This morning I opened an old suitcase that hadn’t been open in over fifty years. In the suitcase was a candy box full of love letters between Connie and me. Also in the box were these: tire, rent, and dress shop receipts. I’ll share the receipts, but not the love letters.
On September 22, 1956, we headed north in my 1946 Chevy to Paicines, CA, to visit the family who had gone there to work the piscas (fruit picking). In the car with Connie and our one-month-old daughter, Linda, my two sister’s boyfriends, Georgie and Danny, and I was my young cousin Tonito, I was doing the driving.
We had decided to take a shortcut via State Route 33. Out in the middle of nowhere, we got a flat tire, and I didn’t have a spare tire; okay, I did have one, but it was flat too. As we were standing on the side of the road, a pickup stopped, and the driver asked if we needed help. Of course, we did! I told the guy that I needed to buy a tire, asked him where was the nearest town; he said about ten miles north was McKittrick; he offered to give me a ride into town but said that he couldn’t bring me back. I accepted his offer. We got into town, and he dropped me off at a tire shop. After I bought the tire, I rolled it to the side of the road to try and get a ride back to the car when the same guy stopped and told me, “get in, I’ll take you back” That proved to me that there are some decent people in this world. We got into Paicines without any further car trouble. After spending a few days with the family, we got back to South California without a hitch.
The rent receipt is from mid-1956, and it was from when we were living on 6th St. just east of Eastman in East Los Angeles. That was during Connie’s pregnancy with our firstborn, our daughter Linda.
The dress shop receipt is from 1956, and even though it has my name on it, I know nothing about it; that was Connie’s deal.
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