Growing Up in La Colonia

Boomer memories from Oxnard's barrio

Margo Porras, Sandra Porras

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781439667309
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

La Colonia is half a square mile of land separated from the rest of Oxnard by the railroad tracks and home to the people who keep an agricultural empire running. In decades past, milpas of corn and squash grew in tiny front yards, kids played in the alleys and neighbors ran tortillerias out of their homes. Back then, it was the place to get the best raspadas on Earth. It was a home to Cesar Chavez and a campaign stop for presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. As one Colonia native put it, "We may not have had what the other kids had, but we were just as rich." Through the voices of the people, the authors share the challenges and triumphs of growing up in this treasured place.

CHAPTER 1

THE WAY IT WAS IN LA COLONIA

“It Was Our Whole World”

What I remember about the Colonia is that it was our whole world. We literally lived on the other side of the tracks. We were not isolated, but we were insulated, like an island that has a boat to cross to the other side.

It was the center of everybody’s life. Everything was there. Everybody knew everybody. It was a complete life. I did not realize what I was missing, what was lacking. On TV you noticed people had other things, but our life was complete. On our block alone there were nine of us kids in our house, a family next door with ten, another across the street with fifteen. Our world, the kids’ world, was the street. We made up games, played in the dirt, made our own stilts. We created our own world. We had everything we needed.

That’s how Colonia native Ofelia Rodriguez remembers the barrio where she and her eight siblings were born, on the little block of North Hayes Avenue (usually referred to as Hayes Street), near the lemon orchard in Oxnard, in the late 1940s.

A decade earlier, another family arrived in La Colonia. They moved onto the block behind Ofelia’s home. A series of misfortunes had cost them the home they’d always known in Arizona, and like many American families of Mexican descent, they’d come west as the Great Depression ended.

Librado, the father, had come out to Oxnard first. Once he found work, he sent for his wife, Juana, and their remaining children: Richard, Cesar, Rita and Vicky. The family had already lost a daughter, Helena, before leaving Arizona. After arriving in La Colonia, they endured many more hardships. The couple’s younger son, Cesar Chavez, would remember his first winter in Oxnard as the worst of his life. In Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa, Chavez shared his first impressions:

House on Garfield Street, La Colonia, 2018. The Chavez family lived behind this house in a storage shed in the late 1930s. Photo by author.

Oxnard is a damp, foggy little town near the Pacific ocean about fifty-five miles north of Los Angeles.…Winter in Oxnard is wet and cold. When it isn’t raining, the fog pours in thick from the Pacific, leaving drops of water on everything it touches.

…Though farm workers were harvesting vegetables and fruit, hunger was constant.…Some families survived on nothing but beans and fried dough, or perhaps just fried oatmeal, or dandelion greens and boiled potatoes.

…When we found the little house in the barrio, we piled out of the car to explore our new surroundings. A weathered fence around the yard turned that shack into a fort. That’s the way it was in La Colonia—many houses in one lot, very small houses, and lots of people in each house, unpaved streets, no lights, no sewers, just outhouses. And every house had a fence.

Oxnard neighborhood, 2018. The roads, sidewalks and unfenced yards are much as they were by the 1920s. Photo by author.

McKinley Street, La Colonia, 1947. Unpaved roads with new sidewalks, background. Before then, every house needed to have a fence for safety. Courtesy of Bungalow Productions.

For most of the twentieth century, La Colonia was, in many ways, decades behind the rest of Oxnard. By the 1920s, the other side of the tracks had broad paved roads, sidewalks and homes with electricity and indoor plumbing—amenities not extended to the barrio.

IT WAS A WONDERFUL LIFE

Manuel Muñoz, who was born in La Colonia in 1939, recalls life in the barrio in the years during and after World War II:

Pearl Harbor was bombed in ’41. The whole western United States was afraid that the Japanese would bomb the West Coast. All the villages on the coast were on alert. During the war, my father was an air raid warden; they had blackouts. We had kerosene lamps, and we had to put a black curtain on our windows. No sidewalks, no paved streets, no asphalt. We had boardwalks. I remember running around with shoes that had holes in the bottom for a long time.

We would go around and make sure everybody in the Colonia had their curtains closed, that there were no lights getting out. We had a big old siren to alert everybody. We’d practice getting under the table and so on, in case a bombing occurred. I used to walk with my dad. I was a tiny guy.

It was dangerous; you know why? We were surrounded! We had Port Hueneme naval base and we had Point Mugu, and so on. We were a target.

It was hard times getting back up on our feet after the war. We had to ration stamps; a loaf of bread would cost twenty-five cents. Milk cost ten cents a bottle. We survived, but it was interesting because it was the only way you learned about life itself, during a crisis like that.

You know where Rose and Colonia Road meet? There used to be, way back then, a big pipe that let out a bunch of water from farming areas. We used to call it our old swimming hole. It’s where you’d go to get cool when it got hot. The water pipe is still there. There was a eucalyptus tree right next to it. We used to tie a rope around one of the branches and hang on old tires and jump in.

We’d play hide-and-go-seek underneath the houses. There were spiders all over the place! And we’d chop wood for our wood-burning stoves.

Absolutely, we had an outhouse! We had one until 1950, more or less. We used to have a lot of bedpans, too. With ten of us in the house, it was a lot. Can you imagine that? So, if you wanted to go to the bathroom at night, you had to get the lantern, light it up and then go outside and go for it.

We collected blue chip and green chip stamps, and we’d turn them in for some prize. All we had was radio; we didn’t have TV yet. I loved the westerns like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Tom Mix. We used to have county fair parades, and celebrities from the world of westerns used to come. We were happy; I was anyway. I loved everything.

It was quite interesting, actually. There was a togetherness of life. We helped each other out: “What do you need? Okay, come with me.”

Neighbors among Colonia wildflowers, Oxnard, 1940s. Courtesy of Martha Muñoz Rodriguez.

La Colonia Boxing Gym, now located within the old firehouse, has turned out some formidable figures in the sport’s history. Photo by author.

IT SMELLED SO BEAUTIFUL

Robert “Bob” Herrera, who owned Bob’s Market, also remembers the barrio during the war years:

We didn’t know what segregation was. That’s how our mentalities were. I just love everybody, I don’t distinguish. When others do, I say, “No, we are all children of God.” It’s not right [to discriminate], you know?

I remember las lámparas de queroseno, cuando levantaron, así [the gas lamps they’d light when they got up in the morning, like that]. We didn’t miss it, not having electricity. We’d go to bed early anyway.

In our family’s case, we didn’t play in the street. Our Aunt Jessie was very strict. She used to keep us in the yard, but it was wonderful. She would take us to the five-and-ten-cent store, the Woolworth’s here in Oxnard, on Saturdays or Sundays. She’d buy us the orange slices, loose candy, which I liked. She got us hooked on those. She was a wonderful lady.

When there were no sidewalks or streets en La Colonia, it was clean. I remember my grandma, my mom, everybody would get up in the morning and sweep the street, sweep the dirt. But it’s a blessing, you know why? Because they put water to keep the dust down, and the dirt smelled so beautiful. See? It’s God’s creation.

IT WAS A LOT OF FUN

Ofelia Cabral was born on First Street in La Colonia just before World War II. She recalls many fun times with the neighborhood kids during the 1950s:

We played out in the street with all of our friends. The Colonia was a nice neighborhood. All the parents had a lot of kids, so we had a lot of people to play with. At night in the summertime we would all go outside and play tag. We had a lot of fun when we were young.

When we started growing up, we would go out to parties. We used to go in bunches, not one-and-one; all the girls would go and all the boys would go. It was a lot of fun in the old days. Out on Cooper Road, the cars would drive up and down, and the girls would walk along the streets and the boys would pick up the girls. We would go down to the park then back up Cooper and down to Hayes. It was the same route all the time. That was a Saturday night hangout. That’s what they would do.

The parties, we would go to people’s homes as they would do in those days. They didn’t really drink. They used to dance, and we used to talk with each other. All the girls would hang out together. It was a lot of fun.

Colonia house party, Oxnard, late 1950s. Courtesy of Martha Muñoz Rodriguez.

LITTLE BY LITTL...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction. “Or the Colonia”
• 1. The Way It Was in La Colonia: “It Was Our Whole World”
• 2. Home, Food and Family: “There Was No One Else Like Us”
• 3. Called to Serve: La Colonia Joins the Ranks
• 4. Work: La Pisca, but So Much More
• 5. Unrest, Activism and Progress: “Aggressive in Spirit”
• 6. Roberto: “Due in La Colonia”
• 7. The Churches
• 8. School Days
• Epilogue. Chiques
• Bibliography
• Recommended Reading for All Ages
• About the Authors