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Thanks for calling attention to multigenerational roots
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Anonymous user Tue Oct 17, 2006 09:46:10 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments I received my Southwest Voice today and noticed an article about a former employer of mine, Mexicali Restaurants.
The grocery store Santos and Trinidad had actually belonged to my grandfather first. He left town to travel through the valley with farmworkers as a labor contractor before Cesar Chavez came around. He did this as the workers came through his store in the mornings to get food for lunch, and wait to be picked up and taken to farms. He heard the stories of how workers could not control how they were treated. 
My grandfather asked Santos and Trinidad to run the store for them while he traveled. He told them they could keep the profit as their earnings until he returned. 
Santos and Trinidad put everything they had into not just running the store, but making it the best store around. They wanted to show my grandfather, when he returned, just how much they respected him for allowing them this opportunity, and how responsible and dependable they were. 
It worked. When my grandfather returned because my grandmother was ill and he was no longer going to travel, he was amazed at how well they had minded the store in his absence. 
I never knew my grandfather, however my aunts and uncles tell me he was a very serious guy. Not much of a smiler — and you didn’t want to make him mad. When he returned to Bakersfield, Santos and Trinidad were scared. Scared that this better life with higher earnings was over, and scared that perhaps they might not have done what he wanted done with the store. 
My grandfather inspected the store and talked with people in the neighborhood. When he finally went to Santos and Trinidad, they were amazed when he told them that since they were the reason the store was able to stay open, and since they worked so hard to make it better than it was, they could keep the store. 
When I was newly married, with a child and needing a job, my dad told me that Sonny Crews had told him if any of his kids ever needed a job, call him. My little sister was already working at Mexicali downtown. I went to the restaurant and was hired on the spot.
I had worked there for a few years when Trini came in for a meal. Santos died shortly before I was hired, and Trini was quite old. They always gave her a waitress who spoke Spanish, even though she spoke English. 
That day she looked at me and her expression changed. She told them I was to wait on her. When I went to her table, she asked what my name was.  I told her, and she asked if I was married. I said yes, and she asked what my maiden name was. I told her, and she told me her eyes were bad and she had never noticed before how much I looked like my grandmother (who died when my dad was young), but when she saw me that day she knew I was related to her. 
She then made me sit at her table, while I was on duty,  and told me the story above. Sonny heard parts of it, and later told me that he did not know all the details she gave that day. However, he spent a lot of time with his grandfather when he was growing up, and through his grandfather knew there was a great respect and bond between our families in days gone by. 
Trini gave me a wonderful story of a man I never knew and had only heard how harsh and serious he was. When I went to my dad and told him this story, he did not know it, as he was younger and not aware of what was going on at that time. I was then asked to tell this story at a family anniversary, and was amazed at how many in the family were not aware that their father had not sold the store, but had instead given it to Santos and Trinidad as a reward for their faithfulness. 
Santos and Trini instilled great family pride, faithfulness in God and family, respect for those around you, self respect, honesty and loyalty in their children and grandchildren, because they themselves had all these things. God blessed them with the store in what appears to have been my grandfather’s greatest act of kindness to anyone, and possibly his only act of kindness to anyone outside his own family. 
I am not the Gamez family cheerleader. In fact, short of Sonny, they may not even recognize my name, as we all live busy lives and haven’t had much contact lately. 
I want to thank you for this article, as Bakersfield has rich family history with multigenerational roots, despite opportunities to move elsewhere. It is nice to see a paper that brings this out.
Andrea K. Cagle

Editor’s note: Mexicali West owner Kenny Gamez’s grandparents, Santos and Trinidad, immigrated from Mexico (Durango and Sonora, respectively) to Bakersfield in the 1940s.   After Santos’ stint with the railroad, they decided to go into business for themselves. Ventures included a grocery store, gas station, tortilla bakery, and finally a soda stand that eventually began serving food and became the first Mexicali. It opened in 1957 at its current location on 18th and R streets.

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