Even Castaways Can Blossom

Chapter 1

Even a cast away can blossom. When it is raining and I go through a desert and I smell the greasewood weeds that are abundant there, I reminisce about my childhood.

I come from a very dysfunctional family. I am the illegitimate child born to a Mexican Indian mother and an Irish American father. I only saw my father once when I was about nine years old. I look a lot like him with reddish blond hair and blue eyes, nothing like my mother’s dark eyes and completion. At an early age my mother gave me away to my aunt and uncle. She could not stand to have me around because my father left her.

My uncle’s father came from Ireland and migrated to the United States when my uncle was six years old. His father settled in Baltimore, Maryland and later came west to seek his fortune. At one time my uncle had been a very wealthy man; owned a whole city block in the heart of downtown El Paso, a western city in Texas. My uncle was born in Texas in 1866. He married my aunt when she was only fifteen years old and was twenty five years older than she was. It was not a happy marriage as she had only married him for his money; she was not a very nice person. My aunt liked to drink and fool around with other men. They did not have any children.

Years before I was born, my aunt was having an affair and my uncle discovered the affair by mere chance. One day when he was home, a young boy came to the house. He had a note for my aunt from his grandfather, wanting to know when my uncle would not be home so he could come to see her. My uncle intercepted the note and told the boy to tell his grandfather that my aunt was home alone in the house. The man came to the house to see my aunt and when my uncle confronted him, they had some words and started fighting. Earlier my uncle had been working outside with a shovel, he grabbed it during the fight and swung at the man and killed him. He was arrested, taken to jail and charged for killing the man. He was put on trial and during the trial, the judge threw my uncle’s attorney out of the court house. The attorney climbed back in through the window to continue defending my uncle. In the early nineteen hundreds, the court house did not have screens on their windows and it must have been summer because the court house windows were open. My uncle was found not guilty, but it cost him his fortune. He lost most of his money and properties. He then decided to move to New Mexico to start over.

My mother gave me away to her sister, my aunt. My uncle raised me and was very happy to have me as they did not have any children of their own; needless to say I became his pampered little darling.

My first recollection of those times was that we lived in a big house. It had a big front porch and the house was made of a light colored brick. There were several big rooms. It was nice and cool in the summer but quite cold in winter. The house was about half a mile from the main highway. A dirt road ran in front of our house which connected to the highway. There was a general store on the main highway and the post office was on the next block. There weren’t any neighbors close by and all the ranchers lived quite a distance away.

The house had big massive furniture; I especially remember that we had a hutch in the dining room. As a very young child my aunt would put me to work. Since I was too small to reach the top of this piece of furniture, she would picked me up and put me on top. It had a big mirror with a very ornate frame. The frame would get quite dusty and it was my job to clean all the crevices and put oil on it. I had to leave it spotless. The kitchen had a big white wood range stove with a large oven. I liked to be in the kitchen especially in the cold winter mornings. It felt nice and cozy. Winters were very cold and not all the rooms had heaters. On those cold early mornings, my uncle picked me up from my bed, wrapped me in a blanket and carried me to the kitchen to get dressed and eat my breakfast. There was always a fire going in the kitchen stove.

We only had a small ice box, but ice was not always available. There was a man that used to drive around in his truck and sell the ice. The ice was not in bags like today. It was just blocks of ice.

During the winter months my uncle would milk the cows and bottled the milk putting the bottles on the window sill. As it was raw milk, the cream would separate from the milk. This is what was used to make butter and cheese. Sometimes the milk would curdle and my uncle made cottage cheese. We used to look for a weed that had little buds of seed and that was what was used to make the cottage cheese. We always had meat as my uncle raised cattle and hogs. We had eggs because we had hens, turkeys and ducks that laid eggs. Though times were hard and there was no money during the depression years, we always had plenty to eat. We had lots of animals, chickens, turkeys, ducks, goats, cows and pigs so there was always plenty of food. My uncle was a butcher by trade and had his own smoke house so he cured his own bacon, hams and made pork sausages. My uncle milked the cows and churned the cream. We had plenty of butter, cheese, cream, milk, eggs and meat. In fact, I grew up with the impression that if you did not have meat for lunch and dinner, it was not a meal.

On those cold winter mornings, my uncle prepared my breakfast. He would beat an egg white by hand until it held its peak then he added the yolk, sugar, cinnamon and the frozen cream and mixed it all together. That was my breakfast. The left over milk that had separated from the cream was the dog’s breakfast. The weekends were extra special on those days my uncle made hot cakes and he always served it with an over easy egg on top. We always had butter but sometimes we did not have any syrup so he would boil some sugar to make the syrup.

One morning my uncle had a surprise for me. He told me that we were going to the next town to meet the train. I got all excited and was jumping up and down eager to get started. We climbed into our truck and away we went. It was just starting to get dark when we arrived at the train station. I could hear the train chucking down the tracks; I was so excited I began jumping up and down again. I did not know the reason why we were meeting the train but it was an adventure to see the great big black engine coming down the rails. Finally the train pulled into the station. It seemed as if we waited forever. I was very fidgety waiting for the train to stop. My uncle was holding fast to my hand as he did not want to turn me loose and run into the path of the train. I wanted to know what the surprise was.

Pretty soon my uncle was handed a wooden crate. I was curious to know what was inside the crate. As I got nearer, I heard a yap. It was a little puppy only six weeks old. He was jet black, the Heinz 57variety but to me it was the most beautiful dog that I had ever seen. He was shivering and a very frighten little dog. Of course, I immediately fell in love with him. He was a beautiful mongrel, part bull dog, jet black and bow legged. His head looked twice as big as his body. He soon grew some and stood about 15 inches tall. I named him Rover and he became my most faithful companion and playmate. There was no other children close by as the other farms were quite a distance away. During the winter the days were mostly sunny as it seldom rained but there was snow in the winter and it was extremely cold. Sometimes the temperature would fall down to eight degrees and you could feel the cold cut right through your bones. The winter nights were