Jesse

Jesse

Oral history from Mexico to Kansas City, Kansas.

Jesse’s parents are from Mexico, but he grew up in the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. After graduating from high school, Jesse enrolled in community college but decided to work for the railroad. Now that he is retired, he frequently volunteers in soup kitchens. His advice for the younger generation is to know the value of work.

Late 1900s

Kansas City, Kansas

Jesse (J)
Marta (M)

J: Okay. Well, let's see. My mother's side of the family is my grandfather…Her dad was already living here in the United States. He had came [sic] from New Mexico. He would actually because my grandfather was very dark-skinned. I've had a lot of Indian in him. He was an extra in silent movies as an Indian back into movies that before they were talking. They were the silent movies.

J: He came up with a friend, Robinson, to Kansas City, Kansas for more work. And he found work with Griffin Wheel Company and that’s the company that makes railroad wheels and boxcars.

J: And he had a home in Argentine, on the what's considered the south side of the tracks. And at that time, it was all Anglos on that side. And my grandfather was the first Latino to own a house on the south side of the railroad track and never did get the full story on that, how that happened.

J: [Coughs] But anyway, again, I'm sure Alice Robinson is one that helped him with that.

J: Then my great uncle Salvador came up from Mexico as a young man. He swam the [Rio Grande] river, he made his way to Kansas City, found a job with the Santa Fe Railroad as a painter and met my grandfather somehow or another, and lived with my grandfather for two years.

J: After two years he returned to Mexico to return was my grandmother's Brunelda, my great uncle Leo and my great grandmother Paula. And so they came to live in that house.

J: And the story goes from my uncles that because Grandpa Rico, who was 33 at a time allowed Salvador to live there said, you can marry my sister, who was at that time only 15 years old.

J: So they had their first child, Uncle John, when she was 16. Mother came along four years later. Uncle Bob came along four years later. And Martin came for your later. Uncle Joe came four years later and uncle Frank came three years later.

J: My uncle contended that my grandmother would only let him [the grandfather] sleep with her once every four years.

M: [chuckles]

J: So that’s the way the story goes.

J: The house they lived in had a living room, two bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. So all the men slept in one room and all the women slept in another room.

J: My grandfather also at this time, besides working at Griffin Wheel, was the neighborhood plumber. So him [sic] and his friend Chenel, who lived across the street–and by the way, I'm gonna get a hold of Chennel’s great granddaughter and we're going to be able to contact with her. Her name is Bea Madrigal. But that's a little later.

J: Anyway, grandfather was also a bootlegger, which my uncle said led to his death when he died of cirrhosis of the liver.

J: Grandpa Rico died the day they landed on the moon in 1969. So it’s always an easy date to remember when he passed.

J: But anyway, getting back to the thirties, in the late thirties and early forties, my mother tells the story of grandpa being a bootlegger at Christmas time. They had men–Coop Doors [?] came by and they would sing songs and carols.

J: And so my grandmother always told grandpa, take the boys out a bottle of gin. I don't know what it was. They may have been anyway. Excuse me.

J: They took the bottle out and was passing it around, somebody slipped and dropped the bottle. It broke and all and there was snow on the ground.

J: She said All these men were on the ground, eating the yellow snow, where the booze had fallen into.

J: So that being said, that was just one story about grandpa and what he did, he was very industrious.

J: My grandmother was very active in the church. But the only time I saw Grandpa go to church was for somebody's funeral or for a wedding. Otherwise, Grandpa didn't go to church. Never to get the full story on that. So a lot of times things happened and we weren't always keen to what was going on.

J: Fast-forward to 1947. My mother is 17 year old girl. My father came up from Mexico on a borrowed passport. Somebody that you'd looked very familiar with.

J: Dad was actually in the seminary at this time, and was studying to be a priest. He was the 13th child out of 13. And my grandmother said one of her son was going to be a priest. And because he was the last one, he got elected to the job.

J: Well, he came up on a vacation, met my mother, and their dating story begins with him living next door in a boarding house. And because my grandmother was very strict, [my father] was not allowed to talk to my mother. So in order to communicate with her, he wrote to her own penny postcards.

J: The mailman, after a couple of months of this and seeing how he would pick up a postcard from one house to take to the post office to get that back to the house. Next door decided that he would just hand the card over without having my dad having to put the penny on.

J: So once in a while they could talk across the fence when grandma was sitting up in the patio and what and so then dad went over to ask grandpa for mom’s hand and my grandfather told him You have to go back to Mexico and you have to come back with your proper papers.

J: He did not want her. How should I say? And I guess he wanted to protect her.

J: So my dad goes back to Mexico, quits the seminary. And I'm sure that went over real well with my grandparents [sarcastically].

J: But anyhow, he came back to [the] United States, courted my mother for two more years.

J: And then this time dad always told me when he went to take mother out on a date–grandma always went, he had to take two boxes of candy or two bouquets of flowers for grandma and my mother.

J: There was one time a few weeks before the wedding, dad and the taxi hip pulled up to take them. They were going dancing at the Pla-Mor Ballroom. And my grandmother was sick and came to the door and told grandpa, my toe, my dad, you cannot you cannot go because I'm sick.

J: And my grandfather said no, it's okay. Let her go. So that was the first day they had unchaperoned and it was right before they're married. But grandma Rooney, raise, holy hell.

J: Then back forward again because of the way my grandmother came back across to the United States, they decided that my dad would, my mother were [sic] gonna get married in Mexico. My grandmother did not go. My grandfather did not go.

J: There was a lady down the street, Luis Valdez, and she was kind of like a sponsor. And so she was [my] mother’s chaperone. And so they went to Mexico, they got married and returned home. They were married June 15th; nine months and two days later my sister was born on March the 17th. My sister always teased mom about how close that was, but mother would be embarrassed.

J: So that was March 1950. I came along in May of ’51. My sister Suzy came along in December of ’52. And then my sister Christie was August of ’54.

J: So within five years she [my mom] had four little ones.

J: Mother was a stay at home mom. She did not go–she did not work or anything.

J: At that time my dad worked two jobs. He worked at the Ag. [agriculture] plant during the summertime and they would lay him off usually right after Thanksgiving until sometime in February. So he had two three months during the year where he worked one job. And the other jobs were with the railroad; he worked for the Kansas City terminal for 17 years.

J: Fast-forward to 1967 and Johnson–President Johnson cut the mail off of the train and put ’em on the airplane. And that's when air mail with it. And that pretty much broke the Kansas City terminal’s back. So dad got laid off and he got laid off.

J: Mother–they decided mother was going to work. Mother had a highschool education.

J: We [my mother and I] went to the same high school, Argentine that Tess [?] was talking about.

J: My mother was 36 years-old. She walked up the half a block up to the main street to get on the bus. And she was scared to death because this was the first time she was going downtown alone.

J: Any other time she go in downtown if my mother was with her my aunt or us kids. And so now she had to work and get out in the real-world. And so she went to work for the SOC Security Administration.

J: In the meantime, dad got a job with the Santa Fe Railroad. Then mother worked in the daytime, dad worked at night. And that way there was always somebody home with the kids because by this time there were six of us in the house. My older sister would have been. 17 and a junior. I was a sophomore, 16 and then going down the list.

J: So that was a–I know a changing time in the whole world at this time, women were getting to be more independent and not to where your job is at home with the kids. You don't need to be out and whatnot.

J: So I know mom and dad struggled with some of that because one's mother went to work and seeing how other people lived. And how women got to do things on their own, so on and so forth. Where they've got to be a little bit of a cultural battle.

J: Not only were we growing up, but my parents were growing up at this time. This had to be something that was most unusual.

J: Then it was about this time that Tess and I were walking home from school. And I told you the rain story where it rained and my house was close [by]. So we said let's go inside. Well, let's get on the porch and not even inside the house. Just on the porch. You get out of the weather.

J: And my dad came out and asked if she was hungry because that was the way my folks were all their lives. Even after they retired, I would come over to the house and the first thing they're doing is reaching for a pan to put on the stove to heat something up. And I said, I didn’t come over to eat, I came over to visit.

J: But anyway, Tess came over and she was a quote, unquote, first white woman, white girl that ever came into the house. So that was a little bit of a culture shock for me, I guess.

J: I mean, we were pretty well–I don't want to use the word segregated but I think we were just–our community was separate from everybody else. Everybody else had a separate community.

J: In the time that we lived on 24th street, when I was much younger, in kindergarten, at the other end of the block with an all-black school called Lincoln grade school.

J: The black people lived up on the hill about three blocks from the school. And they walked by our half every day to school and walked home every day. Never had any issues with them. We had a black lady living next door with her son and I didn't think anything of it.

J: You know, it would just they would–just people living like we were.

J: We had a fireman–he lived on the end of the block and he was a black man. And then on the other side we had two other Mexican families that lived...

J: So we were just people.

J: We didn't didn't know anything. I didn't know anything about segregation. I had not witnessed anything.

J: I do have some friends that were my age. And they told me that they had gone to a drugstore to get a soda. A soda from the soda fountain. And the guy says, I'll fix it for you, but it'll be in a cup and you will have to take it outside to go. Meaning [that[ they could not sit at the counter and drink [the soda].

J: I did not get exposed to any of that; I guess I was–was blessed in that.

J: About this time I got out in the world of work and I went to work at the Kansas City Star and I worked on the weekends at nights, stuffing newspapers.

J: On, on Saturday night, they would print the front page, the wanteds, the sports, and the classified. Everything else was all printed ahead of time. So you would always have to put the two sections, the paper together.

J: Working there, I was exposed to a lot more diverse group. There were probably 60% black there, 30% Hispanic, and about 20% white.

J: And this was, I worked in the period there in 1968 after Martin Luther King had got assassinated. And they were having the riots all over. Our job normally work from ten at night to five in the morning, but because of the curfew, we had to be there at 06:00 and sit in a warehouse and wait five hour, we go to work–work. And then after the curfew after the work basket or warehouse, wait till 06:00 because we couldn't be out 6-6.

J: All the brothers–and this is what we used to refer to when we were growing up. When we talked about the brothers, we were talking about Black people. We never said we never used the term Black.

J: Then back in high school, if you were talking about Ivan or Melvin, the Black friends, you were talking about the brothers.

J: Amen. The brothers told us, when we go home, the hang white sheet on your front porch and nothing will happen to your house. Because this was a time when they were burning houses and they were riding over density very, we're very fortunate that in Kansas City, Kansas nothing happened.

J: When I hung a white sheet on the front porch coming home. Mom said, What are you doing? The brothers said if we don't want to have our house burned down, hang up a white sheet, and they know that you would be okay here though she let it go because you don't make something up like that.

J: So that means I'm sad. I was over there. And during this thing, it was the first time that I heard somebody knew the N word. And even to this day, I cannot understand how they can sing songs and use the “n” word to me that just sets the hair on the back of my neck. That's an alarm.

J: I heard somebody used “n” word and I saw this guy got beat within an inch of his life. I've never seen anyone beat like that and I hope I never see it beating like that again.

J: The guy came back to work two weeks later you've been attained with bandage up, but he came back to work and I don't think he used the “n” word again. I think he learned his lesson.

J: So that was 1968, and I graduated high school in 1969. I started dating a girl that year, she was two years younger than I was, and she was a white girl. Her name was Lorraine Perkins. Ended up being my first wife.

J: But the first time I went over to pick her up, her mother said I couldn't see her daughter. So we did not go out at night. So we figured out the next week when it was time to go out for the football game and the mixer afterward. I would have one of my friends, either Kelly or Chris, call Lorraine and say, Are you ready to go? And they would pick her up, drive to block. She would get out of one car and get my car and off we go.

J: My wife was a change of life baby. Her mother was very old at this time. You would probably I want to say Oh, she was in her 60s. I'm 69. I'm not old, okay. So anyway, that's how we dated for a couple of years until she graduated high school. We got married in 1972. We had two children, and we divorced in 1983 because we got married too young. Okay.

J: I know a lot of the issues, a lot of time to see my I felt insecure when she'd go over to the house and they would start talking in Spanish. And she would always think they're talking about me. She would ask me later on. Were they talking about me? No. They're just more comfortable speaking in Spanish about some things.

J: And I told her when we were younger a lot of times that they didn't want us to know what they were talking about. They would speak in Spanish because I was a boy. I was out in the street. My sisters were at home, so they learned the language before I did.

J: I also had a hearing issue growing up. I had to wear a hearing aid for a while and I learned to read lips.

J: The girls in high school told me at the first [high school] reunion and they said, you know, oh, I always liked talking to you because you always look at me in the face and not be staring at my breasts. And I had to explain to them. Well, I kinda peeked every now and then, but I had to look at you–at your eye [sic] because I was reading your lips or I would make sure to hear what you say.

J: Now, you can go ahead and laugh, but it's true. And you know, you’re a boy, you’re a boy--you know had that hormone raging and everything

J: So anyhow and also had a lot of the girls well, I won't say a lot. I had two, three different girls told [sic] me–and it was kinda weird because that first one they said–you know, I wanted to go out with you in high school, but my dad wouldn't allow it. But if I saw any discrimination, that's where it was. Okay.

J: And I am on the pale side. I'm not really a dark Mexican like my friend Mario is my grandma. My sister's a little on the dark side. They always call her “the Laylita” because she was a dark one. My other sister would red hair and she was like I was on my dad's side, family.

J: Even though my cousin Gracie explained to me that she went back to Mexico and started looking up the [family] tree and somewhere back up the line we had a great, great, great grandmother who was a Belgian landowner. They lived, they worked for the landowner. She said, one of our siblings is half Belgium, and then they just dropped down not filling but one of our great grandparents.

J: But I don't know how much truth there, but she went back and she was able to find a paper on it. There’s that.

J: See, what do I leave off? And then I married again. And well, actually this is the funny part.

J: I dated my current wife for about three years and then we parted because we were both too headstrong for each other. Okay. We knew that it probably wouldn't work, so we went off and didn't see each other for ten years–twelve years. We both married somebody else. We both divorce–divorced that second person ran into each other again. My daughter Rachel happened and now 24 years later here we are still married.

J: Though we are actively been together for almost 30 years with a break in there. So little irony in my story, but what goes around comes around.

J: I went to work for the Santa Fe Railroad…

J: Well, I went to junior college, like I said, right out of high school and that's when I did the Che Guevara thing and I was independent.

J: I mean–I'm going to college. My first semester. I felt like my mind got opened up that I didn't see or I didn't listen in high school.

J: There was…high school was high school and then you get to college and you get to these classes…

J: I had a gentleman that taught American government. All he had was a desk, a microphone, and a pencil, and he would sit and lecture you for 45-minutes. And he would just start writing and you're hearing all these things. But I couldn't believe it.

J: I had a psychology teacher who, she must have changed her name, because she had gotten married. Anne Brown, I believe her name when she showed us her arm with her number [Jesse points to his forearm]. She had been in Germany. She had been in one of the prison camps.

J: Prison camp? What are you talking about? I don't know, nothing. So then you go and you research in the library and you read this stuff and we say all that was going on?

J: Okay, so my favorite teacher was Henry Louis and he was a history teacher. He is passed now and I could not believe when he told me that the Civil War was not fought to free the slaves.

J: He said no, the Civil War was not fought to free the slaves, they ended up getting freed. But the Civil War was fought because of money. You know, everything rolls down to the money.

J: So anyhow, we got educated through there after a year-and-a-half looking at going to a four-year college. I was looking at being a high school history teacher and football and track coach.

J: And then I started investigating to see how much money they made and how much money it [college] was going to cost–and this was before I got married to..and I thought there's no way swing it.

J: There was not [sic] scholarships available like right now. Much easier to get to–to get help to go to college where there wasn't that much.

J: I think if I would have put my foot down and really insisted on it, I probably could have done it but there was–I'd seen my guys, my buddies were already working at the railroad making good money. I mean, almost as much as the teacher was making at this time.

J: I thought, How can I pass that up?


J: You know, I shouldn't be at my–my folks still had four [children] living at home. I couldn't…and they were going to parochial school. So that was already costing [them] money.

J: I was fortunate to go to parochial school until the sixth grade. And because of my hearing problem, I never did get along with enough [people] for whatever reason.


J: I thought when I was real young boy, I was going to be a priest. I really wanted to be a priest. I don't know, maybe because my dad was lined up to be that way. I don't know, but then I got to be a teenager and the priesthood kind of slipped behind me.

J: So anyhow, fast-forward, back to going to work for the Santa Fe [Railroad]. I started working at the clerk cleaning up box cars, checking numbers on the cars and the trains when they came in, I had to walk the track.

J: And after one year, they…there was a separate department of the clerk’s department that was called the SFRD, the Santa Fe Refrigeration Department. They went to my boss and said, we need to hire someone and within the railroad…

J: The first year that I worked, I was extra bored, you never knew what day you're going to work. You never knew how long you were going to work. Some of you had real good paychecks, some months you didn't. It depended on your work.

J: Anyway, these guys were going to offer me a regular job with set days off. So my boss told them “hire this guy.” Well, they looked at me and my hair was about as long as yours was maybe a little bit longer [past the shoulder]. And the guy said, no, we don't want no hippie. So they hired two other people. Neither one of them worked out after a couple of months. So then they came back in that third guy again, he said, “Where’s your man? You want somebody to work and come to work there.”

J: They finally hired me reluctantly.

J: I ended up becoming a supervisor in that department, I had that job for 12 years until they've done away with it. Then after they've done away with that job, I had to go back to the clerical forces, for about two years and then I became a supervisor in the transportation department or rather the yardmaster.

J: The yardmaster is the one that runs the yard. A couple of takes to make a train with which one separates them and whatnot.

J: I was the second Latino yardmaster to work in Kansas City.

J: At that time, they were looking–the railroad was looking to integrate departments. In other words, they wanted clerks to become the yardmasters; they wanted boiler men to become yard masters; they wanted foreman to become yardmasters.

J: They wanted a cross-section because they figured if you know your part job already, you can and then you go to work the new job. You can see this part can help you. We can cut corners, changes.

J: I won't say that I would breakin’ the line as far as becoming a supervisor in Kansas City because New Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona, they had Indians [Indigenous people] and Mexicans that were working as supervisors all over the place.

J: The Santa Fe was very good about that [diversity efforts].

J: When I went to my first regional supervisor meetings and I looked and I see all my brothers, all the Latinos, Rodriguezes, Santanas, Camachos, and everything. What do you do? Well, you are? So am I.

J: But we took pride in that and we did good. The Santa Fe was an excellent place to work. It got hard sometimes any job, but that gets far. Not easy. But for the most part, I was blessed to go to work there.

J: In fact, to tell you how I got hired at the Santa Fe, I had been working at a steel plant and an ice plant, withdrew manual labor jobs. Okay. I had applications at the electric company, TWA, the gas company–four or five different places. I had applications. I've been waiting for the phone ring for them to come and get me the phone number rang, whether it because I had long hair like you.

J: So then my dad says, “Come on, I'm going to take you to the railroad work.”

J: I said I didn't wanna I didn't want to disappoint him. I thought to myself, okay. Let's go see what it's all about.

J: We're walking up the steps to talk to the boss and held his hand and I said, Look, I'm only going to work here to give me a good job. Well, 40 years later I got my good job when I got to retire. So sometimes dad knows what's best for you.

J: So I worked 40 years…My last ten years…Well, actually, the last 14 years was the BNSF [Railway company] and they also had a diversity department. And because my boss knew that I would be good with talking with people and whatnot. He thought that that would be a great department for me to go into. And that was working my regular job and having the goals, attending meetings.

J: What we were was a link to get people to communicate with each other.

J: One of the first issues that we came into was gender identity. This is 1996. Okay? We had, and I never did find out whether it was a fellow that turned into a gal, or a gal that turned into a fellow. But he was working in Amarillo. And the man did not want him in the men's restroom and the women and did not want him in the women's restroom. Okay. So then they had to create an extra bathroom that was for anyone to use.

J: So you talk about an eye-opener situation like that.

J: So [I] worked there.

J: Then the other issue that we had, one that really dealt with me was the use of the word master.
Because you had train masters, which is what I was, You had roadmasters. Who are the-the gentleman that took care of the track. And then you had master foremen who took care of the car department.

J: So sometimes I think some of the employees were using that as a ploy to not work or to slow down production or whatever. But they were the word “master.”

J: I always told him that I thought I went to master craftsman and not a master slave owner. You guys don't work for me, a slave, you guys are getting paid a very good salary. I don’t whip you, i don't beat you; I don't own you, you know, you go home from work every day lives.

J: But it was hard to get across about being a master. And that's where some of the issues that are happening today is because of master-slave thing. So they never did throw out that term to my knowledge, I think there's still being used as train masters and yard master.

J: Because that was a very that was a very important thing to be. My position. I am a year-and-a-half out of college and I'm working a supervisor job, but I'm one of the highest paid employees down there.

J: I took pride in my job. I had–I had people that would come and work for me that had many years seniority and they could work someplace else and work in the daytime. But they chose to work with me afternoons and nights because they were comfortable with the way I did things.

J: They knew what they had to do to get things done. And a lot [of] time I led by letting them lead. I let them show me. You got a better way to do this. Tell me I'm all ears. And so they would explain how to make a movie and I say go for it until I got a lot of respect for the truth that way.

J: So I don’t think that I was ever one that they said, Oh, you got to work for that guy because we had those guys/ Oh you are going to go work over here for this guy. But when they would find out I would work and they say, Okay, we're going to have a good day. Suggests, is that fair?

J: So I guess that's about it.

J: I've retired after that.

J: I started working [in] food kitchens. I help out where I can with that.

J: I've been awarded a volunteer of the year. I don't know if I told you this or not. I'm going to receive a monetary award and a plaque for everything that I've done.

J: The monetary award I wanted to put into the food kitchen fund to help continue feeding people and they will not allow it to happen. They said because you are a volunteer, this is something for you. You buy your new computer, buy a set of tires, you buy a plane ticket, whatever you wanna do.

J: Well, my favorite thing is to play golf, and I've never had a better set of clubs. But there you go. In the next couple of weeks I'm gonna get a brand new set of golf clubs and I told my wife, [this would] probably be my last set. She said, Yes, that's what you told me the last time or the time before or fifth time, it doesn't come out of my pocket. Okay.

J: I do the food kitchen work and it involved–when the kitchen was open…it involved about 18 different volunteers doing a separate job. We would feed 350 to 500 people. They would get a–two slices of bread and butter. They would get some kind of a dessert–donut or whatnot. They would get a choice of a salad or coleslaw, or something like that. They would get a choice of kind of some kind of fruit–apple, orange or banana. Then they would get either green beans or corn. Usually some sopa. They really love when we make it right. Okay, and then they would have a main course. Sometimes it would be Sloppy Joes, sometimes it will be pulled pork. Once in a while, it would be chicken, and then they will have to drink and milk.

J: So it takes a little while to get all that organized. And my skills at the railroad from being an organizer and being a planner and looking up two, three things ahead, help out with that. And it really doesn't take up a lot of time.

J: A lot of people think, oh, you spent a lot of time doing it. After all, it’s one day a month and one day I had to pick up the fly from there and that was a couple of hours. Another day, I had to go shopping so it was three or four hours. And then the day we actually cook was two to three hours. Then the day that we serve was about a five-hour day. So all-in-all maybe 20 hours in a month to do this.

J: But this year with the pandemic, we're blessed with an organization called Operation Barbecue. They barbecue–that is another thing that I do. I'm a judge for the American [unknown] Kansas City KCBS society for barbecue meats. So I know what good meat tastes like, good barbecue. I know what bad barbeque tastes like, too. Some of these people that think they could cook can not cook.

J: But anyway, this Operation Barbecue Relief, they organized when they had the first hurricane a couple of years ago. And these were barbecue enthusiasts, getting donations from different places. And they would get donations from different places, cook the food and feed–feed the people that were at the disaster area.

J: Okay. Well, good friend, Chris Hillier [?], who is probably a big part of this second part of my volunteer, and really all the kudos should go to him because he is such great help. Through him, we were able to get food from the Operation Barbecue Relief. And so on Friday, we were serving meals. We had–they would give us to meet and decides and the utensils, the pan to put them in. But we haven't organized and put them together. I already had food kitchen people who knew exactly what to do and we started passing out meals, about 150 meals for families of four. We did that for about six weeks. And then Operation Barbecue Relief, because they had no place to go and cook the food because of the pandemic, they had to end that program.

J: And then a couple of three weeks later, Pete’s Garden, which is another organization that goes around. They get grants and they collect food from different venues that doesn't get eaten. Like the hotel might have a conference there and they'll feed food and then they got food in the kitchen that didn't serve because people don't eat as much now as they used to. They always have extra so then they [Pete’s Garden] would get that food so it doesn't go to waste. And it would come to us. And again, we would put together and we would pass that out.

J: During this time, we had St. Michael's Parish in Leawood. And we had the Church of the Ascension in Overland Park because every Wednesday they were supplying groceries, the families of our parish because the kids were getting school lunches during the week, Mondays and Wednesdays, they would get a lunch and a breakfast and so on.

J: When we were getting the groceries, we would sort them out because some people would give you two cases of green beans and other people would be– somebody would give you eight loaves of bread. But we would have to break down the groceries. We make them be like shopping. There we go. And so we were passed from that out. And that lasted for about six weeks. We were doing that every Wednesday.

J: Then. When that [unknown] quit, then Chris Pound, Catholic charity and through their program, we were able to give away boxes of produce every Friday–just ended last Friday. I don't know what I'm gonna do this Friday because I'm not going to be there. But these boxes of produce had cucumbers, had cabbage, had lettuce, had bags of apples, bags of oranges, celery, strawberries, cantaloupe.

J: And so we were passing those out to the parish and because we had more than enough for the parish, we opened it up to the community, the Argentine community.

J: I had two Facebook pages that I would put on there and I would say, come and get free food. No questions asked. The people would call and say, well, you know, I got a job. I said we're not asking any questions. If you want the food, you need the food and it's gonna go to good use, you come and get it.We're going to get it for somebody else. It's not for you. Come and get us.

J: We wanted–we wanted to see what helped people and that's what we did.

J: So through all that–through all that…that's how all this happened during the summer. I don't know that they give you the numbers on what we'd done. But it's the law and what somebody is not around it, it can be overwhelming. But to me, it was just another day in paradise

J: Alright, so that's where I'm at today. I continue to do the soup food kitchen. We are in the process and now we have to make sack lunches because the kitchen is actually closed. The city allows us to hand out fact lunches out the back door. And because of this situation, they had jumped up. I think the most we have been is 862 packed lunches. We make about 800 sack lunches. And then any sandwiches or any apples or anything that would have leftover. We've taken back up to the school. We take back up to the food until they can use them tomorrow or the next day whenever it's needed.

J: Hello…Still there?

M: Yeah. I'm here.

J: Okay, so I don't know if you have any…

M: I have some questions. [To a male in the background of the screen: “Okay. Wait until I'm done, please. You can eat all that you want. Wait ‘till I’m done.]

M: This is teenagers at home because they're not going to school. They're staying here for school.

M: So, Jesse, did you live in Argentine, [Kansas City, Kansas], your whole life?

J: Yes. I live while I move when I was married to my wife, I moved to Overland Park and I lived out there for about five years. And then I moved back to Argentina. And then two years ago, I moved to Lenexa. I sold my house. We downsized. We had a three-bedroom house, two car garage; it was just too big.

J: And at that time I had not had what I had had my knee surgery but it would get too hard for me to maintain cut my flashing [unknown]anything. So we were just looking at downsize because we did not need that space.

J: We put the house up for sale and sold like two days later. And the people next door and then combine it. The people across the street wanted at first, their loan didn't go through. We put the sign back out and the people next door came, bought it and they bought it.

J: I don't know how many people were living. Next door. They had probably ten or 12 people living in a three-bedroom house. But when my house became available, they jumped all over it–two sisters bought it.

J: I drove by a couple of times, a month or so later. My driveway could hold eight cars. There was eight cars in the driveway. I don't know how many people live in there.

M: If I say the word home? What do you think of? What does the word mean to you?

J: Home is where…My home is a parking lot. Vaguer [?] park. Oh, man, that home is the one that I told you about was Ted. I grew up there from the timeout 12 to 18 because over my formative years–that went home. That's where I live.

M: Anything you would want for kids or other, you know, younger generation Latinos in particular, understand about your experience that maybe you think they don't understand right now?

J: [coughs] No. I don't know if they understand how you have to work to get to where you want to be. What I've told you about my first job with the railroad. I was working from 3 o’clock in the afternoon to 11 o’clock at night. I had Tuesdays and Wednesdays off.

J: Do you know how much [sic] social events I've missed? I'm talking about weddings. I'm talking about parties. Oh, we’re having a party Saturday. I'll be there after 11:00, you know, being the second way. Then you have to decide. They want a lot of people that I grew up with, they only went on to work eight to five was Saturday and Sundays off. No more hours. Well, those hours are not there.

J: And I think it's even harder. Now with the way that education is that the pandemic has proven that by all these people working from home. I've got three blocks down the street–big office building before the pandemic that parking lot was always full. Now you drive by and you’re lucky to see a car there because all these people are doing their work from home now. You’ve got to have the education to do that.

J: But there are good jobs out there. If you want to be a fireman, if you want to be a policeman, if you want to work for the telephone company, you want to work as a nurse, or anything in the hospital. You just think about it. Oh, I got sick at 4 o’clock in the morning. I'm going to the hospital. Look at those people [that] are working. They're working at nighttime. You have to understand that we're 24/7 mentality workplace.

J: But then there was kinda hard it was hard, you know, my wife would be going to a party. Where’s your husband? Oh, well, my husband's working. So it was Tuesday, Wednesday nights when we went out. It was never crowded. We went to the movies. It was never crowded. You know, it hadn't advantages and disadvantages. You work those kind of hours. You can sleep when you want.

J: I couldn't play any sports back then because everything happened on Saturday and Sunday until we found they were daylight things that we could play; we would get off work and then we could go and play ball at 9 o’clock in the morning.

J: And then that's when I took up golf because that was something all you needed was a little sunshine to play that.

J: So I would think that the hard–the hardest things for these kids, they have to understand everything and not an eight to four ob. Saturdays and Sundays off.

J: I mean, that's the normal world. I can't tell you how many World Series games I missed. I was a big big pastime. Would listen to the radio, link them to buy a baseball, baseball game, World Series, football game, you know, whatever was everything radio, you had to visualize it in your mind because you couldn't see it on TV. Somebody say, oh man, we're going over to so and so's house. He could have put the TV up outside. We can drink beer and have hot dogs, you coming over? You know, they've just yeah. You [could] say I don't want to work. I'm gonna go–I'm gonna go probably why he going to pay your pay your bills? What do you do? You know?

J: I want to get back to college. I want to get back and for nothing now just take more history classes, more. I can get into discussion, maybe some philosophy. Because you're older, you're wiser. You're not in a hurry for this class to get done. You can go do it. You gotta go through just the maturity thing and going to school. Just unbelievable.

J: I mean, I know one kind of my brother-in-law and my sister were going through their differences and my nieces were asking me–and they were teenagers–they said, Uncle Jesse, yes, I can’t understand how a mom and dad are acting. I can't believe how things are and I told him, “Well, honey, you got to remember just because you get older, doesn't mean you grow up.”

J: So it's something that I've always tried to remember. You know, the same thing which my boys would say, “Dad so and so team was supposed to and I said, yeah, just because you're supposed to win doesn't mean you're going to, well, there are disappointments in life that you have to deal with. There are situations that are not all hunky-dory.


J: So it's just like what's going on right now. This thing in Louisville where the policeman got off killing a woman and everybody riding. Well, there's a way to explain your side of the story. I think without having to do the riots

J: Maybe because I'm older, I'm thinking that so much hot blood is out there to try to make things happen your way. But it’s supposed to be that way–supposed to negotiate [coughs].

J: It’s supposed to be let’s share our thoughts. Just because you don't think the way I do doesn't mean I'm gonna I'm gonna, you're not gonna be my friends.

J: It's so hard to see some of my friends on Facebook, how they feel about different things and all I can do is shake my hand. You know, that's a nice thing to do, is take your head.

J: I've opened it with the death of Ruth [?] that a lot of people are gonna get out and vote.

J: That's another thing that I do. I work the lesson. [chewing a crunchy snack] I've been a supervising judge in Wyandotte County for eight years. And then I've been supervising judge out here in Johnson County.

J: Now what that means is I'm in charge of one polling thing. I answer all the questions, deal with everything that goes on in there. And we were very, very busy for the last primary. And I know that when the general election comes up in six weeks, that it's gonna be a very hectic day.

J: I do hope that we don't have any issues. I'm very fortunate that I'm in a very affluent neighborhood in Johnson County. There are very few minorities but we do have them. There are no poor people [that] come to vote, okay? If anybody comes in rags it is because they choose to dress in rags. You know how the kids dress. Everyone that comes [to vote[ is very affluent. They're upper middle-class is how it is. Put it. And I'm sure that there are places even higher class and that in Johnson County.

J: But I'm in western Shawnee and I don't have any poor people. I don't have any farmers. There are some places where you worked and Wyandotte County, we could see where people work in all of these people to come now, you can, you can, you know…

J: One way of noticing is the ladies come in, they come and sign and they got rocks on your hand. And I'm not a jeweler, but I know that that’s not cheap, so they’re blessed.

J: And so most people come and you're not going to argue with you about anything. They'll have a question. All my workers are excellent workers. Nobody looks at me like because I'm a Mexican or anything.

J: There have been, in fact, where I'm at now–there was only maybe six people that I knew. When I worked at Wyandotte County and I worked at Argentine, I knew everybody that came in there. I had so many older ladies come up and give me a hug. I would give–the men would all come and say,they were so proud to see one of their [own] doing the work. Oh, Tucci–that’s my childhood nickname when somebody calls me Tucci, that means they know me from way back. Okay. Oh, tricky.

J: And even now to this day, I probably had three phone calls from somebody in Wyandotte County asking questions about the voting. Do I need to vote now? Do I need to go? Somebody called and asked me about the primary and Kansas. Do I need to go vote in that? I said no, that's already been decided. You want to go vote? You can. And this lady was in her eighties. She wanted to know that you need to get out from there. I said “no, you're okay.”

J: I don't mind helping out civic duty. I can't be a history teacher. I can still do my civic duty. So I help out.

J: Very fortunate I got a great wife that's understanding that lets me go and do whatever I want to go do because she knows I'm helping people.

J: My favorite thing that she says her sister was asking her. And I heard this on a speakerphone. Well, where’s Jesse at? “Oh, he's out feeding the world.” So that, you know what she's asked her what she considered when I'm doing what I do, my civic duty. So that makes me feel good that she knows that I'm doing that. I guess that's about it unless you have more questions.

M: Well, Jesse, that's a really rich story. There's so much there's so much history in your story. You kind of are a history teacher.

J: Yeah. Basically how I break things and break things down. It is by the history–thing that you can relate to it. I've talked about Martin Luther King, talked about landing on the moon. We've talked about Daegu where? So yeah, these are these are–things that are big impacts on my life.

M: You can tell–you kinda mark your story by what was going on in the world and in the country.

J: Now I have a lady. I can introduce you to her name is Bea Ramirez. Her maiden name is Madrigal. Her grandfather or her step grandfather, Channel [?] was my grandpa’s buddy. They lived across the street from each other and they were both plumbers. They were together like Mutt and Jeff [?]?

J: So she is educated, she went to Pitt State and got her CPA.

J: I will get a hold of her and I will send an email with her email and text. And then you guys can figure out how to get together and do this Zoom, call me. Let me tell you–Bea Ramirez can talk.

M: I like, Okay. That's great. The more information the better.

M: Hey, Jesse. So were you first-generation your family when you went to college? When you went to community college?

J: Yes. I was a first first one to go to college. My brother…my sister went to work. My older sister, my two other sisters got married. And then my brother number four, he graduated from well, he went to KU..but he graduated Benedictine..He is the Fire Chief in Corpus Christi [Texas].

J: So, [he is called] Chief Rocha down there. So I go down there in January when the weather gets cold here, I go down there to play golf. Every time we go to the restaurant, Chief Rocha, I got your table over here. We would go someplace and there are ten people waiting to eat, they see him and say “Chief Rocha.” We'll walk around and everybody–kinda embarrassing at first. That way, It's pretty cool. He gets his recognition.

M: Yeah.

J: He likes that.

J: And my younger brother went through Baker University and he worked for the city of Kansas City, Kansas he’s in procurement and left for another job. So–

M: Did you ever wish that you grew up in Texas or California or something? Or were you happy growing up in Kansas?

J: I grew up in a village. I had people–I had love all around me. I didn't I didn't see very much violence. Yeah. We had our fight as kids and whatnot. But there was always somebody there that you could depend on. I didn't see a lot of hatred–when we heard of our first divorce when I was about 12 or 13. Oh my God, that was sacrilegious, you know.

J: We had a nun who was our teacher. And then she left the nunnery, came back three years later, married with the husband. But we all thought, holy cow, how in the world could she do that?

J: And that's what mom explained that they are just people–even though they become priests or they become nuns–you still have to remember that they’re people.

J: When I was married, my second wife, we had a pool at the house. And one of the priests, we had two priests at that time, one of the priests was just a year older and I would come over for a beer, right. I mean, ate steak and had beer. And then he said, “How about let's jump into the pool?” So all the kids jumped into the pool and they were jumping all over him and dunking him in the water and my then wife said–look what they’re doing to the priest!

J: He's having fun. He's just a guy.

J: You know, my dad still had friends with priests. Here's another little story. We went to Royal Stadium, not Royal’s Stadium [?], a municipal stadium, the 22nd of Brooklyn. This would have had to have been about 1958–59. We go to the ball game. My dad, friend, Father Paul, not wearing a collar. Okay. He's dressed in a regular shirt, and I thought, well, okay, but we get to the game and it's the first inning. And here comes the beer man. And my dad stopped the beer man and said “let me have two beers.”

J: He gives the beer to my priest, a beer to my dad, I see the priest take a drink of beer…and I thought to myself, we're going to hell now. But that's how naive I was at that time. You know, you have your thoughts. It can't be no priest, the perfect, you know, then you find that they’re human.

M: That's interesting. I've never actually thought about…Are priests allowed to drink alcohol? Well, the Catholic Church is against that.

J: He did not get inebriated that I could tell. Okay. All right. We'll have to tell you that story.

J: We did have a priest at our parish, he is deceased now, and he had an alcohol problem.

J: I was on the school board because… because the age differences of my kids–two times, I had an eighth-grader graduate and then a kindergartener start the next year. Okay. Now, I was on school board for over 20 years. Okay.

J: We had a school board meeting. Father King. He would smash smash, and we're trying to figure out what's going to happen with the school. The school didn't have enough money to run. We don't know if we're gonna be able to pay the teachers, if no one is doing [it] for us. So I told the head nun at that time, the principal, I said “we're going to have to call the archbishop.” Something's got to happen here. That was on a Tuesday.

J: Well, the next thing you know is that weekend we had a different priest saying the mass. And everybody will want to know: “Where’s Father [King] at?” And then the word got out that he went to a rehab center. So they're human.

J: And this priest was a great guy. He was probably in his late seventies and my mother always said he doesn't want to be working anymore; he’s working because we had a shortage. Okay.

J: He went on to be afraid for another five or six years after he dried out [?]. Not at our parish, but at another place.

J: So we're all just human.

M: Yeah. Jessie, thank you so much. I really love your story. I'll send you the tape back…if there's anyone else so you can think of who you want to talk to me in the two years, that would be off.

M: Or do you have a phone that you can take pictures of, letters and photos like that?

J: Photos of what?

M: Anything you have..pictures of your kids, your family?

J: Well, yeah, I've got some pictures. You see me.

J: You can see some of my pictures. One thing, when I look at my picture to myself, when I was young–I'm never smiling. I don't know if I was thinking, oh, if it was going, I couldn't hear somebody say “cheese” or whatever. But you will see a lot of my pictures. I'm not smiling as a youngster.

J: I did not have a bad childhood. I did have issues with one uncle that was abusive to me and he's still my uncle. I'm not upset with them or anything, all that is gone in the past; I learned how to deal with my demon. You know, a lot of people [say that] they can not deal with my demons.

J: I have another uncle who I got into a lot of this history from and he always contends that my grandmother didn't love him. Okay. I had to tell him grandma didn't love anybody but Frank, Frank was the baby. I said “so, don't worry about you not getting love from your mother.” Because grandma did not give–

J: And you know, when people say, Oh, you love going over to grandma's house.

M: [laughs]

J: Well, if I loved going to grandma's house, it was because she had the TV. We had to go pay to watch Ed Sullivan because grandfather the ban on [unknown] you got to see who did the Beatles.

J: The Beatles? Who wants to say anything about bugs? I say “Grandpa, no.” We gotta watch it. And I think we got to watch it because a little mouth [?] is going to be on top of video. So he said, Okay, let's watch the Beatles. I had to go over there to watch the Beatles. We didn't have our TV.

J: Oh, you know, I was 13 or 14 when we got off work telephone and then polyline…Pick up the phone if somebody were talking to put the handle with a receiver and just listen to people's conversation. Then you hear..Is there somebody on the phone..Is this?

J: Kids don’t know how easy they got it…

M: It's true. My daughter calls me up from college. She says, “Hey mom, you want to FaceTime?” and we have a video call. Can you imagine? Even ten years old, years ago thinking, okay, I'll be talking to my daughter who's in college. Just like this, just like a Zoom call.

J: I saw somebody that had a picture of a hand-held phone and they're holding it up like a regular camera [Jesse holds out his right hand like he is going to take a picture with a flip phone] and that's it. The first-out fees. Yeah. Yeah.

J: Alright. I'll send you some pictures. I'll send you the Bea Madrigal information, and then you–we’ll keep in touch.

M: Yes. Thank you so much, Jesse. I appreciate it. Have a great day and a great weekend.

J: You too. Bye bye.

Marta Caminero-Santangelo

Jesse

English

Video

Kansas City, Kansas