Teresa Hinojosa

One of my girls used to ask me, "Mother, how was the Depression to you?" Fine. We didn't suffer. I mean we were poor to begin with, but we always had chickens, rabbits, and whatever. In fact, my mother used to give to the ones that didn't have anything. And my dad used to have a victory garden. All the time we used to have, not a fancy house, but we always had something to eat and to give. They used to come over and ask for some eggs. My mother used to give them whatever she could and my father used to buy a sack of flour, a hundred pounds, and beans, potatoes, so we always had something like that to eat. We were never hungry.

My dad was in the club where they used to go in Central Market and pick the leftover fruit that were not good to sell. My mother used to make applesauce out of the apples that were a little rotten - cut it out and make applesauce. So we always used to have fruit. Whatever was good we used to use it. So to us, we never went though a Depression, but there was a lot of people that didn't have a home, didn't have nothing to eat. We did, we had a little, even to share to somebody else.

Like I tell you, you need unity. Togetherness and all together you can do something about it, but if you go one way and the other one goes the other way, forget it.

ABOUT PARTIES

I used to go dancing all the time, every little party, Teresa was there! (laughs) With my relatives, you know, my brother has a big family, and on their birthdays, or they get married, and they used to invite me. My husband never wanted to go, so I would go, they would come for me. They always used to have parties. I used to go, but my husband never liked to go no place like that. He enjoyed reading the paper, looking into a nice TV show. He knew all the actresses and everything that was going on in the paper he knew. But otherwise that's about all, no music outside the house or anything, just in his house.

I used to enjoy going out with my friends. I used to have a lot of friends, and mostly all of them were Mexican group of musicians, and they used to have little parties at home. At time they used to have parties at home and nobody interfered or anything. And all the time they used to invite me and here I go!