"My mother observed my birthday all the time. I was the oldest and she always had beautiful arranged parties. I remember when one year giving me a pink tea party. Everything was in pink. Of course there was no tea, pink punch. Pero she said, “un te color de rosa (a pink tea).” She bought me a pink dress. That’s one of the parties I remember. Invited all my teenage friends.

[I went to the movies] silent movies there at Metcalf. This fellow named Luis Solis would rent old cowboy silent movies and we thought they were marvelous and we went to all of them for five cents. He had a building right in the center of Metcalf. It had always been a hall for dances. He charged five cents and sometimes you didn’t have the five cents and he let you in. As a young person, I loved the Jeanette McDonald movies. They were very popular at that time which was good because it was in the Depression. [They were] all musicals. I still have a collection of records of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald. Not that I can remember [did the theater have a name].

We had radios. I don’t remember any favorite programs. [I was] nine [years old when my father gave me the Victrola. I don’t think I ever bought records that I would like. I think my mother and my father bought records they liked. They were all in Spanish, La Golondrina, Estrellita by Manuel Ponce. It’s one of my favorites. They sang that at my fiftieth wedding anniversary, Estrellita, very beautiful.

Not many [Americanos dated Mexicanos]. I don’t remember [if anyone got married]. I remember in high school a Mexican family had two young boys, very intelligent, very talented in fact some of them live here in Tucson. Their last name was Cajero. One of those boys was going around with a Spaniard, an española from Spain and they didn’t like it. They objected very very much. The españoles. These were very fine people, los Cajeros. They were not just anybody. Concha [Cajero] was my brother’s girlfriend when they were kids. Oh, I wish I could talk with her. I have pictures of Beto and Concha. [Había] muchos españoles alli en Morenci y Italianos tambien. ([There were] many Spaniards there in Morenci and Italians too.

I went to dances at el Imperio lots of times. We never went with a boy. We always went with older people. We sat over there and the boys were out there and they would come in and ask you to dance. [It didn’t have to be the parents that took you] as long as it was somebody else or a group of people.

Me when I went away to college.

I had a very dear, dear friend that was almost my second mother, Concha Ibarra. She’s the grandmother of Stan Paz. She still is alive. She’s one hundred and two. Very beautiful woman, she was a seamstress. She sewed for everybody in town and she made my graduation dress. She made me a lot of dresses but I think for most of that graduating class she made their dresses. [I graduated in] ’34. I don’t recall exactly [how many students were in my class] I could make a guess in the fifties or sixty, something like that but I don’t remember the exact number. She [Señora Ibarra] lives in California with her family. She’s in a home now but two years ago when she was a hundred years old, I went to the party. I flew to California and went to the party. Her children were there, great-grandchildren. She had a lucid mind, yet. She still talked to me and remembered but now her daughter tells me that she’s lost a little bit, now she’s in a home and she’s a hundred and two. She’s a dear, dear lady.

Yes, [I dated when I was a teenager]. No, [I didn’t have to have a chaperone]. [They were] boys from Morenci, from my class. Yes, I did [have a special boyfriend]. "