Two were openly armed. Oakley had a hunch about what they were going to request. County officials, local businessmen and certain union men had been visiting companies to ask the owners not to hire Mexicans. Of course, they never claimed they represented any government agency or private company. They were there only as private, concerned citizens. They explained that hard economic times required emergency measures, and that the shortage of jobs demanded that companies hire local Americans, citizens.
“We know your crews have Mexican boys working. Oakley, we’re askin’ you not to hire aliens.”
The well-dressed, tall, obese man stopped talking, placed both hands on his cane in front of him and leaned forward. He seemed to be catching his breath. Oakley recognized the large man from the newly elected Mayor John C. Porter’s office. The three men had not introduced themselves. They had simply barged in and started talking. As the men spoke, Oakley’s hands caressed the mahogany desk. What magic did this desk possess? Oakley thought.
The huge man’s face turned red, and his eyes squinted on hearing Oakley’s response.
“We’re not hiring! Today I had to lay off a group of long-time workers. I might have to completely shut down a few projects.”
“Just remember, when you need to hire again, hire only real Americans, no Mexicans of any kind, no aliens.”
“Tell them to go back to Mexasshole!” one of the armed men standing against the wall shouted.
The obese man straightened his arms and pushed his upper body away from Oakley’s desk. He slowly made his way toward the door. He paused and looked back at Oakley. “Thank you, Mr. Rivers. I know we can count on you.”
Outside, the car engines revved up, and Oakley and Albert heard them drive off the Boyle Heights Yard.
“Why did they do that?” Albert asked his father, who sat pensive, now feeling the leather inlay on his new magical desk.
“They’re afraid of losing jobs. It’s not going to get better for anyone.”
Oakley’s thought, unfortunately, became fact. Citizens or not, residents began to understand that the economic downfall had deep roots and that jobs would be scarce for a long time to come. Men and women who had lost their jobs got up in the morning to walk the streets in hopes of finding work for a couple of hours, half a day. A full day’s work would be a miracle. People not only lost jobs but, as the months went by and the cash disappeared, those who owned a car sold it to buy food for the family.
Day after day they walked. Some men covered the entire city searching, hoping for an hour of labor. A few dollars would make the wife happy—able to buy bread, ground meat, onions, spaghetti, canned beans, milk and fresh vegetables.
“Hey, you Mexicans, don’t bother—there is no work for you here!”
“I only have jobs for whites.”
ONCE IN A while, white men walked into Mexican barrios hoping that maybe someone there needed help working on a car, cleaning the house or the yard, any kind of work would do. Men were more than willing to work for a few handfuls of beans, some rice, a couple of ears of corn, some tortillas. There came a time when outsiders wandered into Mexican districts and noticed the yards were planted with large gardens. Those who crossed the bridge to East Los Angeles often got lucky. They slowly walked by the houses, stopped at the gates and stared down at the gardens that covered the many front yards of houses.
Mexican housewives glanced out from their kitchens or living room windows and saw tired, sad-eyed men staring at their fruitful gardens. The men would invariably lean over a fence to get a better look at the rows of vegetables, pots with tomatoes, green beans, peppers and many more vegetables. They kept walking barrio streets, leering jealously at hundreds of pots and boxes with live food-bearing plants and trees. In every free space rested a receptacle for fruits and vegetables. Some of these men were fortunate.
“Yoohoo, you, Señor gringo!”
The man turned, chuckling at the greeting. At noon the East Los Angeles sun shined directly down upon the man and two women who stood in the middle of a garden. He squinted, unable to make out the women’s faces.
“Are you hungry? ¿Tiene hambre?” The two women spoke in one voice.
The sunlight fell directly on his face. There seemed to be one woman now. From out of the blue, gold, orange-yellow bright light appeared a woman holding out a grocery bag.
“It’s not much. Tortillas, frijoles, calabacitas y tomates para usted y su familia.”
The man took the bag, unbelieving. He thought he understood what the woman had said. He reached into the bag, finding exactly what the woman had described. He looked up, but she was gone. He returned to the fence and once more leaned over and stared at the variety of vegetables abundantly planted and thriving there in the middle of East Los Angeles. He opened the bag again. It felt heavier, making him think he should immediately return to the small one-room efficiency apartment he had rented for his wife and three children. After selling the car when the time came, it was easy to sell the house, but now that money was about gone. The bag felt even heavier now. He held it against his chest and headed home and stopped feeling so sorry for himself. He ceased repeating in his mind the thought of why did this have to happen to me?
The weight of the bag made him lean forward and walk faster. He sensed that he was getting stronger. He had to get stronger, for the bag seemed to have even greater weight. He suddenly realized that he was running, that he was healthy, and his wife and children were healthy. He suddenly leaned against the door of the apartment he had rented a few days earlier. His wife opened the door, helped the man place the heavy grocery bag on the kitchen table.
“You’ve been gone all day. You must be tired. My God, this bag holds so much food! Did you finally work?”
“No, I crossed the river. I found a garden. There a Mexican woman appeared. The sun was bright. I couldn’t see her face clearly. She handed me this bag. She said it was food for you and the kids. That’s what I understood. I think I ran all the way back, all the way home!”
From the bag the children excitedly pulled out tortillas, rice, beans, a small bag of sugar, coffee, eggs and chorizo, fruits and vegetables, and a bottle of milk. For an instant, the bag seemed like a bottomless store of food for the man’s family. He embraced his wife and children.
“We are going to be fine. Things are going to get better for us all.”
On the east side of the river and in other Mexican communities throughout the Los Angeles area, Mexicans held together and survived the difficult economic times. Often, many were generous with strangers who wandered into the barrio looking for work. The neighbors made sure they at least left with a bag filled with food. Mexicans were able to live a rasquache, hard-scrub lifestyle, which allowed them to overcome the lack of jobs for the men. The Depression equalized and made every man vulnerable. Men throughout Southern California got up in the morning and set out in search of work. They took any kind of labor. Pride was not needed during those times of desperation when the priority was to feed their children and themselves. The men worked in the fields and orchards, on small farms tending animals, on big and small construction jobs that lasted a day or two. They worked as handymen at menial home repairs, and on the Long Beach and San Pedro docks unloading sometimes dangerous cargo. They happily took whatever the day offered, anything at all. No job was worthless. The men said yes for money or food. The women cleaned houses. They made, mended, washed and ironed clothes. They took care of children and elderly and invalids and sick people. They washed dishes, cooked meals in the hidden kitchens of restaurants. They unpacked and hung clothes in department stores. They worked in hundreds of factories and sweatshops scattered throughout the city and county of Los Angeles. In the afternoon, like their men, they crossed the bridges, drove the highways, rode the buses and the trolleys to return home with everything they had earned: money, chickens, rabbits, seedlings to plant or pot in their gardens. While calls increased not to hire Mexicans, to cut them off from any kind of public help, and to repatr
iate or deport the aliens who took jobs away from the real Americans, the gardens in the Mexican barrios became more productive.
OCCASIONALLY, ALBERT AND Louise traveled with Sol to visit his friends who lived in the many barrios in the San Fernando Valley. Sol went often to the home of a friend who owned approximately ten acres in the center of an old barrio near Van Nuys. Consentido Hermano Rincón had inherited forty acres from his parents. He was the only child of the Hermano Rincóns and therefore did not share property and wealth with any brothers or sisters. Consentido never knew his family on his mother’s side. Once his mother, Ceritzia Hermano, left La Rosa del Trinoro in Tuscany, Italy, she never returned or heard from her relatives. Consentido often expressed how sad it was that he knew nothing about his Italian relatives. The same destiny fell upon his father, Don Elegante Rosario Rincón, who came to California from a small farm in El Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California del Norte. Don Elegante and Ceritzia had met at Guadalupe Catholic church in Santa Ana, California. They were married there a year later, about the same time they accepted an invitation to go for a two-day trip to San Fernando to look at properties for development. Don Elegante and Ceritzia wanted to get out of what they considered to be a fast-growing and overcrowded city area. They both desired a large portion of land on which to build a house, plant fruit trees, corn, vegetables, raise animals and have children. They found forty acres of flat land filled with old oak trees and with a pristine fresh water stream flowing down from the foothills and making its way to the Los Angeles River. The couple purchased the land with funds that they had saved independently. Ceritzia had rented a room from a family in Santa Ana, and worked washing and ironing clothes in an industrial laundry. She also took care of the landlord’s children, and Ceritzia became part of the family. Don Elegante had always worked as a carpenter and overall handyman. He liked to boast that there was nothing that he could not build or repair. “If I can build or make it, I can repair it” was his motto. He made out very well doing exactly what his motto declared. Don Elegante always had a job and was never without money.
The couple moved to their forty-acre parcel at the end of the rainy season and immediately set up a tent, an outside kitchen and an outhouse near the stream. The next day they both went to the nearest lumber mill, purchased wood, cement, bricks, windows and doors to begin the construction of what Ceritzia called Il Castelluccio, which took about five years to complete. Within a mere three months, Don Elegante had built a small cottage consisting of one bedroom, a kitchen with storage, and a living room with a brick-and-stone chimney. These rooms marked a corner of what eventually became Il Castelluccio, designed from Ceritizia’s memories of her home in Italy and raised with the carpenter and mason’s skills of her husband. The final product was a magnificent Italian Renaissance-style castle surrounded by ancient oak trees in the middle of forty acres of undeveloped land that nobody wanted. During the construction of Il Castelluccio, Don Elegante always found time to take on outside jobs to secure their financial well-being. As he methodically shaped their home and brought in cash from outside jobs, she planted the garden around Il Castelluccio. Ceritzia’s fruit orchards and plots of vegetables, corn and peppers became so productive that she hired several men from the nearby barrio to work in the fields and orchards and to take the produce and fruit to the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, where they immediately sold.
“Where is this produce from?” the buyers would ask as they admired the freshness and quality of the fruits and vegetables. Ceritzia’s workers looked at each other until finally one responded, “From Il Castelluccio, sir.” Il Castelluccio became Ceritzia’s brand name, a trademark that guaranteed fresh, high-quality and timely produce. Ceritzia was Il Castelluccio, and for everything she produced that carried her brand name, she demanded and received a fair but expensive price.
On several occasions she prepared food for several ailing elderly neighbors. To cook a full-course Tuscan meal she took the ingredients to their houses. She enjoyed spending an afternoon with them and getting the old couples to linger and reminisce. She, too, shared her stories about her childhood in Italy. The neighbors gathered to listen intently to Ceritzia’s reminiscences of Tuscany, the medieval cities of San Gimigniano, Siena, Montalcino, Pienza and, of course, her memories of her family and Il Castelluccio, the family house. Tears of regret would streak down her cheeks. Why had she not reestablished contact with her mother, father, brothers and sisters? What had become of the people she so dearly loved?
During one of her dinners, an elderly guest’s daughter came by to see how her parents were doing. Upon catching the aroma of the bread and the pasta, the fish sizzling on the outside grill, the daughter decided to stay for dinner. She was so impressed with Ceritzia’s meal that she hired her to cook for her next dinner party. At first Ceritzia resisted, but the woman offered to pay an exaggerated price. Ceritzia countered with what she considered to be a fair but expensive price. From that point on, she had invitations to cater dinner parties, baptisms, quinceañeras, bar mitzvahs, weddings, funerals, birthday parties and simple dinners for two. Her dishes were considered extraordinary but simple Tuscan cuisine. Il Castelluccio and Ceritzia were Tuscany, and those who could were willing to pay the price to support the rich heritage of Il Castelluccio and Ceritzia Hermano Rincón.
The year Don Elegante started to build Il Castelluccio, Ceritzia and he constructed four wooden pergolas starting about twelve feet from the main well and extending in four directions, forming a cross and the center of a mandala. At the foot of every wooden beam Ceritzia planted a grapevine. She bought a variety of vines from winemakers near Santa Barbara and purchased as many grapevines from vineyards in the Valle de Guadalupe, the winemaking area started by Jesuits at the end of the seventeenth century, located where Don Elegante was born in Baja, California. From the pergola hung Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo and Chardonnay grapes. The land and the weather seemed to be amenable to planting vines, and Don Elegante and Ceritzia decided to cultivate about twenty acres of vines. By the time the United States went dry at midnight, January 16, 1920, Don Elegante and Ceritzia uncorked the finest bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon produced at La Rosa del Trinoro Winery. Like everything else they produced, the wine was of the highest quality. The word went out that La Rosa del Trinoro had excellent wines. The orders for cases came much faster than Don Elegante and Ceritzia could produce them. They established a wine club, and everyone who could afford the high price wanted to join. The couple, of course, did not discriminate against clients. If you had the money and the patience, you were on their list. Nonetheless, the most important members of the club were the Catholic churches in the area that offered the priests and their large congregations an exclusive contract to purchase wines solely for their religious rituals. From the start, La Rosa del Trinoro Winery produced as much wine as the grapes, crew and time permitted. As the popularity of their wines grew, Trinoro planted more acreage and hired more workers to tend to the vines. Don Elegante was the winemaker, Ceritzia did the accounting and organized delivery of the cases ordered. And people from throughout Southern California came to buy wine in person. Prohibition was in place, but the purchase and consumption of alcohol did not stop. People frequented speakeasies and defiant saloons that never stopped operating. They drank as if the world were coming to an end, and to many it had. Booze was not difficult to get, and one of the principal sources for quality wines was La Rosa del Trinoro Winery. All over the state, police and dry agents simply ignored the workings of honest winemakers while going after crooked purveyors of alcohol.
Consentido enjoyed bringing wines to the Rivers family, especially on occasions when he could talk to Sol about the building underway at the winery. Both men considered themselves guardians of enchanted structures raised on energy-centered land. Now, about thirteen years later, Sol still thrilled upon entering the grounds of Il Castelluccio, its winery and magnificent gardens. He always invited Albert and Louise. They never said no to the opportunity to s
pend the day exploring Il Castelluccio.
IT WAS STRANGE that the highest point of the enforcement of Prohibition coincided with the peak production years of La Rosa del Trinoro Winery. It was during this time that Don Elegante and Ceritzia both fell ill, and their bodies changed drastically. Don Elegante’s bones and flesh slowly diminished, almost becoming invisible to the people who loved him. Ceritzia’s body went the other direction and grew large, as if it wanted to crush and suffocate those who loved her. Don Elegante ate well, never lost his appetite, but still he lost weight and strength. When he finally admitted that there was something wrong, he went in for many medical tests. After the results came in, Consentido drove his parents to hear what they dreaded most. A terrible cancer had struck Don Elegante, and the only hope of prolonging his life was a radical operation. Upon listening to the options the doctor offered, Don Elegante refused all treatment. On the drive home, now knowing what he had, the sensation of pain ever so mildly made him adjust his seating position. He had noticed that at times his testicles had swollen, but he attributed the cause to ejaculation, as when he was a young man. He would never allow the mad Russian doctors to neuter him, to cut everything away. They wanted to carve him up and leave him like a woman, he thought. He cringed as he imagined the cancer eating away at him and spreading throughout his body, consuming cells, tissue, blood, organs and bone. When Death entered his house, Don Elegante never left his bed. He refused to leave his beautiful Ceritzia’s side, declaring that he would make the Reaper wait as long as he could.
Ceritzia’s path to paradise was one of immensity, of growing larger, of becoming grossly obese. The doctors were baffled as to why she had gained weight so quickly. Unlike her husband, she slowly lost her desire for food. Into the second month of her illness, weighing close to three hundred pounds, she hardly ate. She drank water and, eventually, seeing no end to her battle other than death, she drank bottles of the wine she had become famous for. For breakfast, lunch and after her four o’clock tea, for dinner she drank—slowly of course, a bottle or two of Tempranillo—because she felt closer to God drinking the wine of the holy fathers and nuns of the Church she dearly loved. Priests and nuns came and prayed every day for her recovery and, finally, her salvation. Yet Ceritzia’s body never stopped growing. By the sixth month of her agony, not of pain but of the burden of trying to move her body, she began to swell with water. The doctors could not find what was causing the rapid and massive growth and now the water retention. Ceritzia’s extremities, especially her feet, grew larger and larger until they burst. Her toenails separated from the skin. The flesh opened, causing profuse bleeding. She lay in bed for days, weeks and months until, finally, she fell into a merciful coma that closed her brain from the pain and putrefaction of the huge, infected bedsores that eventually caused her merciful death, which was unlike Don Elegante’s; he struggled with terrible pain and fought off death by screaming blasphemies right up to his last breath. They died together in the original bed and bedroom of Il Castelluccio that they loved so much. They died moments apart. Ceritzia passed the threshold first, while her husband alternated lovingly calling her name and screaming in agony, cursing Death and the Almighty. His last words were coherent and clear. Facing his beloved Ceritzia, he called out: “Ceritzia, wait for me! ¡No me dejes! ¡No me abandones!”
River of Angels Page 22
