Abuelita Maria

In 1952, my father had an old Model T car, which he had fixed to have room for carrying his carpenter tools. he removed the trunk closing and added a wooden area he made to look like a pick up truck. My father, Jose Villarreal was a freelance carpenter, who could give you an accurate detailed list of the lumber needed to make whatever size building anyone wanted, mostly little houses used for homes by hispanic people in Weslaco. He could figured out exactly how many 2x4's. etc for whatever addition or construction was wanted. Usually my mother was the one who putted it down on paper, because he didn't know how to read or write, but he did know exactly how many pieces of each piece of lumber he needed. I could never figure out how he knew that, but he did.
As soon as I learned to write, it became my task to put down on paper his summary of lumber needed for all his work projects.
In 1952, because there had been very few jobs, my parents decided to go try to find work in Kenedy, where my mother's oldest sister, Maria, lived with her husband and two married children. Her husbands name was Nicolas Aguirre, and he was in charge of a farm and he had three houses for himself and his two married children, Ernesto, married to Catarina, and Aurora, married to Ortiz. Ernesto had five daughters, Olivia, Ofilia, Ofelia, Odilia, and the youngest Orselia, just a toddler then. Aurora had only two girls, Adelaida and Ana. Adelaida must have been in her early teens and Ana about 5 years old.
When we arrived in Kenedy, we stayed at the farm with Maria, who I always called "abuelita", or grandmother. It was a learning experience for me to be living in a farm. I saw my Abuelita and Catarina making corn dough for "tortillas" and "gorditas" They used two old methods---"el metate", which was an old stone utensil that looked like a slide, with a stone that looked like rolling pin, but was a square shape for grinding the corn into dough. They also had another kind of grinder, very similar to a coffee grinder.
My Abuelita was an expert in needlework. She made all the clothes everyone used, and always decorated all the children clothes with crocheted edges. She even used crocheted edges to decorate and finish the edges of panties, slips, nightgowns and even bed linens. All the women oin the household were expert quiltmakers and they had beautiful quilts, both pieced and appliqued. She even made her own towels and potholders, both crocheted and quilted.
Besides all the sewing and other needlework, my abuelita was an avid reader. She was the one who named me Odilia after the magic swan in Swanlake, the ballet. Having left school very young, she had made it a point to educate herself on her own.