of us saying a word, and he drove us away from the border, moving along the well-lit main drag of Calexico until we blended in with all the cars driven by local revelers continuing their New Year’s festivities from the night before. We then turned west and wound around until we reached the highway leading toward San Diego, which thankfully had no checkpoints.
Now came phase two of the strategy, which called for Fausto to drop me off at the airport in San Diego. Here was where the plot became much more complex and where the outcome was going to depend less on science than on luck. I had heard that some people paid smugglers six hundred dollars to orchestrate and implement such a plan, but with only sixty-five dollars to my name, I had no choice but to devise my own makeshift version.
Not knowing what to anticipate, I was on pins and needles. From the moment my passport had been confiscated, I’d been on an adrenaline rush, catching only a few hours of sleep here and there. Exhaustion should have set in by now. Not a chance! My heart beat faster as Fausto and I reviewed the logistics of the next step. To avoid the Indio checkpoint, we needed to separate in San Diego and then reconnect in Los Angeles—probably in the early dawn. In these pre-9/11 days, airport security and requirements for showing one’s ID were not as stringent for short domestic flights as they were for transcontinental and international travel.
My gamble—which was huge—was that I would be able to buy a ticket and board a plane for the very short flight to L.A. (thus avoiding the checkpoints along Fausto’s driving route) without having to show my ID. But, of course, this wasn’t an original idea, and ticket agents were sure to be on the lookout for people like me. So on the way to the airport, Fausto had helped me memorize and rehearse answers to some of the questions I might be asked. Being a good mimic, I listened to his pronunciation of key phrases—“A ticket to Los Angeles, please”—and then repeated them, practicing my best American accent.
Only after Fausto dropped me off in the middle of the night at the San Diego airport and sped off into the darkness did fear really set in. As I stood in line at the airport ticket counter, I began to panic, afraid that immigration agents would suddenly appear and surround me. Although I was dressed in stylish American Bugle Boy slacks and a preppy Le Tigre polo shirt, I doubted that my attire was fooling anyone.
When my turn arrived, I walked up to the woman at the airline counter, concerned that my heart would beat right out of my chest. I summoned every memory I could find of past successes at mastering my fears: driving a car for the first time at five years old, overcoming stage fright at my first public speaking event, turning menacing bullies into bodyguards. These thoughts quieted my nerves and I said with as much charm as possible, still keeping it cool, “A ticket to L.A., please.”
“Next flight out, sir?”
“Yes, thank you.” I almost added “my lady” like Tata Juan and threw in a small doff of my imaginary hat.
The cost of the ticket was sixty-three dollars and change.
I paid for it and nodded graciously, carefully tucking away the dollar and coins that I had left and looking around to determine where to go next. Without a better option, I decided to follow the early-morning crowd and fortunately ended up at the plane’s departure point. The flight was surreal, astounding, and stomach-churning. Not once was I asked for identification or questioned by anyone in authority. Even so, I didn’t exhale until we landed in Los Angeles and pulled up to the gate.
But now the plan lost all scientific control. Since Fausto hadn’t known what plane or what airline I was going to take, he had simply said that he would do his best to be there to meet me when I disembarked. If I didn’t see him when I got off the plane, the plan was for me to wait for him near the lower level of the terminal entrance by the baggage carousel—though we had no idea that the airport had numerous terminals. So I wasn’t alarmed when he wasn’t in the gate area to meet the plane or even when a few hours passed and he hadn’t arrived at the terminal entrance where I’d arrived. Though somewhat concerned, I thought perhaps he had driven back to Mexicali to get Oscar and would eventually show up.
While the past two days had flown by, the hours now slowed to a sluggish crawl. Of course, I wanted to run victory laps around LAX, but until we were on the road to the San Joaquin Valley, I wouldn’t be able to relax. Besides, I was famished, even after spending my remaining dollar and a half or so on a cheeseburger at the first spot I found—Burger King. To distract myself from worrying about where Fausto was, I decided to explore the airport and spent the rest of the day listening to the fantastic array of conversations, languages, and dialects. At one point, weak from hunger, I went to sit in the food court, hoping to spot leftovers at other tables. A few tables over, I saw a couple with two children dash off to catch their flight, leaving their trays behind. With the agility of a gazelle, I went over to bus the table, discreetly feasting on the food that would have gone to waste otherwise.
The food revived my energy and spirits, but by late afternoon, I was frantic, ready to give up on the long odds that Fausto and I would ever find each other. The prospect that I’d have to make it on my own suddenly became real. True, I knew no one in Los Angeles, had no money, and spoke practically no English. But if my road had brought me here, I would follow it out into the city: someone would recognize a hard worker and give me a job sweeping floors or pumping gas. And just as I resigned myself to this fate, right as I stepped onto the down escalator—in a terminal far from where I arrived—to make my way into the cool of the evening, there was Fausto coming up the escalator on the other side! Unbelievable! What were the odds? We could have circled the airport for days, never finding one another. But here he was! I will never forget the moment when I saw his face and his warm smile grinning up at me.
We jumped into my Thunderbird and peeled out of the parking lot, into the chilly night air of Los Angeles, California. Before I could get a sense of the city, we veered off and away, onto the freeway, following the signs north. Once we were out of the city limits, I finally allowed myself to hoot and holler and to thank the saints above for the miracle of this opportunity.
If memory serves, the date when all of this came together was January 2, 1987—my nineteenth birthday.
FOUR Lessons from the Fields
Winter is often the most grueling season for the year-round migrant worker.
I learned this hard truth a short time after my return to the San Joaquin Valley, along with a series of other eye-opening discoveries about the new path that I had chosen. Besides the cold, wet weather that greeted me upon my arrival, I was confronted by the fact that the year-round work cycle was very different from the short stints I’d worked at the ranch before. Seasonal workers move from farm to farm and crop to crop, depending on the growing season, so any preconceived ideas I had about what I could expect for the coming months at once became irrelevant. Because the seasons had just changed, there was no work picking the crops where I’d been working last. This was the cue to move on to the next job and the next employer.
When I went to speak to the foremen at nearby farms, most had already filled the bulk of the jobs. They were impressed that I could fix machinery and drive anything on wheels, but these skilled, supervisory positions were usually earned only after long periods of moving up the ladder. I realized that no matter where I landed—and no matter which season or crop, I’d need to get used to starting over every time I moved. And with each move, I would have to get to know a different boss, who had to answer to a different owner, as well as find my place in a different group of co-workers. The only familiar element—whether the crop was cotton, tomatoes, corn, cauliflower, broccoli, grapes, or melons, all of which I helped cultivate over the next eighteen months—was that one or two of the workers would remember me as Doc.
Fortunately for me that winter, after a couple of days staying with Uncle Fausto, I was hired on at one of the huge neighboring ranches. For the next
