After some research, i've discovered that grandma Concepcion and stepgrandpa Manuel did not separate in Laredo, Texas, in 1930, when dad met his biological father through a chance encounter. After that meeting, they cross the border and continue their journey south all the way to Romita, Guanajuato where Concepcion was from. They are traveling in two Model T Ford's because grandma's niece and her husband are traveling with them and so is my uncle Rafa, the oldest, who is not at the meeting with grandpa Lupe, for reasons unknown.
In Romita, in 1930, people are wearing those white pijama-looking outfits made of sackcloth and huaraches, like you see in some John Wayne westerns. Dad shows up in shoes and knickers, speaking spanish
with an American accent; of course, the other children laughed at him.
They spent two years in Romita; dad went to school, lost the accent, got himself one of those cool white outfits and started hanging out in shoe shops and carpentry shops, watching and learning. And it's during those two years that Manuel disappears from the picture. They have sold the Model T, the money is gone, and grandma decides it wasn't such a good idea to come to Mexico, and decides that they would go back to the U.S. So, they take as much of their belongings as they they can carry and start walking north; from sun up to sun down they walk and camp out under the stars. It must be a good 900 miles to Laredo from Romita; how long they walked? dad never told me, but they only got far as Zacatecas, maybe 200 miles.
Eventually, grandma concepcion gets discouraged about getting back to Texas, and by 1946 we know she is living in El Control, Tamaulipas, not far from Valle Hermoso, where her ex, Lupe, is living. That year, 14 years after dad leaves Romita on foot, headed to the U.S., he
makes it back to Texas to try to make a better living there. He is 26 years old, has been married 10 years, has three children, and in the throes of a full blown case of alcoholism.
I have heard the story of how dad ran off with Simona when they were both 15 and how they were married on his 16th birthday countless times from him while we worked in the shop, because so much happened just before that and just after that, he used it as a milestone. On their way to Zacatecas, and life there, when they arrived, was difficult; it was difficult for everyone in the mid 30's, but especially for an uneducated single mother of four. There were days when there was no food to be had, and all he could do was try to keep busy all day, waiting to see what his mom and older brother could come up with. When he got bigger and stronger, he was able to join them in the struggle to make a living.
So, he's 15, jobless, pennyless, and he convinces his girlfriend to run away with him? Dangit, that Dominguez charm! Grandma actually reported him to the authorities and they were caught somewhere by a constable and the judge, when he saw that dad didn't have money, sent him to a local farm to work for a week and he got 10 pesos, enough to pay for the marrige licence and ceremony; Simona had spent that week working in the judge's home. Back then, you took a young girl out of her home over night, you paid the piper. The newlyweds were forced to go back to dad's home where grandma was waiting, and she was none too happy; dad said that she just took one look at Simona and turned to him and said: you're going to feed her, 'cuss i aint feedin' 'er!
Nice, grandma, real nice; not even a happy birthday. But dad stepped up, he went to work, and in 1938, when the war started, there was an abundance of work for everyone. Finally, there was some disposable income, that's where the guitar comes in, and according to dad, led to the drinking.
Dad lived the first 10 years of his life as an American. He arrived in Mexico in a motor car, wearing shoes, and speaking english and spanish. But because of their poverty, for about the next 10 years, they lived in adobe huts with no electricity or running water, scratching out a meager living from this beautiful, but hard, land. The way my father told it, being poor in 1930's Mexico, it might as well have been the 1830's. This life is what i think made dad Mexican through and through.
Dad drank all through his 20's, but so did i, but from my calculations, i did not drink even one eighth of what he consumed. In 1946, when he got back to Texas, he was in and out of jails in the valley, i assume for public intoxication, he was never that specific about it.
10 or 12 years ago, my half brother, Arturo came to visit dad a few times; it took a little getting use to seeing this 60 year old man hugging dad and calling him papa. Arturo told me that dad basicly abandoned them, but he understood it was the alcoholism; his brother, Max, though, had a more difficult time forgiving dad.
Eventually, dad was brought before a judge who cared enough to try to set dad on the path to sobriety; instead of going to jail again, he gave him the option of going to a facility where he might get some help. Dad said that something inside his head clicked that day, in that courtroom, he saw someone who was trying to help him. He accepted and was taken to the mental ward at a San Antonio hospital, that was where they treated alcoholics. There he was dried out, brought back to health, given some therapy, and got set up with AA. That was the early 50's, in decade of the 70's, on two occasions i saw him fall off the wagon two times, a few years apart; the last time, the worst of the two, he stayed drunk about three days and then he asked me to drive him to clinic that i'd never heard of, in Wichita Falls, where they dried you out and gave you vitamin shots to get you back on your feet. I guess i was about 17, and that was the last time.
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