Month: March 2021

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Neto ~ A Mexican Champion

Neto was fourteen years old, the first time he saw someone surfing. 

Walking along the beach one afternoon with his girlfriend, Luci, three boys glided across the ocean in front of  them, standing on something that looked like a long, flat ironing board. The boys, not much older than Neto, resembled giant birds, flapping their arms as they stood on top of the water. The ocean was alive with huge swells from an incoming storm. Neto was transfixed with the magic of people dancing on water. 

Neto and Luci had been fighting.  She thought that if  Neto was her boyfriend, he should want to hold her hand all the time. He told Luci that if she would let him kiss her, then he would hold her hand.  Finally, Neto turned to her and said, “See those guys in the ocean? I’m going to do that. And if I like it, I’m going to do it forever.” 

“I knew she didn’t believe me. I wondered if she loved me, even though she said she did,” Neto told me. “If you don’t love me, then leave me. I will join those guys and love the ocean instead.”  

Neto walked Luci home, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the boys he saw riding the waves.

“I pictured myself, flying on top of the ocean, my feet planted on the board beneath me, arms stretched out, holding me steady against the wind.”

 Finally, Neto turned to Luci one more time and said, “If I am going to leave you for something, it will be for riding waves in the ocean.”

That was the beginning of Neto’s love affair with surfing. He was one of the first surfers in Mazatlán. He’s still riding the waves today.

When Neto was twenty-two years old, he hitchhiked to Guerrero, Mexico, to compete in the Mexican National Surfing Competition in Pentacalco. He was the only surfer from Mazatlán, competing against men from Alapulco and Iztapa-Zihautanejo in El Libre, a free-style event for surfers of all ages and all levels.

Neto remembers that the waves that weekend were “perfect” ~ fifteen feet tall in the front and eight feet in the back, “with lots of barrels” to ride through. He came in sixth place, overall, and was eager to compete again the following year.

For the next ten months, Neto stayed in Guerrero, training for the next competition. He bought a bigger board and surfed every afternoon. He worked as a deep-sea fisherman at night. 

“We caught swordfish, marlin and sharks in huge nets. We were in small. motorized fishing boats called pangas, not the big sport-fishing boats that tourists rent today.” Some of the fish were forty-feet long, and weighed between 500-1000 pounds. 

“How were you able to get those fish back to shore in your small boats?” I asked.

“Oh, we beheaded them so they would fit inside our boat. We threw the bloody heads back in the water.”

“That seems like an awful mess,” I commented.

“Oh, yes. When the Great White sharks smelled the blood, they came looking for us. We’d leave them to feast on the fish heads, while we headed for shore to the congelador (freezer) for processing. The next night, we’d do it all over again.”

“So, what happened in the surf competition the next year?”

“It was cancelled. The waves weren’t high enough. I still wonder if I might have won first place, but it was time for me to go back home.”

Neto still surfs every day when the waves are high enough. One of the oldest surfers on Mazatlán’s beaches, young surfers often come up to him and want to shake his hand. They affectionately call him “Ruco.” (Old Man) They tell him that he’s the “godfather of surfing” in Mazatlán. The ocean is where he belongs.

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A Minnesota Monster Storm

It was March 1, 1965. My friends and I were looking forward to graduating from college in St. Cloud, Minnesota. We were studying for our third quarter finals when the blizzard struck. We were used to snow, but totally unprepared for what was coming. 

I lived in an off-campus house with five other women. Most of us had turned twenty-one, the legal drinking age in Minnesota, and we liked going to the local college bar, about a mile away. It didn’t take much for us to take a study-break and head for the bar, to eat hamburgers and sometimes have more to drink than we probably should have. 

That night it started snowing while we were at the bar. I was the only person with a car, but I left it at home. We were used to walking a mile and usually we weren’t in any hurry to get home. Besides, I knew I would rather spend money on bourbon than on gasoline. The bar was crowded and noisy. We were having a lot of fun, when my roommate came and yelled in my ear, 

“We’ve got to get Sonia home.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s in the bathroom, throwing up. She’s so drunk she can’t stand.”

Oh, my! We looked outside and saw that the weather was getting serious. We bundled Sonia into her Minnesota parka, hat, scarf and gloves, and started the trek toward home. Sonia kept falling into snowbanks. No amount of cajoling could get her to walk more than a couple of steps. This was 1965 in rural, college-town Minnesota. There were no cell-phones. Everyone was hunkered down inside their homes, as the blizzard howled and quickly covered everything in snow.

That’s when we spotted a toboggan on someone’s porch. We weren’t going to steal it. We just wanted to borrow it. We needed to get Sonia home. We pulled the toboggan off the porch and into the street. We dumped Sonia onto the toboggan and she immediately passed out. 

By the time we reached our front door, we were wet and cold. We knew we were lucky to have made it home. It took four of us to drag Sonia off the toboggan, into the house and onto her bed. We peeled her out of wet clothes and  into warm pajamas. We covered her up in extra blankets and knew she was going to have a terrible hang-over the next day.

Meanwhile, the blizzard was getting worse. I went outside, tied a bandana to the antenna of my car, and hoisted the antenna as high as it would go. That was a signal to the snowplow that there was a car buried in the snow, in case drifts covered my car. Which they did.

That weekend, it snowed twenty-two inches, with drifts over three feet. The following weekend, it snowed again ~ another eighteen inches, with drifts again over three feet. And on St. Patrick’s Day, the third weekend in March, there was a third blizzard. School was cancelled. My car was hopelessly buried and even snowplows couldn’t get down the street. One of the drifts was higher than our front door.

A few resourceful students managed to cascade out second-story windows on sleds made of cardboard. They walked to the liquor store ~ the only business open ~ to buy cases of beer. They sold it to thirsty students who tunneled their way to the street to celebrate that finals were cancelled. 

The National Guard was called to load snow onto trucks and pile it in vacant lots. That year, St. Cloud went sixty-six days in a row without seeing the sun.

That was the last winter I spent in Minnesota. By September, I was on my way I way to Denver, where even when it snows, we know it won’t be long before the sun shines again.

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When Irish Eyes Are Smiling!

Next Wednesday is St. Patrick’s Day. I’m writing this story in honor of two strong, amazing, Irish women in my life: My grandmother, Irene Fay, whose mother came from County Sligo, Ireland, and my mother-in-law, Dorothy Gorman, whose mother was born in Hannibal, Missouri.

Irene and Dorothy had a lot in common. Both lost their fathers at a young age. Dorothy’s father died in the flu epidemic of 1918, when she was eight-years-old. Irene’s father was crushed between two train cars, while he was working for the railroad. Irene was in high school at the time. 

Both Irene and Dorothy grew up poor, raised by single mothers, at a time when jobs for women were scarce. As adults, they were hard-working, brave women who loved their spouses, their children and their grandchildren. They also loved to drink, now and then. Dorothy drank wine out of a pretty wine glass. Irene drank whiskey out of a porcelain cup.

I don’t know if Irene Fay was proud of her Irish heritage. My Welsh grandfather didn’t approve of her Irish family. I loved all of them, however, even though they were often in trouble with the law. Grandma died she was seventy years old.

Dorothy, on the other hand, was enormously proud of being Irish. St. Patrick’s Day was the most important day of the year to her and her sister, Margaret. They had their own booth at Duffy’s Shamrock Tavern in downtown Denver. They arrived early and stayed all day, wearing green from head to toe. Dorothy died just before her ninety-eighth birthday, still strong-willed and determined to live on her own terms.

One of the sweetest love stories I’ve ever heard was the story Bill Hein told about meeting his Irish sweetheart, Dorothy Gorman, at church, one night in the rain. Here is his story, told in Bill’s own words:

“My Uncle, George Hein and Aunt Mim had already moved to Denver. I stayed with them when I first moved to town. We used to go to church at St. Francis De Sales on South Sherman Street and we always attended the Tuesday night services together. Very quickly I noticed that six young, pretty girls always sat together in the front pew on Tuesday nights.

One Saturday afternoon, I came into church to go to confession. When I was finished, I saw one of the pretty girls from the front pew, praying in the back of the church. And then I noticed that it had started pouring rain outside. 

I ran as fast as I could, through the rain, the two blocks to where my sister, Anne and her husband, John Kastle, lived. I ran right in their door shouting,”Where’s the car keys!”

I jumped in their car and went back to church, dripping wet. When I saw the girl I was looking for, I said, “I wonder if I could take you home? It’s raining outside.”

“Is it?” she answered, as she looked at me, dripping wet from the downpour. She agreed to let me drive her home.

That night we got lost all over South Denver. Dorothy said turn one way, and I turned the other. I didn’t want to take her home just then. I wanted the ride to last forever.

Later, I took Dorothy to Canon City to meet my folks. We were married at St. Francis De Sales Church on June 2, 1937.”

~ Bill Hein

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John and Euphrosina ~ Early Westcliffe Pioneers

I love learning about family history and documenting stories, especially stories from long ago.

I learn to tell stories by listening to storytellers. My father’s family were a very quiet bunch. They were reluctant to talk at all, much less share their history. On the other hand, my mother’s family, the Hunts, were good storytellers. I hope to tell you some of their stories later.

But the best storyteller, by far, was my father-in-law, Bill Hein. Born in 1901, he had an excellent memory and a treasure chest of stories from his family tree.

I can still see my father-in-law, pipe in his hand and sometimes a drink on the table, as he told stories after dinner. He loved hearing his own words as they came out of his mouth. He’d laugh before he even got to the punch line. In the tradition of good storytellers, he’d re-tell the same story many times, using the same words over and over. That way, his stories were carried down from generation to generation. until, eventually, I started writing them down.

Here is one of Bill’s stories, just as he told it to me.

“The year was 1873. Colorado was not yet a state.. That was the year my grandfather, John Hein, arrived in Denver with a team of big mules, a large wagon, and his bride, Euphrosina.

John was a bridge builder in the German army. When the army got too close to Holland, he decided it was time to split. John left the army, came to America and went directly to a German colony in Illinois. Before long he convinced his parents, Nicholas and Catherine Hein, his brother Conrad, and his sister Christina to join him.

John, a Lutheran, met  Euphrosina Schneider, a Catholic, in Illinois. They were young and brave and very much in love. They wanted to take advantage of the Homestead Act, leave Illinois and start a new life in a beautiful place. 

John’s family decided to tag along. They signed on with the Colfax German Settlement and headed for Colorado. Soon they were joined by Euphrosina’s brother and his wife in what is now the town of Westcliffe.

To be part of the settlement, men had to be of good moral character, between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five. They had to be in good physical and mental health, and pay a huge sum of $250.

John, Euphrosina and the rest of the Hein family traveled together across the prairie by covered wagon, pulled by two big mules. In Denver they loaded their belongings onto a train going to Pueblo ~ the wagon and mules in one boxcar and the family in another. They unloaded in Pueblo, and once again traveled by covered wagon to their new home in the Wet Mountain Valley.

John and his neighbors were among the first settlers in this early German farming community of one hundred families. The first thing they did was to throw up a big, long barn. In the beginning, everyone lived together in that great big barn.

Farming was tough for people coming from Illinois. The elevation was 7000 feet, and the growing season was short. Frosts came early and many of their crops died.

John was a woodsman and fine carpenter. One of the first things he did was to build a sturdy cabin about eight miles out of town. Next he decided to keep cattle, in addition to farming. He started with longhorn, but with their long horns and skinny behinds, there wasn’t that much meat on them.  

One day, John went to the state fair in Pueblo and bought a big Hereford bull for $600.00. He hooked the bull on the back of his wagon and pulled him back to Westcliffe. At first his neighbors thought John was crazy. But when he started to breed his bull with the longhorn cows, everyone saw why he had done it. He soon had the finest beef cattle in all Westcliffe.

John and Euphrosina had three children, each two years apart: Pauline (Lena), John Edward (my Dad, known as Ed) and George. On the morning of December 16, 1891, John went outside to ride his horse. The horse reared and John lost his balance. The horse fell on top of him and crushed him. The saddle horn went right through his spleen. 

The family hurried outside to see what had happened. My Grandmother, Euphrosina, yelled to my Dad, “Ed, run for Father Servans. Then get the Lutheran minister and then the doctor. Your father is hurt bad.”

My Dad found the priest who volunteered to go after the minister while my Dad ran for the doctor. By the time they returned, my grandfather was nearly gone. He died with Father Servans holding one hand and the minister holding the other. He was fifty-two years old.”   

~ told by W.E. (Bill) Hein