When Andres transferred to the Indiana University from Texas Southmost College, his father, working as the head gardener at a trailer park for snowbirds in Brownsville, could not help him with money, only with his goodbye and his blessing.
The only way that Andres was able to attend the Midwest school was because his family had worked in the fields there picking tomatoes and cucumbers every summer for as long as he could remember. They would return to Brownsville in October and enroll in the migrant school that started in October and let out in April, just in time for the families to start their annual northward trek.
It had been the same when he had volunteered for the military. He had a brush with the law after he and his neighbor got nailed knocking over vending machines and he had to start working at a local used clothing warehouse making bales of ropa usada. When he tired of it, he enrolled for GED classes and passed. Then he enlisted and was gone for four years. His father had seen him off at the Trailways station and gave him a hung. That's was all he had to give him.
But now, after two years in Indiana paid by the G.I Bill and in-state tuition for his migrant status, he came home for Christmas and was looking forward to graduating with his B.A. in business the next May. He had called his parents, who still lived in the home they had bought with the earnings from their field work, to tell them that he would be home in two days. The road in front of his home was a dirt road still coated with caliche, just across a small concrete irrigation canal from his father's workplace.
The morning after he arrived from Indiana, his mother said his father wanted to see him. She said he was across the street at work. Andres walked out and saw his father, wearing rubber boots since he and the crew were using water from a small resaca to water the plants around the trailers, waving at him. There was a portly white man standing by his father looking Andres over.
As a kid, Andres used to see his father, muddy and wet, come in after a nightlong riego session in the cotton fields as a blue northern struck the hinterlands in Olmito. The steam from the coffee his mother gave him framed his face as he fought off the chill.
"Que paso, Dad?," he asked. his father.
"Nada, quiero que conoscas a Mr. Katzenbaum, mi patron."
Katzenbaum, pleasant and bland, spoke to him and said: "So you're Andres, Jose's son?"
"Yes sir," Andres said, extending his hand.
"And you're going to get a B.A. from Bloomington?," the man asked. "I'm from Indiana, too."
"Well, a pleasure to meet another Hoosier," replied Andres.
The Katzenbaum turned slightly away from his father and asked Andres in a lower voice: "You're going to graduate from Indiana University? And you claim him?," he asked, nodding slightly to his father, whose boots and pant legs were coated with mud.
It took a bit for Andres to fathom what the man had told him. But when he did, bile rose in his gut and he said firmly.
"Yes, of course I do. He is my father. Good day, sir."
Andres walked away and as he jumped over the concrete ditch, he glanced backward and saw that
his father, proud of him and his education, was smiling at Katzenbaum, totally unaware of the insult the other man had heaped upon his humble station.
8 comments:
Poor people are dirt, bro. Get it through your poor fucking head!
And then people wonder why Hispanics can not swallow the high and mighty Anglos.
Did Andres ever get a chance to retaliate? I guess he had a better sensible
pobre education from his Dad than to pay attention to a dumb patron.
You are evidently straight up racist.
That is a good story with a good moral, that all people should have respect for all other people. People are worthy of respect regardless of their station in life.
Too bad Andres did not show the same respect for the persons whom he stole from. I find his indignation, coming from a former thief, to be a little hollow. Neither education, wealth nor position bestows character on a man.
This fable has your standard cast of characters. There is the rich evil Gringo, the humble but good working Mexican and his educated son who sees the injustice in it all. This seems to be the filter through which you see all of life down here.
Try a new cast of character, like the evil ambitious Mexican, who screws over his own people to get ahead. Plenty of that going on, then and now.
Good day, sir? No mames, Montoya. 99 percent of red blooded Mexicans would have said "Chinga tu madre pinche gringo" or something to that effect, without thinking about consequences, risk, or ettiquette because an insult to familia is like a mortal sin, a call to arms, not a call for gentility or civility. Fuck you, puto! It demands a visceral, not an intellectual response. And therein lies the rub. Even at a young age, you appear to have exhibited a rare form of self restraint, a skill which most of us acquire after we fuck up a few times or never learn at all. Instead of saying "good day, sir" we bash the puto's car with a baseball bat dot dot dot then lose the Loyola scholarship and wind up selling cars for Charlie Clark. Gotta go, I'm on a break
Great story, but we wonder why Mayor Tony Martinez gives favor to Cesar de Leon, a racist and bigot who sits on our city commission. We are amazed at stories outside of our community, but allow this bigot and racist to make policy for this city. Shame on you Brownsville City Commission for not taking action against this Hispanic racist....and a lawyer to boot...double jeopardy.
Si. Pinche de leon no tiene verguenza
Pobre de sus padres
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