El Paso

When I arrived at Uncle Lester's place he had a two bedroom house with a screen porch. Grandma Cardon was in the extra bedroom and I stayed on the screen porch. In the winter time the wind would blow and when it snowed I got very cold out there. Uncle Lester had a restaurant across the street. He told me I could go over there and eat anything I wanted, anytime.

I started school at Austin High. It had about 2-3,000people. I was a freshman. I had to ride two city buses to get to school. My cousin E.L. also went to school there. I really hated that big school. I had no friends. I was taking health which Coach Yarborrough was teaching. I was sitting in the middle of the class with a Mexican on each side of me. We took a test for which I had studied very hard. I did very well and got the top grade in the class. I didn't realize that the Mexicans on either side had copied my paper and got the same grade. When he called out for us to give him our test scores, each of the Mexicans said they got 88. He said to me, "I suppose you got 88, too?" I responded, "Yeh." He said, "Where were you born? In a barn?" You are supposed to say, "Yes, Sir." He plowed back to me through the students. He was a big, strong guy and I was only 5'2" and weighed 115 pounds. He grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out of the chair. He slugged me and I dropped back into the chair and he pulled me up and slugged me again. My left ear was ringing for quite a while at the time. I was very embarrassed by this. I was  afraid to tell my dad in the Aminas. I told my grandmother Cardon. She was very upset and told my Uncle Bill. He wouldn't believe this story because his sons had gone to school there and really liked this coach. I never liked my Uncle Bill (whom I was named after) since that time. I never trusted any coaches after that. Every time something happened to make me feel bad I would think about that coach and wanted to beat him with a baseball bat. When I was practicing Orthodontics in Santa Cruz, I decided to contact this coach and tell him how he had affected my life. I called the high school, but they had lost track of him. I never got to face him. He had gotten away with it.

I went out for freshman basketball. My cousin E.L. did too. I made the team and E. L. got cut. I had to stay to practice and had to walk home each night several miles to Uncle Lesters. The wind blew a lot and it snowed and it piled about two feet around Uncle Lester's restaurant. I used to take the bus then walk about a mile to see Mom in the hospital every weekend. One Saturday morning I was getting ready to leave for the hospital. We got a phone call that she had died. Laurence, Sis, Larry came from Duncan, Dad came from the Animas, Grant came from California. We had the funeral in El Paso and she was buried in El Paso.

Then I went with Dad, Sis, and Laurence to Duncan, Arizona. Dad sold the ranch at the Animas. He had a lot of corn stored at the fairgrounds in Lordsburg. He bought a lot of pigs to eat the corn.

Before Mom died she told me that when she was very sick in the hospital her father came to get her. She told him that she had something to do before she could go. I had a lump on the side of my face. She was worried about it and wanted my dad to take me to the doctor to have it checked out. When Dad came from the Animas, she made him promise to do that. She lived another couple minutes after that. The lump was benign and the doctor cut it out.

More El Paso Memories

That fall Mom was sick and she went to the hospital in El Paso. Mom's family lived there. Sis and Laurence and Larry came to see Mom in their new green Ford car.

Aunt Ethel took Larry to see Mom at the hospital. Larry got up on a stool by Mom's bed. He couldn't think of anything to say to Mom except he told Mom, "Aunt Ethal said Son Bitch."

Later when the doctor thought Mom was dying, the family called Dad and Sis to come from the Animas and my brother, Grant, who was in Dental School in San Francisco to come quickly. I had a little lump on the side of my face and Mom was really worried about it. She survived this crisis-when she saw Dad, she made him promise to take care of that lump.

She later told me that during that crisis, her father who had died many years before came to her and said, "Come on, Genevive, it's time to go." She told him that she couldn't go because she had something to take care of first. What she had wanted to take care of was to make Dad promise to take me to the doctor to see about the lump. She died a little later.

Sixteen Years Old

During the summer when I turned 16, I went to El Paso, Texas and worked for my cousins, La Von Cardon and Bernard at their service stations.

On my sixteenth birthday I went to Juarez, Mexico. I took the bus to the Rio Grande River and walked across the border into Juarez, Mexico to celebrate my birthday. I drank some beer which was .05 cents a can. I bought half a pint of whiskey and tucked it in my belt to bring back to El Paso. It was illegal to do because I was only 16. When I came back across the border into the US I must have had a guilty look on my face and the border patrol guards sent me into the office. They asked me if I had my wallet. They found the whiskey and he motioned to two big military police who came and picked me up by my arms and took me into a back room, where they made me strip and they searched everywhere looking for drugs. They thought I was in the military. They took me back out to the man in the office. He told me to take my whiskey back where I bought it and to get my money back and to never do that again. I got my money back and went back to El Paso. What a 16th birthday!