"My husband didn't finish high school. Because when the war broke out he enlisted. He was only seventeen when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. That's why he quit school to go to the service. He was a senior but he didn't go back. He learned a lot of things in the war. He got real educated in the service. He was a radioman. He served in the Pacific, Hawaii, Japan. He didn't go to the European, he came to the Pacific; to Australia, Hawaii, the Philippines. I guess he went to Camp Pendleton for training. My husband was very lucky he never was in action. That was lucky. He said he would hear the bombing close to him but he wasn't in action. He was a corporal. He had two or three medals but I don't remember what they were. After the war, we met so I didn't have to worry about him being in the war.

I had several boyfriends who were in the service, they were sailors. I knew some from Morenci who were killed. Edmundo Marquez, "Mumu" and there was another one we used to call "Negra." I don't know his first name, just "Negra." In fact, he was the brother of Tanis Paz. He got killed in the war.

There were some women working in the mine during the war. They didn't lose their jobs after the war. They continued. I had one in my husband's family that worked there. Dolly Cruz. She was a niece. She worked there. I don't know where she worked. She worked there until she quit. She didn't get laid off.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, I was working in California. I remember we were at work and we heard it on the radio. Everybody was panicking. We went home. They told us, "Everybody go home." So we went home.

During the war, they rationed the panty hose because they used them for the parachutes. Sugar was rationed. Different food items were rationed. They gave us ration stamps that you can buy so much and that was it. For the panty hose, you used to buy that liquid, you used to put it on to cover your legs. (laughs) Like if you wore a dress, it would be like you had panty hose. It was a bottle, I don't know the name of it, but it came in different shades and you would just put it on and you had stockings on. (laughs) They used to use eyebrow pencil to make the lines and it would look like stockings. Dresses were very short. I didn't wear them too short. I wore them below my knee. I never wore those short short ones. I used to have a pompador.

I was happy that the war was over. My life was different than the depression. I got married. We had more. My husband was working and we had money to buy more things, a car, TV, to have a nice place to live in."

"Don Manuel Vidales, he had a little grocery store. Madero, too. And Berra used to have a little store down below the church. Oscar Vallejo bought that. Don Jose de Leon had the little store where he used to sell hierbas (herbs) and different things, candy. It was next to the Imperio. Later on, he went to where the Catholic Church was. There was a big yellow house. He moved there and he still sell hierbas and raspadas. Don Manuel was next to the Imperio. The Imperio, then there was a barber shop and then Don Manuel. It was a two-story house. The barber was a man, I don't know his name. They used to call him el monito de hule (rubber monkey). He was a short man. That's the first one I knew. Then there was the galletas. That was another man. And then the Cajeros, Nick and Nayo. Later on they had that.

The PD Store Coupons were $5 coupons and the $10, $20. All those coupons were taken off from their checks. It depended on what you used to draw out. To start with I would get a $30 coupon, a $10, and a $5 to buy the groceries. They would add it up what it was and they took it off. There were people that gave you less than the coupon, like in a $5 book they would just give you $4. That's why they used to sell them because they were earning a $1. A miner, desperate for money would sell a coupon book for less. They were old people who didn't work and they were earning their extra money by doing that. They had cash. Here comes these people that needed cash, they'd draw the coupon book and sell it to them. We got the books upstairs in the office of the PD Store. Manuelita Cobos would say, "What do you want?" "I want a $10 coupon." Then she would give it to you but she would write it down, the amount that you got. They kept track how much coupon books you drew out so they would take out from your check. I don't know why PD used the coupon books but they took cash too. Electricity and water, all that we had to pay cash. We used to pay that with money, they didn't take it out.

I loved Morenci. My friends, my family and all the friends that I knew there made it special. My favorite memory of Morenci was when we used to sit outside and tell those spooky stories, we'd all get scared and start hugging each other. The grandmas told those stories about what happened to people who were bad. They would be scary. They would be telling us about Mexico what happened, that this man's son was a mean son and that he saw the devil, something like that. They were scary stories. My brother-in-law told me that el espinazo del diablo was called that because they saw this man, the devil riding a horse. They didn't see it. Somebody made it up and they started calling it el espinazo del diablo (the devil's spine).

My neighbors was your grandmother and then Antonietta Hernandez, her mother, and then the Duartes and the Bianes. Next to us was our grandmother and then further down was Salcidos, another family. We played with their kids and we visited each other.

There were Mexicanos, Americanos, Italianos, and there was some black ones too. The only ones that I knew that were our friend were the Petes. There was some Chinese. We had a Chinese store there, the Wee Yee's Store. Then we knew another little Chinaman, he lived further down. He used to have a long pole and baskets, he would carry with fruit. He'd go from house to house to sell vegetables and the fruit. He didn't grow them. I think they used to bring it to him. There was a Chinaman who was a watchman at the PD Store and he got murdered. Somebody went there and that they were trying to steal, break into the store and he was the watchman.

All the Mexicanos had their own neighborhood and the Americanos had their own. They used to live where the PD Store was, around there in the back that's where the Americanos used to live. The Chinese used to live with us. They had their places next to us on Burro Alley.

The cemetery was in la Arizona. In the back. That was long long ago. It was up on the hill in la Arizona. It's still there. Later on they made that Bunkers Cemetary. I think Bunkers started around 1939. It was mixed but mostly it was Mexicans but there were some Italians buried there too. They don't call it a Catholic cemetery, just a regular cemetery. Everybody was buried there, Catholics and non-Catholics. It was PD's land and they decided to make a cemetery there.

I didn't like Morenci being destroyed because there were so many memories, but that property belongs to PD. Our houses were ours, but not the ground. We had to pay a lease every year in order to have a house there. First when we got married we lived a few months with his mother, then with my mother, then in another house. We had to make applications for the PD house. We lived there seven years in a PD house.

We remember the past, all the people that we knew. By sharing things with other people. Right now by getting the phone and talking to people from over there. That girl I talked to last night, they were our neighbors there in Morenci. We still talk to each other. That's why we have those picnics so all the people from Morenci, see each other again and remember the past.

We had a hard time, but we had a beautiful life there in Morenci. People visited. They shared what they had."