Category: family

Another Thought

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Jessie Tellez Garcia (1922-2008)

For natives of Los Angeles, rain is exciting. We don’t have many seasonal changes. Wind and water for a couple months a year remind us of the circular movement of life, even if our nature isn’t as obviously dramatic as in other places. In a few days, when the sun starts to shine, the air will be filled with the energy of millions of sprouting seeds as they begin their new lives. We revel in the fleeting greenery they bring to our usual beige surroundings, our lives once again full of color.

On the second anniversary of my Grandmother’s passing, I think of these things. I still miss her terribly but she is always with me in my dreams and in my memories.

I’ve been listening to lots of Arthur Russell lately. His piece Another Thought is a perfect match for the mood of the day.
[audio:https://chimatli.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/arthurrussel_another-thought.mp3]
Listen here for Arthur Russell’s Instrumentals 1974 Vol. 1
More on Arthur Russell’s disco projects coming this week!

Knowing Eyes

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Esthela, 1936

This photo is of my Grandmother Jessie’s cousin, Esthela. She sent her this photo from Sonora, with a sweet inscription on the reverse. There is something about her eyes, they look very much like my grandmother’s. They are knowing.

Darela Mansiones

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I came across this 8 1/2 x 11 photo of my mother while helping her clean the house the other day.

I hope she doesn’t mind me secretly spiriting it away for use on this blog. It’s such a lovely image, she reminds me of Anna Karina or I think Anna Karina has always reminded me of my mother. No one in my family reminds me of Serge Gainsbourg, that’s probably a good thing.

Perhaps it’s the size of the photo or the starlet affectation of her pose that inspired the joke note to my father (her boyfriend at the time) written on the reverse. Or maybe every young woman that grows up within sight of the Hollywood sign harbors a secret desire to be famous.

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70 Years Separate Our Footsteps

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It wasn’t difficult to find this house in Guadalajara, the former home of my great-grandmother Sara Ybarra Ramos. She never knew I existed and I knew nothing of her until my father shared some family letters with me earlier this year. But now, I have this connection to her – we have both traversed the same pavement, 70 years separate our footsteps.

(Light posting due to a long needed vacation in Mexico)

November 9, 2009

You might’ve noticed the picture now is of a different house. I went back to the house to find more information and to ask around if anyone had information on my family and realized I had the wrong house. It was on the same street and the correct number but the street name had changed. Luckily, the correct house was only blocks away and interestingly, near the city courthouse.

My great-grandmother’s old house is now rented by a friendly social justice lawyer who recently took over the space and plans to rehabilitate the building as it is in extreme disrepair. Neither he nor the abarrotes across the street knew of any Ybarra families in the area. The lawyer did mention something about chocolate…

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Front hallway of the building

The Lucky Banana Pup

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My Grandfather Atanasio, like many other Mexican men was a drinker, a gardener and a tinkerer. Often he would combine all three activities into one afternoon. His inspiration resulted in a backyard of mosaics and fountains (a whole post on this coming soon). Although he passed away in the late 70s many of the plants he grew live on today at the old family homestead, including a great big walnut tree – a favorite of the neighborhood squirrels.

In this photo, he is standing next to what looks like a freshly planted banana tree. Generations of this banana tree live on today, each succession of pups churning out hanging bunches of fruit. This small grove of bananas was divided and spread around the garden, at times the trees were on the verge of taking over swaths of the backyard. The trees are easy to maintain but they do need to be kept in check.

About ten years ago I decided to take a pup (a baby banana plant, they reproduce by sending up shoots from underground rhizomes) home and planted it in a pot. I thought I would carry on the banana growing tradition at my home. I never had a proper place to plant it until I moved to my new place a few years ago. The tree grew tall and flourished, sending up 4 or 5 new pups in one year. I looked forward to harvesting my first bunch of bananas, until one morning when my landlord knocked on the door with a request. She asked if I would remove the banana tree. I told her not to worry the roots were very shallow and would not damage the foundation. She then said Chinese people do not like banana trees and it is bad luck to have the trees growing on her property. As to not offend her and my Chinese neighbors and because it was more a demand than a request, I removed the large banana tree and replanted the pups in pots.

I now have a couple of pups in pots I do not need and would like to keep this banana family going. I’m sure my grandfather received his pup from a friend and so I will continue this tradition. If you would like a banana tree for your garden, leave me a note in the comments area.

Why are bananas never lonely?
Because they hang around in bunches.

Hobbs Battery

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(please click to enlarge)

It’s rare to have photographs of people at work, that’s why I was quite excited when I came upon this photograph of my Grandfather Atanasio in work mode at Hobbs Battery Company. He is the first worker on the left. I don’t know too much about his work at the battery shop. I know he also worked at a company called Smallcomb Electric.

What I love about this photograph is it seems to have captured the various personalities of these men, they look to be so different from each other. It’s almost as if the photo was staged. Who is the mysterious Zoot Suiter in the hat? Most striking to me is the fellow with the upturned collar. He looks to be a heartbreaker or the workplace snake. There is the double-headed ghost man and the White guy stuck in the shop full of Mexicans, perhaps he was the boss? The curly-headed worker filling the batteries with toxic goo looks to be the clown, the payaso quick with the jokes and biting comments. My grandfather is so fresh faced here, slightly dazed as if he slept in a little too much. He was probably the one who’d tsk Mexican style while waving his hand away in a sharp motion and saying “Ay, estas chingaderas!” But in the next minute would crack a smile and think about the beer he’d be having at quitting time.

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My uncle has been cleaning out the last of my grandmother’s things and recently handed me a big Danish cookie tin containing forty years worth accumulation of my grandmother’s junk drawer. In the jumble of rusted paper clips, plastic stirrers and other flotsam was this badge from the Hobbs Battery Company. What a find! I pleaded with my family to never throw any of my grandmother’s things until I have gone through them for this very reason. I imagine this badge was long forgotten.

Little Castles

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My grandmother’s favorite craft/hobby was to construct these little castles from leftover scraps and refuse from around the house. Sometimes her depression era ways would confound and annoy my brother and I but nowadays she’d be rather fashionable. We should be having a resurgence of depression era habits very soon.

She would gather empty cereal boxes, baking soda boxes, oatmeal canisters, toilet and cardboard tubes and the ubiquitous Bisquik boxes that seemed to be everywhere in her house (her breakfast specialty was waffles) and glue them together to form the shape of the castle. She’d then spray paint them whichever color suited her fancy but usually white. From the Sunday Los Angeles Times magazines she’d collect clippings of windows, doors and all sorts of other objects which she would glue on the exterior of the castles. The steeples were made from construction paper. We’d sometimes help her but she seemed to find solace and relaxation in creating these little castles on her own.

Hospital Quiet

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A photo of my great-grandmother Matilde taken somewhere in Los Angeles, perhaps Echo Park. Her heavy coat suggests the photo was taken in the winter.
Although, she died long before I was born, something about her smile seems familiar and knowing. It’s as if I can tell exactly what kind of person she was through this photo: spunky, warm, mischievous, responsible and independent.
She died in her 50s and quite tragically of a heart attack. It was told to me that this heart attack came after she received a error ridden phone bill of an extremely high amount. Her second husband was never told of the phone bill because the family believed if he knew this was the cause of her death, he would have gone to the phone company and killed someone!
I was told they were very in love with each other.

Se Leen Cartas

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Letter dated March 19, 1946, Guadalajara

Among the many insights and discoveries I’ve encountered from the box of long lost letters my father recently shared with me is this letter from my paternal great-grandmother to her daughter-in-law, my Grandmother Teresa. Until I started reading these letters I knew nothing of my great-grandmother, not even her name. I was excited then when I came across the above letter and saw her name, Sara Ramos Ybarra. The V in her beautiful signature script stands for “viuda” my great-grandfather (do not know his name) passed away a few months before this letter was written. Looking forward to uncovering more family mysteries.