THE WHITE LAS PRIETAS LANDFILL CHRISTMAS TREE

By Juan Montoya

In the days when the city landfill of Brownsville was in the west side of the city adjacent to the Las Prietas neighborhood, some resident of that colonia would scavenge the dump for anything of value they could find.

The landfill, by the way, is now Oliveria Park near to Pace High School.

Some would seek metal, like copper, or iron to sell to local scrap yards. Others would look for anything they could find, with the chance that someone in town may have inadvertently thrown something – like money – in their trash.

Jose Luis and his friends would often go with some adults from the colonia on the weekends and line up behind them as the dump trucks backed up up to the piles of trash and spewed their contents on the ground. Depending on what was discarded by the townies, some of the kids might get a nice present from the refuse. At least, they hoped.


During one Christmas break when the barrio kids had nothing else to do, they joined the regular dump scavengers and waited for the trucks to bring the trash to the dump.

The only indication now that there was a dump there is the large brick incinerator stack alongside the railroad tracks to the east of the park.

Very few families in the colonia had much to celebrate on Christmas. One or two families whose parents had good-paying steady jobs would have Christmas trees or decorate their homes with Christmas lights. On the 25th, very few kids were playing with new bikes or toys out on the dirt streets of the colonia.

And so it was that Jose Luis woke up the Monday after Christmas Day, he and his friends decided to make the trek across the dry ditch and into the dump to see what they could find. Jose Luis' family was poor. His parents worked at a local laundry doing labor and washing the the dirty uniforms of the various businesses.

They had not been able to get the kids much of any presents save for a bag of candy canes and candy mixed in with peanuts and an orange or two. They had not had a Christmas tree at home.
When Jose Luis and his buddies reached the dump at about mid-morning, some of the Christmas trash from the better city neighborhoods was being dumped. There were already throwing away the wrappings of Christmas presents, tinsel, and other holiday refuse.

Then he saw it, a large (six or seven foot) Christmas tree. But it wasn't just any Christmas tree. It was white, an  artificial tree that made it seem like it had been covered with snow. The tree had been thrown away the day after Christmas by some family in town after it had served its purpose. To Jose Luis, it was a godsend.

Las Prietas kids, like others in the city and in neighboring Matamoros, had two chances to celebrate the holidays. If they didn't get any presents on Christmas, they still  hoped that Los Reyes Magos, on January 6, would bear gifts for them. Los Reyes Magos was a holiday based on the arrival of the Three Wise Men who bore gifts for the newborn Jesus six days after his birth in Nazareth. It also gave parents some breathing room to buy the kids a little something then.

He would take it home and celebrate until Los Reyes Magos, Jose Luis decided.
It was not a light load. The tree was actually heavier than a regular tree and Jose Luis pulled it along the edges of the dump and across the ditch worried that he might lose some of the "snow" limbs before he got to his house. He passed by the Velasquez home and then the Cadenas before turning left on to Kennedy Avenue to his house. The Rodriguez next door did have a tree. Along the way,  people in the colonia would stop in their tracks and watch bemused as he labored to drag the tree home.

Eventually, he got there and – to the delight of his brothers and sisters – he propped it up against a corner of the family's rented wood frame house. They cut pieces of colored paper and decorated it as best they could.
They could hardly wait into see the look on their parents' faces when they got home from a long day of working in the laundry.

When the bus stopped from town along Military Highway across from Garden Park Elementary, they all crowded around their mother and father excited about showing them their surprise.
When their parent saw the white Christmas tree with its decorations they looked embarrassed at one another. It was not the response that Jose Luis and his siblings had expected. They knew where it had come from. His father turned around to them and told them they could keep it for the night, but he was firm about telling them that they had to get rid of it early the next morning.

Jose Luis and his brothers and sister were stunned.

Early the next morning, after his parents were gone off to their job, Jose Luis removed the decorations and tinsel from the white tree and slowly dragged it back to the dump.

There, he pulled it to the nearest trash pile and discarded it, walking back slowly to his house. Where he had been careful not to pull it too hard when he had taken it to his house lest the white peel off, this time he merely dragged it along and noticed that when the white spray-painted "snow" was scraped off, there was only bare grey wire underneath.

After he grew up and had children of his own, Jose Luis made sure that his children had a Christmas tree each winter and that they received some present for the holidays. But he always made sure that the tree they got was a live one, and not a superficial white tree like the one he dragged home from the dump that Christmas of his early childhood.