Barrios Oral History Project

Narrator: JOE SOTO
Interviewer: SCOTT SOLLIDAY
Date of Interview: January 25, 1994
Interview Number: OH - 139

Joe Soto was born at the railroad section camp in Tempe in 1937. He has lived most of his life in Tempe, and worked for many years as a janitor for Tempe Elementary School District No. 3. Soto assisted the museum staff with the development of the exhibit The Barrios in 1992. Since the 1980s, he has documented his memories of the Tempe barrios through paintings. Photographic copies of some of these paintings are in the Permanent Collections of the Tempe Historical Museum.

In this interview, he talks about the Ruiz family, which came to the Tempe area in the early 1900s. He talks mostly of his grandfather, José María Ruiz (born 1877 in Pala, California), who worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad and as a freighter during the construction of Roosevelt Dam. He also discusses his grandmother, Marina Ceballos Soto, his uncles, who also worked for the railroad, and family members who moved to California after World War II because of better work opportunities. Other topics discussed during the interview include social life, landmarks in and around the barrio, the demolition of the barrio in the 1950s, and Hispanic mutual aid societies, such as the Alianza Hispano Americana and the Sociedad Mutualista Porfirio Diaz.


FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

Copyright © 1998 Tempe Historical Museum

BEGIN SIDE ONE

SOLLIDAY: This is Scott Solliday, and today I'm interviewing Joe Soto for the Tempe Historical Museum. Let's see now, Joe, were you born right here in Tempe?

SOTO: Yeah, I was born and raised here in Tempe. I was born in the railroad section houses that's out there on University and the railroad. See, they used to have section houses at one time there, and my grandfather worked for the railroad, so. . . . And my dad died and my mom went to live with Grandpa, and that's where I was born, in one of them section houses.

SOLLIDAY: And that was your mother's side of the family?

SOTO: My mother's side of the family, Ruiz family, right. That was March fifth of '37, in 1937.

SOLLIDAY: And when did the Ruiz family first move there?

SOTO: I think they moved there as early as 19 -- in the early '20s, 'cause one of my uncles started working for the Eastern Arizona Railroad [Arizona Eastern Railroad]. He started [in] 1914, I think. In fact, he was 14 years old [when he] started. Then my grandfather joined him in the early '20s to work for the railroad. Then I had another uncle that worked for the railroad, which was Rupert Ruiz. They made a career out of working for the Southern Pacific. In fact, my grandfather was retired from Southern Pacific Railroad.

SOLLIDAY: And so they were the only ones that lived there in the railroad section yards?

SOTO: Right there in the section house, right.

SOLLIDAY: When was that all torn down?

SOTO: I think they tore that down in 1958-'59.

SOLLIDAY: So it was actually pretty late.

SOTO: Yeah, because I think one of my cousins, they bid for one of the little section houses, and they have it at the place where they live on Wilson Street. In fact, they made it into a little office or something of that nature.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, so they moved it.

SOTO: They picked it up and moved it, right. So I'm sure that it was 1958 when they teared everything down, during that time.

SOLLIDAY: Now . . . since you grew up with your grandfather, you said he told you lots of stories?

SOTO: Lots of stories about when they came here and how they progressed, you know. In fact, they moved from. . . . I think when. . . . They lived around the Verde River where the McDowell Reservation, that area there, because when they made that property into a reservation, that's when they moved to Mesa. And I surmise it must have been around 1898, because they moved to Tempe in the early 1900s. And him and his father bought a lot right there on the corner, which is College Avenue and Dewey Street, see. That's where they bought their lot and that's where they built their house. And from that time on they were here in Tempe. In fact, I was remembering that Grandpa said that he was one of the first people that digged the foundations of the old Mount Carmel Church [St. Mary's] that's just right there on the corner of University and College Avenue.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, yeah, the one that. . . .

SOTO: In fact, that used to be Willow Drive instead, or Willow Avenue, before they changed it to College Avenue.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, back when the college was still called the Normal School.

SOTO: Uh-huh, the Normal School.

SOLLIDAY: Well, of course, then University, they changed Eighth Street to University, once it became a university. Yeah, that goes back to 1902, so that was certainly the early days of Tempe. Yeah, when I was doing some of the research, I found Francisco Ruiz at -- well, he was still at Fort McDowell in 1904.

SOTO: [In] 1904?

SOLLIDAY: He was the only Ruiz left there at that time, and I think he might have been your grandfather's brother, because there was a Francisco Ambrosia Ruiz.

SOTO: Oh, okay.

SOLLIDAY: So it wasn't. . . .

SOTO: As early as 1904?! Well, because I knew. . . . Well, the church was built in 1903, and they were already there. Mr. Ruiz, my Uncle Frank, he was born in that house right there, and I think he was born in 1903. So I'm wondering which Ruizes might have been those. Probably relations to Grandpa and his dad, probably.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, 'cause there was one earlier one here. Let's see if I can find that.

SOTO: Or not unless it's OTHER Ruizes.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, there was a Francisco Ruiz. That was your grandfather's brother.

SOTO: Oh, okay, okay. He was Ambru. His middle name was Ambrosia. Okay, okay.

SOLLIDAY: He might have been the one that was there, 'cause. . . .

SOTO: Oh, okay, it could have been, could have been him.

SOLLIDAY: 'Cause he was on the school board there. They had just a little one-room schoolhouse there.

SOTO: Oh! I never saw like that.

SOLLIDAY: And I think it was the last year they were open, in 1904, was on the school board. But I found a little bit in writing that there was a whole little community right there by Fort McDowell. But that's the whole. . . .

SOTO: Was there any Mendozas there?

SOLLIDAY: I'm not sure of Mendoza. There was a family called Mazon, M-A-Z-O-N. And they ended up coming to Tempe also.

SOTO: Un-huh, because the Mendozas were my grandfather's first cousin. And I don't know how they were. . . . In fact, he was a policeman in Mesa, see, this Ramon Mendoza was a policeman, and he was first cousin to my grandpa. In fact, when he got married, my grandpa stood up for him. And he said that there were times when they used to go chop wood and they would sell the wood. And when they were building these canals here in the Valley, they were using steam shovels, see. A lot of times they didn't have any coal, so they'd sell the wood to the people that buy for the shovel so they could dig the canal. That was one of the stories I remember, too. That would be during that time, I would guess, around 1904, one day.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, right around.

SOTO: He must have been about as old as 24, 25, 26, maybe 28. And he said once you left about 15 miles out of Mesa, you'd have to be very aware because the Indians would attack you, you know. In fact, he said they had this one guy with them, and he says he was -- mentally he wasn't all there, you know. He told him, he says. . . . And he told my grandpa, he says, "Jose Maria, what kind of. . . . I saw this person," he says. "I don't know," he says, "half man and half animal," because he had feathers. And then they knew, you know, that he had seen an Indian, you know. And what they would do, they just gathered themselves in the wagon and started coming back to the community. So he said that one ________. You could go out and walk out, or you could go 30 miles out to the Superstitions and you would get raided at that time, you know, so. . . . I wonder what it must have been, Apaches then at that time?

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, there were _______ Apaches here in that area there. Well, especially. . . . Well, this is in Mesa, because. . . .

SOTO: Uh-huh, this was in Mesa.

SOLLIDAY: Because Fort McDowell was even closer, right to the center of the wilderness.

SOTO: Yeah, it was Mesa then.

SOLLIDAY: So were they farming up there on the Verde River?

SOTO: They were farming up on the Verde River, and it was mostly farming for survival -- raised crops there when they started there. And then, when that Roosevelt [Dam] project came in the early 1900s, it seems that everybody got a job then. You see, they used to work loading the wagons with cement. In fact, my grandfather used to help them drive the mule trains up there to the dam, where they were building the dam. See, he participated in that project.

SOLLIDAY: To bring supplies up?

SOTO: Up there. So he said they had teams of mules they used to just load just everything they needed, just drove it up there. And a lot of times he said they would climb a steep hill, what they'd do, they'd put a rock underneath the wagon, you know, and then so the horses would keep on pulling. They had a lot of good stories to say about that. So he worked on that project until that point. That was kind of a good steady job, I guess. (chuckles)

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, for about five years there.

SOTO: Five years, at any rate. So he did work on that project, on the Roosevelt projects. I remember him telling us that. In fact, I can remember when I was a Boy Scout, we went out there the first time, I was real tickled to death, you know, seeing that dam. I was about twelve years old, and then I got all excited, saying, "My grandpa helped build this dam!" you know. (both chuckle) So he was one of the Hispanics that participated in that. So was his cousin, Raymond Mendoza, the one I was telling you about. And he says that between that they used to be cowboys. At that time, everybody was a cowboy, really. So then they used to do little roundups here and there, whoever'd hire them. As far as being a miner, my Grandpa Ruiz wasn't much of a miner -- he was more of a cowboy and a carpenter type of a person, you know. So he went to work for the railroad. And he was a ranch hand too. They left that, but this right here, I don't remember what the time factor was. They worked up in a place they called Muleshoe. It was around Prescott area there, see. (SOLLIDAY: Oh yeah.) The Muleshoe, where the Santa Maria River comes. In fact, he said that river would get real nasty when it flooded, so a lot of people would get washed out with that river. And he worked for a family they called Mullins, I think. They owned a ranch up there, that's who he worked for. Then after that, I guess they came back to Tempe, where his dad's house was. I guess that was like domestic shelter. They'd go out and then they'd have a place to come back to. So that's what he did. That was a center place. There must have been like. . . . You can't call it a homestead, but that was their domicile.

SOLLIDAY: That was right on. . . .

SOTO: Right there, the one on Mill Avenue and -- no, no, College Avenue and Dewey right there, where University and that area is.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, then later they moved to the section house?

SOTO: Yeah. Well, later they moved to the section house. But that house was always the family's house. That there was kind of a foundation place. And then they bought another place. They did all the place at Sixth Street. You know, they had a house at Sixth Street too. So they did buy a little bit of land here and there. But mostly they lived in the section house, because that's where they worked.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah. What kind of work did they do?

SOTO: Well, they called it maintenance away because they were the maintenance people, the ones that. . . . You know, when a railroad tie would crack or break, they would change it, you know. Whenever a track was needed to replace, got chipped or cracked, they had to put another track in there, and made sure the track was plane and levelled all the time.

SOLLIDAY: Did they cover a certain area on the track?

SOTO: Yeah, the Tempe Section covered -- I think it covered as far as 40th Street, and they came down, I think the dividing line for them here in Tempe, I think it was the canal, I'm not sure. But then Mesa took over. See, they had so many miles that Tempe would take care of, Mesa would take care of, and Gilbert had a section, and Phoenix had several sections that they'd take care of, down clear to Tolleson. They did take care of that. And mostly at that time there was a lot of . . . the railroad was a big thing, so anybody that worked for the railroad, at least they had a steady job then. And they were real lucky, because the rest of the people were migrant workers, and they had like a more stable job, so it helped them out.

SOLLIDAY: And then later, let's see, that started out as the Arizona Eastern, but then they all became. . . .

SOTO: And then Southern Pacific bought it, you see. When Southern Pacific bought it, then it became a little bit better for them, because then they got organized. And I can remember Grandpa _________. I still have his union card, you know. (chuckles) He was a proud union man, you know. But in those days, the union was a thing that was used. You stood up and you lived and died for it, see. They really had real good benefits there. In fact, a lot of times when I hear about Medicare, I always think, "Well, the railroad had it before even the government invented it."

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, most other people didn't really have all those benefits. Let's see, you mentioned also you stayed for a little while with your grandmother, Marina Soto.

SOTO: Soto, yeah. That was. . . . See, my mom died in June of 1942, and I must have been with them for at least three, four months. I remember that very clearly, because I didn't want to go, you know, I wanted to stay with them. I got real attached to them. But my sister came after me, and said, "Well, you have to go," you know. Grandpa. . . . And they kind of had a little stand-off for me there. (chuckles) But I think my sister took me away. And then, when I went to live with Grandpa. . . . Well, Grandpa took us to live with one of his aunts, which were the Andrades, you know. She was a Ruiz, but she married Mr. Juan Andrade. And I lived with him, with that family 'til I grew up, 'til I even went to the Marine Corps. Then when I came back, I still came back and lived with them 'til I got married. But that family never had any kids or anything. They never. . . . You know, it was a couple that never could have families here. Me and my sister and my Grandpa went to live with them, and they kind of filled-in, we kind of made it a family within ourselves. My Uncle Ed . . . Andrade, he was a farmer. In fact, they say -- I don't know much about it -- but they say that he was one of the first farmers that raised watermelons. He was a crop sharer [sharecropper] for a man they called Turley -- I don't know his first name. He was very successful at that. Then after -- when we went to live with them, it was during World War II, and he learned to be a welder, and then he got a job in Williamsville, and he did real good with that job, and he stayed there 'til he retired. When we went to lived with him, they had a place in the Superstition Mountains. One of the. . . . My grandpa's uncle, his name was Jesus Castro. He was something like a miner type of a person. He would always go up to the hills. Remember that one time (chuckles) that I told you that the Mexicans, instead of going to the gold fields, ______________________. They all used to camp and would scout the area over at the Toole Canyon, around that area which is Township One, Section Eight. And they were always looking for minerals, and they ended up being mostly sheepherders. (laughs) But the good thing about those areas, the water was so surface that they'd dig springs there and the water would just come out of there. They were gravity springs. And when this gentleman, Jesus Castro, he found this spring -- in fact, it still runs by Castro Springs over there -- and Mrs. Andrade, she was the one that took over that spring when the Old Man Castro died, see. So we ran up to the mountains, you know, and we built a little cabin over there, and we took care of the place, me and Grandpa, for years and years, you know. In fact, they made it a domestic spring, because at that time it was a water right. You could use the water, sell it, and do anything you wanted to. It still is such good water -- we used to bottle it and sell it. But then there was another kind of adventure too, because. . . . They used to say that the Spaniards not only used the Peralta Road. There's a big creek that comes down to that area, and there was kind of the Spaniard trail, too, and they said that they buried a lot of treasures. They even say that the priest buried his chalice and all that. So when we were kids (chuckles) remember I was telling you we used to see an old crater there? We used to dig that thing, hoping we'd find something. Never found anything, but it was like God's little acre. I remember this one friend of mine, one of my uncle's nephews, his name was Alfonso Andrade, he's got a Model-A truck, one of those about a three ton. We drove all over that creek and he said, "Well, there's maybe something here. Look, the ground's real soft." And we'd start digging. (laughter) Kept us busy, anyhow.

SOLLIDAY: Looked for some real buried treasure.

SOTO: We did look for them. Yeah, we even used one of those sticks, you know, when you try to follow the magnet with it, and it would point right here. We'd dig. (laughs) So that was part of my growing up experience, too. And here in Tempe. . . . That was during the summertime, when school would close we'd go over there. And here in Tempe, well, wee started -- I started in the Tempe Grammar School, elementary school. And when the parochial school opened in 1945, then we came to Mount Carmel, and then I went to school there in Mount Carmel 'til I graduated from the eighth grade. Then I went to Tempe High, and I was just thinking, I really done a lot of crazy things. And then when I was seventeen, I just wanted to leave home, I wanted to get away from every place. And so I went into the Marine Corps, and that was the biggest mistake I made, 'cause I didn't think they were gonna push me and kick me around. I wasn't the only one. But it was a good experience. Then later on I got discharged out of the service. And everybody kept telling me, "Well, if you don't have high school, you're not going to amount to anything." So here I was 19 years old, a veteran, so I went back to high school and graduated with the Class of 1958, you know. And I never did feel out of place with those kids. I mean, I was older than they were. But I. . . . I was working part-time and getting money off the G.I. Bill with it, so I did get my (chuckles) high school diploma. And I was 21, 22 years old, but I got it. I was real happy about that. That's one of my accomplishments ________ I was real proud of.

SOLLIDAY: Now have you lived here in Tempe since you came back?

SOTO: Yes, since I came back. When I got married, I lived in Glendale for about three years, but we did come back to Tempe.

SOLLIDAY: Let's see, can you tell me a little bit about your grandmother? So many people always mention Dona Marina.

SOTO: Yeah, my grandma, Dona Marina. My grandmother, she was a very industrious lady. She was kind of a sales lady, see. She used to like to buy and sell, you know. She was kind of like the "merchant lady of the barrios." Even the relatives, you know, one of my aunts, Sophia Ruiz, they wouldn't go to a five-and-ten store to buy anything. They would say, "No, no, no, when my comadre Marina comes, I'll buy off of her." They were real faithful customers. (laughter) But she took care of everybody's needs. And. . . . Of course, what I know about, she came from Mexico. They came from Mexico during the Revolution. And they settled at Metcalf, which is around Clifton, I think. That's where my dad was born, in Clifton. And from that time, I think they left Clifton because they got into a strike, I think, see. And they didn't want to be a part of it. I guess since they were migrants they didn't want to. . . . They kind of felt that, you know, they couldn't pull for both sides. He said they kind of eloped away from the people at midnight. They just loaded their things and took off. (laughter) They got the train and they came here, and they ended up here in Tempe. It must have been about 1910 or 1915 when they came over here. So that's how they got to Tempe. I guess my dad must have been about 18 years old. And my grandfather, Jos‚ Soto, you know, all what I knew, he was a miner. So he tried working in the fields, you know, being a migrant worker, but his blood was in the mines. So my grandma told me that, "Nah, nah," he says, "I hear there's a lot of work in Jerome. I'm not going to work here in the farms. I'm going to Jerome." So he went to Jerome, he worked over in Jerome, too. From there on, he went to California, and that's all I know of him. But he was more of the mining type of a person.

SOLLIDAY: 'Cause I know . . . it just amazes me how almost everybody I've talked to, everybody will always mention Dona Marina.

SOTO: Dona Marina, yes. Dona Marina was kind of a. . . . Irene [Hormell] was telling me, when they got here, she was very . . . she used to liked to be a crop sharer, too. She would grow cotton. _________. She and my father and her kids they said that they cleared three acres of land by hand, and they planted cotton and they raised cotton and they picked it themselves, and they even cleaned it. That's how conscientious she was. And she made a little money at that with that cotton. And the owner of that land, after the cotton [was picked], he put his cows in there, you know, to feed over. And my grandma went and stood her ground and said, "Look, I still have a lease from you, so you can't bring your animals here and take this land away." And he said, "Yeah, she's not going to do nothing." So she brought the law, and the law backed her up. (laughter) So she -- I don't know what, but she took advantage of that lease, though. She grew cotton, vegetables, and other things there. She was very conscientious.

SOLLIDAY: She really. . . . It seems like she really planned on doing a lot of different things.

SOTO: A lot. And with that money that they made there, they bought the lot in Mickey Mouse Town. And between my dad and my Uncle Chono, that lives in Victory Acres, and my Uncle Chino, the one that -- he died -- the one that was killed in the war, you see, they and my aunts, they bought that land, they built the house there in Mickey Mouse Town. So they set roots. But then after that, one of my uncles, Chono, said him and my dad, they used to go to California. They had, I think -- it looks like a Buick, it looks like a 1927 Buick. Because the jobs were better over there. And he says the only thing was, the only catch they had, they could never get Grandma to leave Tempe, you see, so they always came back. But I think they had relatives there. When my Grandpa Soto went to Jerome and from there him and another brother they went to California around Los Angeles and settled there. That's how my dad and my Uncle Chono used to go work over there, you know. I don't know what they did, but when they would come back, they would tell my Grandma Marina, "Come on, Mom, let's get out of here. Things are better over there. There's better jobs, there's better opportunity." And my grandma said she bought that house, "Since I set foot here, I'm not going nowhere," she said. "This is my home." So that's the reason they never left. I guess it runs in the family, that's the reason that I never left Tempe, I guess. (chuckles)

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, because I think so many of the families here left and went to California, well, especially in the war years.

SOTO: In the war years, yeah. Well, my sister -- my half- sister Annie, they left to California, because during the war her husband got a job with Kaiser Aluminum. And he worked 'til he got retired over there. So most -- the majority of the people did.

SOLLIDAY: So there weren't really any of those jobs here. It was just. . . .

SOTO: No, just over there. And a lot of people. . . . The migrant workers, a lot of the people would follow the harvest in California, and they ended staying there, too. You know, getting steady jobs so they didn't come back, too. That's how a lot of people ________________.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, 'cause I know doing the genealogies, so many -- you see whole branches of families that are over in California.

SOTO: Yeah, there they are.

SOLLIDAY: Right there, I guess it's pretty close to us. You know, one of the best things, I think, of all the -- when we did the exhibit in the museum, although the paintings that you did are one thing that people [were] really fascinated in looking at all that. But you painted all of that recently, didn't you?

END SIDE ONE

BEGIN SIDE TWO

SOTO: . . . Our Lady of Mount Carmel School. You know, Sue Enright, she was the one that got that thing. She put together that [history of Mount Carmel School]. I told them, "Well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm working on it." I told her, "I'm working on trying to put the barrio together," I said. And I did. I did that, the one that I donated, the first ones that I gave to Chad [paintings of the barrios donated to the Tempe Historical Museum]. And the nun liked it so well, she said, "Well, this isn't going to leave here until I DIE or I leave." So she called me when she left, when she retired. I said, "Well, what do you want me to do?" I said. "Well," he says, "I'd like for these pictures to stay where someone is going to be able to. . . ." You know, keep going so it won't die out. So I said, "Well, I'll paint a bigger one, I'll put the two together, then I'll take them to the museum, and I'll donate them to the museum." So that's how I met Chad [Phinney, THM Exhibits Coordinator]. He asked me if I could contact more people. (laughter) I got so sick I couldn't sleep that night. Me and my son Steven came and I said, "My God, Steve, I don't know what I got into!"

SOLLIDAY: (unclear) (laughter)

SOTO: "Well," I said, "I wanted to give them the picture, that's all." You know, we're all very grateful to you and to Chad, because if it wasn't for you. . . . Like I was telling Irene [Hormell], if it wasn't for Scott [Solliday] and Chad [Phinney], we would have never gotten our history of our people in there -- at least the Mexican people.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, because I know in looking. . . . Well, I never found anything in writing very much.

SOTO: No.

SOLLIDAY: And I think we HAD to do all of that.

SOTO: We HAD to do all of that.

SOLLIDAY: To get some of it now, because the longer we wait, the more we'll never be able to get.

SOTO: I think Mr. Phinney said the only thing they had in writing was that they went up to the Council and they wanted the City to put sidewalks in the barrios, and pave the streets. And that's the only record they had, and that was 1950. That's all the record they had about the Hispanics. Of course you know there was a lot of people -- a lot of people remember the discrimination and all that, which was around. But, when I think back, as much discrimination as there was, we did have a lot of good Anglo friends, you know. And thank God we did, because a lot of them would stand up for us and back us up when we needed something. There was a lot of good people that would help us out. I know that when my grandfather worked in the railroad, they were all -- the workers were like my grandpa and my uncles and all that were Hispanics. The foreman was Anglo, Mr. Langley, but he was such a wonderful person that we used to look at him as family, you know. But my older brother and my older cousin, they grew up with the kids, so they. . . . I don't know if they do now, but they used to, you know, there were real close ties with them.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, it seems like at the time you were growing up, (SOTO: Uh-huh.) that a lot was changing, too. (SOTO: Uh-huh.) Because then, well, I guess in 1946 when the [Tempe Beach] swimming pool was desegregated for the first time. You were kind of young at that time. Do you remember?

SOTO: Yeah, I was kind of young. Well, we didn't care because we went to the river and the irrigation ditches were our swimming hole. In fact, let me show you what I'm working on right now.

SOLLIDAY: Oh yeah, you'd mentioned about that. (Soto shows a painting he is working on of a boy jumping into a canal.)

SOTO: . . . jump from the bridge into the water. See, this is what I'm trying to illustrate.

SOLLIDAY: Where was that at?

SOTO: This was around Canal Drive, you know, the one that went around. . . .

SOLLIDAY: Oh, all the way between the barrio and Mickey Mouse.

SOTO: Yeah, the barrio and the canal, and around the butte, you know. So this is one section that I'm trying to put together. This is the illustration I made off of it ______. I hope this will be the finished product (laughs) anyhow.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, because I know there is a lot of people that are really concerned about saving what's left of some of the canals because so many people have memories of swimming in the canals, or how they have nice big trees all along there.

SOTO: You know, the only thing, myself, the only thing I can do is just try to sketch it and put it together, because there's no pictures. I just use my imagination, the way we used to jump and swim in the ditches -- that's all we could do. But these (laughing) were our swimming pools. It's a good thing they didn't have no pesticides in those days! (laughter) But this is what I'm working on right now.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, because I remember you'd mentioned that.

SOTO: Yeah, so it keeps me busy.

SOLLIDAY: Now, were you living here in Tempe when ASU bought out [all of the houses in the barrio]. . . .

SOTO: No, that was the time that I was in the service, see. I went into the service. And that's how I keep. . . . What was it? I keep telling everybody that I left the military and it looked like future shock, because when I came back, I thought I'd see the barrio, and everything was vanished. Looked like a bomb had fallen and just wiped everything out. So I didn't see that movement right there, when people were moving out. They say a lot of people were crying, a lot of people thought that they were getting cheated, you know, but. . . . I didn't get to see that.

SOLLIDAY: It was just a shock coming back. . . .

SOTO: The old house at Dewey Street and College Avenue was still there because they were the last ones to sell. In fact, my Uncle Ed, he didn't sell that property until 1960. Or was it '63? That must have been around 1962 or '63 -- '62 I think.

SOLLIDAY: So it must have been right on _______________.

SOTO: Right there. Then he was lucky, because he had the opportunity to hold off from selling, 'cause he wasn't in the middle. See, he was in the corner, so they kept coming this way. So he got a little bit more money than the rest of the people. But that's what saved them, or else (laughs) he would have went out like a firecracker! (laughs)

SOLLIDAY: But that. . . . So all these people that you knew before were gone, too. (SOTO: Uh-huh.) Were they just living in different areas around the Valley? Or were they in Tempe or Phoenix?

SOTO: After they sold the barrio a lot of them ended up in Victory Acres, a lot of them in Mesa, and a lot of them moved to the Campus Homes, there at Tempe Union High School, around that area. (SOLLIDAY: Oh, yeah.) Roosevelt and what is it? Sixteenth, 17th Street and around that area -- that's where a lot of them moved. They bought into that tract.

SOLLIDAY: So there were still a lot of people _________.

SOTO: Yeah, there were still a lot of people left.

SOLLIDAY: They were just not in the same place. I guess it's -- well, that was in the late '50s.

SOTO: Yeah, that must have been. I came back in '56. No, it was right in the middle and at the end of the '50s. Because I was talking to Bennett -- you know Marvin [Marvell] Bennett? (SOLLIDAY: Uh-huh.) Well, he was one of the last people to move out of there. That must have been in 1956. So I think Mickey Mouse Town, everybody in between '56 and '59, that's when everything vanished. I remember there's still parts of Mickey Mouse left when I came back, because Grandma was still there.

SOLLIDAY: And now that's the area where. . . . Did that go all the way down to where the parking lot is now, in back of the stadium? Or was that just closer. . . .

SOTO: No, no. Let's see. No, that was right behind that _____ Canal Drive, you know, east of that. East of Canal Drive as far as what's Rural Road now. They had a dirt road that used to run down there. And then later on they opened it up all the way to Scottsdale.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, that was just a pretty small area now.

SOTO: Yes, pretty small area.

SOLLIDAY: So that's where all the fraternity houses are.

SOTO: That's where all the fraternity houses are right now.

SOLLIDAY: But the people, you knew they were still here.

SOTO: Yeah, they were still here. That was like the last stronghold there 'til 1958-'59. That's when Grandma moved out. And they bought over here by Una Avenue, someplace around that area.

SOLLIDAY: So a lot of that, with the reunions now that started about ten years ago: was that because so many people had really kind of moved or moved away, or were they still here in town?

SOTO: Yeah, I think the reunion, when I first came, when we had that little Mount Carmel reunion, then Clara [Urbano] and Irene [Hormell] came. I said, "Why don't we make a reunion of the barrio, see how many people we can get together?" So started calling, putting addresses together, and started mailing it out. And the first one we held was real good, 'cause we must have pulled about a good 300 people, 200-300 people. Then from there on, we've been bringing in at least about 500-600. But that, Clara and Irene started that. And Clara used to live in San Jose [California], and Irene was in Florida, and they used to (laughing) call each other, saying "Call this guy." And Rachel, you know, [Rachel] Arroyo was the one, between the three of them, they pulled it off real good. So we've been pretty successful at it. You'd be surprised all the people we've lost since we started in '83. My brother came to the one in '86. He lived in Florida. Now, you see, he passed away, and so did my sister. We had a family reunion. We got together, that was the last time we got together in '86, and it was at that reunion too. So there's a lot of good times and a lot of sad memories, too. But we've lost quite a bit of the elderly people, too.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, I know, especially, well, just recently in the last year or so. That's certainly one of the reasons why I try to go out and see as many people as I can and get photographs and things that we can save. And what we're doing right now I think is pretty important, because as I look around all the other museums, nobody else has any of the Hispanic history. It's almost like it didn't exist. But I think that those reunions probably helped that along.

SOTO: Yeah, probably helped a lot. Now I know other cities are doing pretty much what we're doing, too, because my wife's from Glendale, and the people over there, Hispanics, have gotten together and started writing a lot about their history, too, there. And I've talked to some of my sister- in-laws, and they're very -- you know, they like what we did, and they're kind of trying to do the same thing that we did, you know. How when their ancestors got the oldest family that got settled in those barrios. I've kind of given them some pointers, you know, "Talk to the curator and start talking to them. Start writing, that's all you can do." (SOLLIDAY: Yeah.) And get pictures, and I said, "Get somebody that's an artist that can put things together." That's what I've done.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, because those paintings you've done show a lot more than any photograph. With a photograph, it seems like you only see a little bit. And with the paintings you have everything.

SOTO: You can cover a lot.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, it's kind of like having both eyes open instead of just looking through the camera, so you can see a little bit of everything.

SOTO: And those families over there, their history is very interesting, because when they came to Glendale, a lot of them worked for . . . a lot of them ended up being farmers themselves. They were families that worked for people, farmers that ended up buying the farms and staying, you know. Everybody has his own history. It's really nice, you know, a lot of things happen. A lot, a lot of people suffered over there, too. I guess everybody did one way or the other. But. . . .

SOLLIDAY: You know, about the barrio, one thing that we probably have the least amount written down anywhere is about just the daily life in the barrio. And I guess since it started with just the early Mexican settlers coming in, was there really, like a lot of Mexican culture in some of the daily life?

SOTO: Yeah, there was, because a lot of. . . . Even my family, through the Ruizes' side, you know my grandpa, they didn't come from Mexico -- they were settled here, you see. But we still had a lot of the Mexican traditions. Of course, you know, especially during Christmastime and all that, they had posadas and the whole community, they used to make dances and they used to dance. In fact, Dahlia Bennett, she was telling me that my Uncle Ed, the one I told you we lived with them, and my mom, they would always start the dances. They were like the leaders of the people. The dance would never start until my mom and my Uncle Ed would start. They used to call what they called un chota. I don't know what they call it here. It must have been like a square dance or something, because they'd call out -- they'd go out and dance. But my mom and my Uncle Ed were the leaders. And when Nadia wrote it, she showed me. She wrote everything in the book. And I did read it, she's got it documented, who started the dances. And you know everybody was like my grandpa: Although he worked in the railroad, he was kind of a carpenter. When they needed a table done, a chair done, or something built, he'd build it for them in his spare time. In fact, my grandma's house, you know, Marina, he did a lot of work for her. And then since, you know, the community. . . . Who was telling me one time, Mr. Estrada -- he died a long time ago -- he used to go visit my uncle. And since the Anglos and the Hispanics are separated, when they had a fire, they had their own little volunteer firemen, see. But they used to have to run to the ditch to fill the water tank in order -- or pump the water into this tank that they had. And they used to haul it, you know, run with the water tank with the tires on it. A lot of times, by the time they got to the fire, the house was already burnt. But there wasn't much that got burned, because they were adobe houses. I think just the roof and the doors would burn. (laughter)

SOLLIDAY: (laughing) The adobe doesn't burn very well.

SOTO: Yeah. So you had your community leaders, too, you know. I remember that Mr. Estrada and my Aunt Mary, that Alianza [Alianza Hispano Americana] thing was a big thing among the ranks, you know. And that Mr. Pedro Estrada was the, I think, was one of the leaders of that, you see. And they used to have their meetings and that in that old saloon that the Alianza Saloon that they had. It was a two-story thing that they had.

SOLLIDAY: Now was that on. . . .

SOTO: That was on Dewey Street, or Dewey Street and Center Street.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, so it was right in the very center of the barrio. (SOTO: Yeah.) Were a lot of people in Tempe members of that?

SOTO: Yeah, most of it. I borrowed the picture, you know, from one of them because I took it Sunday to a. . . . (tape turned off and on) . . . two-story building. At one time we lived on the bottom here. And this was like a social hall up here. And this is where they used to have their meetings, Alianza meetings. They used to have the Porfiro Diaz [Sociedad Mutualista Porfiro Diaz], too. But this little section right here, is right here. This was Dewey Street, right here, and Center Street. This is this building, right here. This is where the town people would meet for their meetings, you know, when we had something. They even had their dances and social things there, too.

SOLLIDAY: So everything happened right here, right at Dewey and Center?

SOTO: Right at Dewey and Center. Now they had this man here, Mr. Vegas, this was the town, he had a pool hall and a tavern there, and everybody would go there. People that used to like to (chuckles) drink, I guess, went there.

SOLLIDAY: Were there other businesses right in that area there?

SOTO: Well, they had this place here, Sandy had a store here. He had a garage too. And then Mr. Fincher, right here, he had a small grocery store, and a lot of times we'd go buy stuff off of him. But everybody here in the community would shop there -- not unless they went downtown to Mill Avenue, so. . . . And you see here, this is Canal Drive that goes over here, and the other side of the canal, this is Mickey Mouse Town, where the fraternity houses are right here. This is the area, right here.

SOLLIDAY: So the very edge of this, I guess would be right about here, where the [University] Activity Center is?

SOTO: Where the Activity Center is was the very edge right here. Okay?

SOLLIDAY: Since there's none of those familiar landmarks there now (SOTO: No.) that I recognize. Were these all cottonwood trees along the canal?

SOTO: Yeah, those were cottonwood trees. You see, this is where I'm painting right now. You know that little bridge that I showed you? It's either this one. . . . Well, both of them were kind of our swimming holes in here, you see. This area here, and this area here. So you know, I'm trying to paint right now one of these bridges where we used to jump off and swim in the irrigation ditch. That ditch was pretty wide. That must have been a good 20 feet wide. In a lot of places it was about five feet deep, so. . . . [I'm] surprised none of us ever drowned in it. There were two flour mills too: there was the Arizona Flour. I don't know if you're aware of it. It was the Arizona Flour Mill and the Mill Avenue. See, this is the Arizona Mill, right here.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, how long was that there?

SOTO: Well, it was there, I remember walking -- I used to walk up to the place they called Freddie's Place, because that was a tavern. That was there up 'til the late '50s. I can remember seeing the tin shed there up 'til 1959, during that era.

SOLLIDAY: Okay, 'cause I know a lot of people have mentioned that before. (SOTO: Uh-huh.) And usually almost all of the history of Tempe is usually right along Mill Avenue, and as we get further out, we don't know that much more about things like along what would have been University.

SOTO: Remember, a lot of the people in the barrio used to work for the City of Tempe, okay? And this was the first city yard here. This was a yard right here, and this was the pump house. As I understand it -- I'd have to ask Marvin [Marvell Benett] about that -- this pump here, the one they used to pump the water way up to the butte. You know, the one that could tell you about that is Marvin, you know, Bennett.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, ________.

SOTO: He says that this was a pump house, right here, and this was the old city yard, here. The city had it's maintenance truck, the garbage trucks, and everything else. And I'd say at least a third of the people worked for the city, and the other third worked for the flour mill, and a lot of the people used to work for Arizona State College, you know, as maintenance people and custodians. So eventually everybody ended up getting a steady job, being stable, anyhow.

SOLLIDAY: But people here in the barrios didn't really work that much in farming then?

SOTO: Well, they did when they first came. When they first came, and even up after the war, there were some people that still. . . . 'Cause I can remember the truck coming to pick [up] people to go pick cotton. They mostly were -- some of the people did.

SOLLIDAY: And the farmers would just have a truck come in?

SOTO: Come in and, you know, just take them out to the fields and work. See, this is the house I'm telling you that they bought in the early 1900s, right here at Dewey Street. This used to be Dewey Street, and this is College Avenue, right here.

SOLLIDAY: So that really is right at the edge here.

SOTO: Right, right there on the edge, the corner of it.

SOLLIDAY: Were these dirt roads?

SOTO: No, those were all dirt roads. I remember Model-A's getting stuck. A lot of time everybody would bunch out and just push 'em off. (laughter) Yeah. I understand this ditch here, they dug that when the city. . . . There were a lot of people, one of the Alvarez. . . . Mr. Alvarez used to be a, what was it, one of the Hayden. . . . He used to work for the flour mill for Mr. Hayden, and this gentleman by the name of. . . . I forget his first name. Mr. Alvarez was kind of the foreman there at the time, and they knew that they were going to build the mill, so some of the people help build that ditch to carry water to the mill -- some of the Mexican people did. So there was that. But I don't know much about that part of the history _________.

SOLLIDAY: That really goes right back to the beginning. . . .

SOTO: To the beginning I think, because I think that when Kimball [Charles Trumbull] Hayden told the people from Mesa, "Look, we can dig a ditch and bring the water all the way around that____. I can build a sloop and put a wheel there, a water wheel. Maybe we can grind the flour, whatever they had." So what year that must have been?

SOLLIDAY: Well, it was in 1874. So yeah, that was really the beginning of town here.

SOTO: Yeah, and this house here used to belong to the Ortegas. We used to call it El Altito. When the pueblo first started -- because this is what they used to call pueblo, right? -- okay, this was the stagecoach station, right here.

SOLLIDAY: And that was like a little hill there?

SOTO: That was like a little hill up here. That's why we called that. We even named it El Altito right here. So that was a stagecoach station right there. And I always remember reading what you wrote over there on Queen Creek, you know. You said there's still a well over there. I was reading an article (SOLLIDAY: Oh, yeah.) I think that you wrote about that.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, there was one of the first stage stops in that area ______________________.

SOTO: That area. And then I wanted to mention to you that this house right here was equivalent to that, that stagecoach station right there. (SOLLIDAY: Oh, yeah.) I guess that's where they had the horses and they would change them.

SOLLIDAY: Yes, it's what Josie Sanchez told me, these stories about the house there too.

SOTO: Uh-huh. Well, that's it right there. That's the Ortega house.

SOLLIDAY: It's so hard to envision all that now, because it's so completely different. But, of course, that's true for _______________.

SOTO: I have no memory of what happened, but I remember, you know, like I said, I was raised with older people and I heard the stories. That's why I'm aware of what went on, you see. Not unless somebody has something else to contribute. But that's. . . .

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, because if anything [is] outside of Mill Avenue, usually we don't have. . . . For some reason, people never got that much information on anywhere outside of Mill Avenue.

SOTO: Uh-huh. And that surprises me how the city yard ended here, because you'd figure it'd be close to the city hall somewhere, when it started out. But it was right here.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, I wanted to ask you a little more about the Alianza. Was that. . . ? It started out as an insurance, like life insurance?

SOTO: As an insurance, or life insurance, yeah. 'Cause so was that other one, Porfiro Diaz, because they figured on somebody died, there was no money to bury them. So they used to kind of collect dues, you know, so they'd have a little budget to bury whoever died. (laughs) And one of those stories, one during the time of the bad influenza where a lot of people died. Was it 1918, 1917? They ran out of (laughs) funds, you see. . . . (laughter obscures comment) Too many people were dying. So one of my uncles, he thought, "Gee, I remember," he says, "A lot of times I thought that people were still alive, 'cause they used to wrap them in canvases and bury them." See, you had to bury the corpse because of the disease, I guess. But he said, "I wonder (laughing) how many people we buried alive." That was something terrible. (laughter) That wiped Alianza out there for a while. So did the Depression. (laughter) I think the Depression wiped everybody, not just Alianza.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, because it seemed like they disappeared for a while, and then they made a comeback in the '40s or '50s, I think, because that was Pedro Estrada -- I think he was. . . . (SOTO: Yeah, Pedro Estrada.) He had something to do with the organization nationwide in the '40s and '50s.

SOTO: Yeah, he did, you're right. One of his brothers was the president of the insurance company. That was a corporation that at one time was big guns, I remember. And that's like the priests were saying in this church here, "It's surprising, it's a miracle, 'cause the Hispanics built that church," he said. "They left a monument here and it's like a seventh wonder," because they were all migrant workers, you know, they were real poor people, (laughs) how they built the church, because there was only about a few Anglos, you know, at that time. I guess the heavy population of Anglos were mostly Mormons and they were Anglos. But most of the Hispanics were Catholic, so. . . . It was like a seventh wonder.

SOLLIDAY: This concludes the interview with Joe Soto.

END SIDE TWO

END OF INTERVIEW