"Almost all the time, I worked. Rare was the time that I went to the movies until I got married. My mother played the guitar and sang. She sang songs that she heard when they came to the rodeos. Many came and they would get together to play and sing because my mother would lend them the guitar. They would leave her the papers with the songs, those that came to work with my father. They would take books of songs in Spanish. It all stayed with her. My mother was at the ranch. She helped my father. All of us would get together. She would tell us what to do, to gather lots of quelite (wild spinach) for the pigs. And the same corn that my father gathered. She would feed them especially in the winter. We also gathered lots of mesquite and we gave it to the pigs.

Me as a teenager.

Photo courtesy of Eduvigen Hernandez

I liked to go to the dances but went to very few. We went with an old woman, doña María Frutosa and her husband. They were good dancers. They were old people. My mother let me go because we got together with the Perus, two of them, Fidlia and Nati Peru. We got together with them and we went with them to the dance because at night we had to go on foot from Newtown to el Imperio. [I did not go] to all [the dances]. "