"My daddy was taking us to Mexico and we had to stop in El Paso. I think my mother was pregnant with Licha or Tere or one of them. I was just a little girl. It was when I used to get together with Queta [my cousin]. I remember when they put me in school [there] and I was going down the corridor to go to my class and this boy went and grabbed me and kissed me. He said, "Here, don't tell nobody I kissed you." He gave me a pencil and I thought I was going to have a baby. (laughs) I didn't tell nobody. Later on, he would follow me around and I told him to quit following me around. He was just a nice looking, I remember, he was a nice looking kid.

I remember there was a bunch of kids, a gang. They were a bunch of thieves. They put me to watch, because there was a cop on the block to go up and down. "You call us if he comes because we're gonna go and steal candy and we'll give you some." So they come running and they give me a candy bar or two candy bars. (laughs) I was keeping an eye so the cops wouldn't come and get them.

I think it [the house in El Paso] must have been a shop because there was a big picture window. The rooms were big. It was like in an apartment place but ours was down below and it was on the way to Juarez [near the border]. One day my mother said, "Don't let nobody in the house." She left me by myself and this lady came to the door. She told me, "Let me in and I'll give you some money." I told her, "No, I can't because my mother told me not to." So she gave me a quarter. I remember she gave me a quarter. She was going to use the room to pin some material around her waist, underneath her clothes. She was going to Juarez so she was smuggling it. When my mother came, "Did you let anybody in?" I told her, "No." (laughs) But I kept the quarter.

The day that I went to the bathroom, I didn't know it was full of white rats. I was so busy in the toilet when here comes a big rat, a big white rat. I ran out of the bathroom tripping over my panties (laughs) and screaming. Everybody was laughing. I remember people laughing and my mother laughing. They thought it was funny. I didn't think it was funny. They [the bathrooms] were upstairs and downstairs. The downstairs was so busy that I went to the upstairs one.

[When we were living in El Paso] he [my father] would be peddling cantaloupes and watermelons. On Saturdays and Sundays he would sell menudo. I remember the smell of menudo. [My mother made it] and he would go sell it for just any thing. We went through a lot, that Depression. That's why I tell my kids when they say, "Why do you collect everything?" I tell them, "Because I went through the Depression. You guys didn't know what it was like to be poor."

My mother worked just at the house. Just taking care of us was a big job. Right when my grandfather got real ill, they sent a letter to my mother that my grandpa wouldn't live long, was very sick. So there comes my dad back again [to Morenci] with all of us. [He had sold his house already] and most of the furniture. We used to have nice furniture. I remember a big round table we used to have and a Victrola. My daddy used to like to buy nice things. We lived underneath where my aunt, the Martinez' lived. Underneath, the downstairs. Then we lived from right there my aunt's house, we moved to a house by the Violines [nicknamed after their father's nickname]. The Violines were real mean to us. They were mean to my mother. My daddy didn't see. They used to throw rocks at us. The kids and the mother, too.

Carmen, [my older sister] was taking lessons from my aunt. She knew how to sew, but she was learning more how to sew and my aunt was giving her lessons. She was just a teenager, too, my sister. She'd be passing by the Violines and she'd <the Violines' mother> would be screaming at Carmen that she was trying to steal her husband from her. That man was such an ugly man! They used to call him El Violin [The Violin]. [He was] tall and skinny and ugly. She was short and fat. The husband was just a mousy old man. All of them were mean. Even Mary would tell you about it, how mean they were. They were there before us. They had their own house. It was a two-story house. There was a lot of two-story houses in Morenci. The Martinez' was a two-story. When we had to get away from the Violines, my daddy went and bought a shell of a house and he himself fixed it. [He put in] the screen porch and everything.

It was a shell of a house, that one. Then my daddy began to fix it all by himself. One time he hired this old man from the other hill to come and build a little room for Chelino and Chelado. Because they didn't like it, because they called it the "dormitory" where we girls were. My daddy wanted to separate them because they were sleeping in the other room, Chelino and Chelado, by where they cut up that room and made a dining area and the living room. They cut it [the wall] and made a big room. That's where Chelino and Chelado used to live so my daddy built a little room in the back. He hired this man to fix it and my daddy went and checked on it and iee golly I remember that day he got so mad! He said, "Who in the world told you (in Spanish) that you were a carpenter? You're not worth a damn as a carpenter!" He really threw a fit. He said, "You get all your equipment and get out of here." (laughs) He threw him out. My daddy had to repair everything that had to be done because that man didn't do a damn thing, just a big mess.

[During the Depression] they used to give us vegetables on Saturdays, I think. They sent me and Nati and Chelado. We would get carrots and squash and things like that. [That was>] in the Morenci, they used to call it la clinica. We'd get shoes, hard-soled shoes and funny looking dresses. Nati would tell me, "Josie, I need a dress." She would put me in the front for me to go ask. I told her, "What should I tell them?" "That you need a dress and some shoes." So I went up there and I says, "I need some dresses and some shoeses." (laughs) They would give us this funny looking shoes. They were like the kind the girls wear nowadays, real thick soles, we could barely pick up our feet. We used to call them mata vivoras (snake killers). They were brown and black [like oxfords]. That [shoes] was my weakness. Now I can't [wear them]. You better enjoy them while you can.

You know what was my other weakness? Hats! I used to have a collection of hats. Every color! I used to love them. I used to go where there was a sale of hats, I used to go and get me one. The first hat that I ever got that Carlitos [my son] had a job when he was working, a summer job, he went and bought me a hat. It looked like a flower pot. (laughs) It had flowers all around. Como las que usan las negras. (Like the Black women wear.)

They [my parents] were grateful [for assistance] in one way. I remember one time they gave us a whole bunch of turnips and we didn't want to eat the turnips cause the turnips were kind of bitter. We thought they were bitter but now I love them. My mother went and got the turnips and cooked them, mashed them like squash, like pumpkin. She put cinnamon, and sugar, and then she made her dough and she made empanadas (turnovers). They were good! She said, "Comanselas, mis hijitas porque todo sabe buen con azucar, hasta las piedras." ("Eat them, my daughters, because everything tastes good with sugar, even rocks.") She fixed us some empanadas de turnips [Turnip turnovers].

[My daddy had a gold claim]. I was the middle [daughter]. I remember I was the one that used to go with my dad to pan for gold because he would wake me up early in the morning and there I'd go with him with the burros to go pan for gold in the hills. He made a contraption like a little box, like a canoe and then I would be doing like that (makes a shaking motion). My daddy would be shoveling the dirt on top of the little canoe. He made it himself. The rocks and the dirt would go by and the little sand that was left had little specks of gold. I would do that or I'd be throwing water on it.

[The gold claim] was way over there going to the Eagle Creek, the lower Eagle. My daddy had a friend, he was a hermit. He lived up there in a cave. He would stop him <my daddy> and Diego Hernandez. They would stop there with that little old man. He was a little old man. They would just talk. I think [he lived there] because he liked to be by himself. He had company like when my daddy would go and Diego and those other men that had claims. I remember they used to just sit around and talk. He was an Anglo but he understood my dad and Diego.

One time I got Tere and Licha and I told them, "Come on let's go and follow my dad." So we followed him and we went ahead and we went and hide behind some garages up on the hill and when he was getting closer to the garages, we jumped. Oh, my daddy threw a fit at me because I was the one that took them. He had to take us to the mountains with him.Then when we got home, my mother didn't even know that we were gone. (laughs)

When he didn't pan for gold, we would cut some cuyote, that century plant [an agave]. He would roast it up there. He used to make a little fire to roast those cuyotes in there. He cut them into about that big pieces. It's even more sweeter than sugar cane. There was nothing left after. It was beautiful up there. The cuyotes were up there on the hills. My daddy used to go and take us over there where the open pit is. They used to call it el carasco, las minas de carasco. We used to go up there and we used to go to the lower Eagle Creek. Le decian el arroyo de placer (they call it the creek of placer, a mining term for gold) where my daddy used to have his claim. [People found gold there.] We didn't find much.

I remember one time my daddy got so fooled with me because I told him, "Papa, papa, mira aqui está un oro muy grandote." (Papa, look, here's a big gold.) It was big huge nugget but it wasn't [gold] it was only a yellow rock. (laughs) And I thought we were rich. We used to get just little specks to pay for the electricity and the water. [That was one of the ways we got through the depression] with the gold. [Other people did that too.] Because there was a lot of them that had a claim right there by my dad's. Diego Hernandez used to have one. And there was a man that used to live in a cave and then my daddy would stop on the way back and talk to him.

[He sold the gold] to Bufo. He robbed my dad. He would give him just a few dollars just to pay for the electricity. It was a jewelry store. He [would] sell candy and odds and ends. He used to sell lamps, kerosene lamps. But my daddy would never let us go there by ourselves for nothing. He gave us orders and he never wanted us to go over there by ourselves. In later years, it come back to me why. Because I think he was a child molester. That's what I heard in later years. They just tell us to keep away. My daddy would always tell us to protect ourselves from Negroes. He didn't tell us to protect ourselves from Mexicans. He says, "If a Negro ever attacks you, kick him on the shins." (laughs) When we come home, when we went somewhere, he [father] would say, "Wait, let me go in and see if there's any Negroes." (laughs) I grew up being afraid of Negroes.

My dad was in the WPA [Works Progress Administration]. Chelino and Chelado were in the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] camps. I think they were in Duncan. But I'm not quite sure where Chelado was, but Chelino was in Duncan. Daddy worked around town making trincheras (rock walls) up in the mountains to hold the water from coming down. He was building these trincheras. [He never went back to work in the mine.] He was just being a maintenance man in the theater. Julieta [the manager of the theater] was a nice lady. She was a rough-looking lady but she was nice to my dad. She would give him a roll of tickets to go to the movies so anytime we wanted to go to the movies, we'd go to movies. Especially on Saturdays and Sundays. We could only go to the matinee, we could not go at night. He [dad] wouldn't allow us to be on the streets at night. We were just a bunch of girls, Josie [my cousin], Carol [my cousin], the Elvies [Big and Little Elvie], and Jessie de Leon [my friends].

We used to buy them [groceries] at the Phelps Dodge. Everything was at the Phelps Dodge. Later on when Chelino came back, [from the CCC camp] he started helping my dad raise us. Putting more money for the family. I remember the first time Chelino got his first salary. They went and bought me a pair of shoes. It was at the beginning, when he started working for Phelps Dodge [before he went to the army]. He went and bought me a pair of shoes. Oh, I loved those shoes! I wouldn't tell my mom that they were too tight. (laughs) I was afraid if I tell my mom, she'd return them and I wouldn't get them back.

[Franklin Delano Roosevelt], was the best president that ever lived. I remember Carmen when he died, she was coming down the street crying as loud as she could. "Our president died, our president died." There was my mother hugging her and they were both crying. Even Mr. Todd said, he was the best president and he got us [out] from starvation."