Cream Puff Pipe Dreams

It was exhilarating when my father bought a wonderful cream-colored 1953 Chevy with curves like a voluptuous real Latina woman—full and round. Finally, we had a nice car and it was only 4 years old! Soon enough, my father was forced to use this cream-puff to literally whisk us away and move us out-of-town, an unbelievable feat for the likes of us. Our family had deeply-entrenched roots in our hometown of mezquites; we weren’t going anywhere (nor did we have the money to do so). We couldn’t even take a tempting quick ride to the sea and sand of Corpus Christi 30 miles away, yet once in a while my father would daydream that we would someday move to Portland, Oregon, light years away enel norte. We were not like some of the Kingsville Chicano families that followed the crops around the country; we were settled and stationary. Nonetheless, Apá (father) imagined a scenario that would transfer him to another job within the Missouri Pacific Railroad system in a faraway land. It was hard to believe we could possibly break away, but eventually my father was compelled to pull those raíces and shake off the Kingsville-earth when he got bumped in 1957. That meant he was laid off from his job, but was able to take another person’s position with less seniority. No hubo nada más que hacer. He had to chase down another job even if he himself had to take someone else’s job possibly in another town. It was the Year of the Dog, in other words, “dog-eat-dog” time. I’m sure it was traumatic for my parents; I, on the other hand, thought it was a wonderful turn of events. I was going to see the world! I had been a prospective “wanderlust” groupie for a while; I wanted to see stuff I’d read in books and seen in the movies. No one could wipe off the grin inside my head.

Mid-summer, we gathered all our garritas and rode out of town in a cloud of smoke and a hearty “Hi-yo, Silver” flight of fancy. That world waiting for us beyond those familiar trees would be wonderful, I projected. We traveled—my mother and father, and my brother Tuye and me—north on Highway 77, slicing Texas in half, farther than we had ever been before, passing town after little town with old houses lining the sides of the road, smiling at our good fortune. About mid-trip, the road and the terrain started to take on a different look. The squatty mesquite trees from our past faded away in our dust and our fumes. We started to see lofty trees—pine trees I had never seen before. The road would go up, up, up and then it would take a big dip where the cream-puff could coast without burning any gas. The road took us up and down, up and down. This was new for Chicano flatlanders—as we went up we couldn’t see anything but the pavement with a yellow stripe in the middle. Then as we rode the crest of the hill, I could see what I thought was the edge of the world—I could see all the way to the horizon in the distance—I could see what I thought were mountains beautifully outlined by a blue ridge on top. I was enthralled with these blue-ridge mountains. But as we got closer and closer, the mountains soon evaporated and turned out to be piney wood tree tops that vanished into an ashen-gray haze—a shadowy haze that matched our tenuous fairy-tale cream-puff pipe dreams.

We arrived at our destination: a sleepy little town called Taylor, in the Texas Hill Country loaded with signs flaunting Polish names crowning their businesses: Adamski’s, Zelinski’s, Palowski’s, etc.¹ They were so proud of their names—I didn’t get it—I had never heard of them before in the barrio, not even in books. “Es un pueblo polaco,” said...