Linda Huesca Tully1 Comment on The Astor Fire, Part 2: ExplosionsHuesca Schiavon

The Astor Fire, Part 2: Explosions

Joan (Schiavon) Huesca (1928 – 1987)
Enrique Huesca (1909 – 2003)
Mercedes (Formento) Huesca (1924 – 2004)
Eduardo Huesca (1947 – 2023)
 
Introduction:  In the spring of 1978, my father, Gilbert Huesca, sent my mother, Joan Huesca, then 49, on a flight to Mexico City to visit his family while he stayed behind in California to tend to business matters.  During this visit, she and three of our relatives were caught in one of the deadliest fires in Mexico City’s history, known as the Astor Fire. My mother wrote a letter to thank her rescuers shortly after returning home to California. She recounted this nightmarish tale many times to my father, my sisters, and me in the years that followed, always emphasizing that life and the people in it are gifts to be treasured. This is Part Two in a seven-part series about that night, based on my mother’s recollections, those of my relatives, and my research on the event.  – L.H.T.
The National Palace offices of the President of Mexico, Zócalo,  downtown Mexico City.  Courtesy Anthony Stanley, Flickr Images, Creative Commons.
To the Heroic Corp. of Firemen of the
Federal District,
Central de Bomberos,
Mexico City 1, D.F.

Gentlemen,

I was one of the eleven survivors of the recent Astor Fire on May 13, 1978.  Several brave and heroic firemen rescued all of us from the seventh floor of the building at V. Carranza #63.

At the time of our rescue, I had no conception of the seriousness or the extent of the fire.
              – Excerpt from letter dated June 14, 1978, from Joan Huesca to the Mexico City Heroic Corps of Firemen
 
  
Unbeknownst to my mother or the relatives she was visiting, the fire that had trapped them in their penthouse apartment had been caused by an act of terrorism in the neighboring Astor department store. 

It had not been an isolated incident.  In the months leading up to the fire, there had been a rash of explosions in banks and other facilities in major Mexican cities.  The federal government had been cracking down on several revolutionary individuals and organizations. A conglomeration of guerilla groups known as the People’s Union came together in early 1978, retaliating against what was known as the government’s “dirty war,” referring to the period from 1943 – 1981, during which it was alleged to have used a secret police force to round up insurgents and detain and torture them in secret prisons. (1) On Friday evening, May 12, only hours before the fire erupted, police had detonated 16 explosives in four stores and three banks in the downtown historic area (2), not far from Astor and my uncle Enrique and aunt Meche Huesca’s home at 63 Venustiano Carranza Street.  

They had not been entirely successful, despite their best efforts; the bombs in two stores escaped detection by the authorities.

The fact remains that at some time, presumably that Friday, there had been a flurry of activity in the Astor and Blanco department stores, and it had nothing to do with clearance sales.

One or more guerilla operatives of the People’s Union made their way through Astor Department Store’s first and possibly second floors and the Blanco Department Store, which was a block away. At Astor, they concealed explosive devices in various places throughout the store and set them to detonate after midnight, several hours after closing.  According to investigative journalist Laura Castellanos,  this was “to avoid having victims” – a tenet held by some, but not all the members of the People’s Union. (3)  

Whether or not the group had planned on causing human casualties, it would appear they did intend to cause a significant amount of chaos in the downtown financial district.  This would have strained the capabilities of the police and fire departments to the breaking point, possibly necessitating a National Guard or military-type of support response.  Some later mused that the havoc might have made the nearby National Palace and federal government offices, blocks away, more vulnerable to an attack. Thankfully, it was not so in the end.

Twenty minutes into Saturday, May 13 (4), several strong explosions ripped through the school supplies department at Astor, radiating quickly across the lower floors and swallowing up the mostly paper, plastic, and fabric merchandise in flames like matches in a tinderbox.  The blasts killed a night watchman at the store. (5) He would be the first of 58 casualties.

As the fireball traveled through the lower floors, it shot through a large passageway that connected the department store with the mezzanine of the La Galia building next door at 63 Venustiano Carranza.  Under an agreement between Astor and the owners of La Galia, the passageway had served as a delivery corridor for and service entrance to the department store.  Now it acted as a vacuum, sucking the fire from Astor in reverse delivery to La Galia’s mezzanine (6), effectively closing off any exit for its sole residents on the seventh floor and connecting the two buildings in a perilous trap.

About an hour later, another major blast followed at the Blanco Department Store (7), barely a block away, at the corner of Venustiano Carranza Street and 5 de Febrero Avenue.  This explosion, detonated by one or more bombs in the clothing racks, also ignited a major fire in that store.  

Acts of violence take their toll ruthlessly, usually on the innocent, whether they are the intended targets or not.  

 

(1)   Castellanos, Laura.  México Armado 1943 – 1981.  Mexico City,  Ediciones Era, 2007. 
(2) “Grandes almacenes incendiados,” El País, Madrid, Spain, May 16, 1978. Web.           Accessed April 10, 2013.
(3)   Castellanos, Laura.  México Armado 1943 – 1981.
(4) “Incendios Trágicos,” Hispano-Americano, Mexico, D.F., May 22, 1978. Print.            Accessed April 10, 2013.
(5)  “At least 4 dead as stores burn in Mexico City,” Associated Press, Eugene Register-Guard, May 14, 1978.  Web.  Accessed March 25, 2013.
(6)   Huesca, Eduardo.  Personal interview.  April 7, 2013.
(7)   “Incendios Trágicos,” Hispano-Americano.

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Linda Huesca Tully9 Comments on The Astor Fire, Part 1: The Gift of LifeHuesca Schiavon

The Astor Fire, Part 1: The Gift of Life


Joan (Schiavon) Huesca (1928 – 1987)
Gilbert Huesca (1915 – 2009)
Enrique Huesca (1909 – 2003)
Mercedes (Formento) Huesca (1924 – 2004)
Eduardo Huesca (1947 – 2023)

I, a North American, have always loved Mexico for her beauty, art, culture, and the friendliness of her people.  I have loved Mexico, too, for she was the birthplace of my Husband, and the loving family into which I had married. Now, I have more reason to love Mexico even more deeply,  for the gift of life given to me by her firemen.
 

              – Excerpt from letter dated June 14, 1978, from Joan Huesca to the Mexico City   Heroic Corps of Firemen


Introduction:  In the spring of 1978, my father, Gilbert Huesca, sent my mother, Joan Huesca, then 49, on a flight to Mexico City to visit his family while he stayed behind in California to tend to business matters.  During this visit, she and three of our relatives were caught in one of the deadliest fires in Mexico City’s history, known as the Astor Fire. My mother wrote a letter to thank her rescuers shortly after returning home to California. She also recounted this nightmarish tale many times to my father, my sisters, and me in the years that followed, always emphasizing that life and the people in it are gifts to be treasured.  This is Part One in a seven-part series about that night, based on my mother’s recollections, those of my relatives, and my research on the event.  – L.H.T.
 
 
 
My mother, Joan Huesca, had been staying with my father’s eldest brother, Enrique Huesca, 69, his wife, Mercedes “Meche,” 57, and their son Eduardo Huesca, 31, in their spacious three bedroom penthouse apartment on the seventh floor of the La Galia Commercial Building in downtown Mexico City.  The building, at 63 Venustiano Carranza Street, was located next door to the large Astor discount department store.  
 

Astor was always bustling with customers who liked the store for its bargain basement prices on household merchandise and clothing.  The department store, also seven stories high, typically papered its windows with large colorful sale signs advertising the latest slashed prices.

I remember Uncle Enrique and Aunt Meche’s home very well, as our family visited them often when we lived in Mexico City and even after we returned to live in the United States. I had also stayed with them for several weeks during Christmas break in 1973.

Enrique’s linen embroidery business, Sábanas y Manteles Huesca, was on the fifth floor in the same building, making his commute an enviable one in the crowded metropolis.

In 1978, the office building housed only two families on the uppermost floor: the Huescas and the Estradas.  Eduardo Huesca, about to be married soon, still lived at home with his parents, his three brothers already having left to start families of their own.

Enrique and Meche Huesca’s apartment had two rooftop terraces.  The central terrace looked down into a square interior courtyard, called the “cube,” and outer terrace overlooked Venustiano Carranza Street and the busy financial district.

To reach the outer terrace, you had to exit through either the living room or one of the bedrooms.  The building was by no means the tallest in the area, but it offered a spectacular view of the financial district. Being so high up also provided a feeling of safety and serenity.  It lifted you from the noise and chaos of people and traffic, allowing you to take it all in on your own terms and affording an enviable anonymity that was hard to find in a city of some 8 million people.  It was like being on top of the world.

On Friday evening, May 12, 1978, Enrique Huesca and his two eldest sons, Enrique Jr. and Eduardo, arrived home from delivering merchandise to the National Teachers’ Union, some five miles away. Although Enrique, Jr. wanted to get home to his wife and young daughters, he stopped upstairs for a short visit.  Meche set the dining room table with coffee and platters of pan dulce, or Mexican sweet bread, for a late-night snack, and the family sat down to plan the weekend’s activities.

When the family finished eating, my mother called my father, Gilbert Huesca, at their home in California.  She excitedly told him that Enrique, Meche, and the family were taking her for the weekend to Valle de Bravo, a picturesque lake resort situated in a valley about a two-hour drive southwest of the capital. Everyone took turns on the phone, including my uncle.  “Hermano – brother,” he said, “we miss you here, but you can rest assured we’re taking good care of our sister Joan.”

It was almost 11 p.m.  Enrique Jr. kissed everyone goodbye for the night,  promising to return with his family at seven the next morning to pick them up for the drive to the country. (1)  As he left, Meche and my mother cleaned up the kitchen while Enrique Sr. and Eduardo headed off to bed.

My mother and Meche loved to sit up late and talk way into the night, and tonight was no different. Undeterred by the early wake-up time only seven hours away, they moved their coffee and cigarettes to the living room, turned on the TV, and curled up on the couch to continue their earlier conversation.  

My parents had much in common with Enrique and Meche.  Both couples had married in the month of August, exactly 10 years apart. The brothers were 12 years older than their respective wives.  Each couple were the parents of four children. Meche and Enrique had four sons, while my parents had four daughters. Both couples enjoyed successful businesses. Enrique and my father thought and acted alike. They were deliberate and precise in word and action. They shared the same tastes and mannerisms and often completed each other’s sentences.  Even their wives frequently were surprised to find themselves interacting with them similarly.

Sometime around 12:30 a.m., deep into one of those conversations that gives words wings in the stillness of the night, they seemed so oblivious to anything else that it was a surprise when one of them smelled smoke. Thinking they had forgotten to extinguish a cigarette in the kitchen, where they had been a short time earlier, Meche got up to investigate.

Reaching the kitchen, she noticed nothing unusual except the odor, which was becoming stronger. She followed the smell to the center terrace and saw black smoke rising through the cube.

The La Galia building was burning.

“She started yelling, ‘Fire! Fire!’, ” Eduardo would later recall.  “Her cries woke us up – the neighbors, my father, and me.” (2)

Still groggy, Eduardo grabbed the fire extinguisher and rushed downstairs to try to find the source of the fire.  There was so much smoke when he reached the third or fourth floor that he could hardly see, much less breathe.  Perhaps in shock – he did not know why –  he dropped the fire extinguisher on the ground and raced swiftly back to the seventh floor to warn his family of his findings.  He did not know how to break the news to them that there was no way out.

The Huescas in more serene days:  left to right:  Brothers Enrique and  Gilbert Huesca, Dr. Jose Felipe Franco (a longtime family friend), Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, Mercedes (Formento) Huesca, and Mrs. Jose Franco.  July 7, 1975, La Fonda del Recuerdo Restaurant, Mexico City.

(1)  Huesca, Enrique.  Telephone interview.  April 6, 2013.
(2)  Huesca, Eduardo.  Telephone interview.  April 7, 2013.

Linda Huesca Tully2 Comments on Finding A Home, Building a LegacyHuesca Schiavon

Finding A Home, Building a Legacy


Gilbert Cayetano Huesca (1915 – 2009)
Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca (1928 – 1987)



Once my parents, Gilbert and Joan Huesca, realized that South San Francisco was not the warm and sunny place where they had dreamed of living, they began scouring the Bay Area for a place we could call home.

Flickr Images, Courtesy Jitze Couperus

 

In mid-July of 1967, they bought their first home for $17,000 in San Jose, about 40 miles from South San Francisco, and by the end of August, we had moved in.  It was foggy as pea soup as we left “South City” and headed south on Highway 280, up and down the oak-covered hills.  
 
About 20 minutes into our drive, the fog gave way to blue skies and sunshine, and the hills took on a sunburned hue. They looked so different from the same green hills we had seen only a few months earlier when we first arrived in California.  My parents must have noticed it, too, as my father commented on it.  “We got here toward the end of the rainy season,” my mother reminded him, “but  summer must have changed all that. Maybe this is why people call California the Golden State,” she mused.   
 
The temperature rose as we continued south, and by the time we arrived in San Jose, all the windows in the car were down.  The two of us who got the window seats in the back tried with all our might to obey our father and keep our heads inside, but it was hard because we did not want to miss anything.  Our two other sisters, who sat in the middle, fidgeted as they tried to look past us.
 
San Jose was a rapidly-growing, beautiful city of over 400,000 people and countless fruit orchards, large homes, clean, wide, tree-lined streets, and enormous sedans that seemed to have been made just to drive down those avenues.  “Is this our street?” we kept asking.  Our parents patiently put up with our excitement, and my mother told us how many miles we had left to go, but I don’t know if it made much difference.  We could not believe how lucky we were to be moving to such a beautiful city, especially a bright and sunny place.  We eagerly read the street signs, looking for Foxworthy Avenue, where our house would be. When we finally turned the corner onto the long-awaited street, we were all talking at once and my mother had to tell us to settle down.
 
And then there we were.  My father approached the house slowly, pulling our Falcon station wagon up to the curb in a dramatic pause so we could get a good look at it straight on, before he turned into the driveway to park.  We all pushed our way out of the back seat and raced each other past the lacy jacaranda tree and up the juniper-lined walkway to the front porch to see who could be the first to go inside.  
 
I do not remember whether my father or my mother unlocked the front door, but I do recall marveling that it was a double door, something I never would have imagined our house would have.  The facade of the house was green and white with brick trim. Inside, we ran breathlessly from one room to another, barely stopping in each as we tried to take in everything.  The house had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious living room, a galley kitchen that led into a dining room, a two-car garage, and a big back yard.  

In a matter of minutes, we finagled our bedroom assignments, the two oldest sisters sharing the room near the front of the house and the two youngest in another room at the back, just across from our parents.  A fourth bedroom would serve as a small family room when it was not used for guests.
 

My parents were ecstatic that they were now homeowners for the very first time. One of the very first things they did was to hang their prized possession, what we called the Lady Plate, in a prominent place on the living room wall.  A very large 19th century Sèvres porcelain portrait plate, it had come with us from Chicago to Mexico and back up to California on my mother’s lap for safety.

It did not take them long to begin the first of their many do-it-yourself projects.  They were resourceful and creative, and they tackled endless projects most weekends, staying up late into the night to finish something, whether it was painting, wallpapering, building shelves, or installing tile.  To my knowledge, my father had never done this kind of work before, but he was so deliberate in everything he did that his results were always stunning and professional-looking. He discovered a love for working with tools, and he began to amass quite a collection of them until he had to build a set of cabinets to keep them organized. Thinking back on this now, it is clear to me that he inherited these talents from his own father and grandfather. 

My sisters and I – from the oldest to the youngest – had assigned chores and typically spent Saturday mornings helping clean the house before we could go out to play.  My parents made it very clear that because we all lived in the same house, we also had an obligation to take care of it.  

My father often told us that everything costs money to buy, but it costs just as much or more effort to take care of it.  He was an exacting taskmaster and took pains to show us how to “do things right the first time.”  Unfortunately, he had to show us these things not only the first time but many times after, as we sometimes got distracted.  He used to tell me to do things in his style, not mine, which was not very thorough.  I used to think my own way was not so bad, but as I matured, his way, which was always methodical and thorough, became my style, something of which I could be proud.
 
My mother was equally organized and creative.  She resurrected one of her old pastimes from her Chicago days: antique hunting. She had become close friends with a neighbor, Katy West, who had lived across the street from us in South San Francisco.  Katy showed her how to go “garage sailing,” that is, to seek out neighborhood garage and yard sales for bargains.  The first thing my mother had bought was a silver butler’s ashtray. She took off after that, hunting down antiques many a Saturday morning and coming home with amazing “finds” of Royal Doulton, Sevres,  Capodimonte, and Belleek porcelain and a number of silver spoons and other pieces.  
 
We were never far from family.  My great-uncle and great-aunt, Phil and Benita McCormick, their daughter Jane and her husband, Eldon “Ole” Olson, and granddaughter lived a short drive away up the peninsula.  We spent a lot of time visiting each other, with Aunt “Detty,” as we called Benita, and Uncle Phil usually being the anchors of our  family gatherings.  In addition to our visits with them, we often hosted relatives from out of town and found that living in California made it easy for people to want to visit us!  
 
My parents were not wealthy, but they went out of their way to help others, giving what they could and never asking for reward or recognition.  They especially wanted to give back to those who had once helped them.  When the truck driver who had helped us in Mexico mentioned in a letter that his son had lost his eyesight in an accident, they arranged for the Lions Club (to which my father belonged) to sponsor an eye operation to help his restore his sight.  The surgery was unsuccessful, but they let the young man stay at our home for a few months after that so he could have a taste of life in the United States.  When they heard that Dr. Jose Felipe Franco wanted his young granddaughter to learn English, they brought her to stay with us over the summer. 
 
After we had lived in San Jose a couple of years, my parents decided to go into business for themselves again.  They had run a silk screen printing business in their early married years in Chicago, Illinois, and they decided to apply what they had learned to a new field, the advertising specialty field. 
 
Advertising specialties are a form of marketing – what some people would call the imprinted “giveaways” that businesses give their clients and politicians give their constituents and potential voters, such as pens, balloons, calendars, and gadgets.
 
My parents named their business Gilbert Advertising Specialties, because my father’s first name was easier for people to pronounce his last name of Huesca.  They started it at home and moved it eventually to a large showroom and office, where they served clients large and small, local and nationwide. They enjoyed working with young and energetic salesmen and went out of their way to train them and encourage them to excel at their job.  They also wanted my sisters and me to appreciate how much work was involved in running a successful business.  To this end, they encouraged us to help them and taught us about customer service, professionalism, accuracy, and quality control. They took great pride in their work and were highly respected in their field until they retired in the mid-1970s and sold the business. 
 

They had realized their dreams and of settling down, raising a family, and giving back to others in thanksgiving for what they had received.  They attributed this to the grace of God and their strength together as a loving couple who were one in thought, word, and deed.

What a blessing they were not just for my sisters and me, but for all who would come to know them.
 
 

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

 
Linda Huesca Tully4 Comments on Traveling Tuesday: California Here We ComeHuesca Perrotin Schiavon

Traveling Tuesday: California Here We Come

California Poppy, Flickr Photos,
courtesy Brian
 
Having packed our 1962 Ford Falcon station wagon to the hilt for the long drive to California, my father, Gilbert Cayetano Huesca, stopped one last time at my grandmother’s home so our family could give her one last goodbye kiss.
 

She was 68 years old by then and had started to shrink in height, like her mother before her.  As we stood eye to eye, each wiping tears from the other’s face, I wondered when we would see her again.

Many of our other relatives had come to my grandmother”s home to say their goodbyes to us, too. She had prepared a big send-off for us, much the same as she had when we had arrived just three years earlier.  I remember thinking how lucky we were to have so many people who cared about us.

 
We set off in the first days of April, just after Easter, and as we made our way north, the world kept turning.  Martin Luther King spoke on April 4th at New York’s Riverside Church, denouncing the Vietnam War and exhorting his audience to “break the silence of the night” by speaking out against it. On April 5th, Philadelphia ’76er Wilt Chamberlain set an NBA record for a whopping 41 rebounds in a close game (115-104) against the Boston Celtics.  The next day, French Premier Georges Pompidou formed a new government, called the Third Ministry.  The biggest news of that week, however, occurred April 7, the day we arrived in Northern California, when Israel shot down six Syrian MiGs over the Golan Heights, prompting a major air battle that would lead to the Arab-Israeli War two months later.

As we crossed the border from Tijuana into San Ysidro, California, we noticed a difference right away as wide, modern freeways replaced narrow, tired, and bumpy highways. Cars were larger.  Green freeway signs with raised letters seemed to sparkle in the sunlight.  It felt as though we were gliding, not driving.
 
My parents decided to take scenic Highway 1,  also known as the Coast Highway, so we could have our first look at the Pacific Ocean.  My mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, wanted us to never forget the day we arrived in “Sunny California.” The dramatic sight of the gleaming waves against the cerulean sky as we crossed Bixby Bridge high over Big Sur will remain in my memory forever.  I fell in love with the sea that day.  
 
Bixby Bridge, Big Sur, Flickr Photos, courtesy Sequoia Hughes

It was exciting to hear English spoken on the radio again.  My mother had to adjust the stations occasionally as we would drive out of range, so we listened to quite a variety.

One of  the songs that was popular on the airwaves that day was “Happy Together” by the Turtles, at that time the #1 Billboard Song for the third week in a row.  A catchy and upbeat tune, it was a fitting background to the excitement we all felt as we marveled at the wonders of our new home state.

It did not take long for my father to find a job working for a sign company in South San Francisco, and he and he and my mother found a small ranch style house to rent on San Bruno Mountain, up a hilly street at Morningside Drive in a neighborhood bearing the cheery name of Sunshine Gardens.   Our side of the street was the last row of houses on what was called Sign Hill, just below large concrete letters that spelled out to the world that this was  “South San Francisco – the Industrial City.”

How exciting, we thought, to be in San Francisco at last.  But where were all the cable cars and skyscrapers? Only after a couple of weeks did we learn that South San Francisco, also known as “South City,” was not really part of the grand City by the Bay but in fact was separated from it by San Bruno Mountain.

My parents enrolled us in the neighborhood public schools.  My sisters attended Sunshine Gardens Elementary School, and I went to Parkway Intermediate School, a short walk from home.

One day in May, my father took my sisters and me downtown to the hardware and the five-and-dime store.  We saw a sign advertising the city’s annual Mother’s Day celebration.  We entered our mother in a contest that was part of the celebration and were surprised a few days later when she won Mother of the Year.  

 
She was thrilled.  We all went downtown for the parade and cheered loudly as she rode down the street in an open air car.  We wanted everyone in town to know she was our mother.  When the parade ended, she was awarded her special prizes from the sponsoring shops:  a rubber spatula, a can opener, a ladle, and a mixing bowl! Definitely the signs of a time that was about to come to an end.  It did not matter that day, though.  My mother was very proud of her honor and grateful to her family for nominating her.  She baked us a chocolate cake that night to celebrate.
 

There was something else we had not expected.  Being right between the ocean and the San Francisco Bay meant that the marine layer of fog came in every morning, putting a chill in the air that sometimes dropped close to freezing, even in the summer.  We could actually watch as it shrouded our street and slowly crept down Forest View Avenue on its way to the downtown area at the bottom of the hill.  When that happened, the sun disappeared and  you could not see a thing.  Some mornings the fog would burn off by midday, but other days it just lingered there, gray and taunting, as we wondered what had happened to the Sunny California everyone had talked about.

My mother simply could not understand this. So much for “California Dreamin’,” the song made so popular a couple of years earlier by the Mamas and the Papas. No one had told her about the fog.  She began to wonder if we had fallen for a myth.   She and my father began looking into sunnier places to live.

 

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

 
Linda Huesca Tully2 Comments on Daily Life in 1960s Mexico CityHuesca Joan (Schiavon) Huesca

Daily Life in 1960s Mexico City

Flickr images, Courtesy Michael McCullough

The three years my family spent in Mexico City before moving to California in the mid-1960s gave my sisters and me the opportunity to get to know our paternal relatives and learn my father’s native language and culture.   I have often thought that if every young person had the chance to live in another country, our world would be a better place for it.

Being children, we adapted easily to our new life down there as it came.  We probably did not even notice there was much difference between the Mexican and American way of life.  For me, it was when we moved to California, that I noticed the differences more.  By then I was nearly twelve, a pre-adolescent and more sensitive to differences.
 
From the fourth through the sixth grade, I learned so much about the conquistadores, the Aztecs and other natives, and the trials and victories of Mexico that I treasured its heritage as much as my American heritage.  Even knowing that both countries had been at odds with each other over what is now the Southwestern United States, it did not seem unnatural to love both for their pride and richness of culture.  My mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, probably had a lot to do with this, as she had a lifelong fascination with Mexico and the Mayan culture in particular.
 

The one thing my dear mother could not master was how to cook a proper Mexican meal, though she tried her best to watch and learn from my grandmother and my aunts.  She seemed meant to excel at her American and her father’s Italian specialties, illustrated one day when she invited one of my aunts to see her “cochina,” as she called it.  She had been trying to translate the Italian word for kitchen, cucina, into Spanish.  My aunt figured it out and was relieved there was not a live pig in the house.

Instead of “depriving” us of Mexican dishes, we got to enjoy the best of all worlds:  my mother’s specialties and my aunts’ Mexican cooking.  What wonderful cooks my aunts were!  They made the best mole poblano, enchiladas suizas, tortas, and other specialties too numerous to mention, always using fresh ingredients from their daily trips to the neighborhood market stands and shops.

Those markets were a feast for the senses.  American-style supermarkets were just getting started in Mexico, but the way people shopped then and still do today, was by going daily to market to pick out fresh produce, meats, chiles, spices, and other tempting items from local farmers and vendors. There was no such thing as choosing between paper or plastic bags at the store, either.  Shoppers brought one or two of their colorful plastic woven tote bags, just enough to fit what was needed for the day’s meals.

There was a tortilleria, or tortilla shop, just down the street from our home on Altamirano Street in the Colonia of San Rafael.  On our way home from school, we often stopped to watch two Indian women make  towers of warm, fresh tortillas.  They had broad faces and thick black hair tied into long braids going down their backs.  The dull color of the maize they worked seemed to come to life against their bright aprons over their peasant blouses and long, full dark tiered skirts.  All day long they would sit cross-legged on angled stools, rolling masa, or dough into small balls and patting them back and forth quickly between their hands.  
Flickr images, Courtesy Kimberly Vardeman
 Once the dough was flat and thin, they placed it onto a conveyor belt which flatted it even more between rollers.  They would take turns, one shaping the tortillas, and the other placing them over a fire, turning them over constantly by hand while they cooked.  We could see the burn marks on their reddened hands from the hours and days of work over that hot stove.  I wonder how many of us thought about that when we bit into these heavenly-tasting staples of Mexican cuisine. 
 
Sometimes, you did not even have to leave home to buy things.   Often, things would come to you.  Street vendors, called pregoneros, were plentiful in most neighborhoods.  The vendors came down the streets in pushcarts or by bicycle, whistling and calling out their wares in a nasally sing-song: “Candyyyyyyy?”  “Ice Creeeeeeeeaaammmm?” “Floweerrrrrrrs?”  “Sugar Caaaannnne?  Sweet Sugar Cane!”  “Loofahsssssss? Spongessssss?”  Chiles?  I have the freshest chiles!”
 
Even the garbage man got in on the act.  Though we were in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world, there were no garbage trucks but individuals who pushed large metal cans slowly down the street.  “Garbaaaaage?”  Garbage!”  they would chant, loudly enough for Mexican housewives to hear through their open windows.  The women would rush to bring their small plastic bags of trash out to the street, where they would drop it into the large metal can and give the man a 20 centavo coin – the equivalent of about two cents.
 
The garbagemen tied long primitive looking brooms to the cans.  They probably made the brooms themselves by wrapping long bunches of thick straw around long sticks.  This was the kind of broom most houses had, and you often saw women outside in the mornings after breakfast, sweeping the sidewalk in front of their homes, greeting their neighbors and passersby.
 
There always seemed to be some kind of wonderful festival.  Three Kings Day – the feast of the Epiphany on January 6, trumped Christmas in Mexico.  Christmas managed to remain a religious holiday, and families everywhere prepared by hosting posadas, or Advent parties, reenacting the trek to Bethlehem by Joseph and Mary as the guests/pilgrims go from house to house, singing for shelter.  Santa Claus was practically non-existent, and children received clothing as Christmas presents.  The real loot came on Three Kings Day, when the Magi brought all the toys and candy to good little children.
 
There was no question, though, as to who had the best holiday lighting.  While Mexican homes restricted their outdoor decorations to images of snowmen, Santa Claus faces, and the three kings, businesses big and small created fantastical scenes with bright colored Christmas lights.  The skyscrapers were the best, as the lights often covered most of their façades in moving scenes, each trying to outdo the other.
 
They did this on Independence Day, too.  September 16 – the day that Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1810, is the day Mexicans revere, not May 5 as is mistakenly feted here in the United States.  On September 16, the president of Mexico appears on the balcony at the Presidential Palace in the downtown Zócalo, to proclaim the Grito de Dolores – the Cry of Independence and to ring the Bell of Independence against a background of colorful fireworks.
 
Not only did Mexicans honor their mothers and fathers with special days, but they also had special days to honor teachers, children, policemen, mailmen, and even garbagemen.  But none of these could hold a candle to the most sacred day of all for every Mexican:  the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Every December 12, Mexicans celebrate the anniversary of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the Indian Juan Diego in 1531 on the hill of Tepeyac, which at the time was on the outskirts of the city.  Dressed in the clothing of a native Indian woman, she gave him a sign to bring to the bishop, along with instructions that he should build a church on Tepeyac.  The church would aid in the conversion of and offer consolation to the people of Mexico.  The sign, which Juan Diego thought was an unlikely bunch of roses wrapped in his cloak, turned out to be a miraculous image of the Virgin on the cloak, or tilma, instead.  The bishop built the church, and since then, Juan Diego was declared a saint and Our Lady of Guadalupe was declared patron saint of Mexico and of all the Americas.
 
Her image is everywhere in Mexico:  in homes, on windshields, on clothing, and in stores.  On December 12, people flock to what is now the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe to pray and hear the story again.  Many make pilgrimages from afar, sometimes coming the final miles on their knees in penance for their sins.  But the message is clear that it is a day of prayer, reflection, and immense love for Our Lady, who Mexicans consider their spiritual Mother. 
 
The time we lived in Mexico taught me so much more than any class on culture could have done.  We may have left the country when we moved to California, but we carried with us these customs and so many others that always will live deep in my heart and form much of who I am today.   I will be ever grateful to my parents and to the wonderful people of Mexico for this priceless gift and the many lessons it has taught me.

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Linda Huesca Tully4 Comments on Sentimental Sunday: Family TreasuresBennett Huesca Perrotin Ruvalcaba Schiavon

Sentimental Sunday: Family Treasures

 
When we moved from Mexico City to California in the spring of 1967, what I dreaded most was being far from our extended Huesca family. 
 
Cause for Celebration:  Our family got together for holidays but also birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions, such as this one, taken between 1956 – 57.  My mother wrote the names on the photo above.  My grandmother, Catalina (Perrotin) Huesca, is in the dark dress with the lace collar, next to her mother, María (Amaro) Perrotin.

 

Back in those days, our life in Mexico was centered on family, rather than on activities. In our family, my grandmother or Abuelita, Catalina (Perrotin) Huesca, was the matriarch, and she held court on the usual family days: Christmas, Three Kings Day, Mother’s Day, and her birthday, May 31st. Aside from that, everyone was welcome to come to Sunday afternoon dinner at her home on Carpio Street in the Colonia Santa María la Ribera neighborhood, where despite the postage-stamp size of her kitchen, there was always a multi-course meal with plenty of delicious food to go around.
 
My great-grandmother, Maria (Amaro) Perrotin, who was in her late 90s, could either be found at Abuelita’s house or at her own home next door.  There, she would line up a row of tiny children’s wooden rush chairs gaily painted in bright colors.  Once we children were seated, she would sit on a tiny chair, too, facing us right at our level. She had been shrinking for many years due to her advanced age and fit quite nicely in the miniature chairs. In fact, at nine years old, I already towered over her. Her small stature and her fragility appealed to us and made us feel rather protective of her.  We had no idea that for all her delicateness, she had outlived three husbands and four children and raised her two surviving daughters mostly on her own through some of the most trying periods of Mexican history.

My father was the third of eleven children born in the state of Veracruz, on Mexico’s eastern seaboard, to Catalina (Perrotin) and Cayetano Huesca. As all of them lived in the Federal District by the 1960s (except for my uncle Carlos, who had moved to Chicago, Illinois), that meant that most of the time we had the pleasure of being around one or more of our 18 uncles and aunts and over 40 first cousins, not to mention my grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-aunt and a number of other relatives.

As all the brothers and sisters had taken an active part in the family hotel and restaurant business in Veracruz, it was only natural that most of them would become entrepreneurs themselves.  Not long before my grandfather, Cayetano Huesca, died in 1937, the family had begun yet another business:  making embroidered linens for hotels and restaurants.  

Enrique and Eduardo were the eldest of the remaining 11. Uncle Enrique used to say that to have a successful business, you have to find a need and fill it.  This is probably what the family did – found a dearth of quality custom-made linens and decided to make them themselves. The whole family worked together – a given for such large family.  Enrique managed the business.  My father and Eduardo traveled around the country selling and distributing the linens.The younger siblings did their part, too, often hurrying home from school to work on the sewing machines and irons or fold the finished products.  

Eventually the children grew up and started lives and families of their own. Eduardo set off to open his own linen embroidery business a few miles away from Enrique’s.  My grandfather Cayetano’s brother, Jesús Huesca, helped Enrique in his business. Slightly bent, he was a quiet, gentle man who dressed in light khaki shirts with bolo ties and matching slacks and wore a straw hat.  By the time we met him, he must have been in his late seventies.  He was always glad to see us and after a big hug, he would take us by the hand and lead us through the factory, pointing out the latest embroidery designs or letting us use our fingers to trace over the embroidered patterns on the finished tablecloths.

Enrique and my father were nine years apart, but they could have been twins for all their similarities.  They thought alike, dressed alike, and had the same mannerisms.  They finished each other’s sentences, even years after we had moved from Mexico City.  He and my Aunt Meche had four sons, while my parents had four daughters.

Uncle Enrique and my father used to take our families together on Sunday drives into the country, where we would have picnics, go horseback riding, and go swimming.  Health conscious since his youth, Enrique walked and exercised several miles every day, did not smoke, and ate sensibly, way into his old age.  He loved books and music and was very spiritual, often discussing God and morality with us.  Sometimes during our visits he would have me read the front section of the newspaper and discuss the day’s stories, to improve my Spanish language comprehension and pronunciation.  I loved being around him and my aunt and their sons, who were like big brothers to me.

Eduardo’s business was on Carpio Street, just a couple of blocks from my grandmother’s house and across the street from the famous Alameda Park. My great aunt Blanca Perrotin, who was my grandmother’s younger maiden sister, used to help Uncle Eduardo in his business, embroidering beautiful floral designs on table linens, aprons, and sheets.  She liked to stay busy and worked with him well into her eighties.

Uncle Eduardo visited my grandmother daily and years later moved in with her. He was either divorced or separated by then. For this reason, I never had the pleasure of meeting his children (I think he had a son and a daughter), something I regret.  My sisters and I might have reminded him of them, because he always talked about them when he was around us. He was a philosopher at heart and loved discussing life and politics with anyone who would listen.  Tia Blanca usually sat at my grandmother’s dining room table, recalling family stories and poring over old photographs.  It was hard to get anything past her; she had excellent hearing and a mind like a steel trap, and she could be quick to correct a detail from a conversation going on in the next room and go right back to what she was doing without skipping a beat.  

She was always bringing out boxes and albums of family photographs and knew the stories behind all of them. How I wish I knew what happened to those treasures! Some of those photographs were of our English cousins, the Bennetts. They were cousins of my grandmother and Blanca’s who lived in England and, according to Tia Blanca, had perished during the Second World War.  Happily, this was one of the few times my aunt was mistaken; decades later my husband and I would visit some of the Bennetts in England, where they were very much alive.

My Uncle Mario usually brought flowers or some sweet treat when he came to dinner on his breaks from his job as a trolley driver. His powder blue uniform and cap complemented his handsome red hair and blue eyes, which were always twinkling. He was quite a people-watcher and always had a funny story to tell about his passengers. When I remember him, it is always with a broad smile on his face.  
 

My father’s youngest brother, now in his seventies, was a young man back then, fresh out of university, newly married, and beginning what would become a successful career in communications.  Though he had been only a baby when his father died, he inherited Cayetano’s business acumen and passion for his family.  I remember my parents marveling at his energy, vision, and generosity.  He has not changed and continues to look out lovingly for both his immediate and extended family with an enormous heart of gold.

My father always said his sisters were some of the most beautiful women in Veracruz state. Those were the words of a loving brother, to be sure, but there was no question that they were beautiful, outside and in.  They became the sisters my mother never had and showered my sisters and me with attention, hugs, and kisses.

Victoria, the oldest, had been a beauty queen in Orizaba.  She had two nicknames that described her aptly, La Muñeca, or the doll, and Bella, or Beauty.  She was petite and delicate and like two of her brothers, had gorgeous natural red hair and blue eyes.  A single mother, she worked hard and sacrificed much to support her two daughters with a small shop she ran from her home, where she made specialty sandwiches called tortas. She made the juiciest, most delicious tortas! We often went to visit her and played a Mexican version of Ring Around the Rosy or card  games with her younger daughter.  Her older daughter was about six years older than me, but she often joined in our games, much to our delight.

I do not remember visiting my aunt Lucha (Lucia) much, probably because she lived quite far from us, though in the same city, and her children were much older than we were.  I wish I had known her better.  I seem to remember hearing that she had been ill quite a bit.  This may be why she did not come over, but everyone loved her.

Aunt Delia Domitila lived near La Villa, or the neighborhood famous for the location of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  When we were not at her apartment and playing with her youngest son, she was at our house or my grandmother’s, showing us her latest crafts. She was such a creative lady, always crocheting doilies and making dolls and gifts for others. She also was a smart dresser and an excellent cook. Always the life of the party, her nickname was La Periquita – the parakeet – partly because she loved to talk and partly because her voice was so musical. It could be hard to get a word in edgewise sometimes when she got excited about something, but she was so much fun that no one seemed to mind.  She was always showing us photos of her children and in later years was extremely proud that all had become distinguished professionals.

My two youngest aunts, Catalina (“Catrin”) and Olga, who are in their eighties as of this writing, married performers who played in the Jarocho group of Andrés Huesca y Sus Costeños.  Andrés was my father’s cousin, known worldwide for his traditional harp playing, coupled with the traditional music of Veracruz state.  Ricardo Díaz and Rodolfo Ruvalcaba, who played guitar and sang with him, were handsome and talented and funny.  

When we visited the Ruvalcabas, my sisters and I would disappear to the TV room with our four cousins to watch episodes (subtitled in Spanish) of The Flintstones cartoons or The Beverly Hillbillies or sing Beatles songs, or play silly games together while our parents laughed downstairs over cocktails. Aunt Olga loved entertaining and was gifted at making everyone feel welcome and happy. She set an elegant table and always played what seemed to me to be very sophisticated music in the background, and Uncle Rodolfo told jokes at the bar while he made drinks for the adults and poured Cokes for the kids. They were so kind and loving to us that I never wanted to go home.

We lived next door to my father’s other sister Catalina (named after her mother) and my Uncle Ricardo.  Everyone called her Catrín.  To this day, my aunt still has the most expressively beautiful dark eyes and wavy hair. She was so youthful that when her three daughters became teenagers, people used to mistake her for their sister. She was extremely close to my grandmother and devoted herself to caring for her and her own family.  She and my mother shared many a morning cup of coffee together, talking about their daughters and their hopes and dreams for the future. She taught my mother to cook Mexican dishes, and my mother taught her to make spaghetti and meatballs.  

Living next door to the Díazes meant we got to play with our cousins daily. We created so many memories, bonding over paper dolls and Chinese Checkers and spying on our parents together.  We became more like sisters than cousins, and I remember laughing with one of them because we looked so much alike.  We still talk frequently, and I cannot imagine what my life would be without them.

I am so grateful to my parents for giving us this marvelous opportunity to know our relatives. Thanks to their foresight, our closeness with our Huesca relatives has grown stronger over the years as we have forged many memories together. My children stay in touch regularly with their second cousins now and delight in being Facebook friends and talking to them on Skype. Like their parents, they cannot get over how similar they all look and sound and how much they have in common, even though they live thousands of miles away.  That is the delightful thing about family – our love and shared history connects us through lifetimes and generations.

When I was young, I was afraid that when we moved to California we would be too far away from our extended Huesca family in Mexico. As I write this in 2013, some 46 years later, I am happy to say we are closer than ever.

 

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Linda Huesca Tully4 Comments on Follow Friday: Master WeaverUncategorized

Follow Friday: Master Weaver

Yours truly comparing notes with Jacqi Stevens
When you write about family history, it’s nice to read the work of others.  It refreshes your perspective, gives you insights you might not have had, and exposes you to different writing styles. It’s even more fun when you can meet the writers behind the works. This past weekend brought one such treat – meeting fellow genealogist and writer Jacqi Stevens, of A Family Tapestry. 
 
Jacqi and her husband, Chris, were in town to research the Bean branch of their family. Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say this was one of their many stops up and down the Peninsula, as they hit some of the haunts family historians would consider “fun” places to go – historical societies, newspaper archives, and cemeteries. 
  Jacqi and Chris Stevens      
True to her blog’s name, she weaves together the various strands of her research, instincts, a keen sense of history, and the big picture as she tells the stories of her family. Not only does she let you in on  the fascinating details of their lives but shares her thought process and the resources she used to learn about them. She is a master story weaver and relentless detective who knows how to engage her readers through her warm, witty style and subtle sense of humor. Just when you think she has told the whole story, she comes up with one more surprising detail, one more hidden resource – or one more cliffhanger.  
 
Meeting Jacqi was as much fun as reading her posts.  We spent a delightful afternoon over coffee at a sidewalk cafe in downtown San Jose, comparing notes on research, writing, and families. I marveled at the fact that she has been able to post a blog article every day of the year. (I feel lucky if I can crank out a story or two a week!) We also discussed a certain family name we have in common, though at this point we have been unable to link our two branches. Still, you never know.
 
Even if you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Jacqi, visit her blog.  You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll want to come back for more.

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Linda Huesca Tully7 Comments on Wisdom Wednesday: CrossroadsHuesca McCormick McGinnnis Schiavon

Wisdom Wednesday: Crossroads

Gilbert Cayetano Huesca (1915 – 2009)
Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca (1928 – 1987)

My parents, having decided that our family should leave the high altitude of Mexico City for the sake of my little sister’s health, now had a decision to make:  Where should we go?
Flickr Creative Commons, Photo by Laenulfean
We had been living in the Federal District for nearly three years after leaving our home in Chicago, Illinois, in 1964 following the Cuban Missile Crisis.  We were very happy living near our Huesca relatives.  My sisters and I had learned to speak, read, and write Spanish, and we had acclimated well to the culture.
 
Unfortunately, the city’s high elevation (7,350 feet above sea level) had affected my sister’s health and  enlarged her adenoids, which made it hard for her to breathe and eat. Although the rest of us did not suffer the effects as severely, on occasion we found ourselves huffing and puffing from the thin air as we went up the stairs or exerted ourselves physically.
 
It was not unusual for people of lower altitudes to suffer from Mexico’s thin air.  When Mexico City hosted the Olympic Games in 1968, just a year after we left, I remember reading newspaper reports about the challenges the high altitude posed to many athletes. It turned out that those who came from areas with similarly high elevations had an advantage over the others and performed much better, particularly in the track and field events.  In fact, someone took advantage of this to promote a souvenir during that time – a metal tin of “Mexican Air,” said to be especially helpful for beating athletic performance records. The thin air was so detrimental to the performance of many of Olympians that the Games have not taken place in such a high elevation ever since.
 
There was no shortage of beautiful cities and towns in Mexico where we could have moved. My parents had their favorite cities:  Puebla, Guadalajara, Cuernavaca, and Merida.  Of these, the most job opportunities were in the first two cities, so they would have been at the top of the list.  The biggest drawback was that none of our relatives lived in any of those places at the time. As was the case with many Mexicans in the mid-twentieth century, most of the Huesca family had migrated to the capital, where the jobs and opportunities were.  
 
Other options were areas back in the United States.  We had lived in a warm climate long enough by now that my parents did not want to return to the extreme temperatures of Chicago, even though my grandfather still lived there. My mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, missed him and her brother and his family, but she thought it was time for a change.   My father, Gilbert Huesca, felt the same way.
 

That December in 1966 as we celebrated what would be our last Christmas in Mexico, my parents began to talk to us and to our relatives about the upcoming move.  It was a difficult topic, to be sure, but their sadness at leaving our relatives was tempered by their concern over my sister’s health.  While they were still uncertain about their decision, they also felt excited about the wide range of choices available to them.  

I was not too sure I wanted to move somewhere else at this point, if it was not back to my hometown of Chicago.  As happy as I was in Mexico, there were moments when I missed our old house and my grandfather and cousins and friends back there. I used to fantasize that we would return there one day to a rousing welcome by the mayor, complete with a ticker tape parade down State Street, my old classmates cheering and Frank Sinatra singing my favorite songof the day, “Chicago, That Toddlin’ Town“ in the background.  On the other hand, I had grown very close to my Mexican relatives and had made lots of friends and did not want to leave them, either.  But the more my parents talked about the move, the more we got caught up in the excitement of a new adventure.

My parents began leaning toward moving back to the States.  Both of them were American citizens (a native of Mexico, my father had become a naturalized American citizen in the early 1960s) and could own property and have a better chance of finding good jobs.  They might even be able to start a business once they got settled.  The more they thought about the possibility of starting a business, the clearer it became that we should move to an area where the economy was strong and growing.

 
Two states fit the bill:  Texas and California.  Both were known as forward-thinking states, were experiencing rapid growth, and had warm climates.  The cities that appealed to my parents were Brownsville, San Antonio, and Houston, in Texas; and San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles, in California.  All of these cities were at or close to sea level.  Texas was closer to Chicago than California, which would make it easier to drive north to visit my grandfather.
 
But that led to a discussion that would end up deciding the question.  When all was said and done, where would we feel most at home?  There needed to be family or friends, at the very least, nearby.  My parents had made friends with the Baileys, when we had visited Brownsville a couple of years before.  They also had old friends from Chicago who had moved to Los Angeles.  And then my mother thought of her aunt and uncle, Benita (McGinnis) and Philip McCormick and their daughter Jane, who by now was married and the mother of a little girl.  Aunt “Detty,” as we called her, and Uncle Phil and Aunt Jane (McCormick) and her husband Ole Olson, lived on the San Francisco peninsula in California.
 
My mother and her cousin Jane were only a year apart; they had grown up together in Chicago, as their mothers were sisters.  A few years after Jane had arrived in California to work for Trans World Airlines, her parents followed so they could live close to their daughter and her family.  By now they were in their early 70s but were still active and in excellent health.
 
My maternal grandmother had died only three years before at this point, and my mother missed her deeply.  The idea of living near her mother’s sister and her cousin was comforting and felt right.  My father thought it was a wonderful idea.  It would be a healthy place to live for all of us.
 

I still remember how excited my sisters and I got when we heard we were moving to “sunny California.”  I don’t think we knew much, if anything at all about the place.  I can’t speak for my sisters, but I was very proud that there was one thing I knew something about:  San Francisco.  It was the home of the Golden Gate Bridge and of my second favorite song:   Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francsico.”  It was also the home of my favorite American commercial – Rice-A-Roni, The San Francisco Treat.  I couldn’t wait to hear the ding-ding of that cable car.

 

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Linda Huesca Tully4 Comments on Motivation Monday: Whatever You Do in this Life Will Come Back to YouDr. Jose Felipe Franco Huesca

Motivation Monday: Whatever You Do in this Life Will Come Back to You


Gilbert Cayetano Huesca (1915 – 2009)
Joan (Schiavon) Huesca (1928 – 1987)
José Gil Alberto Cayetano Huesca (1888 – 1937)

Photo by Alex Proimos, courtesy Flickr Creative Commons
 
“Who is that man?”
 
The short, stout, hunched over pediatrician my parents had found in the Mexico City phone book and called in desperation to tend to my little sister pointed to a portrait over my parents’ bed as he blinked his eyes.
 
It was late Fall of 1966.  My father, Gilbert Huesca, was startled by this question. He was more concerned about my seven-year-old sister’s illness than about answering questions from a curious man looking at pictures on a wall.  
 
He redirected the doctor’s attention.  “How is our daughter, Doctor Franco?”
 
The doctor snapped out of his fog.  “Her tonsils and adenoids appear to be inflamed.  How long has she had trouble breathing like this?”
 
My mother told him that my sister had been sick on and off for a couple of months.  At first it had seemed she was just getting recurrent colds, but when she lost her appetite and began losing weight, it was clear something else was happening.  
 
The doctor explained that enlarged tonsils and adenoids could cause such symptoms, well as her labored breathing. Why they were enlarged was yet to be determined, but to start with he prescribed a course of antibiotics in case it was a bacterial infection.  If the antibiotics did not work, my sister might need surgery to have her adenoids removed.  In any case, he would see her again in a few days.  

My two other little sisters and I, watching from the door, grimaced.  “Why do they have to add a noise to her?” My baby sister asked in a stage whisper.  “No, silly,” I corrected her. “They’re called adenoids. And if they don’t get better, then the doctor has to take ’em out.”  My second sister, always quick to get to the heart of the problem, asked, “So that means they’re bad.  Does he have to take ’em out of us, too?” I knew as little as she did.  We leaned in closer to get a clue.
 
My parents, somewhat relieved, thanked the doctor for coming.  “How much do we owe you?” my father asked.  
 
Dr. Franco seemed not to hear the question.  He was looking at the picture again  “I’m sorry, but I have to know, sir.  Do you know that man?”
 
My father, still puzzled by the doctor’s distraction, answered.  “He was my father.”
 
“Your father!  And your name again, sir?”  
 
“Gilbert Cayetano Huesca.”
 
“My God,” the man said emotionally.  “You don’t owe me anything, Mr. Huesca.  I owe you.  Your father was my best friend.”
 
Recalling this encounter many years later, my father remarked, “He felt as though he found something special, something that belonged to him.”
 
It turned out that some forty or so years before, José Felipe Franco had been a struggling young doctor in Orizaba, Veracruz, when he met my grandfather,  José Gil Alberto “Cayetano” Huesca.  At the time, my grandfather worked as a mechanic for the Mexican Railway, Ferrocarriles Mexicanos. When he learned that the young José often skipped meals to make up for the costs of his fledgling medical practice, my grandfather was shocked. He invited his new acquaintance to daily meals as if he were one of the family, helped him with business expenses, and recommended him to relatives and friends.  
 
Over time, Doctor Franco became successful.  He eventually moved to the capital, where he founded a children’s hospital, the Clínica Infantil Doctor Franco, on San Cosme Avenue, in the San Rafael neighborhood, or colonia. He never forgot his humble beginnings and set aside one day a week to care for the poor and indigent, free of charge.  
 
Of all the ways to meet an old family friend, so many miles and so many years later, this was quite remarkable.  Though Dr. Franco was saddened to know my grandfather had died in 1937, he was glad to learn my grandmother, Catalina (Perrotin) Huesca now lived in Mexico City. He visited her soon afterward and reconnected with some of my aunts and uncles. 
 
The friendship he had shared with my grandfather years before took on a new life with my father’s generation of the Huesca family. I think my father saw a bit of his own father in this grandfatherly gentleman.

Dr. Franco welcomed the relationship. He became quite close to my father and mother and some of my uncles. They looked out for each other and each other’s families over the years, each at his happiest when he could do something for the other. For the second time in his life, the good doctor became a part of our Huesca family. But this time, his story became part of our family story. It also led to one of my father’s favorite sayings: Whatever you do in this life will always come back to you.

Dr. Franco continued to treat my sister as an inpatient at his hospital. I was in the room when he told my parents of his opinion that her enlarged adenoids had been caused by the Federal District’s high altitude – 7,000 feet above sea level. As he saw it, my mother and father had two options. One was to undergo surgery to remove the adenoids. The other option was to move out of Mexico City to another area that was closer to sea level.  This second option, he theorized, might allow her system to regularize itself.

The thought of leaving our beloved relatives in Mexico City was wrenching, but my parent’s first concern was for the good of their child.  After considerable discussions, they concluded that moving out of the area might be the safer and more beneficial alternative for my sister in the long run.

Having solved that dilemma, they now had to tackle a new one.

Where should we go?

 

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

 

Linda Huesca TullyLeave a comment on Wishful Wednesday: Did She Find Happiness?Huesca Schiavon

Wishful Wednesday: Did She Find Happiness?

 

November 22, 1965
 
Dear Joan,
 
Received your letter and glad to hear from you and that you are all well.  I am feeling pretty good myself at present.  A week ago Gene Vallee* and I took Joe Hanlon** to South Bend to see a football game and that evening we all had dinner at the Swedish Club.  Thanksgiving day I am having the Vallees for dinner at the Club.
 
I see you are having problems with the domestic help.  I guess it is very hard to get someone that is serious about work.  I had that problem for sometime and know what it is to find someone reliable.  I hope that you will be able to find someone that will be satisfactory.
 
Hope that the girls got over their exams O.K. . . .I am enclosing a check for 50.00 to use as you see fit for the holidays for yourself and the children.  
 
I’m sorry that I don’t have much more in the line of news and will close with all my love to you and kisses and hugs for the children.
 
                                         BA BA.
 
 
 
“Ba Ba” was my maternal grandfather, Ralph Schiavon.  My mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, loved receiving his letters after we left Chicago to live in Mexico City.  She would carefully slit open the envelopes so as not to damage their contents and take them into the kitchen, where we would surround her while she read them aloud.  
 
The “problem with domestic help” to which my grandfather referred had to do with the two maids my parents employed during our stay in Mexico.  At the time, although most women stayed home to run their household and care for their children, most middle and upper-class families hired maids to help with the laundry, cleaning, and cooking. 
 
Our first maid was a young 18-year-old named Maria.  She was the sole breadwinner for her single mother and her eight brothers and sisters, and she lived in a rough-and-tumble shack a few miles from our neighborhood of Colonia Los Pastores. Unlike most maids, she was tall, fair-skinned and had what used to be called “dishwater blonde” long hair. I don’t know how many women my mother interviewed before she met Maria, but the two instantly connected. My mother liked her sweetness and eagerness to learn and found her to be friendly and well-mannered.   
 
By the end of Maria’s first week, my mother had given Maria some of her own dresses, helped her dye her hair a golden blonde and put it in rollers, and was teaching her English.  From the back, the two of them looked so much alike, they could have been sisters, except one of them was always singing in Spanish. 
 
By Mexican standards, it was a lopsided relationship.  Maids were expected to keep to themselves and serve their employers quietly, and employers were not expected to get involved in the lives of their domestic help.  While my mother must have been aware of this, she treated everyone equally and respectfully, no matter what their status in life was.  She saw that Maria, in spite of her hard life, was bright and idealistic and full of possibilities.  
 
The first day Maria began working in our house, I thought I might be able to bribe her to make my bed for me every day. Before leaving for school, I offered her 20 centavos – at the time probably not worth even two cents – to make my bed. When I think about this now, I realize how insulting it must have been, even coming from a 10-year-old child.  But Maria was nonplussed.  She patted me on the head and said my mother had not hired her to do our work for us, no matter how much we offered her. Pointing to my bed, she waited, arms crossed, as I made it sheepishly under her watchful supervision.  As far as I know, she did not tell my mother about this.  I was grateful to her and followed her around the house like a puppy dog when I got home after school.
 

Maria was a hard worker. My mother liked that she was thorough with her chores, and my father liked that she never had to be told anything twice. Aside from that, she was rapidly becoming like one of the family. She was kind to my sisters and me and would do anything my mother asked her without a moment’s hesitation. She picked up English vocabulary quickly, to everyone’s delight and asked a lot of questions about life in the United States.

One day my mother discovered that Maria was illiterate. Her mother had pulled her out of school at an early age so she could help at home. My mother, who valued education highly, still struggled with Spanish, but she managed to teach Maria how to read and write. My father often came home to find all of us at the kitchen table, my sisters and I doing homework and my mother and Maria copying words from one of our school workbooks.

Before long, she began talking about going to high school. My mother promised Maria that if she could get her mother to agree to this, she could have the afternoons off to go to classes.

It seemed to be a good partnership, each helping the other in her own way, until Maria stopped coming to work abruptly. It may have been due to circumstances beyond her control; her mother, it seems, did not like the idea that her daughter was learning English, or anything for that matter, much less from a gringa.

 
I remember hearing my parents discuss this. They thought Maria’s mother, an indigenous woman, was afraid that her beautiful daughter would leave home, maybe even go to the United States and leave her to fend for herself. She probably felt she had no other choice but to keep her daughter away from us.
 
There was nothing my parents could do.  They were clearly frustrated by this turn of events, more for Maria than for themselves.  I do not think my mother missed having a maid as much as she wished she could have helped Maria achieve a better life. 
 
My parents reluctantly hired another maid named Rosa a couple of months later.  I say “reluctantly” because my mother was convinced that she would never find another maid of Maria’s caliber.  She was right.  Rosa lasted a week, until my mother found her sneaking out of the house with a pocketful of silverware.  After that, she went back to doing her own housework, training us, her daughters, to be her able assistants.
 
We never saw Maria again.  I wish I knew what happened to her. Assuming she is still alive, she would be in her 60s and is probably a grandmother.  I would like to think that her dreams came true and that she was able to rise up from her poverty.  If nothing else, I hope she found the happiness and fulfillment she deserved.
 
 
*  Gene Vallee was a lifelong friend of my grandfather’s.
 
** Joe Hanlon was our (and my grandfather’s) next door neighbor on South Luella Avenue in Chicago.  
 
 

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully