Barrios Oral History Project

Charles Sigala was born in Tempe in 1911. He was the son of Cresensio "Chris" Sigala and Magdalena Gonzales Sigala.

In this interview, he talks about the Sigala and Oviedo families in Tempe. He discusses at length the activities of his father, Chris Sigala, who was a football player for the Normal School, a typesetter for the Tempe Daily News, a grocery owner, a National Guard officer, and the local truent officer. He mentions the Oviedo store on Eighth Street, and La Cremer¡a barrio. He also talks his own career and work experiences as a butcher, Coast Guard officer, union official, and welder in California Other topics include the Payne Training School, the Liga Protectora Latina, and the volunteer fire department, as well as his recollections of several prominent Tempe figures, including Carl Hayden, Pete and Ralph Estrada, Antonio Celaya, Cruz Reyes, and Carl Spain.

SIGALA: Amelia is Frank's wife. Rosario is my father's sister. Porfirio, also known as "Doc" Oviedo, who is proprietor of the grocery story on the Creamery Road with his brother Lichi, they called him. He was a pitcher for the Tempe team for many years. And Doc married Edith later on. And Feliz, also known as Lichi, was Doc's brother. Margaret Oviedo was one of the family of Oviedos, and so was Rose. She was graduated from the Normal School, taught school in Phoenix for many years on the corner of Washington and Ninth Street. And Susan Oviedo was the youngest of the Oviedo girls. She. . . . They all moved to Phoenix. Then years later, with the coming of beer, I had the first beer sales in a restaurant which was the old Oviedo house on the Creamery Road, and it was called the Casa Vieja. That's what I named it, Casa Vieja.

SOLLIDAY: That was right after Prohibition was over?

SIGALA: Yeah, right after 1933, '34.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, I think, '33. . . .

SIGALA: In '33 I think it was, yeah. Myself and somebody else in town had the first beer. Anyway, I sold it to somebody else. And as far as the Sigala family, Cresencio, also known as Chris, my dad. There's his date of birth, 1874. Magdalena, my mother, and Rogelio, also known as Roger, but mostly known in later life as Roy. He worked for the Oviedos at the store on the Creamery Road. Later, he worked for Babers, originally known as Baber and Jones, and Baber bought out Jones and it was just Baber's Store. My brother, Roy Sigala, worked for Baber for a number of years. Later he moved to Phoenix and went to work for the County Treasurer's Office. Angelina is my sister, she passed away about a year ago in Los Angeles. There is no Ray Sigala, it was Roy Sigala right here. Magdalena Sigala was my mother, and next is myself, Charles Sigala. Chris Sigala my father. Sophia Sigala: she attended -- at that time it was Tempe State Teachers' College -- and she graduated from there. And she stayed with the College to teach at the Rural School Road [sic] near this museum. Then she went to work for the federal government. She was a home economics major. And Sophia, my sister, first married. . . . I'll think of it in a minute. And then later married Florentino Mu¤oz, which owned the Charros: the old Charro on Main Street, and the new Charro on -- what is that road? Extension? The next one.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, over by Country Club?

SIGALA: Country Club Drive. He owned those two, and my sister become the bookkeeper for the restaurant until she passed away. And then later on, I guess Mr. Mu¤oz, also known as Tino, and the bar at the new Charro now is named Florentino Bar, for him.

SOLLIDAY: Is it still run by the family?

SIGALA: It's run now by Freddie Mu¤oz, which is the son of Florentino. The first son, running the OLD Charro, passed away from sickness, from cancer. I just heard last night that they closed the old Charro about a year ago, so it's not there anymore, only the new Charro.

SOLLIDAY: I noticed your mother's maiden name, Gonzales. Was she from the old Gonzales family here in Tempe?

SIGALA: Yes.

SOLLIDAY: Do you remember her parents' names?

SIGALA: Well, her mother's name was Serapia Gonzales, and I have a picture that I brought to show you her mother's name. But she was the only daughter of Felipe Gonzales and Serapia Gonzales, was my mother, Magdalena.

SOLLIDAY: Okay, because I know that was one of the very first families here in Tempe, from what we've been able to find.

SIGALA: Yeah, you're talking way back in the 18--, I don't know, '80-something, when they started here. Really, I don't know when my grandfather went to work for the Hayden Flour Mill. That was sometime in '87, '88. I don't know when that mill was started, but he was one of the first, one employed there for many years. That's why he accumulated a little money and started buying all this property I was telling you about, to run most of the barrio from the front of the college to the Tempe Buttes. He owned a lot of that in there, including that picture, a picture of his store that he had there in that, that he personally run. But that was all while working for, I guess, Charles Trumbull Hayden, and Carl Hayden was a friend of the family. My dad went to Camp Perry, the national matches, with him. And later on, he stayed in the Senate, you know, until he was ninety-some years old, and he retired from there. I happened to visit him in Washington when I was in Washington, during the time that he was a senator. It was sort of a very close sort of relationship between Sally Hayden, which was Carl's sister, you know, and McElherren, which is Sally Hayden's sister, known as the old Hayden Ranch up here at the corner of Hayden Road up here. It was called that, there's a big house there, like the Petersen House, you know, right there. So they were the two girls. Sally Hayden, of course, was the physical education instructor for the college for many years, and then later on become _______ and Hayden Hall, they called it. She stayed there as the house mother of that hall. And days that we knew them for so long. Sophia Sigala, my sister, was on the softball team for the college for all the time she was going to college. She was a catcher for the team.

SOLLIDAY: Well, about two years ago we started an exhibit on the barrios in Tempe, and I always came across -- it seemed like your father's name came across in just about everything, and I wanted to ask you a bit about him. Now he worked for Charles Hayden, originally?

SIGALA: No, he did not. Only my grandfather. Way back he was quite a sportsman. You know, he was a foot racer and then he was a bicycle racer. Like I tell you, he played football for the college, one of the teams of 1899. We have that picture. Then he joined Old Company "C" in Tempe, with the National Guard. Then he started shooting, you know, and he become a good shot, because to make that many teams of the national matches, you know. . . . Took pictures there, I brought. So that's what he did. But he was always in politics, too. And he was attendance officer for schools for many years. While I was going to the Payne Training School, he was already attendance officer for the city schools -- that's the Eighth Street School, Grammar School, Kyrene School, Scottsdale School. I was just at Scottsdale a while ago. Of course that school is gone. And when there was nothing there at that old school, it happened that the lady that was teaching was a friend of ours. Her name was Mary Escalante, which is a relative of Clara Urbano. (SOLLIDAY: Oh yes.) That's her aunt. She taught school. So my dad used to take care of attendance at THAT school, too, so he had quite a route. He stayed as attendance officer for school until I was in college. He got sick and actually they say he was sick because he had a hernia that he didn't take care of while he was playing football.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, going back many years.

SIGALA: As a result of that, later on he . . . he never went back to the job and his health run down. He was always in some kind of sports, you know.

SOLLIDAY: And then he also worked at The Tempe Daily News, too, didn't he?

SIGALA: Yeah, he was a typesetter for The Tempe D and for Curt Miller for many years. I think from there he, I don't know, from there he become constable. And the certificate when he become constable I brought over and you have the certificate. And so he was constable for quite a while. And later on, because he was attendance officer, he had to be a deputy sheriff, deputized by the sheriff of Maricopa County in Phoenix to be an attendance officer. So therefore, some of these fellows like McDonald that was a constable in town for many years, he used to come. He lived across the street from us, and he used to come in and get my dad when they had problems with the Yaquis at Yaqui Town [Guadalupe], you know. And other problems, he helped them, because he was a deputy, but he was attendance officer. But he was a typesetter for Miller for many years, and I have those pictures of the Tempe [Daily] News that I brought today. So later on he did some boxing, too, and he was very interested in that. Later on, when boxing become quite a deal in Phoenix at the old Madison Square Garden in Phoenix -- that's what they called it -- I used to go with him down there to see those boxing matches. He used to help different boxers in training and coaching them, you know, stuff like that. So he had quite an interest in life as a sportsman, and a good shot. Then he was a good carpenter- mechanic, helping maintain all these houses that my grandfather had. It's a never-ending deal. People move in and out and all that, you have to clean 'em up. No carpentry, cement work, electricity, and what have you. And then I used to help my dad do that when I was growing up, and helped my brother. I'm glad I did, because I learned a lot about construction and repairing and all that. I still have in the shop some of my grandfather's hand tools that some day I'd like to bring 'em and donate 'em to the museum.

SOLLIDAY: Now your father also had a store, a grocery store?

SIGALA: A grocery store. Yeah, actually the grocery store belonged to my grandfather, because that was a building where it had apartments on both sides, on Center Street. He had two two little cottages. In back of the store was about three apartments. But the store was in the corner, and he run the grocery store. And my dad used to go to Phoenix and bring supplies for the store. But my grandfather used to _________. But his two brothers, Oviedos, they run the BIG store on the Creamery Road, so they were in the grocery business. That was the days of no supermarkets, you know. If you had a big grocery store, independent, it did business, because there was no other -- at that time, you know, there was a lot of Chinese stores all over. There was one right in the barrio, there. Later on when they closed the store, I cleaned the store up and I bought a pool hall that was for sale in front of the Casa Loma Hotel. It had pool tables and a barber shop. So I moved it into the grocery store that I remodeled, and I put the pool tables in there, and immediately I rented it out and it stayed that way during Prohibition time, you know. So that turned out to be a good investment there, because all those buildings were always rented, including the former store that now was a pool hall, and a barber shop. So I kept that until I guess I sold it. . . .

SOLLIDAY: So when was that, when you went to college?

SIGALA: In 1934.

SOLLIDAY: So even going into the Depression, it seemed that things weren't terribly bad here in Tempe.

SIGALA: No, actually I tell ________ I graduated in '29. That was the start of the Depression, the year I graduated. And being that I worked for Baber's and learned -- everything was packaged, you know, you had to package the beans and rice and grains and all that. In there I started working in the meat department. So in four years, working in the meat department and working the groceries, I learned enough about the meat business. So when I graduated from high school, then I went to work part-time for the old Pay' N Takit on the corner of Eighth and Mill, that become, later on Pay 'N Takit become Safeway, and the main warehouse was the Arizona Grocery Company, and Safeway took that over for all the stores. So from that, the next following year, then I went to Lamson School of Business on Central Avenue in Phoenix. And after that, then I started college. I always worked part-time, summertime vacations and Saturdays for Pay 'N Takit. So about 19--, I guess --35, Safeway asked me to run the Piggy Wiggly Store opposite Laird and Dines Drugstore, because see, that's been torn down there. But that store was there for a long time. Just a grocery, and the meat department, so Safeway asked me if I would go there and run the meat department, which I did. And it become a profitable meat market. And from there, I stayed with them then as full-time. Being from Lamson Business College, graduated from there, they would place you, and I was offered a job up north in lumbering country. But I could make more in dollars and cents -- you know, being young, you want the money. And of course working six days a week would pay more money, so I did stay with the meat business until they transferred me to Phoenix at the corner of Third and Washington. Now that was the granddaddy of all the Safeway stores in the state, the biggest one, right there. I run that store for a number of years. Then we built a new one when they started the air conditioned store, the one at Third and Washington wasn't air conditioned, an open front, it was horrible, because of all the heat coming in there from the street. But the one on Fifth and Washington is enclosed and they had air conditioning in there. I stayed there until the war broke out. But during this time, say starting in about '34, '35, that's when I started shooting .30 calibre, being that I was a friend of the Currys and they liked to shoot. My brother went to Camp Perry different times, my dad went eight times. So I never was interested until then they wanted to form a team to shoot at what was known as the Sheldon Trophy Match. And you joined the Guard then, and if you wanted to stay in, you stayed in it and you got to shoot in it. So we practiced a lot, we had our ammunition because I joined the National Guard, and we won the Sheldon Trophy Match. And when my brother was in the National Guard, THEY won the Sheldon Trophy. All the guards from the state came to Papago Park and camped for the tryouts for the Sheldon Trophy. So Tempe won that Sheldon Trophy consecutive times. Because of that, trying out for the first time, I made the team to the national matches. Then I kept the interest up, and every year I tried out and made the team five different times, including one civilian team. Now these fellows that were shooting .30 calibre were also interested in shooting pistol in their off season. So I started shooting pistol with them, and also shooting small bore. So I had to buy special equipment for small bore, telescopes and this and that. It takes a lot of special equipment. So I did very good. In fact, in 1941, at a tryout in San Francisco, I won the Pacific Coast Sharpshooter's Championship and the National Rifle Association SENT me to the national matches. I was the only one from Arizona. And then after that I started shooting pistol with the guys from the Phoenix Policemen's League. _________________. I was at the pistol range when the war broke out, and they announced it while we were at the shoot at Sky Harbor -- we had a pistol range there and a small bore range -- that the Japs had attacked Pearl Harbor.

SOLLIDAY: You were still in the National Guard then at that time?

SIGALA: Yes. And so then because I had five certificates that I brought with me, to the National Match, you can't shoot unless you go through the small arms school and you prove to them that you know how to handle their rifle and all that rigmarole, although you made the team, but they give you a certificate from it. Because I had those certificates, then I decided that I'd join some type of service and I decided that maybe I'd join the Coast Guard. I heard that the Coast Guard was building a range at San Clemente and they were going to teach rifle marksmanship there. And being as I had five certificates in rifling. . . . I wasn't very successful at first, until one day I talked to Carl Hayden, Senator Carl Hayden, and told him the story. "Wait a minute, you've been to the rifle matches, and you've got all these certificates," he said. "We'll get you in." So I Joined, I then joined the Coast Guard with a rank and I went in there to the Eleventh Naval District, and I was immediately put in charge of a group of beach patrollers during the war.

SOLLIDAY: Right out of San Clemente?

SIGALA: No, I was there until they finished the range at San Clemente. They were building it. And then I was at several stations. The station was at the foot of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. There was a hut there with a crew that would patrol the beach, and a cook and galley and all that. That was near where the artillery was at San Pedro -- there was another Coast Guard Station. Then I came to Playa del Rey to train close order drill. And then from there I went to San Clemente, right to the range. I was in charge of instructing at the range. I had to instruct others to be instructors. We were about six or eight instructors and so we were there. Different crews, Coast Guard crews used to come through there and shoot. They were there a week on training. So that was our job, training them. And the officers, pistols, .38 pistols on the range. And then from there I went to -- I don't know where I was going, but I was shipped out to San Francisco. From San Francisco, went to Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor I went to Quagamin, and out of Quagamin in the South Pacific to the group of Marshall Islands. I was on an atoll with a LRN [pronounced Low-ran] unit. LRN means Long Range Navigation. We had a station there, and Machuro had another one, and we'd talk up ________________ that formed a beam so the B-29s coming into Quagamin to land in there -- Quagamin was just long enough for a B-29 to land. So I was there during the war, until the war was over.

SOLLIDAY: And then after the war was over did you come back to Tempe? (SIGALA: No.) Or you stayed in California?

SIGALA: Right before I went _______ my wife and I were married in California, and so I was gonna come back to Tempe because I had a job with Safeway by seniority of rights, you know, they had to give you a job back. I was coming back, so it happened that I met somebody at one of the Alpha Beta stores in Anaheim and they said they needed a butcher real bad in Orange, and to go down there and give them a hand and this and that. So I went up there and I worked for a month. I could see the difference in wages and working conditions and health and welfare and pensions and all that they had here, which we did NOT have in Phoenix. We were just starting to organize in Phoenix. So I stayed with Alpha Beta for over ten years, and I trained apprentices for them. Although I was a meat market manager, I trained apprentices for them, and I trained journeymen for them, and I trained meat market managers for the company, for extra compensation for them. So the union, observing that I was doing all this, they said, "Well, wait a minute, we need you bad in the union because we have over 100 apprentices to train and we're having a rough time finding an instructor. You come to us and you'll be sort of your boss and you take care of the education program as Director of Apprenticeship. Well, I didn't want to change because I only had two jobs between Safeway and Alpha Beta, but I did. I left Alpha Beta and I went to the union as Director of Apprenticeship, and I was with them for nearly 20 years, all this time as Director of Apprenticeship with them, but also of wholesale and jobbing houses, packing houses, and stuff like that. And I got to travel all over because I had to keep up with the different contracts in the union. They sent me back to visit packing houses, and BIG packing houses like in Davenport. Oscar Mayer's got one in Davenport, they've got one in Madison I had to do. Another one, Hormell, they called them Hormell, and they had a big plant in Davenport. And one in Freemont that I visited regarding their contract, because they had an annual wage guarantee in their contract that's pretty near unheard of, and I wanted to learn more about it. So I stayed as Director of Apprenticeship with the union until 1970. And I retired in 1970.

SOLLIDAY: I'd like to go back a little bit and ask you about schools in Tempe. Where did you go to elementary school here in Tempe?

SIGALA: At the Payne Training School.

SOLLIDAY: The Payne Training School. That was for the Normal School, the teachers that were being trained?

SIGALA: Yeah, the teachers, of course, trained there. That's _______. Each grade had a critic, you know, like Miss [Helen] Roberts, critic for the first. Laughlin for the fourth or fifth grade. Miss Roll. I brought you a picture she's in. She was the eighth-grade critic. That's as far as it went. And so that's where I went to school, to elementary school. Then it happened that the year before, when I was in the seventh grade, or maybe eighth grade, they decided to have the NINTH grade there, and it become a -- what do they call it? Junior High. Anyway, it included seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, like some places, some schools. Well, I stayed at the college for the ninth grade. And that class was held in one of the classes in the basement of the Old Main and _________ in the industrial arts building across the street. And then went there _______. That was a rule, and the principal at the high school was. . . . (sigh) I know his name very well, I can't think of it. But he was there for a long time, very, very nice fellow. But during that time I did play a little baseball and basketball and stuff like that, but I was working after school. During the four years of high school I delivered The Arizona Republic and I got up at four-thirty in the morning, started delivering at five, I had to be through by six. The papers had to be porched, until I graduated from high school. It happens, like I told you before, that Francis Connolly was doing the same thing for Arizona Republic in Mesa, and he was a go-getter for subscriptions, you know, for the paper. And I was over here selling a lot of 'em, too. So we'd have meetings every now and then. Who would say that Francis Connolly become the owner of the Tempe News?! When he become owner of the Tempe News, he started digging back in the old papers and all that. He was the one that told me, "Here it says that Chris Sigala was the instigator of all these. . . ."

END SIDE ONE

BEGIN SIDE TWO

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SOLLIDAY: I wanted to ask you a little bit more about your father, Chris Sigala. I found. . . . You mentioned he was involved in politics, and one thing I found was he was one of the founders of an organization called the Liga Protectora Latina.

SIGALA: Right. El Liga Protectora Latina. I brought you the pictures, and I brought you the badges that they wear. You'll see 'em. He was in that lodge for many years, and many interesting people, you know, learned people that were in businesses belonged to that lodge. And one of them that was the main member was Pedro de la Lama, who owned La Prensa paper in Phoenix. So my dad was a good friend of his, and being that my dad was in politics, of course the politicians looked for somebody to write up these things for them and all that. So they helped a lot of people with jobs. I remember that my dad helped one of the oldtimers from Tempe, Estrada. There were many Estradas in Tempe. Pete Estrada was one of them. My dad got him a job with a judge called, I think the judge was called Struckmeyer, in Phoenix. He [Estrada] become an interpreter for the court, and he stayed there in that job until he retired and moved back _______________________. He never forgot it. And my dad helped him get that job because he was always helping politicians run, but he never -- he already had a job as attendance officer during all these years. But he helped others get into office by making speeches for one here and there, you know. And the one that was a good speecher in Spanish was Pedro de la Lama, you know, the owner of the newspaper. But he stayed in helping people in politics for a long time. That's how he happened to become attendance officer. Mariam S. Graul was County School Superintendent, and SHE'S the one that put up the job. Later on -- this is about 19--, I imagine, --34, through there, that Dr. Moeur become governor. And Dr. Moeur abolished all attendance officers all over the state, and that was the end, really, the end of that job. My dad wasn't working then, and he wasn't working because he was ill. But it happened that Dr. Moeur also traded with the Baber's Store. He was in there all the time. Well I was in there, you know, working for Baber's, and my brother was in there. He was sort of a personal friend of Dr. Moeur. He attended _______ when my dad got sick. And so with his son, Dr. John [Moeur] -- Dr. John was a very nice man, and he was always sick because had one lung, you know. But he practiced medicine along with his dad for many years. I remember working for Baber one time, my job after school was sometimes boning out a leg of pork for the restaurants and tieing it, you know, and all that. And I cut the string one time, and brought the string and jabbed it in my lip right there, and cut an artery, and cut it and it stuck in my gum. And that thing was shooting blood! You know, I went from across the street back of that old National Bank there -- that's where Dr. Moeur's office was. I went back there, Dr. John sewed me up, and I came back to work. So it was interesting, we knew all the Moeurs and the Windes, you know -- the families in town.

SOLLIDAY: And you mentioned the Spains.

SIGALA: Spain. Carl Spain. He took care of all the cars that my dad had and my brother had. You see, Carl Spain, his dad sent him to mechanic school, and he came back a learned mechanic, and he was a good one. His dad was a blacksmith, really, and he had his own shop here. And then right next door was a garage for _______. And every time I came to the reunion down there, I used to meet Carl. And pretty soon he had a stroke, and so his wife used to bring him in a wheelchair. I felt bad that I came one year here several years ago and Carl had passed away. And also, they had known the Currys so long, they were just a few doors ________ Piggly Wiggly where I worked ther, near Curry's Hardware Store, you know. But Eddie Curry had passed away. First his Uncle John passed away, and then later on Johnny passed away, his brother. They were twins, you know. And then later on, why, Eddie wasn't at the meeting, I heard that he had passed away. So that's quite a story.

SOLLIDAY: Continued to run the hardware store right up until '75.

SIGALA: Is that right?

SOLLIDAY: Uh-huh, when it finally closed.

SIGALA: Yeah. And I knew the plumber back here, and I knew his helper, Nellie Molina learned how to be that. But he lived on Dewey Street with all those guys. He learned plumbing, right there. So I knew everybody down Dewey Street. A lot of those houses from the corner of Center Street and Dewey Street, too. Most of those houses were my grandfather's. In fact, one of them was turned into a bakery. They went into the adobe walls and cut a hole in there, and then they put the oven outside, see, so they could run the paddle in there and take the bread out. And all this equipment for the tables to knead the dough. And then my dad built ________, this deal that they take the bread out. So it's very interesting. And Estradas lived on that same street there. And then there was Ralph Estrada, a brother of Pete Estrada. He went to college there. And later on he went to law school and become a lawyer, studied under Greg Garcia, which is the lawyer, criminal lawyer in Phoenix. And then he become a . . . a judge at Phoenix. What do you call it, the first judge that handle tickets and stuff like that, speeding.

SOLLIDAY: Justice Court?

SIGALA: Yeah, it's sort of like that. And from then on he went to the next step and all that. Finally he moved to Tucson. So did Greg Garcia move. Greg Garcia had quite a name in Phoenix as a criminal lawyer. But all those people, Tempe, see: Ralph and Pete and Ramon and there was a lot of Valenzuelas. You know down there on that corner that I'm telling you, Center and Dewey Street, there was another pool hall over there. Who run it? Teodolo Valenzuela, another Valenzuela. The fattest man in the world.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, he was the one who travelled with the circus for a while.

SIGALA: He went into the circus later on and travelled. But there he was for many years. That's what he used to do, run a pool hall there. But on the other side was the bottling company. Of course back there was old Dad's Confectionery Store that faced the college. But this bottling company was there for a long time. Boy, they made good pop, genuine. Pop that TASTED like good pop, not __________.

SOLLIDAY: We've got one of the old bottles. We never knew what it tasted like.

SIGALA: They made GOOD strawberry pop and good, good grape pop, and orange that really tasted like orange. And bottled with a foot, you know, bring the bottle and then putting your cap in there, pushing it down. That was in front of another pool hall that was there. In fact, when I rented the pool hall, I rented it to a guy by the name of Cruz Reyes, and he was an experienced pool hall man, and that's who I rented it to, and that's the reason. He's a good renter, and he knew how to run the business, and he was well-known because there was a robbery in Phoenix where this robber robbed a bank and killed somebody. At that time Cruz Reyes was running the pool hall on the corner of Mill Avenue and the tracks over there, and he happened to be outside, sitting outside, and this guy went by the tracks. He recognized him by the pictures in the paper and the description, and he called McDonald, the constable, and told him. And so McDonald told him to just watch, see where he goes. He went up to the big butte, to the big hump under the "A" up there. There's another little ledge, and that's where this guy was. So Cruz Reyes went in the front and started to climb, and so this guy was watching him. He _____ went back to the big butte, up to the top, he come down with a shotgun and they captured this guy and they put him in jail in Tempe. And so Cruz Reyes sort of become famous for that.

SOLLIDAY: Big hero.

SIGALA: They really captured the bad man, you know, that had killed somebody. One thing leads to another with these stories, you know.

SOLLIDAY: Did you know Antonio Celaya?

SIGALA: Yes, Antonio Celaya, yes. You know, the Celayas and the Sigalas really were the people that. . . . Celaya had a store uptown, you know, near where, either one side or the other, where Currys had their hardware. He was in there for quite a while. __________. I don't know what happened, I don't know what year he passed away, but you know there's Celayas, there was Ida, Ophelia Celaya. She just passed away not too long. She was attending these reunions and she was 90 already, you know. Ophelia worked for the Entomology Station down here on Mill Avenue, on Eighth Street. She worked there for many years. This guy also, Wundermuth was his name, Wundermuth Dairy on the Hayden Road, by Hayden's Ranch, a little past it, a big dairy, all Jersey. Well, that's Ophelia. And the next one was Ida, she was a teacher at Tucson High. And there was Lupe, a nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital, the old St. Joe's. Then there was Laura, she become a nurse at the St. Joseph's Hospital. And then there was Olivia, and I'll show you her picture, I brought her picture. And there was Chris Celaya. He moved from Tempe and went to work for some company in Calexico, but the gins were on the Mexican side, so he travelled back and forth. Don Celaya, he went to Arizona University and he had jobs here and there. I don't know exactly, but he worked in Tucson. But when he got married, he got married with a girl here from Tempe. Later on he passed away. He got appendicitis, and that's what he died from. So Celaya was a big family, you know. They lived in the house right back of the pumping plant. You know, back right next to this shed that I'm telling you.

SOLLIDAY: Right on College?

SIGALA: Where the fire wagons, you know, the carts, they were right along next to their property. And from there then they moved over next to the high school, the OLD high school, you know, on that street there. I forget the name of that street there.

SOLLIDAY: Myrtle?

SIGALA: Myrtle, ended at the Tenth Street School. Well, that, they bought a house and that's where they. . . . Well, the story was that Ophelia, I guess, lasted the longest. Being in Tucson, she stayed over there and passed away over there. Then Laura joined the Army and she retired as a colonel, I think, or something like that. She was way up because she worked in surgery. In fact, when my sister had surgery, they removed a tumor from her, I remember recommending her _______________ "You want to see what we cut out of Sophia?" and I said, "Yeah." It was like a softball, that big. And I _________________. Well, Laura got in the Army and she did good and all that. Olivia, the youngest one, she was staying with Ida in Tucson and she married a fellow that had a distribution for some beer over there, and he was well-to-do, he made money at that business. So that was the story of Olivia. Olivia was practically in my same grade through high school. She didn't go to the college training [Payne Training School], but I think she went to the Grammar School [Tenth Street School]. But at high school _______________. _____________ the Celayas. I remember Mr. Celaya -- there's a name for that now. But he set down to talk and pretty soon he's asleep. And everybody used to kind of joke about that. Go to visit _________ you look at him and he was asleep. There's a name for that. That was the story, very nice guy, and he did alright with his grocery business 'til he passed away.

SOLLIDAY: Let's see, I think just one more thing I wanted to ask you about. You recognized the fire engine he had in the exhibit hall there. That's something we're going to do an exhibit with -- I'm not sure exactly when. I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about it. Do you remember when that was being used here in Tempe?

SIGALA: Oh yeah. Yeah, that was quite a deal because, you know, Sunday afternoon the band used to play. You know how the old City Hall -- well, you've probably seen pictures of it. Well, the band used to sit up there. All the instruments, some of them belonged to the City, believe it or not. They went on this side, facing us. Then went down there in that storeroom. In fact, when I went into the service, all the guns that I had and stuff like that, the City stored them for me in that locker. And right back of that locker was the garage for this Model T.

SOLLIDAY: That was right next to Spain's Garage then?

SIGALA: Well, Spain's Garage, there was an alley in back of the City Hall. And Spain's Garage was about in here, over. So they were really the first ones that when they called in, they called Carl and he'd come up here and yank on the bell, those two ropes, you know, until the thing started clanging. And then they'd toll it for the locations where the fire was. Of course he was the driver of the car, and his dad was the first one to get on the truck. Anybody that'd come along that was a volunteer, got on the truck. And I remember being with my dad different parts of town, and being my dad always wore a blue serge suit, and there he goes to the fire. You know, he'd come back all muddy and all that. But they had to report back to the City Hall to sign up that they attended the fire, because that's how they got paid. I think they only got five or ten dollars every time, you know. But he had a badge and a _________. So that was the story of that. They used to gather there and have some meetings right around the truck, at the back of the truck, what they were gonna do and this and that. Or they'd go upstairs, because upstairs, that was the courtroom, you know. There was room up there. So I was always hanging around my dad for things like that, when I was a little kid. The experience one time that I'll never forget was the bell tolled, but it just rang, no signal where it was. So my dad said, "Let's go down there." The wagon didn't go out. We went back there. What had happened was that the night watchman had come to feed a prisoner. You know, one side was the fire wagon, the other side was the jail. And the jail, the cement around it was that high, and then you could go up there and shake hands with the prisoners, because they were down sunken in there, you know, and they had these stick up -- here's the windows, you know. And that's how easy it was to hand the guy a gun. That's the way it was. Or the guys would go in there because they were drunk, and they'd stay drunk for days because anybody can come and give 'em a bottle of booze, you know. Or their wives would bring food for 'em. They didn't want them to eat. . . . One of the restaurants that was next to the back up there, they'd furnish the food for the City for the prisoners. Well, the night watchman came to feed this prisoner, and the prisoner pulled him in there, took his gun and shot him. And I can't remember whether he. . . . He was alive, because I went there with my dad, and there's the guy laying down there all bloody, shot, you know. And the guy that shot him got away. And finally, as I understand, they caught him near the border someplace near Ajo down there, Calabazas or someplace, and he was getting ready to cross the border and they caught him. But that was an experience that I didn't expect to see, this night watchman laying there dying, and this guy had shot him, you know. And then later on, when my dad used to help McDonald get some stupid drunk that was getting in trouble, they'd bring him down there. I happened to be with my dad, went down there, so I knew there were two cells in there and two mattresses in there, steel doors, you know. And _________. They were roughies, you know, that's where they put 'em. No getting away from those steel doors. But afterwards some guy was in there for something minor, why, he was loose around there. You could go and talk to him and all that. (chuckles) I remember some guy that I knew real well that was in there, and I'd ride my bicycle around delivering papers, you know, and ride by there and talk to him. So that was a good old days. Can you imagine a jail like that where you could hand a guy a gun or booze? But it came handy for the wives to come down and give their husbands (chuckles) something different, a good burrito, you know. (laughter) But that old wagon lasted around there I don't know how many years. When I went into the service, '41, that wagon was still in the City Hall.

SOLLIDAY: It was used quite a while, quite a few years. Well, I think I've gone through all the questions I had here. I sure appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. Certainly helps fill in a lot of those things that _____.

SIGALA: It's too bad there's not too many old devils like me around, you know, that can tell you something about that. You know, you're gonna be able to collect a lot of pictures, but somebody to describe those pictures is gonna be hard, because that's what the museum is all about -- ANY museum. They've got old stuff. I went to the museum not too long ago at the University of Texas in San Antonio. It'd take you more than a day to see. It's all Texas stuff, like I said, Tempe stuff here. And that's a HUGE deal, you know, right in back of the San Antonio, Texas. That guy's in Congress today, what's his name? Gonzalez? Is that his name?

SOLLIDAY: ___________.

SIGALA: He's in charge of banking, you know, and all that stuff. ______________. There's a big space needle up there, a restaurant on top. That's where, this last year, they finished that new stadium. They call it. . . . What do they call it? Alamo Dome. It's a suspended ceiling, you know, these big arches, you know, suspending this ceiling. And they play football in there now, and baseball in there. It's a huge deal. _________________. But this museum is really something. They've got a lot of stuff in there. And then I went to the museum in Memphis, Texas. The museum pertained, I don't know if it was for the area of Memphis, too, and they had a lot of stuff. This old stuff is interesting to see, you know. Places like Texas Museum there at ___________. Had a lot of oil drilling stuff, you know they got a lot of oil in Texas, and a lot of stuff like that, a lot of new stuff that they were using in agriculture, you know -- the whole machinery is there, and stuff like that. So I'm glad that you have so many interesting things here now, you know.

END SIDE TWO

END OF INTERVIEW