Someone said,"You`re back?". I was surprised and glad to see the woman. How could I forget her. She had basically saved me for another day in my life when she took me so close to her children without fear and nourished me. She had given me a pottage like gruel that she was feeding her own children, Here, and now she recalled who I was. She seemed glad to see me . Just like she had taken me by my arm it seems so long ago, this day she did the same. "My goodness, you still have not returned to your home like I told you to do?" she said as she squeezed my shoulders gently like only a mother could do. She was alone and there was no fire in front of her where she sat. Her two young daughters were not at her side this time. "I don`t have a home" I told her. "I am going to live here with my friend Augie and work" I said. "Work?" she asked me incredulously, "And just where are you going to work?" she asked. "I am going back to the railroad tracks and wave at the soldiers. I know they will give me money like they did before", I told her, as she looked at me wide eyed. "You will not do that, you hear me?" she was now very serious. "The police will catch you and send you away", she pleaded with me. "I am not afriad. I will run away" I told her as I looked into her eyes. She was not an old woman as I had thought the first time I saw her. she said her name was Lisa. Her face was clean and her dress was not as the dusty looking woman that I remembered from such a long time ago. For me, like any child my age, time was not an issue of importance. I seemed like I had been here at the squatters city a long time ago. Things looked different and people this time looked more desperate.
The hot sun had hid behind some clouds and it appeared that rain was coming. The day suddenly seemed to become dark and a chill came over me. Augie and Raul, who I had not seen earlier was at the hill, and were getting ready to go somewhere so I wanted to come along. Raul would go fishing on days like today. He knew of a spot he said, on Camp street below a concrete bridge where catfish would strike in the dark. I went back to tell Lisa that I would bring back some fish to eat so she could also feed her two daughters. She was no longer sitting where I left her nor in the room she occupied to sleep with her daughters. I thought nothing of that and went with my friends fishing for catfish.
Raul true to his word, pulled up from the murky dark water under that bridge five large catfish. He said that he would take some to his mother and gave Augie and me one a piece. I would take my fish to Lisa who I was sure knew how to cook it so we could eat and feed her daughters too. She was still nowhere at the camp and her daughters were in the care of an older woman. The old woman was not friendly and would not tell me where Lisa was. I waited and tried to keep the fish clean until Augie told me that he could cut it and cook it. Augie and I ate that night but I waited very late awake for Lisa. When I discovered that servicemen on leave from their units from the many military bases in San Antonio, Here,
If you're lucky enough to be stationed at one of these installations, expect to receive frequent houseguests. Family and friends will want to visit. But it's probably not you they're coming to see - it's San Antonio! This is a big destination location with many more amenities than most military towns.
had suddenly started to frequent this homeless and despaired community to seek out the displaced women I was very sad, and angry at Lisa. I did not understand why she had left her daughters, in strange hands, just like I was, it made me mad. Lisa had decided to leave the encampment shortly after I left her sitting alone earlier. She left with a serviceman and returned at day break next morning. I saw her walk real slow to the shack she shared with others and her daughters. I did not know why she had left the encampment that afternoon. It took others, including Augie and Raul to tell me that some women in the encampment were being used as prostitutes by servicemen from the bases. Such conduct from these servicemen had brought many problems for those homeless living there. The police would constantly raid and roused up those sleeping and threw them out from the squatted shanty huts. Some were arrested as being vagrants, the famous charges against homeless in those days. I had sensed something different when I returned to the hill. The men seemed restless and more desperate without any other place to live.
Augie told me that we could not stay on the hill any longer. Bulldozers were brought to the hill to demolish the shanty houses to rid the site of vagrants. He said that any one caught on the hill would be taken to jail. I told Augie that I would go back to the railroad tracks and live under the El Puente Negro and I might find a good place to hide there. I wondered what would happen to Lisa. Augie said that she had been taken to some house where other prostitutes lived to serve the soldiers. I was very confused, but I saw this pattern of women going after servicemen to survive even with children. The house that Augie was taking about turned out to be located in the Red Light District that was purposely set as a prostitute area where soldiers and sailors could come while on leave from duty to see these women. These women which I included Lisa were actually sex slaves during World War 2 right in the heart of Texas. If you lived in San Antonio in those days you remember these sites on Conchos and Matamoros street. This was the Red Light District and was actually for soldiers primarily.
Augie was very smart compared to me. He said that we could do better downtown. I did not understand at first, but downtown San Antonio had been taken over and swarmed by the servicemen of all the bases that were stationed there during the war that had just broken with Germany. Augie and I would shine the shoes of all these soldiers in town. We built two shine boxes. One for each of us. With a strap nailed from each end to the side of the shine box we could hang the box on our shoulder and walk to soldiers and ask if they wanted a shine. "Shine, Mr. Soldier?" was the phrase Augie taught me to say.This was the first job I ever had. And I made money if indeed I could and knew how to use it. Shining shoes downtown San Antonio. I chose the bridge that is over the San Antonio River on Commerce Street. With a job, the police downtown would not bother us Augie told me. He was right. I still wanted to find Lisa and find out if she too had abandoned her daughters for her own survival. I also wanted to return to the railroad tracks. I liked teasing the oily monster that once haunted me.
I have written the words Fate and Destiny several time in this diary. Trains and the railroad tracks, their loud blasts of whistles would have a profound and lasting impact on my life many many years later. I started this diary featuring a train on the tracks. It is that first day as I saw one on those tracks that I knew I had to write of the impact it has had on my later life as an adult that includes my mother.