The Refiner's Fire - A Family Story

 The coals of the two room shanty house lay smoldering in the hot Arizona sun.  The day prior was just an ordinary day, the Madison School for education and then home to play in the barrio that was his home.  The shanty house was not much, just a little shade from the blazing sun in the Summer and generally dry protection from the monsoons in the Winter.  But now it was gone and to make the situation worse his older Sister Florinda is in the hospital.  It would be several hours until he learned that he would never see her again in this life.  Her passing marked the first moment of true sadness for the 9 year old boy, a pain that he thought could not be worse.  

Life continued for the small Hispanic family, a new house was found and life slowly returned to normal for young Librado.  His Mom Josefia continued to show signs of great sadness from the passing of her daughter. His Mom was a beautiful woman from El Triunfo in Mexico's Baja Peninsula.  It was in that small town that her Dad worked the mine that was the lifeblood of the small town.  But in time the lifeblood stopped flowing as the mine closed and the family was forced to move.  They ended up in Cananea, a town South of Arizona, where she eventually met her husband Jesus Fernandez.  The Fernandez family was also from El Triunfo and both family's participated heavily in the Army of Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution.  They married in the Summer of 1916 and made their way to a land called the United States of America.  Florinda was born in 1917, making them parents.  Jesus found work in the watermelon fields and together they built a life.  It was not a life that would make the free press, but it seemed beautiful when compared to the war and turmoil that they left behind.  

It was noticed by young Librado that her Mother was getting sick, but at 10 years old it is hard to know what grief is normal.  He would soon learn how normal grief would be in his own life as in the Winter of 1932 his mom became ill and soon passed.  She was just 40 years old.  She died so shortly after Florinda that they were able to be buried next to each other at the St Francis Cemetery.  The white gravel surrounding their graves and other immigrants in stark contrast to the flush green lawns of the neighboring plots.  But Librado did not have time to consider such economic differences, he knew that it was just him, his Dad and his younger siblings.  

Jesus was a strong man, who was not afraid of a fight.  He wore a Stetson hat and wore it well.  What happened to Jesus next is a bit of a mystery, some say he was run over by a watermelon truck and others say he was beat badly at a bar following the receipt of the life insurance policy from his wife.  But what is known is that when Librado visited his father for the last time, his father muttered his last words, esos bastardos, and then died.

At this point the heavy blanket of grief was so ever present that Librado just simply learned to ignore it.  Inside of two years he had lost his older sister, his mother and father.  He was now the oldest and at 11, was in no way prepared or able to manage.  Fortunately a positive wind blew from the West and his maternal Aunt arrived by train from San Diego.  Her name was Manuela, but everyone would just call her Tia Manuela, she was kind and compassionate and took Librado and his siblings and moved them all to San Diego.  An entire chapter of life that usually takes decades to complete was finished in two short years.

Upon arriving in San Diego, Librado took quick to the community and beauty that the city offered.  His Tio Juan Campos, took him and his siblings in without reservation.  They were adopted and his name became Librado Fernandez Campos.  He grew and grew well into a tall and strapping man, he was 6', well built and good at sports.  His time was spent around Barrio Logan in San Diego a predominantly Mexican community.  It was there that he met Juanita Villa in school, they took a liking to each other and lived in the same neighborhood.  But their budding courtship would have to wait as WWII came calling for America's youth.  And one day he went from digging a foundation wall to being sent off to battle in a land that he barely new existed.  The very thing that his parents moved to avoid had once again found them.  He served bravely on the front lines of the Army in Europe.  He felt immense patriotism and was proud of what they accomplished.  Unfortunately, tragedy struck as he received word that his younger brother Manuel had been killed in a plane crash of the Liberator shortly after taking off from Hickman AFB in Hawaii.

Upon return from Europe, Librado, like many other young Vets moved quickly in starting their new lives free of war.  He married Jaunita and then came Eva, Carlos and Elisa.  He got a job at a local trucking company as a union driver hauling fish bones from a processing plant, a job that he had for his whole career.  He bought a house, but quickly sold it at the thought of mowing the lawn every week.  He coached Little League and was very involved in establishing the VFW next to Chicano park, where he served as their first President and Jaunita as the head of the woman's auxiliary unit.

As their kids were growing a knock came to their door.  At the door was Juanita's brother holding a baby with a soiled diaper.  Librado did not care much for his brother in law, but he shared his wife's concern for the baby.  He told them that he was given this baby by a young white woman who said she would be back to get him in a few weeks.  These weeks turned to months and then years, Librado and Juanita adopted the baby and gave him the name of Ron Campos.  

Librado at times struggled with showing compassion, his daughters struggled to connect with him as a loving father, he drank heavily and pushed his son to be a great great athlete and punished him when he fell short. As time went on, Librado and Jaunita had their struggles and Librado made some decisions to find love outside of his marriage.  That love was found with Paula Sanchez a widow with a small family of her own who happened to be Juanita's best friend since grade school.  The result was an epic divorce that sent Jaunita out of the area to a neighboring town of Escondido.  It is hard to escape the gossip of a small community and she must have realized that leaving was the only way.  

Juanita was born in San Diego, the daughter of a Mexican School teacher Nicolas Villa and Augastina Herrera.  Both came from the Sombrerete area of Mexico in Zacatecas.  Nicolas moved to America after being threatened for having the last name of Villa.  During the time of Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution, even a name could be dangerous.  Juanita had a normal upbringing of the time in that community and it was all she knew.

Her world was expanding rapidly as she moved 11 times over 10 years until her and Ron eventually settled in an apartment in Sacramento.  Upon arriving, Juanita took Ron on a walk for 4 miles to a local printing press and got a job, she then walked another 2 miles to another printing press and got a second job before returning home.  For months and months, Juanita made this walk daily until she could afford a car.  She raised Ron like all of her other children, in so much that the blonde haired blue eyed boy did not know he was not Mexican until he was 12.  A ride on a school bus with other young kids is a tough way to come to know that fact.  

Ron did not see his Father much, but they did talk and he did long to live with him at times when times were challenging with his mother.  Perhaps that is the beauty of a distant father and son relationship, both parties get to see the other one without blemish.  A relationship that is lived in part in the imagination of both parties, a place where one can feel absolutely loved and never feel abandonment or grief.  The issues that are difficult to answer are never taken up out of fear of disrupting the perfect.  As Librado aged, this perfect world called to him more frequently and he would visit for weeks at a time.  Like Alice had Wonderland, Librado had 5 acres of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, complete with 3 young cowboy grand kids.  It was perfect, just like it was imagined.

A boy and his single mom will always be a relationship unlike any other, they fight each other and the world for the injustice of their second rate status.  It is a bond forged in the fires of hell, so painful that neither want to look at the scars or even acknowledge their existence.  A single mother cannot live in the objectively perfect, they must live in the reality of the present and fight the battles that neither want to have.  One cannot help but wonder if many of our greatest mistakes, come from our greatest intentions.   The difficult relationship even spilled over into his children and distance was the result.  Yet, despite the loss that both of them had experienced, their was an ocean of love beneath that ice covered surface.  A living testament that still waters run the deepest.

The echo of grief that once was unmistakable to each of them, is now just a hum of its former self, remembered by only those who heard the stories.  The pains that once seemed paralyzing have long been healed through what I imagine and hope to be glorious reunions.  I can't help but wonder if grief is the primary author of imagination.  Through pain comes imagination and through realistic imagination comes the seedling of hope. 

Flood Canyon

The flood carves the canyon

Sorrow in it's force.

Through twist and turn it carves

Grief in it's wake.

As the tempest finally ebbs

Pain in it's ruin.

A new day arises from afar

Life in it anew.

Nick Campos April 2023