The students at the university had mostly gone home to their other lives until the next fall. Longed-for days of summer stretched into day-in, day-out routines. As children in the mid-1960s, my siblings and I played outside within the confines of a gated, chain-link fence behind our home. So long as the boys (mainly my brother and cousin from across the street) were with us, the sisters could go to the local park and hang out.
One summer afternoon, I was finally allowed to ride my bike somewhere besides up and down our street. Ten minutes out on a route restricted to known streets, we heard the familiar sound of an air horn from an approaching train. The crossing was only three blocks from our home. But Lynn and I got close to watch the train go by. The dead end road we hoped might take us there was parallel to the tracks. I had not yet explored a path at its end by myself, but as we were two, now was the time. We egged each other to go fast enough to clear the top of the uphill, dirt path heavily framed by trees. An accomplished tomboy, no older sister was going to beat me to the other side. But what we found as we broke through, was no train. With abandoned sections of railway so overgrown by dried grasses between the ties, we knew we wouldn’t see our train from here.
We paused, straddling our bikes and taking in our deserted surroundings. On top of going missing and becoming part of local lore, we could catch hell for even being here. When the train’s horn blew its loudest, a figure appeared from among the grasses on a dead stretch of track. His clothing was from another time—what a railroad worker wore—loose and faded shirt under cloth overalls and a distinctive cap, yet not quite an official uniform. The dark-skinned, older man held a rusty, lit railroad lantern; the kind used by brakemen for signaling in low light conditions. He stood slightly hunched, at an angle to us, looking down the track swinging his light from side to side and signaling no one. Time stood still for Lynn and me as we watched in total awe, unable to exchange even a glance. When the sound of the train was upon us, getting louder as it continued to pass, the interruption snapped us back to our wits. We spun our bikes around, half-mounted the seats, and struggled to keep our feet on pedals spinning out of control. The dirt hill was now on our side and we made it out half-expecting to be grabbed from behind. Was there even a train? We weren’t definite on that; we didn’t see one. But the brakeman’s ghost? Now on that, there’s no question. All the way home, we described the ghost in the most clear details to firm up our experience and then never to speak of it again, except with each other. But yeah, we told everybody.
That was my only visual encounter with a ghost. Seeing one is very unsettling when it happens because you don’t know whether to trust your eyes or your mind. A sighting can continue to replay for days. In a story, ghosts can hold your attention, even if the tale doesn’t seem to hold water. These days, as I research my family’s genealogy, I am looking for a different kind of ghost. So far, none have appeared to me, nor entered my dreams that I know. Instead, my interest has more to do with discovering what drove them—the events in their lives.
What were the reasons some left their homelands and others stayed, dealing with hardships and turmoil not of their making?
Upon first hearing their names, growing up, I had little interest in stories about our distant relatives. They were from another land and time, with unfamiliar names. Both of our parents worked so the six of us and a few cousins from across the street were, at various times, in the care of our fathers’ Mexican mother. We called her MamaBea and fortunately for us, she never learned English. Adult conversations were in Spanish; and the kids spoke Spanglish until the eldest started school. We really weren’t aware of our ethnicity, even with a Cuban-born father and a Puerto Rican mother. We grew up American. But that’s not our story.
As many kids that were in our house at one time sat at the dining table ready to eat whatever MamaBea could put together for lunch. All sat quietly as she lectured us from the stove side of the kitchen. One story we heard many times was that her family was poor and many days she had to climb orange trees to secure her lunch. The message was that education is the way to a successful life, and also we should never waste food. That would have been great if she ever made tortillas, tacos or typical Mexican fare. Many meals however, were served out of family-sized cans, like Dinty Moore, Libby’s, Campbell’s soups and Chef Boyardee. It wasn’t long before a tableful of could-be listeners became one. I didn’t want MamaB to pop her head out of the kitchen and find her audience was off playing. So lots of times I stayed the longest, but mostly because I was trying to shrink the stuff on my plate. Her lectures got repetitious with time. Who wants to hear about days gone by and old relatives you’ll never meet?
Nobody does—until you do.
After moving out of state for the first time, I began writing down whatever details I could remember. During visits I sometimes jotted notes on the back of an envelope, or the margins of the day’s newspaper as I gathered more family history from my mother. I would process my notes much later, as time allowed. Our grandparents had the richest stories to tell, but their young audience at the time wasn’t having it, and they have since passed away. Some of the details were easily recalled, while others got filed away like cold cases. There were enough of the living around that stories didn’t need to be memorized. Someone else would surely recall even if you didn’t. But when too many think like that, the end story becomes fiction.
A close aunt celebrated her 100th birthday last month. She was a professor of Spanish literature and biographer of the poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez ; she was the most academically accomplished member of our family to date. There were photographs of her during her first year and many throughout the next ninety-nine. Her long life has been well documented. It’s for the earlier generations of those who were here before us that I search for now. Something besides birth and death dates, which alone don’t give any information about the energy of the soul that lived in the span of those years.
There are many historical films in which events and eras in our history are re-enacted. But when we learn of those same scenarios playing out during our ancestors’ times, they enrich us as we discover how their lives created a path to ours. Sure MamaBea—her given name was Maria de la Luz—fixed lunches and was the law in my childhood home. But what fills my thoughts about her now is the spirit of the life I never knew: the young woman who took the last train to Veracruz, Mexico, as the Mexican Revolution began, leaving all that she knew of her family’s farm.
