Cesar Chavez: “It was Very Tough”

It had to be around 1967 when I first heard his name, only because I remember the grape boycott. Mom thought Cesar Chavez was a hero for shining a light on the plight of migrant farmers in California’s Central Valley, but I couldn’t care less at the time.

Three years later I had to do a book report about Chavez. Looking back, that reader made him seem god-like and the same appears true today as in 2014 President Barack Obama proclaimed March 31 as Cesar Chavez Day.

Since that book report, and setting aside politics, I’ve learned more about him as I recently, I picked up a 1975 copy of “Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa.” Though the information’s limited and vague, I jus’ discovered that he lived in Del Norte for a while, writing:

“By that time Helen and I had two children, Fernando and Sylvia, born a year apart, and Helen was pregnant with Linda. We rented a house from an Aunt in San Jose and started looking for a job. But we just couldn’t find one anywhere. The best we could do was pick string beans, making $1 or $1.50 a day and working only for a few hours because that was all the work there was. Finally the employment office told us they wanted people up in Crescent City, more than four hundred miles to the north.

We didn’t even know where Crescent City was, and we had never done any lumber work but Richard, my cousin Manuel, two other cousins, and I all got in the car and took off.

In the beginning it was very tough because we didn’t know all the tricks working in lumber. We worked so hard the first days that when we came home, we couldn’t eat or do anything. We went right to bed. Even though we were young, the work on the green lumber chain was just killing. Eventually, we learned, and it became easier.

After Richard built a little shack for us, we drove back to San Jose to get our families. Linda was born in Crescent City and so was Richard’s son Freddy.

We stayed about a year and a half, then got tired of all the winter weather. The constant rain was too much, so we returned to San Jose where Richard became an apprentice carpenter, and I got a job as a lumber handler in a mill.”

Evidently, pulling on the green chain kicked their butts – something I can appreciate as the chain moves green lumber along a belt in order for it to be graded and sorted. Employees stand beside the chain and literally ‘pull’ the fresh-cut wood, putting them in sorting piles.

But, in the end, it was Del Norte’s signature weather that became the deciding factor as to whether he would stay or not. I’d love to know what lumber mill he worked for, the shacks location and why I never learn about his connection to Crescent City when I was doing that damned book report.