Why a Chicano Roots Trip?
I can still feel the bitter sweet taste of freedom and fear I experienced sixty years ago when I was eighteen and made the decision to go on a “roots” trip. I was determined to check out relatives on my father’s Zacatecas side who lived in a mountain town called Juchipilla. In summer 1965 I would attend UC Berkeley as a freshman in the fall. I was the first to make it out of high school from both sides of the family and it was a dream come true for me, but first I wanted to escape from Richmond. I’d read Kerouac’s stories of being on the road and I was ready for my own road trip. That spring I saved about $150 from my work at the public library where I was a book shelver and another hundred from selling eggs and doing odd jobs. The odd-jobs around the hood taught me survival lessons, to placating and feeding ill-tempered guard dogs to delivering food and supplies to some very old people, folks my age these days.
Prepping
I decided that summer not to work the vineyards as I felt the need to be on my own and to see a different part of the world where I could wander and wonder without interferences or expectations. I also needed to get away from my father as we had been avoiding each other for most of the previous year. My mother had gotten fed up with my welder father and his macho ways. He was peaking as a successful immigrant, making good money as a welder and blowing it on gambling, heavy drinking, and womanizing. He gave my mother enough to handle the house but she was tired of his male shit. As her firstborn son she made sure that I knew of his bad habits, including his gambling habits and trysts with other women. In fact she took me one evening to see him walking out of one of his women friends apartments and after that we didn’t speak for months. So, that summer I broke away as I was ready to explode with anger and testosterone.
I had prepared for my odyssey by devouring piles of books about foreign places, including the conquest and history of Mexico and the America to the south of the US. I was especially intrigued by my readings of the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Incans—these rarified cultures based on cruel gods and blood letting rituals who could mark calendars spanning millennia and map the stars as they raced towards the emptiness that awaited all matter. I wanted to walk, run, ride busses, take trains, and go by whatever means to some of the locales where they had lived and died. I also wanted to know about my father’s people better and to see firsthand if any of the ancient drives were at work in his homeland. Until that sixteenth summer his people were mostly unknown to me except for his brother, my Tio Ysidro’s family. They survived as country farmers living in Cucapah (another story), an ejido just south of Mexicali. It was my time to get beyond Baja and to do it on my own.
I left on my roots trip the first Monday after school let out. I had not spoken to my father about my trip other than I hoped to be gone for at least a month and would try to visit his hometown, Juchipilla, and meet his two older sisters. The night before I left he asked me how much money I had and I told him that I had about $250. He gave me another hundred in fives and tens and told me to stay away as long as I needed to and that we would talk after I returned. He was gone to work the next day when I left as the sun rose. I remember that morning mom was in tears and said she would pray for me daily until I returned and that I should always trust my instincts and not do anything foolish. I kissed her and said that I would trust my instincts and run from any trouble. I didn’t tell her that I had an army dagger in my makeshift backpack that I had picked up at the army surplus store and had also packed a few things to help me if things got rough, including some things from my Abuela.
My two sisters in their pajamas came out to say goodbye that morning. They both hugged my mother as they asked me why I was going alone to Mexico without them. I told them I would return soon, bring them each a special souvenir, and that we would travel together to Mexico in the future but for now I was going alone to find more of myself. I don’t know if they got it but they kissed me and returned to my mother who tried her best not too look scared about my roots trip. My brother James was away in Calexico with my Abuela for the summer and I told mom I would try to stop by to say hi to them if the road took me there. It was a very interesting start and more on that in Part Two.
