TRANSCRIPTION
What type of music did you grow up listening to?
Well, I've always loved old music. When I was a little boy I like listening to musics from the 30's and the 40's and the 50's old country songs like battle of New Orleans and stuff like that. Then, we started listening to the old black music like Michael Jackson. In the 70's I started liking the country music like Glenn Campbell, Bobby Goldsboro, Bobby Sherman, sonny and cher, and after about mid 1970's Elvis Presley of course peter Frampton. When I began my military life, we listened to Flee Wood Mac, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton came back into the picture, and Elvis Presley never left and things like that.
What type of food did you have growing up? Did you grow foods?
Well when we were little we used to pick okra, cotton, and stuff like that. We used to love to go fishing and my mom used to make tortillas and we would put butter on them. We would eat and fries and fried fish and stuff like that. We used to love to take the corn and chuck it and with butter oh it was so good and they still eat that today um corn in the cup, people still eat that.
When did you get your first T.V. and do you remember how you felt?
Of course, it was back in the low 60's and we were living in San Antonio. We had a T.V. that only two channels I think or three channels. One day my dad came home and he said now there was color and there was this film like the one you put on cars like on the window film. It was blue or red or whatever color we picked all the kids picked, because there was bunch of us but everything was one color.
Do you remember shopping and the stores you went to?
Back then there was Pinners, Wilko, Joskies, Sears has always been around, and um Montgomery Ward was around then all of a sudden Wilko's became like Walmart that's about it.
What was your first car?
Uh, my mom's husband (my step dad) he had a 1962 Ford van and by that time I was already in high school and I was in auto mechanics and we went and fixed it up. He let me drive it around. It was real old van like a hippie van, and my mom had a dodge like Married with Children and I used to love to drive that thing around.
Growing up in a small town, what are the changes from then and now?
Way back in the old days we used to get bored and just sit outside and look at the sky. And then drive around and go shoot some rabbits down the gravel roads. We were all little and we'd hop into the car with whoever was the oldest one and we'd all drive around and tell spooky stories.
How did school treat you? Your ethnicity?
Since, I was in 3rd grade I started getting pops. We'd always get pops, all through my high school if you acted up you'd get some pops.
Can you describe a typical day growing up?
Well, me, I've been working all my life so when I was in Junior high I was working at the country club and at a gas station and so every evening after school I'd go home and try to eat something and walk over to the country club. Go work, come home after it was dark and that's about it. I'd see my friends in the neighborhood and when I wasn't working we'd try to play baseball or football.
Like today's society was there any gangs or clan affiliations?
No, you had the neighborhood boys like everyone had their neighborhood. But back in those days nobody did knifes or anything like that. It was just like uh you're mad at the other kids and yall would get together and have bloody noses, but compared to today it was nothing like that. But of course you would read about the Bonnie and Clyde stuff and read about all the gangs in New York and Chicago and all that, but were country boys and we never saw nothing like that.
Was your life like every boys life at the time?
Well, if you mean like uh you have country boys, white people, black people, Mexicans. Everybody was the same, everybody got along and the rich people and poor people. We would work for the rich people and they treated you good. The ones that didn't were usually old white people that didn't know that things were changing you can't treat us real bad. But we used to go into the gas station and you couldn't go in without a shirt or shoes and they didn't have their "no shirts no shoes no service" and it's not like that anymore. But of course, you don't walk in their like that, but that was about the strangest thing.
What was your initial reason on why you went into the military?
My brothers were in the military and cousins and not only that but to get away (that was the main thing) to be different then everybody else.
Why did you agree to do this interview?
Because you're my daughter and if I don't your gonna be mad at me laughs.
