-
https://history.lplks.org/files/original/1e8c62773a81a06c250fa439d79d0736.pdf
283295463d0facfc7ec41dee87b2f097
PDF Text
Text
Tape 16a: Interview with Israel Bermudez and Rachel Lemus
Interviewer: Helen Krische
Date of Interview: 2006
Length of Interview: 31:49
Location of Interview: St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church
Transcription Completion Date: September 30, 2020
Transcriptionist: Emily Raymond
Israel Bermudez (Interviewee): …Yeah, yeah. Some of the stuff she brought up I can just barely
remember. But the first priest that was there, then a different priest…my God, how does she
remember all that?
Helen Krische (Interviewer): She must have a good one. Are we ready to roll? We have tape in
the thing here?
Unknown Male: Yep, it’s ready.
HK: Okay. Alright, first what I’m gonna do is, let’s see, we need to get two consent forms going
here. Um, this consent form is just, um, to let you know that this is an oral history of MexicanAmericans here in Lawrence. And that, uh, we’ll keep a copy at the Watkins Community
Museum of History and we’ll also probably give a copy to the Kansas State Historical Society
and, uh, we will make a copy for you. And, um, basically it’s just to kind of tell you that, um, in
doing this that, that you will grant us all the rights and, uh, and intellectual property rights, uh,
for this interview and that we can, um, make other audiotapes of it and we can use it for research
and publications and also for, um, putting on the website if we choose to do that.
IB: [unintelligible]
HK: Oh yeah, sure! [laughs]
IB: All the stories –
HK: If you let us do movies, that would be great too. So, I’m gonna give this one to you to sign.
We’ll need your name up here at the top and then there are two options here that says that you
won’t have any restrictions on what we’ve recorded and then there’s one underneath that says
that you do want restrictions on what has been recorded. And then fill out the other information
down at the bottom…I’ll give you just a minute, Rachel… [long silence, picks back up at 2:18]
IB: So you want my name here again, and –
HK: Uh-huh, your address and everything so that we can contact you.
IB: In print? I print better than I can write.
HK: Okay, well that’s fine. [laughs] Let’s see.
�IB: Cause I went to New York School.
HK: Here you go…Use that pen.
IB: What’s the date today?
HK: 22nd.
[long silence, picks back up at 3:19]
IB: [unintelligible, maybe asks who someone is]
HK: Oh, it’s Brian. [laughs]
IB: Okay.
HK: Alrighty.
IB: It’s kind of legible [unintelligible].
HK: [laughs] True brother and sister. Alright, um, I’m Helen Krische, we’re doing this for the
tape, and this is Israel, um, Bermudez and Rachel Lemus.
Rachel Lemus (Interviewee): Yes.
HK: And they’re brother and sister, we might add that to the tape. And, um, first of all I guess
one of the, one of the basic questions is, what part of Mexico is your family originally, originally
from?
RL: My dad was from the state of Sacatecas. And my mother was from the state of Torion.
HK: Okay. And how did they happen to, um, come all the way out to settle in Kansas?
RL: Well, it’s the same thing they’re doing now, they’re looking for work, my dad, he…the way
I talked to him one time, they came from Mexico and they went to Nebraska.
HK: Mm-hmm.
RL: G-e-r-i-n-g, Nebraska. That’s where my first, my oldest sister was born. And then they came
over to Kansas ‘cause of the railroad was hiring Mexicans. And that’s what I understand, I don’t
know about him.
IB: Most of, most of…work [unintelligible].
RL: And then they came here I think to Kansas City, then they came, I don’t think they lived in
Kansas City, but then they came here.
�HK: Do you know around what time this was?
RL: Well, my oldest sister was, is, was born 1926.
HK: Okay.
RL: So that’s about the time and the rest of us were born here in Lawrence, Kansas. And the next
one was in the 1920s, I would say about 19, between 1928 and Ruben was born here too, he was
born in February 1928. And they were already here in Lawrence.
HK: Did they join the St. John’s Church as soon as they moved here, or –
RL: I don’t remember. I’m sure they did. I mean, I’m sure they did. Very, very religious.
IB: Baptized [unintelligible] in the church.
HK: Did they work for the, uh, Santa Fe railroad or the Union Pacific?
IB: I’m not sure. I think Santa Fe. I’m not sure.
HK: Do you know where –
IB: Yeah, I don’t think he worked with the railroad too long. ‘Cause he had an injury and he had
to quit that and then go to work somewhere else.
RL: At KU?
IB: Yeah.
HK: Okay. So, do you know if they lived in, um, any of the housing complexes that –
IB: [unintelligible]
RL: Santa Fe, I don’t remember them…
IB: Um…I think…
RL: I remember being there but I don’t think visiting, but I don’t, cause we lived in New Jersey
and 7th and the 8th.
IB: Mm-hmm.
RL: And then they…the last house was 810 New Jersey. It was same little vicinity.
IB: We all lived two or three blocks of each other.
�RL: I don’t remember unless somebody comes in [ad?] tells you that…[unintelligible] Older but
better memory, but I don’t remember living there.
HK: Yeah.
IB: [unintelligible] …I can remember when I was about four or five, we lived on New Jersey
street. 740 wasn’t it?
RL: 19 New Jersey. Because then you would, I understood, the only ones that could live in them,
they call it the yards was like, just a
IB: Two-row houses. Little apartments.
RL: And then I remember that the water, everybody used, the faucet was right there in the
middle. The outhouses were over there, they had their side and they had their side. But I
guess…like he said, my dad went to work, he worked over on the –
IB: I don’t think, on the railroad he didn’t work too long. So that’s probably one of the reasons
we never lived in those houses.
HK: Mm-hmm. Did you have, um, was it just your parents and, um, you kids, or did you have
other extended family members living with you, or…?
RL: Just visit –
IB: Visit.
RL: Stay a little longer [when?] visiting maybe.
IB: Sometimes a couple of [unintelligible] [laughs] [says something about jokes, maybe?]
RL: That’s, my mother stayed home, there was 12 of us.
HK: Wow. That’s a big family.
RL: Well, after me there was three that passed, and I never really asked her if they were stillborn
[“probably”?] But after I was born there was, there was I didn’t know whether you wanted
pictures but –
HK: Oh, yeah.
RL: I had these, I should have taken time [unintelligible] my mother. That’s my dad and that’s…
IB: That’s Ruben…
�RL: [We/You?] weren’t even here yet.
IB: No, I said, Ruben…
RL: That was my oldest sister and my oldest brother. And my mom.
IB: Yeah, I think I was out picking up beer cans. [laughs]
RL: Huh?
IB: I think I was out, out picking up beer cans. That’s why I’m not in that picture. [laughs]
IB: And the [unintelligible]
RL: And this is, that’s, the twelve – the nine of us living here. But I think they were stillborn
‘cause we had no pictures or my mother became a diabetic about that time, got pretty bad, so
probably that’s why she didn’t, they didn’t live, or something. I wish I’d have asked, but at the
time, you know –
IB: Well, I think the, I think the gravestone was just the birthday –
RL: Well yeah, that’s what I got off of the old ones.
IB: So there was, they must have been stillborn.
HK: So are they buried here at Mt. Calvary?
RL: Mm-hmm.
HK: Yeah, we’ll probably scan these, and then…
RL: Yeah, they were, the time the father wanted them to, some of them to have markers, so the, I
don’t know that we were rich but important they, I remember my dad getting this, uh, Coca-Cola
cart, wasn’t it, Izzy? Put concrete in it and then he kind of, like, built up a cross and then just put
the dates that I copied.
HK: Oh.
RL: And he said that everything had, should be marked up there. And after my dad passed away,
I was executor and I thought: “The first thing I’m gonna do is buy them, um, their, so that’s what
they got now. Theirs is newer than all, all the rest of [unintelligible]. And that’s the dates I got,
19, let’s see, ’41…
IB: ‘43, and ‘46.
RL: ‘43 and ‘46.
�IB: [unintelligible]
RL: Yeah, he volunteers to cut the grass, that’s why it always [unintelligible].
IB: Cut, cut grass over there, yeah.
HK: So, did you grow up, um, in your household, did, did you grow up speaking Spanish,
or…speaking –
RL: Both.
HK: …English also?
RL: Both.
HK: Both?
RL: And that’s why I don’t know how to speak Spanish good, or English –
IB: Mom and Dad never spoke English, so we had to learn Spanish and speak Spanish.
RL: Mother would never speak Spanish.
IB: And English rather.
RL: And English, she’d probably, she went downtown to pay the gas bill or Duckwalls
[unintelligible] she didn’t have to speak. She went to get thread and she knew [unintelligible],
she knew how much, and for gas bill, whatever she paid, she knew how much, and…My
husband tried to trick her one time. She wouldn’t speak…so we, that’s what we learned. They
didn’t go to – really probably grade-school level. So the Spanish I know, I get real embarrassed
when I meet, I’ve met lots of people from Mexico. My husband hasn’t had the schooling either.
But the, the girls that I’ve met and worked with, they’ve gone to, let’s see, high school level and
I always tell ‘em: “Don’t laugh at me and, because the Spanish I know is…”
IB: Slim. It’s slim.
RL: And then my mother and them didn’t go to probably grade school level, [that’s the?]
Spanish, and I hesitate to, when I speak [I say?] “No, no, you go ahead,” you know…
HK: So do, do your children speak Spanish, or…?
IB: Mine don’t.
RL: Mine understand it, but more than they can speak it.
�IB: When you start speaking Spanish, my kids, they start looking, ‘cause they know something’s
going on. [unintelligible] they can pick up what you’re talking about by…
RL: And I regretted not, not speaking to them, you know. Because now, my husband came from
Mexico. And I got some friends and their kids, and they’re just little you know, right now those
little kids speak English and Spanish just like that. And I thought, why didn’t I speak to, you
know. It’s [not?] too late. [unintelligible] or something, I feel awful. ‘Cause you know, we didn’t
speak to –
IB: Well, that’s like, we went to Mexico, all of us together. Brothers and sisters and
[unintelligible]. And I was in Mexico, and down there they don’t speak no English. And I was
like, in a foreign country. I could understand them, but I couldn’t speak, ‘cause they speak fast.
And I was in Korea and Japan during the service, and I, I could speak to those people more than I
could speak to the people in Mexico, seemed like. I felt…I don’t know why, I just felt different.
‘Cause in Mexico they just rattle off, and I don’t speak that good, so I, I was kind of ashamed
trying to speak, I couldn’t speak. But I feel really bad cause they were interpreting too, the
people who were talking to me. He said this, [unintelligible] and I said that, couldn’t speak. But I
just didn’t use it that much. If you don’t use it, it just kind of goes away. So of course we was
going to school, back then, back then they didn’t want you speaking any Spanish in school, even
to each other. So they always kind of frowned on it. Didn’t speak it to other kids because they
didn’t want you to, so the only time you spoke it when you went home, the rest of the time you
were speaking English. You learn both at the same time.
HK: Did you go to the, what schools did you attend here in Lawrence?
RL: New York School, for grade school, and then over here on 9th and, uh, what was that oneway street? Kentucky. There’s a filling station.
IB: 9th and Kentucky. Oh, you mean Central.
RL: Central.
IB: Junior high used to be on 9th and Kentucky.
RL: There’s a bank over there, and then there’s a, the offices and then I think it’s a gas place.
There was three buildings and I can’t remember all of them. Central –
IB: …Ohio –
RL: [Manuel?]
IB: Ohio and Central.
RL: There was three buildings that we had to change classes, you know. That’s where we went
to junior high, and then we went to, um…
�IB: High school.
RL: You went to –
IB: Central.
RL: Where did you go to high school?
IB: Central.
RL: Central. Central down Massachusetts was high school. But I didn’t, I got to go to Lawrence
High. And that was [unintelligible] graduated and that was it.
IB: And we had, they had St. John’s when I was growing up [unintelligible] ‘Cause I remember
the nuns. They were, they were kinda strict, and they’d pull your ear, and…
RL: And my kids did –
IB: They’re gonna have trouble enough trying to learn without somebody pinching, pulling their
ear, so I said [unintelligible] public school.
RL: And my kids did go to St. John’s, and my grandkids are in St. John’s. And my daughter’s
kind of, like, you know, she lives way over there by Corpus Christi. I went to [unintelligible] and
that’s where I want my kids to go, unless there was no room. Then her boy, instead of going
from sixth grade to wherever he had to go to the new schools. She’s got ‘em over here in Central
because she went to Central. And then he would be going to Lawrence High. When he should
probably be going, I don’t know what the boundaries, but as long as there’s room they can go.
She said: “I went there, I want them to go there.”
IB: Well, usually if they have a choice, the school system [unintelligible] Lawrence High, rather
than Free State.
RL: Yeah, if there’s any room.
IB: Yeah.
RL: As I say, as long as there’s room she could do this.
IB: I said, hardly anybody get turned down going to Lawrence High, Central or other schools,
anybody who wants to go to Central. The other way around, and it’s in the system, it still is…
[certain?] people somewhere. That’s probably – like I say, if you want to go to Central and you
live somewhere else, they usually let you go to Central. If you’re here and you want to go to one
of the other junior highs, most of the time, [unintelligible] unless they got a lot of room, or you
got some reason [unintelligible].
HK: Well, what was it like growing up in Lawrence?
�RL: Fun. I tell my grandkids, they got all these expensive toys, blah blah blah. We had, I said,
we had, it wasn’t Barbie doll then. I remember getting these dolls. I could never understand
when did they buy them, we were with them when they went to town. My sister I remember had
a big sack of these dolls, and you know, we just cherished that doll like it was made out of gold.
Our kids, Barbie’s in, next year it’s something else, and it’s, ah, well, you know. I don’t think
they – they just lookin’ to see what’s next and then they’re gonna get it. And then we had all of,
after supper was all over, we all lived, all the Mexicans lived in one section. We were Mexicans,
black and white. Middle of the day if you were cooking and you needed [unintelligible] you
needed three eggs and you just had two, you could go next door and, “Can I borrow a egg?” Now
we don’t even know who our neighbors are. In the evening we’d all get down on the street,
Pennsylvania Street, ‘cause there was, I guess cause there’s not many cars at the end of the road
there. And we’d play hide-and-seek, we’d play, the guys would make this thing, what is it, where
you jump, you know, the, higher…the wood? thing you guys built. You know, we just –
IB: What do you call that, I can’t remember.
RL: We were happy. That was our happy – we didn’t, we didn’t go to the parks. Walked
everywhere, every Saturday we went to confession, walked from 810 New Jersey up to the
church.
IB: Only time you crossed Connecticut Street was to go to church [unintelligible] Connecticut.
The rest of the time you didn’t. Only time we went over there was, there’s people, trying to, I
don’t know, beat us up or whatever, but…you gotta be fast.
HK: So was there, did you experience any prejudice growing up?
IB and RL: Yes. Yes.
RL: Even up – I met my husband here. We came to – it was a friend in Topeka. And then there
were dances or something, and he stayed in my sister-in-law’s house which I used to remember
was her younger sister, and that’s how we met. But they started giving these Mexican shows and
you had to go to Topeka. And my dad, you know, we didn’t have that. We don’t have what we
got now, videos, we got a channel, I wish we had, my parents it was nothing, you didn’t hear
nothing, no music, no CDs, now you can go everywhere and…food, same thing, cause we, they
made it at home. But back in ‘62 we, he says: “You wanna go to Topeka, take your dad and we
go to the movies.” So we were going to Topeka for the first time and we knew the day – the
night, the night it was. We knew where, North Topeka. We got there like an hour early. So my
dad, he spotted a bar [laughs] he told my husband, “Let’s go have a beer, Frank.” He says: “Your
dad wants to go over there and even if I don’t get one I wanna be with him.” I said, “Oh, go
ahead.” “What are you gonna do?” I said, I’ll just, they had kind of like a waiting area, you’d go
in. I said: “I’ll just sit here.” Well they came back right away and they said “No…”
IB: Wouldn’t serve them.
�RL: “We don’t serve” – and that was in ‘62 in Topeka. And then the guys experienced a lot when
they went into the service.
IB: Yeah, I went into the service in ‘53, and I came home and there was two of us that – that
were on leave, and we was gonna have a little party, after – before we left. And so we went to,
back then they didn’t sell liquor to the Indians. Specially in Haskell, ‘cause most of them were
young, and they’d always get drunk and get in trouble, so they just wouldn’t do it. But we
usually didn’t have – we usually didn’t drink liquor anyway. If we – but anyway, we was going
to, we went to the liquor store to get something to drink, and ‘cause we was gonna leave in a
couple of days, and the guy said, he wasn’t gonna sell it to us. So we said: “Well, why?” He said
“Cause I don’t have to.” We said: “Well, you know, there’s gotta be a reason you don’t want to
sell it to us.” And he said: “Well, I just don’t have to.” And, and back then like I said, they
wouldn’t sell to Indians, so we said: “Well, we’re not Indians, we’re Mexicans.” And he said: “I
don’t care what you are, you know, I don’t have to sell it to you.” So then my friend was getting
kind of mad and he’s kind of a burly guy, and so I was trying to hold him back and, you know, I
said: “You know,” I said, “we’re not gonna bother you. Just give us a bottle, we’re gone.” He
said: “Well I don’t have to sell to you people.” So I thought, okay. So we went outside and of
course we went somewhere else [unintelligible]. Course after you’ve had a few then you kinda
start, you’re still boiling inside, and I can see why people go through life and they’re – they’re
trying to live the right life and [faint sounds] intoxicated, go back and do something we shouldn’t
have done. And then, after that you’re on the wrong side of the law all the time. And I can see
why people do that, you know. But I mean, that was for no reason. We wasn’t, we wasn’t gonna
sit in there and drink, you know. Like you couldn’t go to bars and sit and drink in bars, ‘cause
they didn’t let you. You’d go in and buy your stuff and leave [unintelligible]. But the liquor store
was the same way. You could go in and buy it long as you had an ID that you was old enough. In
those days, and I used to get irritated, ‘cause I was in the service going to Korea and [laughs] I’m
going out to war and I can’t even get a, you know, something to drink in a bar or liquor store or
something. And there was a lot of places you couldn’t go in. And they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t
have a sign up there, but they would, if you went in to get something they would just see you
there at the bar or the counter and they would just ignore you.
RL: Ignore you, like you weren’t there.
IB: Anybody else come in there and you, you know, after a while, you know they’re not gonna
serve you, so even – even if you want to get it to go, you know. It’s just like, I grew up with a lot
of black friends and we had a Mexican ball club and they had a black ball club and we used to
play each other all the time. And we’d get together and drink a few beers and stuff, and we was
always teasing each other. And I was teasing this one black kid and I said [unintelligible]. He
said, well yeah, he said, “You guys think it’s easy, you – you try growing up having to sit in the
back of the bus all the time.” And I say, “You mean you guys got on the bus?” I said, “Why
didn’t you get on the bus?” And he started laughing, he thought that was a joke, but that was, that
was true. Most of the time you [unintelligible] the bus. If you had legs you could walk.
RL: Well, the movies, down here at the Granada…
IB: Yeah [unintelligible] –
�RL: We could go in but we had to sit in the back row, we weren’t allowed to go. And if you went
up beyond… Well, you tell them about that incident with, uh –
IB: Well, I, I had two friends that were older friends. One was a black man and one was white.
The white person was, he was like 17. He was a real good friend of ours, the family. Then the
other guy was kind of in the service and he was a [unintelligible] but he used to take me to the
movies on Saturdays. So every once in a while, that’s the only way I got to go to the movies
when I was a kid. They, one of them would take me, and when I went with the – and the movies
had sections for the blacks that sat in the back, usually up in the balcony in the corner [in the
back?] in a certain area, three rows or something like that. Every time I went with the black man,
he always, he always, uh, bought my ticket for me, which I would [owe him for?] Every time I
went with this friend of mine who was a white boy, he was 17 and he always gave me the
money. Back then it was 11 cents, to go to the movie. He always gave me the 11 cents to go to
the movie. And it used to make feel good so I’d get up there, put the 11 cents up there. I
remember this one time I, I was going to put my 11 cents this gal at the door and she said: “We
don’t have no more colored seats.” And I didn’t understand what she meant, so I said: “What?”
And she said: “We don’t have no more colored seats.” What’s, I’m trying to think, what’s a
colored seat? And so finally he says, he was standing behind me, and he says, he said: “What’s
the problem?” And she said: “Oh, is he with you? And he said, “Yeah, why, what’s the
problem?” “No problem,” and she gave me the ticket, you know. And I went home to tell, and I
told my brothers. Of course, they just started laughing, all over the chair and, you know, I still
don’t know what it means or what it is. And then finally they said, they said: “Well, they thought
you was a little black kid.” ‘Cause I was real dark anyway. And then they would laugh and then I
go, “Oh, that’s what it was.” [laughs] But I mean, you know, you grow up, I grew up like that,
with things like that. And even today there’s still stuff.
RL: Yeah, I feel like it’s coming. I don’t know why.
IB: And I – I figure if I’m in a group of white people, you know and they’re talking and they’re
talking about black people in a certain way, oh, I know if I’m not in the group they’re gonna talk
about me. I mean, not all people, but the people that are that way, ‘cause you know I was in the
[fire department?] and we had, like, maybe two black people on there. And every once in a while
when they weren’t around, these guys would be talking about them. And I’d get mad, because
you know, I knew they were talking about me and I was – you know and I kind of get, get
almost, you know, “Why are you talking about the other guys, you know, they’re just people like
anybody else.” [unintelligible] But, I mean, that’s how I felt. And I always told my kids, you
know, “If somebody’s standing there talking about another race in a certain way, they’re gonna
be talking about you when you’re not there. And it is true. That’s why I said, it still goes on.
‘Cause I’m still around people who, who talk about somebody else, you know…and I know
you’re gonna say that about me.
RL: But like I said, we were in the neighborhood with black people next door, Mexican, another
black, white person. We were all together, you know, all kind of like a family. All got along.
�IB: And I remember growing up with people, too, that, I went to [Oregon?] on New Hampshire,
there. And we had this, I worked with this, these voicers make the music and [unintelligible] and
I, I worked for a guy named [Ricky?] who was from Arkansas. And he started working there
sweeping floors when he was 16, 17 and he ended up, you know, doing things, he, he invented a
lot of the stuff that they made. But he got to be what they call a voicer, he’s the guy that tunes all
the organs and stuff. And he had like a 11th grade, 10th grade education from Arkansas. But he
wasn’t dumb, he was smart. And then after that they uh, they got a union in there and the union,
you know, they [fight?] for all the [bandmen?] in the union, and he ended up being president of
the union. And so the – the company didn’t like him because he was the president of the union,
you know, he was – getting good money. And they had, uh, they, they didn’t have no steps for
how much people could – they just paid ‘em, you know, nobody knew what the other guy made.
So they decided to get a union, because there was some guys that came in [unintelligible] related
to the supervisor, and they’d come and [unintelligible] everybody else started [unintelligible]
And so when they got the union, they thought, you know, they made ‘em have steps that you go
up the ladder and you get paid, and all that. Anyway, so one of the deals with him they were, the
company didn’t like him because he was the president of the union, and he was getting big
bucks, so they turn around and put one of the, one of the deals for a voicer, you had to have a
college education in music. And of course, so then they try to get him out of there, but you
couldn’t do it because he was already there before this came out. And they were trying to get him
out of there, and they, they couldn’t. ‘Cause it’s against the law, you know. And so all the time
he was in there, they hired all these college people with music degrees and stuff. And he was the
only one…but he invented half of the stuff that was there. So he knew down the road, you know,
something like [unintelligible]. So he, when he invented stuff he would put part of the stuff here
and part of it here and part of it at home so they couldn’t just come in and say, “Okay, this is
what you do now.” There was always something missing and that’s the way he kept his security
more or less. And I remember he had these other guys around him, they were all college people,
he was the only one that was 11th grade education. And then he’d always, when they talked about
black people he’d always bring me in there and say, “You know, he grew up with black people
[unintelligible].”
All of them would always say: “Well, I have black friends too.”
And so he said: “Well, who are they?”
“Well, some guy I went to college with.”
And he said: “No, it was just somebody you got acquainted with.” Said: “No, black friends are
people that you, you know, that you know everything about them. Like you know their kids, you
know where they live, you know their mother’s name and all that.” And that’s the way I
explained it to him.
So this guy says: “No, I have one. My best friend’s a black man.”
I said: “Where’d you meet him?”
“I met him in college, and then he went to our church and we played organs together and stuff.
And I said, I said: “Well, what’s his wife’s name?”
He said: “Well, I think her name’s – ”
“How many kids do they have?”
“Well, I think he has – ”
I said: “What do you mean, you think he has?”
“Have you ever been to his house?”
He says: “No.”
�“Has he ever been to your house?”
“No.”
I said, “Then you, he’s not really a friend, he’s just an acquaintance.” I said: “A friend, usually
you know everything about them, they know everything about you.” I said [unintelligible] Or
smoke a cigarette and give ‘em, you know. I said, that’s, you know, those are friends, they’re not
acquaintances. But that’s [unintelligible]. And there was a lot of, some, not a lot of – some still to
this day. But I grew up, you know, prejudice was…The only thing I, where I didn’t see a lot of
prejudice was when I went into the service. ‘Cause then if you performed [unintelligible] I
remember, my life completely changed when I went into the service, ‘cause then we were all
equal. You know, when I went and joined up, there was a bunch of Topeka, this area, we all met
in Kansas City. And there was a group that came from Chicago or somewhere, where we all met
in Kansas City, on the trains that went from Kansas City to California. We – I joined the
Marines, so all the way out there, there was, like, gangs of guys from, you know, Chicago, and
there was guys from the Kansas City area, and a lot of them were just from little towns like I
was. And they were kind of like, you know, all the guys from Chicago would sit together, they
had their big ducktails and their little, you know, back then it was ducktails and [pink? big?]
pants and all that, and they all smoked and drank. Tattoos and everything, I was just, I was
scared to death of ‘em. [laughs] And they were tough, you know, and they’d push each other
around, and they had, they carried their knives, and they got out there, you know, and I’m sitting
on the train, it took us three days to get out there [tape goes silent, then cuts off]
END OF TAPE 16A
�
https://history.lplks.org/files/original/5574de41ddf6903df3b032c25e8355cb.pdf
13381d94827dcfb250e797ea0e3eedfe
PDF Text
Text
Tape 16b: Interview with Israel Bermudez and Rachel Lemus
Interviewer: Helen Krische
Date of Interview: 2006
Length of Interview: 31:46
Location of Interview: St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church
Transcription Completion Date: October 13, 2020
Transcriptionist: Emily Raymond
[Tape begins with buzzing and static noise]
Israel Bermudez (Interviewee): …It was an accident, but just…happened to get hurt.
HK: Was that at New York School where they were congregated.
IB: Now, that was a bad time too, because there was a lot of people that came in from out of
town to get, you know, in trouble, and down in East Lawrence –
RL: They’re doing that now.
IB: East Lawrence, they shot out all the streetlights. And then they’d go down the street in their
cars with their lights [off? out?] And you know, if they see somebody they didn’t like, or
something, they’d start chasing or shooting them or whatever. I mean, you can sit there in the
evenings on your porch and there’s bullets come through the leaves in the trees, you know. And
that didn’t last long, couple of weeks, maybe two or three. The thing about it is, I went to the – to
the store one time, and like I said, I had black friends, that I grew up with and played ball with,
and when those riots and things were going on, there was a lot of, like, [unintelligible] people
came in too. And then you had the black [unintelligible]. And they were all around. And there
was, there was a lot of tension here, when you walk in a store somewhere, they look at you, and
try to figure out: Are you a militant, or are you with them, or are you with them? I, I was in a
store one time talking to this black fellow that I went with, played ball, and there was, some
college, I think they were college kids, and they were older. And I don’t think they were from
town. I think they were just troublemakers. And they came in, we was standing there and they
got all around, about six of ‘em. [murmurs] “They’re gonna, they’re gonna beat us up, boy.” And
so I thought: “Well, all we can do is stand back to back and fight as many as we can.” But back
then I didn’t think about it, you know. Back then fights were just hands, you know. Didn’t use
nothing. The militants did, but most of the time, when you see somebody, [unintelligible] they
was just fistfighting, you know. One got beat up and then get up and go home. And after that it
started turning into knives and guns and all that kind of stuff. [unintelligible] There was a lot of –
RL: We had a – funerals, we was just talking about this the other day – we didn’t go to the
funeral home, they brought the body to the home.
IB: Yeah.
RL: And then in those days you brought the body to the home, and okay, let’s say somebody
died, I don’t think we ever had one for us, but you know, somebody [unintelligible]. And the
�parents would get together and they figured, you know, you’re gonna, after the rosary, you’re
gonna offer coffee and rolls. So that’s when my mother sometimes would say, “Go get the
coffee,” you know, big can, or “Go get the five pounds of sugar and we’ll take it over, take it to
her before so she know they have it.” Somebody else would bring – buy bread, and then after the
rosary we had – we were little, we were looking forward to that bread. We, we drank coffee all
our lives, since we were little.
IB: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
RL: Us kids were, I remember, I remember some putting in a milk bottle.
IB: You had milk, but you [unintelligible], but that was it.
RL: Lot of milk, and, but we drank coffee. And up to this day I, my husband’s trying to, “You
drink too much coffee.” I said, “Oh, that’s okay.” Something’s gonna take me one of these days
anyhow, I believe. It isn’t like, you know, I’m bothering somebody else by, you know, smoking
in your face, or nothing, but…the funerals were like that. Very seldom did they go to the little –
IB: The whole family went to the funeral, these little kids would be [unintelligible], everybody
else [unintelligible] Having the rosary or something like that. The person’s laying right there in
the dining room [unintelligible] in the casket. So the little kids just didn’t want to stand there, so
they’d be outside. [murmurs] We’d always peek in the window, you know, to see the body, what
was there. That’s the way it was.
RL: It’s all, like I said, we’re all together.
IB: Lotta that growing up like that is just because you were poor. And you, you know, you
couldn’t afford this and that. So that’s the way you had to do things.
RL: Well, I have a piece of paper, ‘cause my dad lived with me after my mom passed away, he
came to live with me. And I found this little paper that’s handwritten, I think he paid $300 for the
house, $10 payment. I’ve got that.
HK: Oh.
RL: And he got this little house, then he built two bedrooms. It was just the living room, really a
living room, one bedroom, kitchen, and the back like a porch. Then he, then the city came, you
had outhouses, then the city came and said no more outhouses, you’re gonna have to put your
bathroom in there. And that was fine. But down the basement of that house my dad had, there
was a faucet, he put up walls and there was a stool, a real stool, you know, it might have been
used, but –
IB: We dug the, we dug the line, sewer line, to the, to the –
RL: And the way you flushed it, there was a faucet there, and there was a bucket, so you know,
when you needed to flush it you just fill it and it would flush. But then the city came and says no
�more, they give us a [unintelligible], so then he put the bathroom upstairs. Then he built two
bedrooms, one for the boys and one for the girls. Cause we had, they had their own little –
IB: See, back then you –
RL: I can’t remember how we slept.
IB: Back then you didn’t know, [murmurs] let anybody in that door if you didn’t want to. Even
the police. But back then you didn’t want that. So the city would come and the police would
come.
HK: What house was this, what is the address?
RL: 810 New Jersey.
HK: 810 New Jersey.
RL: That I remember that there, I remember the 740 and 819 before that, I don’t remember. But
the 810 New Jersey I remember, we had the outhouses, you go out there, and there was just, what
outhouses looks like. And then, the city came in and said we were kind of lucky ‘cause Dad, he
got, measured, there was like a porch and he divided a little wall and then we’d put the stool, the
tub and the basin, and this, my mother’s Maytag with her washer. He had a few tools. But we
had that, and then he made a shower downstairs, just put a wall like, you know, a wall and then
we had a curtain, in case somebody had to go to the bathroom and then it was a shower.
IB: You might have one lightbulb in that one room.
RL: Yeah.
IB: There wasn’t outlets or anything. Just the light would hang, you know, most of the time you
had kerosene lamps [unintelligible]
RL: And my dad would put them, yeah, nowadays, when my dad was doing some work. For
them to learn – well, to help him too – that’s why my brothers all know how to do things ‘cause
my dad had ‘em right there. You know, right there, and they –
IB: We used to run away, but then we had to come back and [murmurs] [laughs]
RL: But you know, they had, like [unintelligible], we burned a fire, I remember we had a big
stove in the living room. Big top like that. And we would dry our socks, and it took forever, thick
socks. Cause there was a little, he made a little wooden box and he’d tell these boys, “When I
come back from work, that wood has to be all cut so I can” – big enough to put in the fireplace.
Wood and the guys would do it. I mean, they knew it had to be done, but first they’d come home
and have a cup of coffee. And then they’d get out there and do that and my dad would never get
after, that I can remember, get after them, get in here. Now the kids, “Eh, I’ll do it later Mom.”
Not my kids, but –
�IB: He went down to KU and, landscaping. They cut trees and stuff down. So he’d always take
‘em to the landfill, and so he’d always tell the children, “Just take it to the backyard and drop
them off.” I mean, these logs were that big around. They would just drop ‘em in the yard and so
it was our job to get them [unintelligible]. And then we had this crosscut saw, needed two guys,
one on each side, and one of our jobs was to cut wood every day for the stove, you know, and
then we could play. So we, so we’d always start doing that and then the little ones would sit on
the logs so we couldn’t move them, [unintelligible] get up there. And after a while the neighbor
kids would come around, say “That looks like fun,” you know, like Tom, you know, like
painting the fence. So pretty soon they get, rather than just stand there and watch,
“[unintelligible] My turn!” You know, they kinda, so, they’d all come home, we’d saw the wood
and then we’d go play ball, you know.
HK: Mm-hmm.
IB: But it was, that’s the way –
RL: Our swings were a rope in the tree. Remember, Izzy? And Daddy had a little work shed, and
then he had a garage and it was swinging from that rope clear across. That was, like I said, we
didn’t have nothing like a little, uh – swing set.
IB: Only problem there was we had a mean dog, and he was always chained there. When you
swung across there –
HK: He’d try to get you.
IB: He’d try to get you. Every once in a while he would, too. [laughs]
RL: But no, we just looked forward, you know, we knew we had to get our work done. And like
I said, I remember my dad would have those boys, they built the two bedrooms. And he had ‘em
right there, watching him, handing him, they know what a screwdriver was, a whatever, you
know, that’s how they learned.
IB: Other thing about it was you had two [murmurs] screwdriver, one hammer and all this,
sometimes get [rocks? nails?] somebody come along with a hammer, but you just didn’t have a
whole lot of stuff to work with.
RL: In those days my dad worked his self, and he became a foreman for KU. I’ve got some
newspapers on it. He became a landscaper for the grounds. And he had no education by the time
he got in there. You know, sometimes people don’t know, they have the education, go to school,
but they got it up here.
IB: [Murmurs] Well, my dad, at the beginning he didn’t know English, so he [unintelligible] He
got records to learn how to do English. That’s how he kind of learned. My oldest brother has
some really good stories –
�RL: He’s coming for the fiesta. He comes every year, he’s in, he lives up in the mountains in
Denver, about 20 miles from Denver. He comes, he’ll be coming Thursday and he – he can
remember things and I said, “Too bad he’s not coming,” you know. That – later he’ll be here, but
I mean, that…My dad, um, he liked to drink, like, he wasn’t one of those, like some people and
they go to the bar every day or every weekend, not like that. We, we were, us kids were first.
You know, like I say, he didn’t take much to get drunk, you know, like people, but we were, we
came first for him. I mean, he had two jobs. He worked, uh, I guess when he worked at KU,
right? Then they, the older men made these carts, big square and those big wheels put in the
middle and then they put handles, they’d go down the alleys, pick up cardboard, ‘cause you
could sell cardboard, copper, which you could get more money even now. Pop bottles –
IB: Pop bottles.
RL: He’d get all that and go sell it for extra money.
IB: We kids did that too. We, I did that growing up.
RL: But actually the older men, you know, Mr. Garcia, Mr…
IB: Used to do that all the time.
RL: They’d go down the alleys.
IB: As a little kid, you know, we used to get wagons or we’d carry, cardboard, you know, you
had to break the boxes down and carry the cardboard, and, uh, we used to have to go to this
junkyard which was only about two blocks down the street. But as a little kid you come in there
too, you maybe pulled the wagon, cardboard, and they’d – they’d put it on the scale and weigh it
and then whatever it was they give you so much per pound. And the guys that run that thing
would cheat you. I mean, you were a little kid, and you were coming in with this cardboard. And
these guys are cheating you. They’d always stand in front of the [unintelligible], and they’d
never let you see what it weighed. And so we knew it weighed more than that, ‘cause you know,
they’d give us half of what it was. And we knew, we carried it over there. And so then one time
we was in the yard doing that, and this lady that used to do that, she used to live in
[unintelligible]. She’d go up and down the alley getting stuff and taking it back. She said, “Well
what you do to get back at em,” she said, “when you get the cardboard lay it down, get you a
bucket of water and then just sprinkle it, to make it heavier [unintelligible]. And we thought, you
know, it’ll work. [laughs] So we did that and we’d take it in and the guys said, “Well that’s only
about 15 pounds [murmurs; then says 25 pounds?]. But then, so he’d cheat you down to 20, 15
pounds so we end up, you know, getting even. But with metal you couldn’t do that, ‘cause it was
metal. You’d find metal stuff. And so after awhile, this is getting to be bad, ‘cause you know
they’re cheating you. But there was nothing you could do, and as little kids you start thinking,
“Well, they’re cheating us and they’re grown men and we can’t do nothing about it.” So we go
“Well, in the evenings when the thing closes down, the junkyard closes down, let’s go jump the
fence and throw half that stuff back and resell it to them.” [laughs] So we did that, we did that for
a while and then they got a dog and we couldn’t jump the fence anymore. That’s where this
junkyard dog came in. We, we was trying to get one guy over there, you know, with the dog, but
�they have high fences, [unintelligible] room, you know. You’re a little kid, you know, you gotta
run fast, hit that thing, get up that thing, that dog’s right behind you, so. Sometimes you could do
it and sometimes you couldn’t.
RL: The other way that we made money for us younger kids was, he was a farmer, Heck?
murmurs] I think they still have a farm.
IB: There was three or four farmers, they were all brothers.
RL: They’d bring this, like I guess, it’s a truck, right? Am I right?
IB: Flatbed truck.
RL: And he’d park in the middle of the block, two times, here, and he’d – he’d pick us up. And
we’d get in the back of the truck and he’d keep us all day picking potatoes.
IB: …No more than sixteen, they always had a place, they’d pick you up either this corner or this
corner. You had to be there at like 6:30 or something. So everybody that could walk around, five
years old, everybody got on that truck and went. You sat there in the morning with your little bag
of, your little lunch. And the truck would come and everybody gets on there and I mean
everybody, if there’s 50 people there, there’s only room for 30, otherwise everybody’s gonna be
standing up or they’d be hanging over the side.
RL: We were young –
IB: Oh, yeah.
RL: Like 12 and 10 years old when we went –
HK: So what year was this? About what time period?
IB: Late ‘40s.
HK: Okay.
IB: Then you went out there and you picked potatoes, you know, family, you’d go out there and
get what they called a station [tape fades briefly] there and the next guy, and as a family you
went out there and you kind of all stayed together, you know, until, most of the time. Unless
there was some girls, and the older guys –
RL: That’s what I was saying. Instead of him helping his sister, he went to help his girlfriend.
[laughs]
IB: Some days I would pick five bushels when I should have picked 35 or something.
�RL: And we had a lot of Mexicans, young men, single, come in, and where would they go? They
send ‘em to Bermuda’s. ‘Cause like I said, my dad was a foreman, and if somebody looking for a
job, they send ‘em to Bermudas. But they didn’t have no papers, the ones that came from
Mexico, and my dad said: “You’re better off going to the city, because you won’t be able to get
nothing here.” And, uh, but we had fun too, getting in that truck and going out there, we’re
standing up in the truck, ‘cause he had, he had these boards there, and but, that was help for us
and we really –
IB: It was dangerous, ‘cause you –
RL: But we had –
IB: Kids, and the whole family, and they had grandmas out there, you know, like 75 years old.
They were out there picking potatoes. And the only shade you had was when you found a
sunflower stalk, and then you’d turn around and pretend like this is buried in the ground and you
put a piece, some sacks over it. And then there was competition because sometimes you run short
on sacks. The truck had come around. You got potatoes, you gotta put ‘em in a sack, so you was
running over there and steal some sacks. [laughs] And there’d be little fights. Just little
[unintelligible]. I mean, [unintelligible] but it was kinda funny, you know. You had to survive,
kind of.
RL: But we always, you guys had, like I was telling her, a lot of boys came, from – I don’t know
where they came from. Spanish speaking, those had to come from Mexico. But they’d always,
sometimes our porch was a bit, you know, was hot, so you had no, little, one fan for the whole
household. When we were young, we’d sleep out on the porch, and as soon as it was getting
light, Dad would wake us up: “Come on in.” And then we’d come in the house.
IB: Or the dogs would carry you away.
RL: But we had, we had, well they were friends, we didn’t really know ‘em. But they’d take ‘em
in, and they’d stay at our house.
IB: When we was, uh –
RL: And, and you more like [unintelligible] our house.
IB: When we was kids, I mean, we was real poor, a quarter go a long way. And there would be
bums that would get off the train ‘cause we lived about a block from a train station. The railroad
tracks, and they’d, hobos and stuff, would come down that alley all the time. And they must’ve
marked the houses, cause they’d go along and they’d come up to that house, and my mom would
always feed ‘em.
RL: Always.
IB: And we had –
�RL: Always. Always.
IB: She’d always make something for ‘em, and have ‘em sit on the back step there, and she’d
give ‘em coffee and [unintelligible]. And then one guy told me that’s what they do, they’d go
down and mark a house, they’d put an X or something on it. And the next one will come down,
he knows he can get something to eat there. But she never turned ‘em down.
RL: Never turned ‘em down. Fed ‘em, I don’t care if they’re black, white or Hispanic.
IB: She would make ‘em something like [unintelligible] tortillas, we always had tortillas. My
mom, seemed like she’d sit there and make tortillas, round the back –
RL: Flour tortillas.
IB: There’d be six of us sitting at the table [unintelligible], she’d have a little pile like that of
tortillas. And everybody grabs one, and it takes thirty seconds to get rid of it. And she would
keep that thing like that all the time, cooking and rolling ‘em out and making the dough and all
that. After a while you get to thinking, you know, she was pretty good. Pretty fast.
RL: Like I said, they didn’t go to school but my mom sometimes would tell us, she told me one
time, she said: “Your mother, what a mother” or something like that. She says: “You get the
stupid mother.” I said: Why do you say that? She says: “‘Cause I never went to school.” I said:
“Well, your parents didn’t let you, I mean, they felt like you didn’t need to go to school.” It was
just gonna be work, work, work. But yet, her and the whole neighborhood, there was like three or
four women, after they ate lunch and got their dishes – they’d sit together in one house. They’d
take turns. And they had crochet, you know, like they’d make a curtain for that –
HK: Mm-hmm.
RL: And form a – a little angel, a horse, a basket with flowers, and they’d, she’d put a, you
know, they were gonna quit time to go get supper, she’d put a little safety pin, you know, she’d –
and then she’d go to the Salvation Army and she seen a dress that was a little, seen a dress for
larger person. She’d look at the material: “That’s practically new.” Well, she’d buy it and
downsize it to fit us. And you know, and then she, I said, “Who else, Mother, you don’t need no
education, you’ve had twelve children. Nine of us living. Dad was never on welfare. And you
could crochet anything. You could sew anything. You could cook.” I remember this cornbread
she – I think it’s cool, I think I’m gonna make cornbread. She was going to get her flour, put
whatever, no measuring, break the egg, and I remember a little crack coming down that
cornbread. No recipe. I said: “Well, who had, you had twelve kids. You could cook anything you
want. Sew, crochet, what else does a woman need to know?”
IB: Even when she went blind later on in life, she would sit there and crochet all the time, just –
RL: Yeah, diabetic. She was a diabetic. But no, we were – after they’re gone, you – I said a lot of
times to my husband, thinking about it, you know, what you don’t say to your parents when
they’re living, you know. You know, they came to a country with not knowing anybody. Now
�the people that are coming, they have somebody, you know, somebody’s already here for them,
so they got two or three families there. They had nobody. Took a chance and came because, you
know. But they didn’t – and here my dad [had?] the education, he didn’t have it, became a
foreman for KU over…over…I think right, over 30 years, 35?
IB: He’s a [unintelligible] now.
HK: Well, what would you do when someone became ill?
RL: Uh…the…
IB: You’d never see a doctor. The only time you see a person that was, the school nurse. That’s
the only time you ever see any medical people, unless you really got real sick, or cut your leg or
– ‘cause I remember my brother cut his, almost cut his foot off. Stepped on a Mason jar or
[unintelligible]. Cut all the [unintelligible], they had to take him to the doctor then. And then he
come back and he needed crutches. Well, we couldn’t afford crutches. So my dad cut a limb that
had a fork in it, and there, and put a deal up here, and that was his crutch. He was pretty fast.
You could still catch him.
RL: Homemade scooters, uh, the boys, uh, stilts out of wood –
IB: You made – you made up your own games.
RL: That was fun.
IB: We had games where we’d, like we had stilts, everybody had stilts, and we’d get up there
and then we’d fight on stilts, try to get – or we’d get a smaller guy in the back and, you know,
you’re the horse and he’s the – and they’d fight, they’d pull each other and try to [unintelligible]
each other. And then there was a, down on Pennsylvania Street there used to be a TNT popcorn
place that shelled corn, and the cobs went out in a pile and it was probably bigger than this
house. That was my playground. We used to go out there and play king of the mountains on that.
The biggest guy would get up there, used to throw the other ones all off, and – you’re a little kid,
corn cobs are rough, by the time you get done, you’d be all scarred. [laughs] But you’d play
there for hours and hours and hours. Every day after school we’d go down there and play, then
they’d haul ‘em all off, and then we’d have to wait until they start building ‘em up again. And
then we had guys that were 17, 18 years old [murmurs]. They went up there, and we were like
little kids, like 11 or 12, they got up there, and they were always king of the mountain usually.
Every time you’d try to gang up on ‘em, one guy would grab on and –
RL: But everybody helped each other, especially, you know, the women having one child after
another, you know, another little one. Uh, Mom, they got together, well okay, so-and so had a
baby – didn’t have to worry because they, my mother knew that this – you baptize a baby you
become a…
IB: Godparent.
�RL: Yeah, but [murmurs] mom and dad. What they call comadre and compadre. You baptize my
baby, you would be my comadre, and she’d be my child’s daughter. And, you know, they were
there to help, Mother didn’t just – have the baby, didn’t have to worry, ‘cause they knew that
these other ladies would take care of those kids. Wash ‘em, feed ‘em. You know, that was fun
days.
IB: And back in those days, if you went to somebody’s house and you were acting up, they
would beat your butt just like you’re their kid, and that’s the way it was. Nobody ever said
anything about it. You go over and misbehave at somebody’s house and they’d take the paddle to
you or throw you out or whatever, smack you around. And you never said anything, ‘cause you
know you’re wrong and, you ain’t gonna go tell nobody nothing ‘cause then they’ll get after you
for being ornery at that place or something, but that’s the way it was. Everybody, if you were in
their house, you did what they told you to do.
RL: Also, the funerals – if they knew people were real poor, we’d collect, they’d collect among
the neighborhood, to have whatever, and, and that’s another thing they did. We was – I think
about it now that I’m older, and I said: “Those were the good old days to me.” [laughs] Even
though we were poor, we appreciated. Appreciated, you know, what we got. I think our kids –
our grandkids – I didn’t do that with my kids. Barbie doll, [Delores’s?] Barbie dolls, and she
didn’t have no more dolls. And I didn’t have – like I said, I wanted her to have a little bit, but I
don’t want her to be – now, my grandkids, it’s a different story. My grandkids. I have a son and
daughter. It’s just a completely different –
IB: When you grew up poor, you appreciate things.
RL: Mm-hmm, I think so.
IB: ‘Cause I grew up on beans and tortillas and…
RL: Oatmeal.
IB: The only meat I knew was hamburgers and hot dogs and chicken. I went into the service, and
you know, you get these trays, you go through, they’re slopping all this food, and God – I’d taste
the meat and I’d say: “What is this?” Those guys would look at us – brisket or whatever it was,
pork chops – I said, “Man this is really good,” you know. I’d make a big deal out of it, they’re
looking at me like –
RL: Well, during the week –
IB: Where you been, in a cave or something?
RL: During the week it was wieners. Mother would get the wiener and cut it up, fry potatoes and
put the wiener in there. Or wieners with hamburger. But Sunday was special, we knew we were
gonna have a good – you know, like a chicken. Also marriages. Somebody got married, these
women had these pans, they were white. And they had a navy blue line, just a quarter of an inch
trim, or navy blue. And my – it was always chicken molé. It’s like a barbecue sauce, you know.
�They just boil the chicken and then they make this molé. And then they’d put the chicken in, and
there was rice, with two kinds, a vermicelli, it was like a little spaghetti, and sometimes they had
salad. Well, when there was a marriage the lady would ask my mom: “Could you help me with
the rice?” Sure, yeah. There was never a no. She would bring the rice. And then when they’re
real close, they’ll, don’t – don’t bring it. And tomato, and onion and the garlic. It takes rice, but a
lot of times they would just bring the rice, “Can you make 5 pounds of rice?” And they’d
distribute. Then we would take it to the, wherever they were gonna have their wedding. And
that’s how the food was made. It wasn’t catered in. [laughs]
HK: Yeah.
RL: And it was strictly, that was a typical molé. The broth, made it more tasty with that
vermicelli, and rice was using the broth of when you boil the chicken. That’s what makes
everything good now. But no, you could go – on Sundays the boys would go to church and
they’d come back and they’d have two or three friends and it was a day they get to come and
[sit?] and drinking coffee. And the other time they’d go to this other person’s house, you know,
that’s the way – every Saturday I remember these boys had a car, Saturday afternoon ‘cause they
were gonna date, I guess, in the evening, wash their car, I mean, they had ‘em clean. Washed
their cars inside and out.
IB: That was my brothers. I didn’t get a car till I was 22.
RL: You had a yellow Chevy I remember –
IB: 22 years old. I’d been in the Marines and got out, and bought me a car.
RL: And then when the boys went into the service we had four brothers – well, five of my, four
of my brothers went into the service – and they’d come, in, like leave, was it leave? And they’d
come in like 2:00 in the morning, I mean, knocking and just knocking at the door.
IB: We never told ‘em we was coming.
RL: And they wouldn’t tell us when they was coming. Oh, and then everybody got up, and
Mama was ready to make the pot of coffee was in a percolator, wasn’t it?
IB: And then they’d call everybody that –
RL: Yeah, it was –
IB: You got these people staring at you, this room and that room, you know, they’re looking at
you like –
RL: The best coffee I’ve ever had, you know, was from the older ladies. Ms. Ramirez was my
godmother, if you talked to [one of the Ramirezes?], it was a pan with two handles. The water
boiling, the coffee, I’d watch it.
�IB: Well they, back in those days they didn’t use coffeepots. Just got a big pot and filled it up
with grounds, coffee. And then they’d let it boil, put a lid on and let it boil, and I’m [sitting
there?] and stuff would settle on the bottom –
RL: And you could go down –
IB: Everybody had one, they were that big –
RL: You could go down to this person’s house and for sure they were gonna offer you to eat. No
problem, it was just everybody was together. The men all, they were compadres, ‘cause you
know, every family had a large family [unintelligible] godfather, everybody was godparents and
comadres and compadres. But that’s the way they – once in a while my dad would go to
[unintelligible] and my godfather, he liked a beer or two now and then, couple beers, and my
mother, the – they went to something. We’d look forward to the evenings and looked forward to
that steak. But that’s the way that we were raised, and, you know, hand-me-downs. And we had
clothes – my brothers I’m sure handed, you know, the bigger one down, down. And I was the
youngest one.
IB: I was the youngest, I never got – by the time I got it, “What is this?” [laughs] “What’s this
supposed to be?” [all laugh] I was the youngest boy, so anytime anything came to me, it was –
what is it?
RL: I tell my granddaughters, they got a drawer of socks. Oh, God! You know, how they sell
those socks like six in there. I had two pair. I had one with the hole in the heel, and one without a
hole. So this thing with – I was learning how to darn and this thing was about this thick and you
know, I’d be all – and I’d always make sure the night before, especially in the wintertime, that I
was gonna end up with the best on Sunday. We’d wash ‘em in the night, put ‘em on top of the
stove to be dry and now my grandkids have all these pairs of socks. They got so many.
IB: The boys were – you took care of your own socks.
HK: Oh, gosh.
IB: The boys growing up, you know, you had your own socks and your own underwear,
everything, so you more or less washed them and took care of them. And I remember a lot of
times you just had what you call the tops, they were just the top of the socks [laughs]. The holes
were in the [laughs]. And my brother, he was always trying to figure out, [someone coughs]. One
time when he was in junior high, he was talking to this girl and put his foot up, he forgot he had
his tops on. And the sock [laughs], turn around, he said “God!” But we just got all the tops, and
they were just the [unintelligible], so –
RL: Was you – are you a Lawrence person?
HK: Yes, I am. I went to St. John’s School.
RL: Oh, okay.
�HK: And, uh –
IB: Your last name’s what?
RL: Krische.
IB: The Marlboro person, the guy that owned the Marlboro factory, what was his name…?
HK: George. Bob.
IB: Bob. Yeah, Bob Krische.
HK: Mm-hmm. Yeah, he’s my uncle.
IB: Oh.
HK: Yeah.
IB: He hired a lot of them Mexicans. A lot of ‘em used to work for him. They’d say, “Go out to
Krische’s, he’ll hire you.”
HK: Yeah…well, it looks like our tape ran out. Um, I think –
IB: I was just getting wound up, too.
HK: Yeah, I know.
IB: I was on a roll.
RL: Um, do you need anything like this for the flood? Are you interested in this, and like – ?
HK: Oh, sure.
RL: I kinda, I found these two, ‘cause like I said, my parents – my dad came to live with me for a
while and I got all the pictures.
HK: Mm-hmm.
RL: You can see there, I don’t know where that’s at, but I thought that was a depot but it’s a
depot, two floors?
IB: Uh, the Santa Fe depot used to be two or three stories.
RL: Oh really? And looks like maybe that’s after the water left.
�IB: Yeah, that was [unintelligible? deeper?]. ‘Cause that was in ‘51.
RL: ‘51.
IB: I was, uh, 16 I think. When I was a kid I went – I used to like this girl that lived down near
the Santa Fe houses, and the flood was coming and they was putting sandbags up in the doors.
To impress her parents, I went down there, get sandbags and we’d put ‘em in the doors. Course
the water went through ‘em [laughs]. About two years later –
HK: Val brought this picture and, if you know, let’s see, well I think we identified all these.
RL: Mm-hmm.
HK: There are some that aren’t identified.
IB: You got names [unintelligible]
HK: So yeah, there’s names, and here’s a pen, if there’s some that you know there, go ahead and
fill it in.
END OF TAPE 16B
�
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
Krische, Helen
Raymond, Emily
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bermudez, Israel
Lemus, Rachel
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
MP4
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:13:36 (video)
00:31:49 (16a audio)
00:31:46 (16b audio)
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
83 kbps (16a)
90 kbps (16b)
4376 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
Israel Bermudez and Rachel Lemus La Yarda Interview
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bermudez, Israel
Lemus, Rachel
Description
An account of the resource
Siblings Israel Bermudez and Rachel (Bermudez) Lemus were interviewed by Helen Krische in 2006 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. The interview is split into two parts. Israel and Rachel grew up in East Lawrence; their family came to Lawrence in the late 1920s due to their father's work on the railroad. Israel and Rachel describe their family's journey from Mexico to Lawrence, their school experiences, and their experiences of discrimination and segregation as part of the Mexican-American community in Lawrence. Israel served in the military and shares some memories from that time. Rachel and Israel also describe daily life in their neighborhood, including work, childhood pasttimes, foodways, and funeral customs.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Krische, Helen
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
2006
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP4 (video recording)
MP3 (audio recording)
PDF (transcription)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
16-IBermudezRLemus-2006.mp4 (video)
16a-IBermudezRLemus-2006.mp3 (audio)/16a-IBermudezRLemus-2006.pdf (transcription)
16b-IBermudezRLemus-2006.mp3 (audio)/16b-IBermudezRLemus-2006.pdf (transcription)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Watkins Community Museum (Lawrence, Kan.)
Relation
A related resource
To access the video and audio recordings of this interview, go to <a href="https://archive.org/details/16-ibermudez-rlemus-2006">https://archive.org/details/16-ibermudez-rlemus-2006</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 Israel Bermudez and Rachel Lemus. 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