Remembering My Childhood (Cecelia Coronado) - Part Three

(This is the third in a series of posts based on audio recordings made by my mother, Cecelia Coronado Phipps in 1983.)

Mama canned all our fruit.  We kids learned to eat quinces like they were apples.  But she canned everything, not only the fruit, but she made cottage cheese from the cream by putting it in the back of a great big range in the kitchen.  Papa made cheeses.  He was an expert at making these great large rounds of cheese.  They were kept in the pump house.  So we always had plenty cheese of all kinds.  He really did a terrific job of that.

Dutch Coronado, as a beer truck driver

Here's a little story that I wish Dutch would tell you about.  Maybe I can get him to record this.  Some friend of Papa's or just someone he knew had gone across country, clear back east and back with this beautiful horse.  By the time he got back to Vallejo, the horse was completely exhausted, had collapsed, and almost died.  Well the man said to Papa, "Here, you take him Mariano.  Take him.  I don't want him.  He's no good anymore."  So Papa took him and made a canvas sling, like a hammock, and put it up on a hoist on a big branch of this huge eucalyptus tree in the back yard and let him rest his whole body in the hammock.  I don't know how many days the horse stayed there.  But he fed and watered him and put liniment on him.  He took care of him just like a doctor.  Papa was a veterinarian on the side.  He loved animals and understood them.  He took care of this horse for days and days until finally he saw the horse moving a little bit.  He gradually let the hammock down, until his hoofs would touch the ground.  Then, he gradually let him stand on his feet, all the time taking good care of him until he was able to get on his feet again.  He said to the boys one day, "He's alright again now.  I think you boys can hitch a cart to him and let him take you to school.  It was the Blue Rock Springs School that they were going to at this time.  So the horse turned out just fine.  He took the kids back and forth to school in the cart.  Then one day, he was so much better, a horse passed him and I guess he got the racing fever again.  He took off.  His hoofs hit the cart and the kids, maybe five of them, flew in all directions.  So that was the end of the horse being able to take the kids to school. ... Papa said it wasn't safe to take the kids to school anymore.

Mariano Coronado giving a steely eye to his horse in the corral - probably not the horse in the story

 I don't know who made the stilts, if it was Papa or the older boys, but we learned to walk on stilts in the winter time in the sloppy mess in the corrals, adjoining the back fence by the railroad tracks.  I can still hear the suction of those stilts in the mud.

Sundays and Holidays

On Sundays we would go into church at St. Vincent's in Vallejo for Mass.  After coming home, we knew what our job was.  Mama would have all of the ingredients made to fix ice cream in the churner.  Toots and I usually wound up churning it.  Of course we would fuss over it.  "No, it’s your turn.  No it’s my turn.  It's your turn.  No, it’s mine."  It didn't take all that long, but you'd think that it was a great big deal.  Mama made the best ice cream.  If there were fresh strawberries on hand, she would put that in, and good cream and all.  Mmm, boy, it was awfully good.  Fond memories - something like you don't get nowadays.

Of course, on Sundays when the family came home, Mama had made tortillas that were as big as a dish pan.  Nobody in this world could make them that large and not have a hole in them.  She would flip them and they would go way above her elbow.  She would cook them right on the wood stove.  They were so good.  And, of course, we would always have chili beans.  No matter what we had, there still had to be chili beans, even on the table for breakfast.

On holidays, Papa always slaughtered the pigs and calves.  He fed them special food up to the time of slaughtering so that their meat would be nice and firm.  As the older members of the family were married, he would have great big roasts of pork and beef to pass on to them for the holidays.

I can remember our table at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.  It was like a huge banquet.  Not only the whole family, but the married kids would come with the grandchildren.  There was all the hired help.  That table was set from morning until night. ... I can see a big suckling pig at one end and a big ham at the other end and plenty in between.  The kids would get through and they would run out to play.  The adults would sit there and talk and drink a little bit.  Pretty soon the kids would all come back to eat again.  This went on all day.  Now this was holiday time!  It was a family gathering with lots of good memories – seeing all the smiling faces.  We all got along swell.