Notes from Dec Interviews - by Gibz

South Kern Sol
Notes from Meeting with Will on Dec.21 : By Gibran “Gibz” Moncayo  

Questions:

1. How old were you when you got here?
2. How did you travel or get here?
3. What is a fond memory from you or your parents at that time?
4. Where did you live at?
5. How where the conditions in which you lived?
6. Where did your family and you move from?
7. When you arrived what did you see?
8. What was the feeling you got once you arrived?
9. How was school here?

Wayne was seven when he arrived here, born in Oklahoma. Larry was born here, named by his father a C.I.O. (California Improved Okie). Don was nine when he arrived, born in Oklahoma. 

Don: During Fourth or Fifth grade, I went to Digiorgio Farm School.  New comers would go to camp 5 and after secure employment you would move up to camp 8.  Rockpile school changed name in 1946 to Digiorgio Farm School. Camp 8 was box cars, due to insulation it was hot, they were train carts, two side by side and one in the middle. It had two bedrooms and one bathroom they were in a row, "it was the first time I've seen hot running water and toilets that flushed.‟  Each had ten units.  Our swimming pool was the reservoir that was there. What I remember was the National Geographic in 1938 or 1939 the big Arvin national Poppy spread.  Camp 8 had a sink and running water. Camp 5 is where you established yourself as an employee.  A blanket split the box car.  Camp 8 is where everyone hoped to be and wanted to be.  In 1946 I graduated from Digiorgio Farm School, my dad got fired at that time for union activity, and we moved to Lamont and started high school.  We always had chickens, so that meant eggs and fried chicken, potatoes farmers had on their land.  I was in the diaper crew, which is when you work when you're 12 and work during the summer. I worked in the potato farm and you had to cut that off the plant.  Marcus camp was one the camps for the Mexican workers in the Bracero Program.  The first thing I remember seeing was the white wolf grade, coming down Highway 58, the most spectacular view of the lush green valley and the check board patterns in at the cross.   At 8 years old I didn't have feelings, but as long as my mommy and daddy were there I would say it was good.  Star light room was where the dump was, sand hills. Males worked most of the year; and females work in the summer, go through asparagus, corn, apricots. Females would have 8 hour days, and they would take pride in what they did, the best of them would be floor ladies. Swampers started working at 16. “He shines like a dime in a goats butt.” 

Larry: I always heard of Camp 8 it was famous “main camp.”  I remember bringing 200 Poppies and 300 Lupines home.  Rockpile was where we shot doves; we (my father and us) would go to play there for a couple of hours.  It would cost a gallon of gas and it was great recreational past time.  Moving from Digiorgio to Lamont is like a whole different world. When I see a man with a wife and 3-5 kids it takes me back to 1937 and 1938 that was a beauty.  There are more similarities with Okies and Mexicans than there are differences.  Indoctrination of Mexican students in 1980s and 1990s is horrible oh poor me, we went through the same thing you guys went through.  Discrimination was subtle, because there were so many of us.  Union thugs, the people that would not quit for the excuse of working.  Farm worker's house had a black maid, they had fridges not ice boxes [not like us] and it was full of food which was unbelievable.  There was no differences in in school much, small farmers had 500 acres. It was misnomer, we were never starving, was it meager?  Yes beans and taters was what we ate a lot of.  My mom paid bills and whatever was left was for food.  We had 500 rabbits and daddy was going crazy.  I remember telling my dad, Dad I‟m proud of you.  Why aren't you proud to be called and Okie?  "Well son because there is always four to five adjectives in front of it."  I was eight when I picked cotton.  At 45 my dad became a bartender.  My uncle Buddy loved picking cotton. I wasn't a great cotton picker. I remember a guy wanted to charge me five cents to empty my sack.  I climbed the rickety ladder and emptied out myself, and then I got a coke and a chocolate bar for fifteen cents,  [that‟s when I learned the value of hard work.]  I was one of nine boys, my dad came from a family of 15 and my mother from a family of 12, Don was only child till he was 20, which is very weird and rare.  "Boles"-- it's when you start picking cotton but from the roots up, grabbing everything, and then there‟s cotton picking when you do it correctly. 1955 is when cotton picking was over with.  Even if you were a poor migrant and they appreciated your work they stayed at a bunk at Digiorgio's house, the men where single though.  Women would work 6-9 months and then draw up unemployment after the peach season.  My mom was a positive woman lived in a tent first.  I was born in Kern General Medical Center.  An Okie dinner is at 12 pm, daddy worked for seventy-five cents.  In 1937 my dad traveled 1300 miles to get a job, came in the back of a pickup truck. Steinbeck traveled with Okies.  He traveled here for a better opportunity.  My daddy cried only twice in his lifetime, one explaining how my sister died because he had no money to pay a doctor to help my sister and when my grandfather died.  “If I could buy him for what he is worth and sell him for what he thinks he is worth I would make a lot of money.” 

Wayne: Digiorgio was the biggest fruit importer, they had 25,000 acres. When I first got here, I saw orchard over orchards of grapes. I lived in tin cabins, each was one room, had a kerosene stove for heating, second woodstove, we had two cabins, my grandmother, grandfather, mom, dad, sister, and me would stay in them. Blankets would make a room. Air conditioning was a breeze of wind. 110 degree heat it was hot in there, you can imagine. It had main bathrooms; I had never seen so many flushing toilets in my life. My slip-n-slide was on the shower floor a concrete slab that was 12x18 or 12x20 feet long, it seemed big but as a child everything looks big.”Y‟all remember when we get our cotton bags and pick cotton till night?” I used to pick cotton, irrigate it, and chop it. I‟ve been here since 1942, I remember Earl Shelton picked 500 lbs of cotton a day. Green bulbs would open up and soft cotton material would sit up on top of it. I would swamp the peaches on to the trailer bed and I would go to the shack and stack them there. I remember we came down the mountain, it was a Saturday and it was getting dark, we arrived at Weedpatch Camp, the music hall always had something going on, met my cousins that took me to the bathrooms, which was like Disneyland to me. In 1942 my daddy sold all his farming equipment and got a brand new Chevy pickup truck that we used to get over here, we had to use a lot of hot patches for the tires. 

All three agreed that picking cotton at age 12 was something good, gave something for youth/kids to do during summer.