Augustine Silvas (1928 - 2014)
last modified 1/25/2021
I have made some minor corrections 7 years later (2021) after speaking to Vito's sister, Carmen.
Augustine Silvas was my grandfather on my mother's side. I know for certain that my great-grandfather Frank (my mother's mother's father) emigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico. I am not absolutely certain about the rest of my great-grandparents on my mother's side but I'm reasonably confident that they also emigrated from Mexico.
My grandparents spoke Spanish. I originally thought that they had spoken it as their primary language as young children but that is incorrect. Their parents (my great-grandparents), like so many immigrants, thought that an English-only home would speed assimilation. My grandparents picked up "street" Spanish as adults as a practical matter of working with more recent immigrants from Mexico.
When I was in high school, I tried conversing in Spanish with Grandpa for practice. I noticed that he did not conjugate his verbs; he always said the infinitive. He had all the vocabulary and I had all the grammar.
In turn, my mother did not speak Spanish nor do I, beyond the little that I retain from high school. A few odd words survive, mainly having to do with food and mischief, "Ay chavalo! Are you telling chismes?"
Augustine Silvas, known as Grandpa to me and Vito to everyone else, was born in Los Angeles in 1928 and died in Los Angeles in 2014. As far as he was concerned, and I reckon his parents as well, he was purely American. Ancestry and heritage wax romantic with distance but first generation immigrants have strong reasons for leaving home. There was no love lost for Mexico.
2021 - I moved my wife and son from California to Montana. This little internal migration adds some texture to my feelings on one's home and one's choosing to leave it. I have strong reasons but there is love lost.
Mexican families sometimes have a white streak. Most people will have tan skin but here and there you'll get someone with fair skin. One can recognize Mexican facial features upon closer inspection. Mexicans with a streak of bigotry value the white streak.
My father has German and Irish ancestry plus I got the Mexican white-streak plus I don't speak Spanish plus I grew up in the east end of Ventura, CA. In sum, everybody that I've ever met has assumed that I'm the whitest guy they know. However, I'm just the biggest whitewash that they've ever known. I laugh inside when anybody lectures me on white guilt or white privilege. Any privilege that I received came from my ancestors working and saving and not sitting around feeling guilty or envious.
2021 - My father's side is the more well-to-do. I've learned that my mother's side of the family has plenty of well-to-do in it, just not my particular branch! By well-to-do I mean college educations, properties and job titles. Values such as labor, doing over blaming and judging based upon character are strongly inherited from both sides.
The male figure in my grandpa's life was his step-grandfather. Grandpa's surname should technically be Diaz but he and his siblings took their step-grandfather's surname Silvas. The 5 children are close in age, essentially one born every year. Grandpa is the oldest but not by much. Nevertheless, the line is blurry between being a good big brother and taking on some fatherly duties. Grandpa had been a father figure to several, including my first cousins Danny and Julie (who called him Dad) and for a short period my sister Jannine. He was the patriarch of the family.
My great-grandmother Rosy (mother's father's mother) lived into her nineties. I spoke to her passingly when I was a little boy. She smiled at me but said very little. Carmen confirms that her mother was not generally talkative. Rosy is known for her tamales. My grandparents kept up the tradition of making tamales from scratch for Christmas until my grandmother became senile. Rosy was present during my grandpa's entire life and she loved him. She was a butcher and it was she who got jobs for Grandpa and Carmen.
Burrito
When Vito became a boy of 9 or so he started to become more self-conscious, as children do around that age. All of the other kids' mothers packed them sandwiches for lunch. My grandfather's mother, however, packed him a burrito. The other kids asked him why he didn't have a sandwich for lunch and he got embarrassed because he didn't know.
He started eating his lunch in a hiding place. There was a water main that was surrounded by a short wall. He would throw his pack over the wall, climb over as stealthily as possible, eat his lunch as quickly as possible, then go rejoin the kids to play football. He did this for a few weeks. Then, one day, when he threw his pack over the wall he heard a thump and a kid say, "ouch!" Grandpa's pack had hit an Italian kid whose mother packed him a pizza for lunch every day. So, for the rest of the semester, my grandfather and the Italian kid ate together, he his burrito and the other his pizza.
Macular Degeneration
Grandpa's eyesight was poor. He had Macular Degeneration and other eye problems. Macular Degeneration is a disease of the retina. The retina processes raw vision into recognizable objects. If the retina doesn't work then the brain doesn't understand what the eye sees. Imagine camouflage as an analogy. Camouflage works by fooling the retina. I've heard it phrased as, "presenting no clear edges." You might look directly at someone wearing camouflage but your retina tells you that you're just looking at foliage! Having Macular Degeneration is like living in a world where everything is camouflaged. Sometimes you don't recognize things right in front of you. Sometimes you see things that aren't there. If you focus hard, or someone gives you hints, you might do better, but you'll tire out quickly.
Macular Degeneration worsens over time. Grandpa's disease progressed slowly. He had to turn in his driver license sometime in his late 30s or early 40s. He had to leave his job sometime in his late 40s or early 50s. I remember that, in his 50s, with the help of a magnifying glass, he could still read the headlines in the newspaper. In his 60s he could see shadowy outlines. In his 70s he could only see peripheral light and then he went totally blind. That final loss was the result of a medical error by a hospital intern and it was crushing.
Macular degeneration was not widely known of by doctors when Grandpa was a boy. They sent him to get glasses. Glasses can't treat Macular Degeneration. He did poorly in school because he couldn't properly read. He said that, "The 3 became an 8 and the 7 became a 1. I could do the arithmetic that I wrote on my paper but I couldn't copy the problem from the board correctly."
Teachers scolded him for not doing his work correctly or accused him of using someone else's glasses. After a few years, he finally got a teacher who looked at his work rather than just checking his answers. She noticed that his arithmetic was correct and that he was just working the wrong problems. She sat him in the front row where he could better see the blackboard. He made a lot of progress with reading, writing and arithmetic that year but overall the school punished his handicap rather than working around it. His grades were poor and he couldn't wait to escape.
Macular Degeneration is devious because people, especially children, may not realize that they have any problem. When Grandpa looked at the blackboard, he clearly saw an 8, not a 3, etc. He felt no indicator that his vision was wrong.
World War II
Grandpa, like most of the country, went on the warpath the day after the Japanese navy bombed Pearl Harbor. He was too young to join the military right then but when he was 17, he dropped out of high school, lied about his age and joined the Army.
The Army requires recruits to pass a vision test. Grandpa knew he wouldn't be able to pass it straight. The test involved a bank of lights. I can't describe it to the reader precisely because the person who described it to me was half-blind! Anyway, the lights flashed in some sequence and you had to tell it to the examiner. Grandpa noticed that the sequences repeated. Based on the number of people lined up in front of him, he deduced which sequence he would be given. He memorized it by listening to the people in front of him. It worked.
In fact, Vito even got himself a marksmanship badge! Pretty impressive for a blind man, no? As long as his rifle sight was calibrated and someone told him how far away the target was, he could put a bullet through it. The quandary was calibrating his rifle sight. He couldn't see where his bullets hit the target so he couldn't zero-in his sight. That's where having friends came in handy. He was wasted in infantry. The Army should have put him in artillery.
Vito always referred to the military as, "The Service," and his memories of it are fond. For the first time in his life, there was too much to eat. Army food is not exactly synonymous with gourmet but it was solid and plentiful. Every week of training, they piled more food onto his tray: scrambled eggs, sausages, fruit, pancakes, milk, juice, everything. By the last couple of weeks, his tray was a heap of food and he couldn't see the plate until he worked at it for a while.
Vito was deployed to Austria. However, by the time he arrived, the war in Europe had ended. He was stationed at a railroad bridge between the American controlled sector and the Russian controlled sector. His job was to inspect paperwork for civilians entering the Russian sector. It was for the civilians' own protection. The Russians were extremely picky and if your paperwork wasn't perfect then the Russians would not let you return to the American sector.
That was my grandfather's first winter outside of California. He had never been in snow before and now he was in a lot of it. His thoughts were mostly along the lines of: WHY WOULD THE ARMY SEND A MEXICAN TO BAVARIA IN THE WINTER? ARE THEY CRAZY? He spent most of his time in a guard shack staying warm by a little space heater. However, from time to time his unit would do training maneuvers in the hills in the snow.
Grandpa does not like the taste of coffee. Even people who do like coffee don't like whatever it is that the US Army brews. The soldiers are pretty sure it has two ingredients: caffeine and dirt for color. It is, however, served boiling hot. So, on this occasion, given the bitter cold and his thin Californian blood, Grandpa decided he would submit to drinking coffee. He got his cup of coffee and walked back to his sleeping bag as quickly as possible. He got in, grabbed his cup of coffee and took a sip only to find out that the top of it had frozen solid. He was miserable that night.
The soldiers were nervous that war could break out with the Russians at any time. At this border railroad crossing, the Army only deployed a handful of soldiers at any given time. The Russians had an entire company deployed on the other side. If the Russians crossed the river, my grandfather's orders were to run as fast as his legs could carry him to company headquarters. Then the company would retreat as quickly as possible, etc. The plan was to counter-attack somewhere around France. Grandpa knew that the Russians were tough because while he was trying to keep his hands warm in his guard shack, he would watch the Russian company shave their faces in the icy river.
One day, the Russians were drunk. They were drunk a lot of days but on this particular day they shot the windows out of some of the train cars. Passengers were on board. There was no reason other than Vodka, boredom, angst and being Russian. That was as close as Vito ever got to action.
Grandpa and his friends decided that things might go a little smoother with the Russians if they struck up some commerce. They quickly found out that the Russians had hardly any supplies. The Russians especially liked boot polish, soap and such things. The Russian soldiers were supposed to keep their uniforms and gear in order but they were not given any supplies to make it happen. So boot polish was given for whatever tokens the Russians offered in return and everyone calmed down a bit.
The difficulty with an officers' club is that someone has to tend the bar. That means someone must be trusted with the booze. Let me reiterate: we're talking about finding someone in the US Army to trust with booze. The best bartender is one that doesn't drink from his own stock. Fortunately, they had Vito. He didn't smoke or drink alcohol or even coffee. It wasn't out of any principle. He just didn't like the taste. He preferred to spend his money on boxes of candy bars and then trade the cigarettes in his rations for more candy bars. Grandpa didn't start drinking until years later when his doctor told him to. He had had stomach surgery and lost a lot of weight. Beer helped him to regain the weight.
One day, the normal American beer was not available. Grandpa procured some German lager, instead. The bottles were smaller yet more expensive. The men gave Vito a hard time but he held firm on the price and in the end what could they do? Not drink? Hardly. That evening the men learned that not all beers are created equal. The small bottles contained more alcohol than the big bottles and the men had been drinking more bottles than usual. By the end of the night, they were complementing Vito on his fine work. There was always German beer under the bar after that.
Discharge and Korea
Vito was having a fine time. The Army offered to make Vito a sergeant if he reenlisted. However, he would have to stay in Europe. He was in favor and wrote home to his girlfriend, Delia. They could get married by post, he said. Delia wouldn't stand for it. "If you want to marry me then you can come home and do it in person!" she replied. So, he did. Thus ended his life in the service.
Every day at school, the lunch bell rang at noon. Every day during the summer, my mother put lunch on the table at noon. In the army, we ate at noon. When I married your grandmother, I told her that I expected my lunch at noon. Ever since then, I've eaten at one.
Vito Silvas
The Korean war broke out a few years later. The Army called Grandpa's unit back into duty. He and some others who had been called back were presented to the new recruits as grizzled veterans of World War II. D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge - you name it - these veterans had been through Hell and back and now they were going to do a demonstration. The drill sergeant said that the situation in Korea was a little different than it had been in Europe. "There are so many Chinese, you don't have time to aim! You shoot from the hip! These men are going to show you boys how it's done!"
The bit clarifying that most of these veterans had actually arrived in Europe after the war had ended was omitted. Even so, those paper targets didn't stand a chance.
Grandpa's eyesight had deteriorated since World War II. He was referred to the doctor. He examined Grandpa, scratched his head and referred him to another doctor. This happened a few times. Grandpa was chauffeured to his appointments. The gate guard assumed that Grandpa was an officer since he had a chauffeur. The guard would salute smartly and Grandpa would salute back. They encountered each other a little while later in the mess hall and the guard was incredulous that he'd been saluting a private.
Once again, my memory gets a little hazy. I believe that Grandpa eventually got referred to a specialist who finally diagnosed Macular degeneration. However, I don't think that was what prevented Grandpa from going to Korea. It might have ultimately worked out that way but something else came up first. My impression is that there was a lottery for someone to get to stay home and Grandpa won. He was a father by that time and happy to go home.
Farmer John
Vito worked for most of his career as a butcher for Farmer John. He sharpened knives by muscle memory to the end of his days. There is something impressive about watching a blind man hone knives using the butcher method where he pulls the knife towards himself.
Butchery is hard, dirty work. To earn extra money, Grandpa would bone heads. That is where you cut as much meat as possible off of the animal's head. It's a dirty job within a dirty job. He would also arrive early and help setup. Carmen informs me that Grandpa also slaughtered livestock. Perhaps he avoided sharing this last gruesome tidbit with me.
The original owner was good. He paid fair wages and ran the lines at a reasonable speed. The business eventually passed to his sons. They were only interested in extracting as much money as possible. They ran the lines at inhumane speeds. They brought in cheap and most likely illegal Mexicans to depress wages. Grandpa got lucky, sort of, if you can ever call going blind lucky. His eyesight had deteriorated to the point that the doctor said he wasn't fit to work anymore. That made him eligible for early retirement. Between his pension from Farmer John, his pension from serving in the Army and social security, he got by.
Interview
In 2006, my history professor at CalPoly assigned us to interview someone who had been alive during the period we were studying. I interviewed my mother's parents, Augustine and Delia. Their interviews are below. Delia was in the very early stages of going senile and her long term memory is suspect. Other people in the room made corrections and she would remember her place.