photos: our live/work spaces in Arvin

Entrance to Adobe Plaza and Veterans Hall is on Acala Street between 4th St and Bear Mountain Hwy.

Main entrance to Arvin's Veterans Hall

Inside Veterans hall

Adobe Plaza is a series of buildings around a lovely courtyard, non-working fountain and a stretch of very green grass.  Adobe Plaza and Veterans Hall are enclosed together by a fence.

The Dining Room- connects to the kitchen (just left of the green floor in this picture) -- aka "The Nest"

Our Kitchen at Adobe Plaza

Varsity Road House where some CTC staff will live in Arvin.

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.

Will in December

Will's notes from a week (-ish) long visit to Arvin & South Kern County

December vineyard

Monday (12/19)
Played pool with the men of the Rasmussen Senior Center. They berated me often for being from New York (i.e., watch out people, he's just hustling us, he's from NY!). Outside the center afterward, I spoke with Larry Rasmussen who shared stories about growing up poor in Arvin (specifically about being too embarrassed to bring his teacher to his house).  

Tuesday (12/20)  
Attended a City Council meeting where drastic budget cuts were considered and, later, adopted. Also at the meeting, the members of the We the People Team asked the City Council to fund their team jackets. Although the City Council denied funding the jackets, the attendees in the meeting, spurred on the Mayor, volunteered to donate money, and the money was raised. The impromptu community philanthropy reminded me, and many others at the meeting, of the final scene of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Wednesday (12/21)
Co-facilitated an interview with three men whose families came west during the Dust Bowl (Larry Hallam, Wayne Schlusser, and Don Burkett). The interview was co-led by young people from South Kern Sol (Andy Garcia, Gibz Moncayo) and Coordinator Luz Peña. Gibbs' excellent notes from that meeting are attached to this report. In the middle of the meeting, Supervisor Karen Goh happened to stop by, and was so excited by the work that we were doing that she left and came back with Rafael Moreno, the Branch Supervisor of the Lamont Branch Library. After the interview, Mr. Moreno showed us the extensive collection of Dust Bowl history housed in the library, including binders of Government Migrant Camp reports which he opened to a page that said, “today John Steinbeck bought ice cream for some of the camp residents.”

Interviewed Mauro Lopez with the support of translator Javier Arreola. Mauro talked about his journey north and his first days in Arvin.

Thursday (12/29) 

6:45 a.m. Breakfast with Gabriel and the men of the Dust Bowl at the Westchester Bowling Alley in Bakersfield. Heard stories about: the German prisoners of the POW camp, who worked in the fields alongside one of the men‟s mothers; experiences of discrimination against Okies at the Fox Theater in Bakersfield; an arrival in Weedpatch at Christmas Eve; and a man whose father worked in the fields so early that he would have to light the rows by his headlights. W.C. Stampes insisted that I see the Huell Howswer video about Weedpatch, and berated me that I hadn't done so yet. Also said I should read Elizabeth Strickland's book about the Dust Bowl.

8:00 a.m. A brief game of pool at the Rasmussen Senior Center in Oildale. Don Burkett said that he'd be happy to set up a meeting with his aunt, so we could learn more about the strike at the Digiorgio Farm (although his dad took part, he was too young to remember it). I asked W.C. Stampes what was inaccurate to him about the portrayal of Okies in Grapes of Wrath, and he didn't name specifics, except for that Steinbeck called the camp “Weedpatch” instead of “The Government Camp,” which is a personal pet peeve.  

9:45 a.m.: Had breakfast with Gabriel and Karina Gutierrez. Karina is an Arvin High School and UCSD graduate, and performer with Kaiser Permanente‟s touring theater program. It was a fascinating conversation about race, politics, and theater. Karina's goal is to get a PhD studying Chicano theater. She'll be in Arvin next summer and is excited to participate in any way she can.  

11:00 a.m. Met with Salvador Partida, local activist. He spoke to Gabriel and me about his work in the community, specifically on the issue of clean air. The Committee for Better Arvin, of which he is the Chairman, is doing community-led air monitoring through “the bucket brigade” and the BHC youth group is also participating. He also spoke about the small-town mentality of Arvin, which he said has prevented a hotel, a Wall-Mart, and other services from being brought into the community.  

1:00 p.m. Attended last part of BHC training led by Victor Mehia, of Youth Leadership Institute. Mr. Mehia was training the young people on community organizing and advocacy techniques, in support of their agenda to create a community park.  

3:30 p.m: Met with Alberto Perea Calderon, who came to the U.S. during the Bracero program, along with South Kern members Clara Bruno and Andy Garcia, and South Kern Sol Coordinator Luz Peña. The meeting was set up by Luz, and took place in the Bakersfield home of Mr. Calderon. It was a moving meeting, in particular the description of the centers in Mexico where Braceros were processed or, as Mr. Perea described them, “concentration camps.” He described men waiting in long lines, scratching their palms raw with dried corn cobs (rough hands were considered signs of experience in the fields, and thus more advantageous for acceptance into the program), men having to strip naked and sprayed with “DDT” to get rid of pests (I question that it was DDT, but this should be researched), and in general being treated as animals. His father was also a participant in the Bracero program. 

Evening: Met at Bear Mountain Pizza with Gabriel Garcia and two of his classmates at CSUB, Mónica Martinez and Sue Calderon. Mónica has been very involved in theater, and is the person who got Gabriel involved. Sue is a very close friend. It was a very fun night, filled with many stories of what it's like to grow up in Arvin. Mónica spoke about her love for Arvin, about the many sacrifices her parents made, and how proud of them she is for that – she spoke in particular about growing up without any money, but never feeling poor. There were also many funny stories about weddings (how big weddings are in Arvin, and how both Mónica and Sue dream of a small wedding, even though their parents would never allow it) and the unique bond between mothers and daughters in such a small, Mexican-American town.  

Friday (12/30)  
9:00 a.m. Interview with Ana Maria Arreola (mother of translator Javier Arreola), Jim McKee, and Wayne Beavers, two men in their seventies who were migrants from the Dust Bowl era. Ms. Arreola spoke about her family driving west from Texas to work in the fields, in a crowded car that broke down in Arizona, where her mom made tortillas by hand over a home-made grill. Much of the story reminded me of Dust Bowl migration stories. She also spoke about her life in the midst of the UFW struggles. Particularly moving was her memory of serving as a translator during the main community meetings of the UFW during the summer of 1973, which took place in the Lamont Park opposite the Boys and Girls Club. Mr. McKee spoke about his life in Oklahoma, and his struggle to make a living. Particularly moving was a story about a man coming to his father's farm and offering to sell him a nice truck for $700, but that, even if his father sold his land, his house, his horses, and everything he owned, he couldn‟t come up with $700. Mr. McKee said that he always dreamed of buying a nice truck and bringing it home to his father.  

12:30 p.m. Interview with Gabriel's mom and aunt. They spoke about the village where they lived in Mexico, and their mother, and specifically talked about the day that Gabriel's aunt had to tell her mom that she was leaving for the US. The conversation was rushed , and had to take place at their mom's store in the main plaza of the town. They also shared details about the days of working in the fields and balancing child rearing, and going door to door at around 4:30 a.m. with “baby burritos” (babies wrapped in blankets) asking for neighbors to watch their children so that they could go to work. 

5:00 p.m. Visited the Boys and Girls Club, to attend a planned pot luck for members of the South Kern Sol group. It was unattended, except for Andy Garcia and (briefly) Clara Bruno. I stayed anyway and saw selections of Andy's video of the interview with Mr. Calderon. I also was able to spend time with Amerika Niño, who grew up in Lamont, then went to NYU, and now is back to support her home town. 

7:30 p.m.: Attended a drama class reunion thrown by Sheila McClure, the former drama teacher at Arvin High School. She's a legendary teacher and the students of those years are still remembered in the high school. In attendance were a number of folks who might be interested in participating the project: Araceli, who has significant experience as a Stage Manager in community theater, and would be interested in helping out in stage management; Paola, a community organizer and activist who lists as her occupation, “activist, actor, student, runner;” Jorge Guillen, a muralist and spoken word artist who is on the board of the Arts Council of Kern; Gerardo (Jerry) Kern, who does set design and set construction for local theater; and several others. Paola spoke about her life as an undocumented student, and what it has meant for her as a person and activist, and also why her father did not picket with the UFW; and others spoke about their experiences with race, class, and being at Arvin High. It was a very inspiring night. Additional notes: Ruben Carillo, not present, is apparently an enormously gifted musician and composer, who has orchestrated whole musicals; and Sheila‟s husband, Randy Lollar, is an experienced actor with an MFA in acting.

Saturday (12/30) 
Visited mural by Jorge Guillen in Lamont: it's a strong piece that embraces 4 walls surrounding a single intersection, including an image of Zapatistas in front of a pastel landscape.  

Paula in December

Arts Council of Kern has arranged for a community-engaged visual arts project in Garden in the Sun, one of Arvin’s main parks.  The project is part of the California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative in South Kern County.  The two artists involved are Hataya Tubtim and Michelle Glass, both graduates of Otis School of Design worked on the 2009 community project in Laton (Fresno County).  I’ve been talking with Hataya about our shared goals and overlapping practices in community engagement.  They are just getting started with their outreach and we are a little bit ahead of them.  They invited us to a meeting on Friday December 16 with friends of theirs—the parents of an Otis colleague—Maria and Sam Mercado.   Their meeting at the Mercados’ home in south Bakersfield was more of a party than a meeting.

Maria and Sam immediately became 2 of my favorite people by telling me that Waking Up In Lost Hills was one of the best theater going experiences of their lives—on a short list with Zoot Suit, The Pointer Sisters' production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, and Angela Basset in Fences.

We ate delicious pozole with tostadas and salsa verde.  We drank cerveza and/or margaritas made with juice from backyard lemons.  For desert we had Cuban coffee, guava pie from Café Tropical (our contribution) and fresh Mexican fruit candy.

Maria Morales Mercado and her husband Sam, & José Morales- head of Migrant Education for Kern County & Maria’s little brother all grew up in Arvin in the 60s & 70s, José’s wife Laura who grew up in Bakersfield.  Blanca Cavazos, chief instructional officer for Kern County Superintendent of Schools, also grew up in Arvin and also was Principal of Arvin High School for 13 years.

Jose & Laura Morales, Sam & maria Mercado

Hataya and Michelle had a meeting in Arvin late that afternoon and it went long so they were rather late arriving.  So Will and I had plenty of time and opportunity to talk with all these guests about their experiences in Arvin and ongoing opinions and insights.  Sam told a detailed story of the one time he went to a farm worker protest.  Maria talked about her family’s move to the US, following her father’s move north in the Bracero Program.

Maria is littlest on left, José in Mama's arms, Keene 1962

José answered some questions from Hataya about migrant ed and about Grimmway Academy the new charter school in Arvin.  He confirmed the same thoughts that it’s existence in his opinion is a vanity project of the Grimmway Farms family, that it’s a rejection of the school district, that there’s an elitism about it though he didn’t really explain that very well.  Maria commented that the school is on the property where the old cable company used to be and the cable company jacked up prices for Spanish-language channels.

Will and I ended up staying an hour or 90 minutes more than the other guests talking about their recent visit to LACMA and the Mexican art they’d seen there, their daughter Marisa’s recent wedding and the ethnic history and transformation of indigenous people and Spaniards in Mexico.

On Saturday, December 17, we led a workshop with a group of youth journalists that are organized through the Dolores Huerta Foundation.  All the same participants we’d met before were present plus a few who were absent last time.  We had 11 participants including Gabriel Garcia and Luz Peña, the supervisor for South Kern Sol.

Pablo, Will, Clara, Gibz, Andy, Lizette, Miroslava, Luz, Gabriel

We had the participants make lists for themselves of the communities they belong to as well as of communities they were interested in and individuals in their own communities that they are curious about.

We did a wagon wheel exercise using the discussion topics: Share an experience when someone made an assumption about you based on your culture or community.  Share an experience when you made an assumption about someone based on their culture or community.  Share a story about how you met your first friend.  Share the background and story about the oldest object in your home that you can hold in your hand.  The conversations tended to be very short and the share back was not very fruitful.  In retrospect, I’d have had Will and Luz sit out so that Will could listen in on the story sharing as it was happening.

Will led an exercise designed around the idea of interviews and personal story collection to be translated into a performed presentation.  Working in partners, one person would tell a personal story of arrival.  The second person listens then asks questions about content and details which the storyteller answers.  The storyteller tells the story again including the new information from questions.  After listening to the second telling, the partner then performs back that story to the teller, in the first person as if it is his/her own story.

The exercise is then repeated with the changed roles for the partners.

This seemed a very successful exercise.  One of the youth responded to the call for a volunteer to perform their partner’s story.  There was discussion about what it was like to speak someone else’s story to them as if it was your own, what it was like to hear that for the story owner, etc.

We then inquired about their interest in doing interviews, accompanied by Will and Luz, that would help Will gain more content (and relationships) for script inspiration.  A plan was made for two outings to talk with “recent arrivals” in town on Monday night.  And, on Wednesday, to have the youth interview the Dustbowl gang of friends that Will has been talking to.  (This latter idea evolved after the Monday night event.)

After the workshop we stopped by Arvin High School to see what was going on with the We The People team.  They usually work all day on Saturday in the library there.  But they are headed into finals and Christmas break so they ended their study session early.  When we arrived though we sat down with a  small group working with Dr. Jim Young and they talked with us for awhile about the work they were doing and had done so far.

Dr. Young is in his 80s I think.  He and his family were Dustbowl immigrants.  He is an AHS alum and former teacher.  He started the We The People program at AHS and even though he is retired and he still is very dedicated to helping train the team.  Dr. Young is an amazing person in so many ways.  His dedication to Arvin’s youth and understanding of the challenges they face is remarkable.  Justice is important to him to say the least. 

He explained about the differences between the AHS team and the other consistently high scoring competing teams.  The other winning schools have API scores about 9 (out of 10).  AHS’s API score is 2.  The other teams tend to have multiple national merit scholars on their teams.  AHS has had one national merit scholar in many years.  Many of the AHS team are competing in a language that is not their first language, so while they are fluent English speakers they do not have the advantage of having been speaking it and listening to it their entire lives, therefore the sentence syntax and vocabulary and in some cases diction often require extra practice and preparation.

After the four kids in the work group left we were joined by four other students who were happy to stay and talk with us about their experiences with We the People and beyond.  The team won a recent competition and are working toward the state competition which will take place in Bakersfield on February 11.  These guys were amazing.  At AHS you have to be a senior to be in We the People, so it’s a brand new team each year.  Some people work toward joining the team throughout grades 9, 10 & 11.  Others learn about it late in the game but still try out/audition.  Grades in government and history class are factors in qualifying for the team and the kids work hard to qualify.  There can be no more than 30 members of the team.  Once on the team the students work after school every day and all day Saturday.  They all seemed to really want to be there and to want to do the hard, focused work it requires.

All four boys have colleges that they’ve applied for though they know they might not be able to afford to attend.  After an inquiry from Dr. Young each of them shared about their economic status.  3 of the boys said they do not feel poor.  They have what they need though there is little to no extra and they have the support of their families.  The fourth boy said he feels poor. His mom says they are poor and they do not have money for rent and food.

It was a remarkable conversation with these 5 people.  Dr. Young would tell stories, sometimes monologue for quite awhile and the boys stayed present and interested the whole time.  They seemed to enjoy the conversation and being asked questions and thinking about their own and each others’ answers.


Will and I attended a Christmas Play/Pageant at the Catholic Church in Lamont that evening.  One of our journalist friends, Veronica, had really encouraged us to attend.  “I think you’d really like it,” she told Will.  Partly because there was a ‘Mexican” version of The Night Before Christmas.

The performances were by the catechism students (extra curricular Catholic class rather than attending a Catholic school) of all ages.  It was a classic hot mess with terrible sightlines, broken overhead lights and sound system that harmed more than helped.  Gabriel Garcia met us there.  We were a little late and, mostly on my urging, we left early.

Will returns to spend Sunday night thru Wednesday night in Arvin and will be back in Arvin the week after Christmas for more interviews and conversations.

- Paula Donnelly, 12/20/11

photos: in Lamont

From intersection of Weedpatch Hwy and DiGiorgio Rd, looking South East.

One section of community mural on Segrue Rd in Lamont.  Young people have planned the content and are painting it, organized through the Delores Huerta Foundation.

Jorge, a local muralist is working on a commission around the block from this.  He told us that someone started this painting on a Lamont residential wall.  When questioning police learned the art work was unpermitted, the artist abandoned the Virgin without finishing her face and hands.  Within days though, people brought her flowers and offerings and prayers.