Interview with my family friend - Eva Vega
Eva Vega at 88 stands in her kitchen making her delicious homemade tamales in Atwater California. She lives alone, but still receives many visits from family members and friends. In California she got married and raised four sons, one daughter, and many
grandchildren. In California she also met her very good friend, Barbara Ramirez, who has been her friend for over 60 years. Eva was born in 1920 in Jalisco Mexico and between the ages of six and seven she moved to Oklahoma City where her small town life began. 'It was a very small town' says Eva 'where everyone knew each other.' When she is asked to talk about her small town life, she remembers the good and not so good experiences she had as if she was living there yesterday.
My name is Eva Vega. I was born in Jalisco Mexico and I’m 88 years old and I was raised in several states. First San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Los Angeles. In my family is three sisters including myself, my mother and my father. When I lived in Oklahoma City I was between 6 and 7 years old and we lived there for about 9 years. I remember going to school and going to the beach and I remember it was nice. It was a very nice city there.
I went to public schools. I enjoyed going to school. My sister and I went, my sister was two years older than I was and we both went. I remember everyday thinking “oh I have to go to school”. I enjoyed it. When we were in Oklahoma I was in the fourth or fifth grade. In Oklahoma City I graduated from St. Teresa’s school in the 8th grade. Then I went to St. Josephs high school and graduated from there. But I was active. I was really active in all the years, not too much sports, but events, like plays and carnivals when we use to have the carnivals and everything, but I wasn’t much for sports. I wasn’t heavy either.
Well where we lived, we lived mostly in the Mexican district and everybody knew everybody because they all went to the same church. So everybody knew the families. And we knew each other through the schools, you know? Through the kids too. So really everybody was more congenial and more friendly in those days I think. You meet friends and we used to belong to the St. Teresa’s young ladies club and would meet once a month for breakfast, for breakfast and a meeting. So that’s how you got to meet new people, and they would all get together there.
There was always a parade where I lived. They had what they called an oleander parade then we had the 5th of May and the 16th of September, the Mexican Independence Day. We mostly attended them and had good fun, that’s about all I could remember.
The dominant religion was Catholic. The biggest church was St. Teresa’s.
That was where all the Mexican’ people went. We could walk, everybody would walk together to school. I enjoyed it because we would go by picking up everybody that lived on the block and they’d walk with us, so by the time we got to school there was probably about ten or fifteen of us getting there. But anyway it was nice, the sisters were very nice, They were the Caroline sisters and they were very very nice to us. They did a lot for the Mexican people. They had Christmas parties, Easter parties, and of course the fifth of May was a big celebration for them, it was the Mexican Independence.
I got news through the paper, and of course we didn’t have TV. There was also the radio, we used to have the radio on all the time, and through friends. But it’s about the same thing, the radio the newspapers, the magazines. Well on the radio they’d have the news, and they’d have programs, mostly singing, and the Spanish program. Of course my mother always listened to the Spanish news.
We used to have a lot of activities, and we used to have a park with a swimming pool, a big swimming pool and we’d volunteer and watch the little kids there. We’d also play volleyball mostly. Our team was good because we used to play public schools and, we were always very lucky. . We would help also with crafts, arts and crafts and all that with the littler smaller children. So that’s what kept us busy. We could walk to downtown, we could go to like Disneyland, they had a small one. We could take the bus to it, and go on Sunday, but it was nice and we had a lot of parks and everything.
We worked with the sisters in the convent, and when I graduated from high school we worked with them because they had their mother house there. They had it by the school, so all the girls would take turns working with them.
Well I don’t remember The Great Depression too well, but I do remember hearing about neighbors loosing their jobs and my father being a construction working there was then no jobs in construction. Everybody was out of their job so that’s what I remember, we had to cut down on a lot of things. And in school they made an issue of it because it was a private school and they had to pay tuition so a lot of the children dropped out because they couldn’t afford to pay the tuition. So it affected a lot of them, a lot of families. Because the main thing is there was no jobs for the parents to work with you know, and no money coming in so that was hard. I stayed in school but it was hard for us with my sister and I in school, but we managed. And I think a lot of times the priest would let them not pay because if they didn’t have it, they didn’t have it. But not so much just us, it affected a lot of people. A lot of people were moving out of the town. They were leaving somewhere to Texas, and came to California, some went to Chicago. They were leaving now because there were no jobs.
I did like Oklahoma, only it was very cold. In the winter it was very cold, and in the summer it was very hot, but it was a nice it was uh its small and it’s larger now, but it was smaller then. I’ve never gone back though, but before I die maybe I can, I could go back there. I’d love to go back because I’d like to see where I went to school, where I went to church, where I used to live. And then my mother and father are buried back there, so that would be a reason. I really felt sad when I left, I didn’t want to leave because I was, well, I was there for so long you know that I didn’t want to leave. I think I would have stayed there, if I would have been older probably. Another couple of years I think I could have been on my own you.
Interviewed by Theresa Ditty