s great. Great, beautiful family you have.
THS: I remember Dr. Herman. Dr. Wilcox was in there, and he was delivering babies. And he
says: “Oh, my gosh, there’s another one coming.” ‘Cause at the time you didn’t know. You
didn’t have no sonograms.
NM: Right.
THS: And the only reason the doctor kept telling me I was gaining too much weight ‘cause I was
eating too much, and I was…uh, I was – had, he could hear a real strong heartbeat. That’s
because one of ‘em was this way, and the other one was this way.
NM: Wow.
THS: And he kept putting me on a diet, and kept telling me: “You’ve got to lose weight.
You’ve got to lose weight.”
So then when Dr. Wilcox, they was in together, him and Herman. And, uh, Dr. Wilcox
was delivering me. He got one out and then he turned around and he said:
“Oh, good heavens, put her to sleep. There’s another one coming.”
And I could hear Dr. Herman say: “Can I go tell – can I go tell Leo? Can I go tell Leo?”
[Laughter] And Dr. Herman – Dr. Wilcox says: “That’s alright, you go tell him.”
So he went out there laughing, and then he come back laughing, and he says:
“You know what?” He says Leo was pretty near asleep. ‘Course he was working the
midnight shift.
NM: Oh.
THS: He said Leo was pretty near asleep and he said:
“I told him to get up,” so he said, “he got up, he sat up, and he said: ‘What’s the matter?’
I said: ‘You just had two babies.’”
And he said: “He looked at me, didn’t say a word.” He said he looked down at the floor
and just stood there for a while.
And then he said: “But I only have one bed.” [NM laughs]
He said: “I told him we’d keep ‘em here long enough for him to go home and make
another one.” And he did. He made the little beds for ‘em.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And he used to sit here and read, and he’d put one foot under one leg, under one of the legs
of the bed, and the other one on the other leg, and he would read and he would push one and then
push the other one while I got the meals done, you know.
�NM: Yeah.
THS: And the laundry and stuff like that.
NM: Isn’t that great?
THS: Yeah, he used to love to read.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And he kept the girls happy that way, because you know, he made them little beds no
bigger than that.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: In fact, when Rita’s granddaughter came, they asked for one. I don’t know whatever
happened to the other one.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: But he had made –
NM: Yeah. Yeah. What do you know?
THS: He loved to work with wood and plant a garden and everything.
NM: Mm-hmm. Well I’m gonna have to get going, Teresa.
THS: Well, sorry that we didn’t get too much [murmurs].
NM: Oh, you always have good stories.
THS: You know, it’s, uh…I don’t remember, you know, too much anymore, ‘cause I’m getting
up in years.
NM: You have a pretty good memory.
THS: But I do remember walking to church in the snow.
NM: Oh.
THS: We had to go to church. Raymond says: “I’ll give you a truck, I’ll give you a ride in the
back of the truck.” He had this great big huge truck. We climb in, and can you imagine how cold
it was?
NM: Oh, no. [Laughs]
�THS: He used to take us to Minnesota to work in the vegetables, too. In that big truck.
NM: Wow.
THS: Four families.
NM: That was in the summertime?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Yeah. That must have been fun, a little bit fun, huh?
THS: Well, it was, to a certain extent.
NM: Rough.
THS: But we had to, uh, we had to, uh…we had to work.
NM: Oh.
THS: And to get a shower, we had to go jump in the lake. We had no other way to take a shower.
NM: In Minnesota, I bet that water was cold.
THS: It was. [Laughter] And none of us knew how to swim. Now Raymond might’ve, but none
of us.
NM: Oh boy.
THS: But we had a good time.
NM: Yeah. Did you ever learn how to swim? No?
THS: I didn’t, but Leo did. Leo and the boys, he used to get the whole neighborhood in the
pickup truck, in his old pickup truck. Went all over to Lone Star Lake to swim.
NM: Oh, fun.
THS: Yeah. Take ‘em all. Neighborhood.
NM: Yeah.
THS: You know.
NM: Whole neighborhood.
�THS: The guys come in -- Andy: “Mom? Dad?”
I said: “No, don’t call Mom. Talk to your dad.” He had an old pickup that just went
[imitates putting noise] all the way to the lake.
NM: All the way to Lone Star Lake.
THS: But he had the back end full of girls and boys.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: That asked their mothers if they could go, you know. Of course, Leo knew how to swim
real good. I didn’t. I – I still don’t. I still don’t like the water.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: You know? I did in Minnesota, ‘cause we had to take a shower [laughs]
NM: Right, sure.
THS: Or you’d never get a shower.
NM: What did they have you picking there?
THS: Um…carrots and potatoes and onions.
NM: Mm.
THS: And, uh, we lived in a garage.
NM: Really?
THS: Mm-hmm. Four families. One in each corner of the garage.
NM: Was it hot?
THS: Uh-huh. And, uh, uh…they had – the ladies had to cook outside.
NM: Did they have a cement floor, or dirt floor?
THS: Dirt floor.
NM: Oh, gee whiz.
THS: Yeah. Oh, we had some – in California, when we had to – to work in the peaches, we, uh,
we lived in a tent. My mother cooked outside.
�NM: You did?
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Was that for, like, a summer, or…when – ?
THS: Well, that was just till the harvest was over. We – we picked peaches and then we picked
apricots.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And then when that was done, then we went over to pick grapes. Over to –
NM: Did she take you out of school?
THS: Huh? Yeah. They made me go to school.
NM: Oh, they made you go to school there.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: So, you left New York school just to go to California for a while?
THS: Well, when I came back, I went back to New York School.
NM: New York School, yeah.
THS: That’s the only way that the boys would make any money to get clothes for school.
Nobody hired ‘em.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Nobody hired Mexican kids.
NM: Mm.
THS: And when we went to – to Minnesota, you know, like I say, four families made.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: Went because they had to have enough money for school.
NM: Right. Yeah.
THS: But…it was fun, though. You know, a whole bunch of kids together.
�NM: But hard work, very hard work.
THS: Yeah. We was so tired by the time we got in that garage, we didn’t care.
NM: No. Hard to play.
THS: We wanted to sleep.
NM: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
THS: And no, I had to go to school in Cucamonga, and I didn’t like that. I had to get on the bus.
NM: Where’s Cucamonga?
THS: In California.
NM: Oh. [Laughter]
THS: Yeah. That’s a town.
NM: Okay.
THS: The gates would – they had great big old fences, the gates would open, the bus would go
in, the gates would close.
NM: Mm.
THS: And you – they would open when the – at the end of the day when the bus was loaded up
again.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: They’d go and drop you off somewhere. Then you had to walk.
NM: Yeah. Hm.
THS: And if you got there early enough, if you woke up early enough, you could have cactus for
lunch.
NM: Cactus?
THS: Mm-hmm. But if you didn’t get up early enough, they was all gone.
NM: Oh.
�THS: Was a time my mother – my mother used to get up at daylight to go out there, and there’s a
whole row of cactus behind the houses where the – the boys went and picked grapes.
NM: Yeah?
THS: And, uh, if they got there early enough, if my mother got up early enough, we’d have
cactus for supper besides beans, you know. So, we ate cactus.
NM: How do you prepare cactus?
THS: My – you take all the stickers out with a little paring knife.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And then you cut ‘em.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And then you, uh, put ‘em in to boil, and then you put ‘em on a skillet with some cilantro
and onion, and you mix ‘em up and they’re the best things.
NM: Are they really?
THS: With beans and tortillas. Oh boy.
NM: Oh, my gosh.
THS: That’s all we ever had to eat.
NM: Uh-huh. Cactus, beans, and tortillas.
THS: Except when the gypsies came. Then we had olives because they – there was a whole row
of olives in front of the houses. And so they’d come and they’d pick all the olives out and put in
a great big old, uh, tubs.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: And cooked them all night long. And so, we was kids, you know, and they was all dressed
like gypsies, and they drove, and they came in on buggies just like you see in a book.
NM: Yeah.
THS: Uh-huh. And they would come in and they’d pick all them olives off, the farmer didn’t
care. They’d pick ‘em all up and they would start cooking ‘em all night, and – and then the next
day they would ask us if we wanted some. Of course, we didn’t have anything but beans and
cactus [NM laughs].
�NM: Sure. But – but you didn’t know how to cook, um, olives, but they did.
THS: No. No, they had great big old pans. And I don’t know what they put in ‘em. But they built
a fire all night till one day it rained up in the mountains and the water came down. It came down
where the – their tents, where their little wagons was, and their tents, and their tubs, and it just
took the whole thing.
NM: Oh, no.
THS: That was the last time we seen ‘em there.
NM: Mm. What a disaster.
THS: We didn’t see ‘em there anymore.
NM: Yeah. How – how many years in a row did you go to California?
THS: Pretty near every year.
NM: Really?
THS: Till we got up into, uh, I think I got up into junior high.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: When we came – see, we had a pass. My dad got a pass. We could go anywhere the train
went.
NM: Oh.
THS: Without having to pay.
NM: Sure.
THS: And so, my sister had got married up there.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: First we went ‘cause my aunt was up there. And then, uh, my sister got married up there,
so she used to tell us: “Come on down.” And – and behind her was a orange grove. All we had to
do was just go about from here to that white pickup, and get oranges for breakfast.
NM: Oh, nice.
THS: Then there was, uh, row of English walnuts.
�NM: Mmm.
THS: And after they went through and harvested them, we could go over and pick all we wanted,
and there was a place right across from my sister’s house. And we could go sell ‘em there.
NM: Really?
THS: Oh, we done it all.
NM: You had – you had it all figured out.
THS: Yeah.
NM: All the angles.
THS: Well, because, you know, with that pass, we could go anywhere.
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: Mm-hmm.
NM: Yeah, you were lucky to get those passes.
THS: In fact, the whole family, my brother and his kids, and my brother-in-law and my sister, we
was all going to California to live.
NM: Mm.
THS: When we got to Needles, California. There was no air conditioning in the car, so we got to
Needles, California, my brother-in-law [murmurs] jumped off – off the train and he says:
“Whew! I wanna go down and get some air.” He got – jumped down, jumped back up, and he
says, he told my sister: “Let me tell you something. If it’s this hot where we’re going, I’m
coming back tomorrow.” [Laughs] But they didn’t. They stayed and worked for that summer,
and then they all came back.
NM: No incentive to stay there. Yeah.
THS: No.
NM: Too hot.
THS: It was a beautiful place, you know, but…
NM: Mm.
�THS: You could see a lot of stuff, and –
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: And my, uh, brother-in-law in California worked in the – where they bring all this, uh,
garbage for the pigs they had.
NM: Oh
THS: They had pigs’ pens.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And, of course, um, there would be all kinds of silverware and everything, that people
would just drop it in, you know, accidentally.
NM: Sure.
THS: But it would be in there, and he’d pick it all up and bring it home and polish it up and take
it up, and make extra money.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Besides what he was getting to feed the pigs and stuff.
NM: Yeah. Resourceful.
THS: In fact, I still got some up there.
NM: Do you, really?
THS: My mother left, uh-huh.
NM: Oh, wow.
THS: Sterling silver. All the kids can do whatever they want to.
NM: Sure. That’s amazing. What a great story.
THS: Uh-huh. It’s a – it was a tough world, but…
NM: Mm-hmm, yeah.
THS: You know, and then when I married Leo, it was entirely different, you know, ‘cause he
worked all the time.
�NM: Oh, he worked very hard.
THS: And then I worked, too, you know.
NM: Mm-hmm.
THS: After I left the laundry, then the kids, he wouldn’t let me work till they got into high
school. I mean junior high, the girls. Yeah. He said no. And so, I stood and I – I – done laundry
for people. I done the shirts for Butch.
NM: Yeah.
THS: ‘Cause he worked at – in the grocery store.
NM: Okay.
THS: I ironed all his shirts and washed ‘em.
NM: That’s a lot of work.
THS: I babysat. I done everything I could to give us extra money.
NM: Yeah.
THS: And then…then I went to work at the – when I worked at the laundry then. And then, uh,
he went to work for the City. And his legs was getting really bad, so I told him, I says: “Give it
up.” You know, I’m still working. I was working the Presbyterian Manor there.
NM: Oh, yeah.
THS: I said: “Just give it up. I’m working, and you can draw your Social Security.” So that’s
what he did
NM: Yeah. Good.
THS: But he was always mowing grass.
NM: I know.
THS: Cleaning garages for people, you know.
NM: Uh-huh.
THS: Just doing everything. Him and the boys. The boys all know how to work.
NM: Uh-huh. That’s right.
�THS: ‘Course Richard, all he does is sit in the chair and –
NM: Work on the computer? [Laughs]
THS: And make money. Yeah, he had a full knee replacement yesterday.
NM: Oh, really?
THS: I thought I wouldn’t call him maybe till tomorrow, until he got a little more rest.
NM: Yeah, good idea. Well, I’m gonna have to get going, Teresa
THS: Yeah, I don’t know about a knee replacement, ‘cause he sits in a chair all the time,
working on the computer.
NM: Yeah, that’s kind of funny.
THS: Not – not unless he – he hurt it, uh, taking the scooter to the swim –
NM: Does – does he go to the gym and exercise at the gym – [tape cuts off]
END OF TAPE
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
La Yarda Oral History Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
La Yarda (Lawrence, Kan.)
Mexican Americans -- Housing -- Kansas -- Lawrence
Mexican Americans -- History -- Kansas -- Lawrence
Mexican Americans -- Social conditions -- Kansas -- Lawrence
Description
An account of the resource
La Yarda was a neighborhood of worker housing provided by the Santa Fe Railroad for Mexican-American railroad workers in Lawrence, Kansas; located near the Kansas (Kaw) River, the neighborhood was largely destroyed by a major flood in 1951. In 2006, Helen Krische, archivist at the Watkins Community Museum, began an oral history project to document the La Yarda and Mexican-American communities in Lawrence, Kansas. The project was resumed in 2019 by Nora Murphy and Emily Raymond. The interviews primarily feature the children of the railroad workers who migrated to Lawrence in the early 20th century; they describe daily life, social activities, and living conditions in the Mexican-American community in Lawrence from roughly the 1920s through the 1970s.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
La Yarda Oral History Project
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Watkins Community Museum (Lawrence, Kan.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006
2019
2021
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
These works are the intellectual property of the Watkins Museum of History, Lawrence, Kansas. The public may freely copy, modify, and share this Item for noncommercial purposes if they include the original source information. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Murphy, Nora
Raymond, Emily
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Schwartz, Teresa Hernandez
Schwartz, Anita
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
MP3
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:12:42 (2019-10-06)
00:47:30 (2019-10-13, pt. 1)
00:7:31 (2019-10-13, pt 2)
01:05:32 (2019-11-14)
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
192 kbps
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Teresa Hernandez Schwartz La Yarda Interview
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Schwartz, Teresa Hernandez
Schwartz, Anita
Description
An account of the resource
Teresa Hernandez Schwartz lived with her parents in Lawrence's La Yarda neighborhood. Teresa was interviewed by Nora Murphy on October 6, October 13, and November 14, 2019, as part of an oral history project to document the La Yarda and Mexican-American communities in Lawrence, Kansas. La Yarda was a neighborhood of worker housing provided by the Santa Fe Railroad for Mexican-American railroad workers; located near the Kansas (Kaw) River, the neighborhood was largely destroyed by a major flood in 1951. Teresa describes her family's migration from Mexico to Kansas, their experiences living in railroad housing communities in Topeka and Lawrence, and the 1951 flood that forced the La Yarda community to disperse. Teresa also describes her family's relationships with other Mexican-American families in Lawrence, their experiences attending local schools and St. John's Church, their working life and family foodways, the effects of World War II and the German prisoner of war camp in Lawrence, and experiences of discrimination and segregation faced by the Mexican-American community in Lawrence. Teresa's daughter, Anita Schwartz, is also present for portions of the interview.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Murphy, Nora
Raymond, Emily
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Lawrence (Kan.)
1920s - 1970s
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
October and November 2019
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3 (audio recording)
PDF (transcription)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2019-10-06 interview: 1-TSchwartz-20191006.mp3 (audio)/1-TSchwartz-20191006.pdf (transcription)
2019-10-13 interview: 2a-TSchwartz-20191013.mp3 and 2b-TSchwartz-20191013.mp3 (audio)/2a-TSchwartz-20191013.pdf and 2b-TSchwartz-20191013.pdf (transcription)
2019-11-14 interview: 3-TSchwartz-20191114.mp3 (audio)/3-TSchwartz-20191114.pdf (transcription)
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Watkins Community Museum (Lawrence, Kan.)
Relation
A related resource
To access the audio recording of these interviews, go to <a href="https://archive.org/details/1-tschwartz-20191006">https://archive.org/details/1-tschwartz-20191006</a>.
The <a href="https://www.watkinsmuseum.org/">Watkins Museum of History</a> also holds items related to this collection.
<a href="https://archives.lib.ku.edu/repositories/3/resources/5295">Additional research on the La Yarda community</a> is held at the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Published with the permission of Teresa Hernandez Schwartz. This work is the intellectual property of the Watkins Museum of History, Lawrence, Kansas. The public may freely copy, modify, and share this Item for noncommercial purposes if they include the original source information. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
La Yarda Oral History Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
La Yarda (Lawrence, Kan.)
Mexican Americans -- Housing -- Kansas -- Lawrence
Mexican Americans -- History -- Kansas -- Lawrence
Mexican Americans -- Social conditions -- Kansas -- Lawrence
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History