WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.790 Speaker 1: This is an oral history interview for the Riverside Library community 00:00:04.790 --> 00:00:05.790 archive. 00:00:05.790 --> 00:00:07.407 Today is the 12th of March. 00:00:07.407 --> 00:00:10.000 Could you tell me your name and where you were born? 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.716 Elena Vasquez: My name is Elena Vasquez. 00:00:12.716 --> 00:00:16.111 I was born in a small town near the coast in 1952. 00:00:16.111 --> 00:00:21.000 My father was a fisherman and my mother sewed clothes for the neighbors. 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:24.000 Speaker 1: What is your earliest memory of that town? 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:27.137 Elena Vasquez: The smell of the harbor in the morning, salt and diesel. 00:00:27.137 --> 00:00:30.715 My father would come back before sunrise and I would run down to the boats to see 00:00:30.715 --> 00:00:31.715 what he caught. 00:00:31.715 --> 00:00:35.000 If it was a good day, he would give me one small fish to carry home, like a prize. 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:38.000 Speaker 1: When did your family decide to leave? 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:39.278 Elena Vasquez: In 1968. 00:00:39.278 --> 00:00:43.944 The fishing was getting worse every year and my uncle had already moved to the city. 00:00:43.944 --> 00:00:47.389 He wrote letters saying there was work in the canning factory. 00:00:47.389 --> 00:00:51.000 My mother read those letters out loud at dinner, again and again. 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:53.000 Speaker 1: How was the journey? 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:54.138 Elena Vasquez: Long. 00:00:54.138 --> 00:00:56.073 Three days on a bus, then a train. 00:00:56.073 --> 00:01:00.000 I remember I was angry, because I had to leave my best friend, Lucia. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:05.000 Speaker 1: we promised to write every week, we did, for about two years. 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.215 Speaker 2: And your first job here? 00:01:07.215 --> 00:01:10.886 Speaker 1: At 16, in the same canning factory as my uncle. 00:01:10.886 --> 00:01:13.734 I worked on the line, putting labels on tins. 00:01:13.734 --> 00:01:14.937 The forewoman, Mrs. 00:01:14.937 --> 00:01:18.987 Doyle, was strict, but she taught me English in the lunch break. 00:01:18.987 --> 00:01:20.000 I owe her a lot. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:24.709 Speaker 2: Is there anything you would like your grandchildren to know about that 00:01:24.709 --> 00:01:25.709 time? 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:27.695 Speaker 1: That we were not poor in the things that matter. 00:01:27.695 --> 00:01:28.695 We had each other. 00:01:28.695 --> 00:01:31.760 And that every tin they see on a shelf was touched by somebody's hands.