Becoming Dr. Q. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa
from the United States to visit us every Christmas, bringing my cousins, Fausto Jr. and Oscar, with him. Uncle Fausto had gone to California as a migrant worker in the 1950s through seasonal passports provided by the Bracero Program. Thanks to his tenacity and ability, he had found permanent work as a top foreman at a huge ranch in the town of Mendota in the San Joaquin Valley, where he was raising his two sons as a divorced father.
A plainspoken man, Uncle Fausto would have said something about our deteriorating circumstances if he had picked up on them. Instead, my mother had to raise the issue and ask him about the possibility of going to the United States for a summer of migrant work. When Mamá first brought up the idea to my father, he didn’t protest, although I imagine he wasn’t happy about the prospect of having to go across the border to America and pick cotton and tomatoes. But since he didn’t have any better ideas, my mother decided to talk to Uncle Fausto during his annual Christmas visit.
This decision came after months of tension at our house. Nobody said anything about it to us children, but the look on my mother’s face when my father came home in the middle of the night spoke volumes. Papá never laid a hand on Mamá, but he had a bellowing voice, and when the two of them began arguing, the sound of his unhappiness filled our house, making me feel that I couldn’t breathe, much less stop their arguing. One day, when Gabriel and I were in the background during a heated exchange, Rosa got caught in the crossfire. She stood between my parents, crying and begging them to stop yelling at each other, to little avail.
Mamá knew that we couldn’t go on as we were. But when she spoke to Uncle Fausto, her tone was casual, as she reminded him that we all had the required paperwork to travel back and forth across the border for tourism, so we wouldn’t need any new or special documentation. The plan, my mother suggested, was that she and my father could work, and we children could enjoy a summer holiday.
“Let me see what I can do,” Uncle Fausto replied with a shrug.
Not too much later, we learned that everything was in place for the summer and that when school let out, we were going to Mendota for two months. Road trip!
I couldn’t wait. My American adventure was about to begin.
Mendota, California, bills itself as the cantaloupe capital of the world—a distinction that made me feel right at home, since I came from melon country. But something else also lent familiarity to our journey, literally providing a link to my backyard at home. Mendota had been founded by the Southern Pacific Railroad in the late 1800s as a switching station and storage area for repairing and housing railroad cars, and most of the products of California agriculture were unloaded and reloaded here. What were the odds? The tracks that passed by Mendota originated at the Port of Stockton (where I would eventually work)—where the ships docked to unload their cargo onto railcars at the water’s edge. After Mendota, destinations could be switched eastward or westward, or the trains would continue south to the end of the line in, yes, Palaco!
None of the dots had yet connected for me back in 1979 when I was eleven years old. But I had a feeling of destiny about that summer. As my first exposure to the United States, Mendota was as close to paradise as I could imagine—a Garden of Eden about forty miles west of Fresno in the middle of the fertile San Joaquin Valley that stretches for miles from Stockton down through the middle of the state, almost to Bakersfield.
As much as a quarter of the produce grown in America comes from California, and most of it is grown in the San Joaquin Valley. As soon as we arrived at the ranch where Uncle Fausto was a foreman, I reveled in the freedom of the first real vacation I could remember. And we could eat for free! I looked out upon field after field, as far as I could see, rich with abundant growth and produce of every variety. All around me were rolling hills, wooded glens, irrigation canals, and winding dirt paths, all begging to be explored. Plus, my cousins Fausto and Oscar were always ready to join me and my siblings in the fun.
Every morning, after the adults left for the fields, the main goal for the day was to figure out how to get to a magical place we called “Faraway.” You would only know you had arrived there when you got there! If I needed a break from our escapades, I hung out at the garage where tractors and farm equipment were serviced, offering my mechanical know how and skill in maneuvering large vehicles. I also started a business cleaning workers’ rooms at a nearby barracks. Because my rates were lower than the competition’s, I was in demand.
Unfortunately, the competition, a fifteen-year-old, came after me with his posse. One of the guys pinned me down and twisted my arm so painfully that I couldn’t use it to clean. Clearly, the time had come to learn some real Kaliman maneuvers for self-defense.
Thus, when we returned home to Mexico, my first thought was to take boxing lessons at a gym in Mexicali. But after sadly saying good-bye to the paradise of Faraway/Mendota, our family was soon stretched as thin as ever, and I accepted that I would have to create my own self-improvement program. So I came up with a bold plan to turn the out-of-doors into an obstacle course for my self-designed training regimen. Aha! On my way to school or work, I’d race against my previous pace, pushing myself faster each day, sometimes inventing athletic moves that called for leaping over creeks, catapulting over fences—anything to squeeze out another ounce of energy.
Such was the Kaliman approach. According to the comic-book hero’s history, his DNA was not superhuman. He had simply pushed his human abilities to their optimal levels, training himself to be as strong as fifty men, to levitate and practice telepathy and ESP, and to fight evil and injustice without ever taking a life. Except for his occasional use of sedative darts to temporarily paralyze evildoers and a dagger employed only as a tool, he needed no weapons to overcome an adversary. Kaliman would even risk his own life to avoid causing the death of another human being. Dressed all in white except for the jewel-encrusted letter “K” on his turban, he was also a scientist, often spouting interesting facts about nature and the cosmos while embracing the attainment of knowledge with such philosophies as “He who masters the mind masters everything.”
Fortunately, school still provided a positive place for me to work on mental mastery, even though being the youngest student and the teacher’s pet brought problems. These concerns intensified when I changed schools and no longer had my circle of protectors. Worse, there were some seriously scary kids at the school. One of them, Mauricio, a mountain of muscle, did back flips and propelled off walls like a circus acrobat, and the ground shook whenever he walked by. The only person who wasn’t afraid of him was his sidekick—known as El Gallo because he crowed like a rooster when he was triumphing over anyone who made the mistake of tangling with him. The Rooster was one of the tallest thirteen-year-olds I had ever seen, with long, sinewy arms designed for landing jabs and uppercuts. Of all the kids I was determined to avoid as part of my survival, these two were at the top of the list. Guess what? Just my luck, Mauricio was in my natural science class, sitting right behind me and peering over my shoulder to copy off my tests.
I saw only one solution and that was to offer him and his fellow bad boys my tutoring services. We settled on a fee, in addition to a promise that they would provide protection from any of the bigger bullies. As I explained, they were on my payroll.
The tutoring sessions were not as transformational for my pupils as I had hoped. Their understanding of the fundamentals improved, but I soon concluded that the more expedient (and profitable) path was to let them copy my answers on my tests. Of course, I knew that this solution was wrong, and I didn’t pretend otherwise. But on an up note, the school saw a downturn in troublemaking during this time.
With tutoring and restaurant work, I could contribute to our family’s welfare without falling behind in my studies. However, I soon began to lament that I couldn’t pursue much of a social life outside of school. At fourteen, I had experienced my share of flirtations with girls in my class, but I had not had the money or time to explore romance. No dates, no dances, no strolls down the sidewalk holding hands. Did I feel sorry for myself? No, I couldn’t allow that. But working every waking hour outside of school, day in and day out, was definitely getting old.
I finally confessed these feelings to my mother, trying to explain for the millionth time