About My Father
Wherein Teófilo muses about how difficult it is to write an autobiography and about parents in general and particular, then tackles the issue by first talking about his father's early life.
Prologue
Writing one’s memoirs, putting together an autobiography, is a painful thing. It can also be a dangerous endeavor. It’s painful because one dredges painful memories of one’s past, forcing one to face and make sense of them, and define oneself over and against them. If done in the right way, writing a memoir might be cathartic. If not cathartic, writing them can be traumatic. You want the writing to be cathartic, but rest assured, it’ll also be traumatic.
A danger the memorialist must keep in mind is that the memories thus written may differ in whole or in part from that held by the parents themselves, siblings, other family members, and assorted witnesses. One’s bright memory may be another’s trauma, offense, or insult or vice versa. Memories will not line up all the time for everybody. They might accuse the writer of painting a bad picture of a bright moment, or a bright picture of a horrible event. Also, they might accuse the writer of adding or subtracting events, engaging in either whitewashing or besmirching people's characters, wills, or intentions. Nevertheless, the writer must remember what he or she must remember, being faithful to the memory as well as to the feelings the events or actions caused in their minds at the time, and to what these mean in the writer’s consciousness today. The memorialist, then, must be sensitive but firm, and in the end, unyielding to such criticism and to be ready for the possibility of rupture with critics and detractors in one’s own family.
The challenge increases when one speaks of one’s parents. We’re raised to idolize one’s parents, to see them as godlike, infallible, unchallengeable, and respected to the point of self-denial. It’s difficult to see them as fallible beings, as passionate individuals, endowed with virtues and struggling with their own foibles and frailties. The challenge becomes even more difficult when the memorialist comes to terms with their parents as sexual beings with all the baggage being sexed humans, created for love and mutual self-giving, the sexual condition carries along. The writer has the duty to address his or her parents in their full human dimension and pray and hope the picture he or she paints is a fair portrait of the two who brought the writer into existence.
At least, that’s what yours truly hopes to accomplish, aware as he is to the challenges just described. Please, be merciful to my parents and all my ancestors as you read what I write about them. They did and continue to do the best they could with the lights they had at their disposal. Don’t judge them too harshly and also, please don’t judge me too harshly either as I proceed with my story.
Origins
There is in South-West-Central Puerto Rico a town called Sabana Grande (sah-BAH-nah GRAHN-deh). The town was created in 1813 out of two barrios or “wards” from the more ancient town of San Germán (SAHN her-MAHN), the second oldest settlement founded by the Spanish in Puerto Rico after San Juan. Rugged in part toward its northern limit, the town’s name means “Large (or Big) Savannah.” Savannah is a Taíno/Arawak word meaning “plain.” The name refers to the town’s dominant large plain extending toward San Germán. The plains offered fertile land to grow sugarcane, while the rugged, mountainous sections were given to small-scale agriculture. In that town my father saw the light for the first time, in 1925. His name was Arsenio Vega (+2011).
My Vega paternal line consists, borrowing Abraham Lincoln’s words, in “the short and simple annals of the poor.” On the eve of my father’s birth the 1920 Census listed Don Antonio, my father’s father, as a 45 year old, married mulatto, (a moniker now considered dated and offensive) who lived in the Susúa Ward of Sabana Grande. The census form also described him as an uneducated man hired as a sugarcane field hand. According to Puerto Rican author and novelist Enrique Laguerre (1906-2005), working in the sugarcane fields was a perilous affair. Workers labored for miserable wages; the work itself was tough, under either the merciless tropical sun or torrential rains. Bosses often forced workers to become indebted to them by means of the company-owned commissary system so one can say they worked for nothing. The work was seasonal and when there was nothing to do, workers faced a difficult time of increasing misery. The off-season time was called tiempo muerto (“dead time”) and if the field-hand lacked another job, his miserable life extended until the next active season when he could earn a wage again by working the sugarcane fields. At least, that’s what Laguerre - whom I had the privilege to meet in college in 1984 - narrates in his germane novel, La Llamarada (“The Blaze”).
In all likelihood, my grandfather worked in the mountains during the tiempo muerto, with or for other relatives, as Sabana Grande seems to be ground-zero for my branch of the Vega family in Puerto Rico, as well as for the Nazario, Santana, and Guzmán families. As far as I can tell, Don Santos, my grandfather’s father and Don Ramón, Santos’ father, all worked the land as far back as the first third of the 19th century. That’s where I’ve lost track of my Vega ancestors.
Grandfather Don Antonio was married to Juana María Santana Guzmán. Like him, the 1920 Census lists her as an uneducated mulatta and with no employment - it appears that being a housewife and a mother was nothing for the census taker back then. I have found more documents about her ancestry, one line appearing to descend from an aunt of Antonio de los Reyes Correa Rodríguez, known in Puerto Rico as El Capitán Correa, renowned for his defense of the northern town of Arecibo (ah-reh-CEE-boh) against a British incursion.
Dad was listed for the first time in the 1930 Census. He was only five years old. Don Antonio had moved away from the sugarcane fields and now was a vendedor ambulante or “peddler.” The ones I got to see pushed a large wooden box of a car filled with the various fruits, roots, and vegetables grown in the Puerto Rican mountains. They would roam various neighborhoods, announcing their wares in unique, clipped tones that made them recognizable to their clientele. Children who were old enough often ran to them with mandados, a shopping list in writing or memorized, that the mothers gave the children to purchase produce from the peddler destined for the family’s kitchen and table. Grandmother Juana María now was listed as costurera or “seamstress,” a step up for certain, but also as housewife, now a job recognized by the census taker.
Dad received an elementary education in Sabana Grande. The earliest picture I have of him (below) shows him on the top row-center of his class, crossing his arms over his chest, as in defiance, or perhaps resolve, to leave Sabana Grande as soon as he could.
By the 1940s, things seemed to be looking up. The 1940 Census recorded Don Antonio as a propietario or “owner” of a finca de frutos menores (“minor fruits farm”) and Dad, then 15 year-old, as a “servant boy” working for a private family - the first indication of a Vega family member not working the fields as a primary occupation. The census taker listed their race as “col” which in Puerto Rico meant “colora’o” or “person of color,” meaning - again - mulatto - and not ‘Black” as would’ve been understood in the US mainland at the time. He was further described as “literate, school-attending” young man, and also as an “English speaker” which came as a surprise to me when I first read the record. With his hazel eyes, wavy black hair, and dark complexion, he probably struck a rugged, handsome figure to his many female admirers - traits I didn’t inherit except for the general shape of his head.
Anyway, Dad looked firmly toward the future. He would put his English to good use.
World War II Military Service
The future came in 1943 when Dad enlisted in the US Army at Fort Buchanan, near San Juan. Like many other Americans during World War II, he appeared to have added one year to his age, listing his year of birth as 1924. He had completed his elementary school and was now employed as a “sales clerk.” The Army trained him as a coastal anti-air artillery operator with Battery C, 764th AAA Battalion, sending him, as well as many other Puerto Ricans, to defend the then US Panama Canal Zone. In 1945 he was admitted to the hospital for a brief stay due to a nematode (“worm”) infection caused by either consuming contaminated food, or by absorption through the skin while on duty (or partying) in the Zone’s mostly jungle-like locations. He added still another year to his life, listing 1922 now as his year of birth.
A Lost Sister
It was during his stay in the early 1940’s in Panamá when Dad had his first consequential affaire de coeur. I found out about it in 2006 when I was about to leave on a business trip to Panama City and I called him for advise. The conversation went something like this:
Me – Hey Dad I’ll be going to Panama City on a business trip next week. Any pointers?
Dad – Be careful when you’re there. Girls will see you’re blanquito (“white-y”) and may want to take advantage of you (I doubted it. As I’ve said, I lack his handsome attributes).
– Oh? No worries. Anything else?
– Uh, you may have a sister in Panama - he intoned.
– Really? What’s her name? (WHAT!?)
– Uh, I don’t know.
– OK, what’s her mother’s name?
– Uh, I don’t know that either. I left there sort of in a hurry.
– Where are they?
– They are in Colón (a city, and also a province, on Panamá’s Caribbean coast).
– Colón the city or Colón the province? - I asked, perplexed.
– Beats me - he deadpanned.
– Dang, Dad! If I were to go to Colón, stood at its plaza, and screamed “Who here is the daughter of a Puerto Rican soldier stationed here back in 1943,” how many do you think would raise their hands?
He laughed good-naturedly. We changed the subject.
As it happened I did visit Colón. I didn’t ask people around downtown about the identity of my anonymous sister, born to the (for her) anonymous soldier boy. Such an attempt would’ve been futile and maybe even misleading.
There you have it, I have a sibling almost as old as my mother who may still be living in Panamá, the odds being I’ll never get to meet her. I await a “hit” on my Ancestry DNA record from either you or your descendants. God bless you sister, wherever you are.
Return home for a bit…
Dad earned an honorable discharge from the Army in 1946 as a Private First Class, and as he told me once, he went on to work with the US Postal Service. In 1948 he married his first wife and by 1952 he was already a father of three girls, my elder half-sisters - or just “sisters” because in Puerto Rico we don’t distinguish between half and full siblings - two of whom still live in Sabana Grande, one having passed away not long ago.
Things were looking up for Dad.
The 1950 Census shows my Dad living in Ponce’s Sixth Ward, in a neighborhood called “Pueblito Nuevo” (“New Little Town.”) He lived there with his wife and my oldest half-sister, then a one-year old baby. The census form lists him as a white man with an unfinished 8th grade education; bilingual, and unemployed but that’s not the whole picture, because the form doesn’t record Dad’s continued service with the US Army Reserve’s 65th. Infantry Regiment then (and now) garrisoned in Fort Buchanan, near San Juan. This military affiliation would soon come into play in 1950, in Korea.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Dad’s mother, who’d dropped her first name “Juana” long before and just went by María, also happened to live at the Pueblito Nuevo in Ponce at that time. The Census form lists her as “divorced,” with seven children but none living with her; a white unemployed woman, not seeking employment, and illiterate. Her husband, my grandfather, is listed as living still in Sabana Grande, a retired man of 73 and a “widower.” I can’t explain the designation, or why Doña María saw herself as “divorced” whereas Don Antonio declared himself a “widower” short of him wishing her dead. There must be another explanation.
Nevertheless, Doña María’s move to Pueblito Nuevo would prove monumental as she lived in the same street where my maternal grandparents and their children, including Mother, would move to later in the 1950’s, a convergence that still lay in the future.
I toured the Pueblito Nuevo neighborhood for the first time back in the 1970’s. It was either my maternal Grandfather Don Pedro or my Titi Gloria who took me in a short drive of the area: it was at the time a tight neighborhood of wood-framed, gabled-roof houses, and narrow, labyrinthine streets and alleyways, difficult to drive on. When I toured the neighborhood the streets were paved, but they weren’t when the neighborhood was sprouting back in the late 1940’s. They were at first dusty, yellow-dirt roads.
I saw the neighborhood again in the mid-2000s when I drove through it during a visit. Most homes in the neighborhood were now built from the ubiquitous cinder blocks to “proof them” against hurricane-force winds. Some still kept their zinc-plated, gabled roofs. The streets remained gnarly to drive upon. I didn’t find the old homestead.
Off Again: Second Military Life
Whether Dad liked the Army life, or whether he considered it his passport to a better life, I don’t know. As I pointed out before, he kept his affiliation with the Army Reserve’s 65th. Infantry Regiment in San Juan. The 65th, organized in 1919, was the successor unit of various territorial Army regiments that the War Department had begun mustering since the US annexed Puerto Rico in 1898. During World War II the 65th saw action in North Africa and then in France, while Dad was stationed in Panama. In August 1950 the 65th departed for Korea, arriving the following month. Dad shipped out with them.
The 65th saw action at several engagements during the Korean War, but I don’t know if Dad participated in any of them. His decorations include an Army Combat Infantryman Badge, awarded while “performing duties while personally present and under fire while serving in an assigned infantry or Special Forces capacity, in a unit of brigade, regimental, or smaller size, engaged in active ground combat” in Korea, between June 27, 1950 to July 27, 1953. You can see it in the picture below, the rifle surrounded by a wreath placed above his award ribbons.
When I saw the picture for the first time and ascertained the significance of the badge, I asked Dad about how he came around to have one. “I’d happened to be in the general area where they were just handing them out, and one day I went in and grabbed one,” he said. End of story.
The 65th returned to Puerto Rico in 1954 under suspicion of insubordination due to the racism they experienced under white Anglo officers. The breakdown didn’t soil the 65th’s record of achievements and the Army later exonerated all involved but by then, Dad had transferred over to the regular Army, leaving the 65th behind for better upward mobility opportunities.
The Army promoted Dad to Corporal in 1951. He was in San Francisco when he transferred to the Regular Army. According to his 1952 discharge document (DD Form 214), he’d enlisted for six years in the Regular Army and was a Personnel Clerk at the time of the transfer. He was recorded as married. He was promoted to Corporal at a time the rank was falling into oblivion displaced by rank inflation, but at least he was a Non-commissioned Officer and his status as a Personnel Clerk showed that he knew his way around office work.
Dad’s Subsequent Life Until the Mid-1960’s
From here I hit an undocumented time in my Dad’s life known only by my three elder sisters. We haven’t sat down to talk about this time, in part because I sense it’s a painful, sensitive topic for them. Of course, Dad was their father first, and girls are, by tradition, very close to their father and my sisters were no exception. Perhaps one day…
Dad’s 1958 DD Form 214 indicates he had returned to Puerto Rico and processed into Ft. Buchanan in the San Juan Metropolitan Area from Fr. Benning, Georgia. He shows he had completed one Vocational High School Year in Secretarial work. He had transitioned from the Corporal rank and was now a Specialist 3/E4. The form shows no record of his marital status. His 1961 DD Form 214 shows him attached to a liaison unit in Ft. Buchanan, as a Specialist 5 / E5, still a Personnel Clerk. This one shows him as married. His signature was firm, simple, elegant, confident.
From here, I suppose he divorced his first wife shortly thereafter and relocated to Germany. There he met the girl who was to become his second and forever wife. By 1963 he had dedicated a picture to her. Dressed in a civilian suit, the picture captures Dad at the height of his manly, mature years (see below picture)
This is the way that he may have looked like to Mom when he came to visit Doña María at her home in the Pueblito Nuevo while on leave in the summer of 1964. A good thing too, or I wouldn’t be here.
Dad returned to Germany right after my conception. At one time in 1966 if I recall correctly, he seemed to have been near New York, perhaps at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, as my Grand Aunt Angelita, sister of my maternal Grandfather Don Pedro, lived in New York and had talked to him on Mom’s behalf. I know about this because Titi Angelita wrote Mom a letter indicating that my Dad had no intention to honor her, and that Mom should just get on with her life. In fact, he had married his forever wife in 1965, a few months after my own birth.
Dad’s final DD Form 214 indicates he retired at Ft. Dix in March 1968. It shows he had completed his GED in 1961. He was now a High School Graduate. He separated as a Staff Sergeant / E6. Once I asked him why he didn’t go to higher rank. He answered, “I partied too much and if I’d become a Sergeant First Class / E7, the Army would’ve sent me to Vietnam.” That would’ve been his third wartime service and he’d had enough of them. He figured he had 20 good years of service, so he cashed in. By then he had completed an “Electronic Computer Programming Institute - Operating, Wiring, IBM Programming” course from the Army. The kid from Sabana Grande who was once a “servant” was now a computer programmer, retired Army soldier.
Dad’s next son, my brother, had been born already in 1966. I didn’t meet Dad until 1974 and my brother and two additional sisters until 1990. But I’ll share that story with you later…
Downstream Effects
From Dad I got the shape of his head and a bit of his early hair. Also, his sleepy eyes, drooping a bit to the outside end, but alas, not his hazel irises. I also inherited from him his body frame and his tendency to thinness, trending to total skinniness in my early years that would lead Mom and my maternal relatives into a lot of misunderstandings and misperceptions as I grew up. I also inherited his appreciation for military life, interest for computers, and for tinkering with electronic things, interests which I would pass down to my own children later. In fact, I inherited his drive to rise above my origins and to improve myself constantly, to achieve an ever-better situation in life, and to move over to the next, best thing.
However, Dad’s absence from my early life had tremendous effects upon me of which I became aware much later. Fathers integrate the personalities of their children. Mothers may nurture, but fathers forge their children’s selves into coherent units, so-to-speak. I’ve noticed this integration phenomenon in my own children. They were at ease with themselves early on, unlike me. My personality showed fractures and later on I would see the cracks.
Next, I’ll talk about Mom and her own roots, and other events too.