Having a Meal at the Smorgasbord
Life was getting harder in the summer of 1933. Rafael and Gabriel were now out of school for the summer and normally they would go with their father, Catarino, to weed the cotton fields south east of Nuevo Laredo, but that was being delayed this summer due to the drought. Salvador, the oldest brother had gotten a job at the warehouse loading sacks of grain on trucks and railroad cars. Maria de Jesus (Chita) had gotten up early to wash clothes that Saturday morning. Antonio was shining shoes at the “Plaza” and would make a couple of trips to the “Otro Lado” (the Texas side) to deliver some “things” later that evening. Rafael and Gabriel had watched him take his clothes off and put them two logs tied together on top of a sack of “merchandise” he was to deliver. They never knew what the “merchandise” was. Daniel, the next oldest had gotten a job as a delivery person, helper and clerk at the large store in town.
The two kids, 8 and 9 years old, had gotten up and had plans to earn some money to go to the movies that night. Chita was in the back by the water faucet washing clothes in a bucket and there was nothing to eat but some left over tortillas and a few beans in the pot that Salvador had left that morning, not enough to satisfy two hungry boys. Their plan was to walk down the river and collect the bones form carcasses of animals and sell them to the fertilizer factory on the other side of town. They both had their burlap sacks and some twine and would have them filled with bones by early afternoon. Two sacks would bring in about sixteen cents, more than enough for the movie tickets, two “funnels” (made from newspaper pages) of pastry crumbs from the bakery, piece of candy and some money left over for later. They went to the faucet where Chita was washing and had long drinks of water from the running water. “You kids should drink coffee from the pot in the kitchen instead,” Chita yelled at them, “at least it’s boiled.” The kids paid no attention and left the house to get a meal at the river “smorgasbord.”
In the U.S. John Steinbeck was getting ready to comment on the effects on farmers from the drought and erosion that manifested itself in the Dust Bowl that affected most of Texas and Oklahoma, as well as New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their farms and migrated to California and other states where they found economic conditions little better than those they had left, because of the Great Depression. Steinbeck would document these in his books “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath” some five and seven years later. The “double whammy” of the Great Depression and the drought had affected a lot of people on both sides of the border, and along with other tragedies yet to come to the family, it affected the Rivera-Gaytan Family in Nuevo Laredo. Catarino was beginning to look at options to move to Monterrey; the big city where there might be a better chance to find some jobs.
The river bank on the Nuevo Laredo side of the border served several purposes: It was home to hundreds of homeless people; it was the garbage dump; and it was the smorgasbord of the poor. Since there was no official trash collection in the poor neighborhoods, people simply dragged their trash and threw it in the river. Most of it floated away out of sight. Up river, in the large farms of both the Mexican side and the Texas side, farmers dragged the carcasses of dead farm animals, casualties of the drought, and threw them in the river. All Rafael and Gabriel could see in these floating carcasses was money for the movies. They would go down to the bend where some of these floated on shore and collect the bones they needed.
For the two boys, the river bank was a play-land paradise. In reality it was a slum where people were forced to live in the worst of squalor conditions, many of them living under a lean-to made with materials from the “dump.” Community sharing of food did seem to be well organized. There were fires everywhere many of them had pots (large cans) of boiling coffee, much less for the few coffee beans they used to make them, but more for having some boiled “purified” water to drink. Other people had various meats cooking over fires. There were always several pigs roasting, large sections of beef on makeshift spits, some had goats cut in half and spread out in a stake over the fires. Other people had large cans of beans boiling and to the kids they smelled wonderful. All this food, of course was the result of it being “borrowed” from farms and warehouses. No one would complain or cared if they took some and it was shared with all that needed. The police had other problems and never bothered the residents of the river bank. People would help themselves when the food was cooked and there was enough to go around.
Rafael and Gabriel dipped for some coffee with their cans, walked further and got some well-cooked pork and beef from several places all the time making their way to the southeaster side of the “community” to where they planned on harvesting their bone booty for the movies. They were so used to the smell of the “community” that they had forgotten the smell of the rotting carcasses. There were several “older” carcasses laying around and the skin and “meat” had been picked by scavengers or rotted on the bone and could easily be scrapped off. The fertilizer factory would only take the bones and those with meat they would value less. They filled their burlap sack by noon, tied them to a bandanna from material they had found on the river, and carried them on their backs with the bags being supported by their foreheads - that left their hands free. They proceeded to carry them way across town fighting the loose dogs with their sling shots. The bones were irresistible to the dogs and they needed both of their hands free to protect their booty.
They got 18 cents! They were rich! They ran back home to get ready for the movies. When they got there they smelled so bad that Chita sent them out to the faucet with some soap to get rid of that smell. She stopped them half way out the back door and sent them first to take the garbage to the river. They got back, washed and changed into clean clothes, the only other set they had. Every year the kids would get two shirts and two overall pants for school clothes. The ones they had were getting a little short and the tares that were mended by Chita happened before last Christmas and one of the straps in Rafael's overalls was tore off completely . The eight months of wear, with the ground-in dirt and grime from two kids playing had really shown in their “clean” clothes. They wanted to treat Chita to a movie but she said she needed to go to the store and meet her friends – code: check out the boys at the plaza and be checked out by them. The boys shared 5 of their 18 cents with her for shopping and Chita hugged them. They left to the movies without a care and happy and satisfied with the world.
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