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Title
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Mexican Migrant Housing Quotes
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Description
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Well, they didn’t have houses. Most of the Mexicans had their own little tents that they brought along with them, living in their car. All the tents hanging off the cars, just like you see in THE GRAPES OF WRATH. They really had big cars because they really needed them—even though they were more expensive to keep up. There was very little eviction because they didn’t live in any place. They had their own things with them, just like a snail would; you carry your own shells with you. They could take the tents off the land, when people said you have to get off the land. Because if you came to pick peas, you generally camped on the land that the peas were on. Elizabeth Nicholas (1930s CAWIU Santa Clara Valley cannery union organizer) Interview by Margo McBane, 1970s, MountainView, CA.
We went to Santa Maria, and my dad bought a tent and he made a great big bed. The whole family slept on that one big bed…. [We had our own stove] and my mother was good at [setting up the tent]. She would get the boxes that they used to pick tomatoes and prunes and she would just stack ‘em and make shelving. And she’d cook outside. Sid Duran Interview by Margo McBane, Oct. 3, 2011, San José Chapter GI Forum Headquarters
We were 13 kids. And we used to go pick apricots in Saratoga. There’s a street, it’s called Cox Avenue. And we picked prunes for Ed Cox. So when he brought us, he would just tell us, “Okay, you can camp in that bare area there”. He had one outhouse and one faucet sticking up from the ground, and everybody got water from that one faucet. And some people brought tents. [My mom and my granddad] had a tent, and so we used it. At that time, on the beds there were no box springs and mattresses like we have now. They were the bare springs, and the mattresses were the cotton… that you would roll up. So, we would take our beds from the home and we would roll them up and tie it with a piece of rope. Tie each end and throw them up in the truck, four of those or as many as we needed. We didn’t bring food because when we got here we would ask Ed Cox to advance us some money so we could go to the grocery store and buy food. And so my mother would pack most of the stuff in about three old tin bathtubs that had holes in Them…that are small at the bottom, wide at the top… [When we got to the campsite] First of all, we would get some apricot [and prune] trays and stand them up and tie them with wire and… make two rooms. [Then we would take more trays] and make a platform upside down and unroll our mattress on that. And my mom and dad slept on one side,... [And the 13 of] us on the other side. My dad would make a mound of dirt and maybe two feet wide and eight inches high. He would [take one of the three old tin tubs] turn it upside down on that mound of dirt just to elevate it a Little bit. He would cut a hole on the side of the tub and that was my mother’s stove…. When we bought food, we always bought a hundred pound sack of flour and a hundred pound sack of beans…we couldn’t go to a store and get milk, my mother always bought canned milk in boxes… My mother would then make tortillas, probably at least twice a day from scratch. She would stand up a hundred-pound sack of flour and open it up. Then she would get a pan, maybe six or eight inches deep… She would make the dough by hand. She knew exactly how much water to put in it and a little salt and baking powder. She had done it millions of times. In five minutes she would have enough dough to make three or four dozen tortillas by hand. She would roll them out by hand and cook them on top of the bottom of that tin top. And she would make potatoes and eggs. She used to cook potatoes in a big frying pan and she would crack a half dozen eggs. That’s how we ate eggs and potatoes. Fernando Chavez Interview by Margo McBane and Peggy Chavez, Feb. 6, 2008, Cupertino, CA.
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Identifier
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B4SV Exhibit Topic Two: Slide 009.1
