Dolores Duenez, Lora Holt, and Tony Duenez

[00:03] DOLORES DUENEZ: My name is Dolores Duenez I'm 80 years old, young, and today's date is February 5, 2023. This is El Paso, Texas, and I'm here with my son, Tony Duenez and my daughter, Laura Duenez Holtz.

[00:27] TONY DUENEZ: I'm Tony Duenez I'm one week away from turning 54. Today's date is February 5, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. And I'm here with my mom, Dolores Duenez and my sister, Laura Holtz

[00:42] DOLORES DUENEZ: Hi, my name is Laura Holtz I'm 57 years young. Today's date is February 5, 2023. Our location is El Paso, Texas. The name of my interview partners are Dolores Duenez my mom and my brother, Tony Duenez Hey, mom, you want to tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in El Paso? Well, I was born in 1942, and we live with my grandparents, my mother, three children. And after the war, we settled in with my grandfather, who worked for Southern Pacific railroad. And my grandmother and my grandfather bought and sold real estate on the side. And so we moved around a lot. So I went to about four different elementary schools and two different high schools. How many different houses did you live in? I don't know, maybe about seven or eight. Wow. I know that there's one. That's your favorite house that you used to live in. Can you tell us a little bit about that one on Stiles Road? Well, when I was about ten years old, my grandfather bought this piece of land that was like a half acre. And it was on this one road where there were houses only on one side of the street. And across the street was a cotton field. And I was so excited because when we moved in, they had chickens and goats, two goats, some geese and white chickens and red chickens and lots and lots of fruit trees. It was a different place. Instead of living in the city, we were suddenly out in the country. And the story was that my grandfather had bought this land because he was planning to retire from the railroad. Excuse me. We lived there for about six years, and it was just totally different. There was a lot of kids on the, in the neighborhood, and we all walked to school together. And remember, this was the fifties. There was no television, and we played games in the evenings. Red rover, red rover, or red light? Green light. We traded comic books. We rode our bicycles up and down the street. It was just a very nice place to grow up. Well, you mentioned that papa had a store in the house. Yes. My grandfather decided two years before he retired, he decided he was going to open up a store. So he had a room added to the house. And he started a neighborhood grocery store. And by then, I was eleven years old, and I would help him in the grocery store. And he opened that store, even though he closed it at 06:00 in the evening. He would open it up for the people that would come for a loaf of bread at 08:00 at night, or some people wanted six slices of bologna. Whatever they wanted, he was there to. To help them. A lot of times we would get people that were from the railroad. They were tramps that were down and out. And they would come to the grocery store, and my grandfather would make them a sandwich and give him a bottle of pop and put in a bag of fritos or potato chips. And he would also give him a bottle of water, maybe a cookie or a little piece of cake, and send them on their way. He was always doing that in the evenings. My grandfather went to bed very early, and so he didn't like noise. So my mother would give us permission to go, and we would go across the street. When the cotton fields were not planted, we would go across the street and make a bonfire and have a weenie roast with the kids in the neighborhood, and it would get us away from the house and the noise.

[05:27] TONY DUENEZ: You always said that your grandfather had a lot of different jobs. As far as working for the railroad. He had the store. Didn't you also have, like you do a lot of, like, buying real estate?

[05:43] DOLORES DUENEZ: Yes, he would like to buy an old house. This is before we settled on Stiles Road. He would buy a house, paint it, clean it up, and then maybe six months later, it was on the market. He did that over and over again. It got to the point where my mother refused to unpack because she knew we were only going to be there for a year or maybe six months. So when you moved onto Stiles Road, how long were you there? I was in the fifth grade, all the way up to my second year of high school. Wow. So you stayed there a lot longer than the other houses? Yes, about six years. Can you tell us about some of the adventures you had over there? Where? At the high school or. No, at the house on Stiles. Cause I remember some stories about playing near the irrigation ditches. Well, this was out in the country, and so we had irrigation water that would come once a month. And so I remember my grandfather getting up early so he could open up the little gate that would let the water in to water the fruit trees. And you could run through the irrigation ditch, which ran behind the houses. And it was always a shortcut to the next road. And so we used to go down to the irrigation and ditch and collect frogs or snails or crawdads. I like doing all of that. I would jump the fence and go over there and join the kids and do that. Until one night I went into the irrigation ditch and I cut my foot on a piece of glass. And after that, I make sure I wear my shoes before I jumped in the ditch. So I remember you telling me a story about how you started liking to have fished as pets. Well, my grandmother had a garden, and she had a lot of rose bushes. And when we would irrigate, it would flood the yard. And one day I was out there and I saw these little tiny fish. And so I started collecting them and putting them in jars, and I became fascinated with these little, tiny fish. And then one day, about. Maybe about three months later, my mother took me to the doctor, and we would go downtown, and there was a lady there who used to help the doctor. And she had these jars of baby fish. And I remember asking her, where did you get all these little fish? And she told me they were guppies. They were called guppies. She told me that you could keep them in a jar of water if you aged the water, and that way the fish wouldn't die. And so for my birthday, I asked my mother if I could have some guppies. Now, my birthday's in November, so that meant that it was in the wintertime. And my mother brought me the little container with mother Guppy. And she brought it. She asked the lady at the. At the store that she wanted a pregnant guppy for me. And so my mother brought me a mother fish and then some seaweed. And I was able to keep her in a large bowl. And about two weeks later, she gave birth to about ten little fish. And after that, I always kept fish at home. Didn't you used to have them, like, on the piano or something? I had them all over the place. I had jars of snails or. Or tadpoles or. I was just interested in anything that came from the ditch. Even though guppies didn't come from the ditch, they were live bearers, like the minnows that I would catch in the ditch. That's cool. So how did this, like, end up becoming, like, a hobby for you? Well, when I got married and we moved to California, I was, my brother and I and my husband at the time, we would go down to Long beach. And in Long beach, there was a street on second street, and they had lots and lots of aquarium shops. And there was that one aquarium shop where you could get angelfish. And by then, I was, I had a young daughter, and I was a stay at home mom, and I did a lot of reading on how to breed aquarium fish, and I became fascinated with breeding the angelfish, and I bought a larger tank, and I was able to breed them. So I remember that show tank at the house. So how big did your angelfish get? What happened is my brother told me that a friend of his was moving out and was leaving behind his aquarium, and he wanted to know if I wanted his fish. And I said, yes, I want the fish. So he brought over a bucket of fish, and it had six large angelfish. I thought I'd gone to heaven. I immediately put them in my large tank, and they pared off and they started laying eggs. And then that's when I read more about breeding angelfish and how to feed them and how to take care of them. And I was able to grow the fish for about two or three inches. Yeah, I remember those were pretty large fish. Everybody made a big deal about how beautiful your tank was when we lived in California. Yeah, everything was big in California.

[12:00] TONY DUENEZ: Go back to El Paso, or we're going to California now.

[12:05] DOLORES DUENEZ: Where would you like to go, mom? Well, I think I'd like to talk about living in California. When I left El Paso and we moved to California, it was such a different place, California in the sixties with the Beach Boys and the music and the hippies, and it was all so new to me. And after my daughter was born and I had my son, like, three years later, and I decided I wanted to go back to school. And so I could not get over that. Going to college in California was free. Junior colleges at the time, you paid $2 for parking, you paid $4 for an insurance, health insurance, and you paid for your books. And so I registered at Santa Ana College, and the reason that I went there was because I was able to leave my son at a daycare. And this was all new in California, where colleges had daycare. My daughter was already in kindergarten, so I felt at peace leaving my son at a nursery school there on campus. And as I went to school, my children grew up in school. I would take them to concerts or sometimes if I couldn't find a sitter or if, like, my son had asthma, if he had an asthma attack, I would take him to class with me. And usually he slept through the lecture. And so they were able to experience that with me. We had a lot of fun on the college campus. I remember, like, faking sick so that I could go to class with you, especially when you were taking the astronomy class or you were firing ceramics. When did you decide that you wanted to be to study art in college? Well, I've always liked the arts, and I used to always paint as a child, and I decided I wanted to study something that would make me happy. And so in talking to the counselor, he told me, he said, at first I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. And once I started taking art classes, my professor told me, if you really want to teach art, you have to go to high school. If you just want to expose the students to art, then pick elementary. I decided to go for the high school, and I never looked back. I really liked it, and I taught high school art for 28 years. How hard was it trying to raise us and go to school in California? It was very hard. The reason being I didn't have the support of my husband some of the time. He didn't. Can you tell us more about that? Well, he didn't like the fact that I had to study long hours, that I took too much time away from him. I was trying to juggle studying, raising two children, taking care of a house, and working 10 hours a week at the library to earn money so I could pay for daycare. And I was just split in so many different ways. It was very hard. I know that when we were growing up on the college campus, we did stuff like watch you paint a mural. What was that mural about? When I was going to Santa Ana College, they were looking for someone to paint a mural on this large wall that was going to block out the construction area. Santa Ana college was growing, and they were building a couple of brand new buildings, and they wanted a piece of art on that wall. And there was an art history teacher. Her name was Shifra Goldman. And she got together some of the art students, and we met with an artist that was hired, and we all helped him to paint the mural, and he included us in the mural. And if you go down to Santa Ana College now and you go into the library, you can see the mural that we all helped to paint. That's cool.

[17:08] TONY DUENEZ: Yeah, it's pretty cool seeing that mural. I mean, I remember having a little bit of memories of you guys painting it.

[17:18] DOLORES DUENEZ: Yeah.

[17:18] TONY DUENEZ: And mostly just riding my background, but it's just kind of cool to go back there and see it, to actually see it in person.

[17:30] DOLORES DUENEZ: Yeah. We were all surprised that he included our faces in the future. He had a section of the mural, and it was all about the mexican movement, the farm worker. And then he had the future of Hispanics in America, and we were. He put our faces in the Hispanics of the future. That's cool. So the Chicano movement was going on very heavily in the campus at the same time that you were going to school, right? Right. How did you feel about that? I didn't join it. I wasn't interested in all the politics that that entailed. I just wanted to finish school and take care of my two children. I had too much going on already. The people were nice, and they encouraged me to get involved, but there was enough going on at the time. I remember Jane Fonda coming to our campus, and she was protesting the Vietnam war, and I remember her showing up, and there were so many students that were trying to. They were protesting with her because they were getting so many people involved in the Vietnam War. And I also remember at one of the functions at school, we had a streaker. This man ran across campus in the nude. I mean, all the stuff that you hear about in the history I experienced going to school in California, it must.

[19:12] TONY DUENEZ: Have been a really eye opening experience being in college in California back then.

[19:21] DOLORES DUENEZ: The what?

[19:21] TONY DUENEZ: It must have been a really, like, opening up your mind and, yeah, when.

[19:28] DOLORES DUENEZ: I was going to Santa Ana College, I won a scholarship to go to the University of California, Irvine. It was a brand new school that was opening up. And when you went at that time, because of affirmative action, you were either very poor or you were very wealthy. And those are the two types of students that wound up going to the University of California, Irvine. It was a beautiful, brand new campus, and I remember they offered me the scholarship and then also the opportunity for my children to attend this experimental school called the farm school, where it was supposed to be a free school. And I turned it down. I went one semester to UCI, and I was not happy with the art classes there. And I had a girlfriend who was going to Cal State Fullerton, and she says, why don't you spend the day with me at Cal State? So I didn't go to class that day. She picked me up, and I spent the whole day at Cal state, and it was everything I always wanted. By then I had a two year degree in art, and I was looking to finish my ba in art. And when I went to Cal State, it was ordinary kids going to school, riding their bikes, kind of middle class. I felt right at home. Not to mention the fact that there was so many. The variety of classes offered was wonderful. I mean, you just had such a choice in drawing and painting classes and sculpture. And so I remember quitting my scholarship. What did dad say when you quit? Oh, your father was so angry. He couldn't get over the fact that I just didn't want the scholarship. I turned down the offer for the farm school. And I told him, I said, what difference does it make? I said, I'm not learning anything there. They're not teaching me what I want to learn. So it caused a lot of problems in the marriage, and we wound up getting divorced a few years later. And it was very hard for him to accept the fact that I wanted more out of life. I just didn't want to be a housewife at home. I wanted to study. And he didn't seem to understand that. Sometimes he supported it, and sometimes he gave me ultimatums that I had to make a choice. Yeah, well, you did inspire him to go back himself and get his associate's degree. That was good. Yeah, it was one time after a fight that we had, he told me that I had to make a choice, that he wasn't going to put up with us anymore. So I went to the counselor at school and I told him what was happening, and he said, bring him, I'll talk to him. So they enrolled him in school, and he started taking just one or two classes, and he did wind up finishing his degree also. He went for diesel technology, and things calmed down after that. You know, he never takes off his college ring. He wears that still to this day. It's very important to him that he went to school. That's good to know. I think what happens is that a lot of times you get married very young and you don't know what you want out of life, and each of you have different paths and you outgrow each other. And I think that's what happened. I want it more. And he was very satisfied with the status quo. Yeah. You know, I remember when I was little, like little little. You know, you used to make dad his tortillas in the morning before he went to work, homemade tortillas and stuff, because we were poor. And I can't imagine you being that woman now, waking up at 530 in the morning to make tortillas for burritos in the lunchbox. Well, he was a very traditional mexican man. And it was a hard adjustment, and I was very docile, and I did everything he said. And the more educated I became, I rebelled. I didn't want that anymore. I wanted more education, and I wanted a better future for my children. So I always read to them to both of you. Growing up, I tried to expose you to concerts, and I would take you with me when I went to make gallery reports to the different museums. I just wanted to open your world. And he grew up a very poor person. His mother was away during his formative years. She was in an asylum, not a mental asylum, but she was in a tuberculosis asylum for many years because she contracted tb. And he went to go live with an illiterate grandmother who raised him. So he had a lot of problems in school, and that was the difference in growing up. Yeah. Well, I know education was always really important to Papa and Mama and that. What was. There's a saying that Papa used to say about education. Well, my grandfather, he was a big influence on all of us, my brother, my sister, and myself. And he always would make us sit at the kitchen table and practice our handwriting. And he would say, your handwriting shows what kind of a person you are. You've got to learn to write correctly. And he says, it shows if you're educated or not. And so he would buy these big chief tablets and bring home pencils from southern Pacific. And we would sit at the kitchen table and work on our penmanship. And I remember him. He was always selling. He'd buy cigarettes, candy, gum. And at work, when he worked for the railroad, during lunchtime, he would sell cigarettes, candy, gum. And at night he would sit at the kitchen table, and he would take out the coffee cans. He had one for dimes, one for nickels, and count his money and put it in a ledger. And I grew up seeing all of that. And now I do that. I don't sell cigarettes, candy, or gum, but I do save coins. And I guess that helps me with my little business that I have. Yeah, I know, growing up, because we saw you go to school and finish, and dad go to school and finish. It was a big influence on me, going through high school, just knowing in the back of my head that no matter what I did, to mess around in high school and not do what I was supposed to do, I knew I was going to go to college. That was just understood. And I always felt like I was going to go. One of the things that I remember that I. At the time, I was sad, but then later I was happy. Was that when Tony was growing up, I never worried about you, Laura, because I always knew that you were going to go to school and everything. But when Tony started going to UTEP, it's like he couldn't find his path. He kept taking these classes, and he didn't seem very enthusiastic. And one day he walked in and he said, mom, I found a school I really want to go to. And then I said, what school is that? And he said, it's in Florida, mom. Tell me about it. Tony.

[28:39] TONY DUENEZ: Well, when I got out of. When I went to UTEP, I was just taking the basic classes, and I really kind of didn't know what I wanted. I was majoring in broadcasting, and I thought, well, maybe I can do something there. I started taking these electronic music classes. One was like an intro to electronic music. And then ultimately, I started taking the advanced classes. And as I was doing that, I was starting to take my basic courses less and less until finally I was just, like, doing, like, one or two classes a semester. And I was like, yeah, I can't do this. This is like, I don't know what, what? I'm just kind of spinning around in circles. I don't know what I'm doing. Well, at my job, two of the guys I was working with were going to school in Florida. They were going to move to Florida, and they were going to go to school. They were taking, they were taking courses in filmmaking. And I had heard about that school, but I didn't really know too much about it. Me and a friend of mine, we went up to Florida, and I went and sat in on a lab, and immediately I fell in love with it. But I was really afraid to tell you guys because I didn't know how you guys would react to me going to a specialized trade school rather than, you know, getting a full, proper degree. And so I remember, you know, being afraid to tell you. And no, you told me exactly what you were thinking. You know, back then, you had to be happy. You know, you have to be happy with what, you know, with what your career choice. And that really meant a lot to me because I, you know, I was so afraid that you have to do, you know, I have to go to UtEp, I have to get a degree in whatever, and, you know, go the same path.

[31:10] DOLORES DUENEZ: And that was, what was so cool about being your kid was that you let us play, you let us be messy. You let us, I mean, I think part of it was just that you were so busy working that you didn't have a chance to kind of, like, micromanage us. But we always had messy rooms, and we always, but we were always playing and imagining and just exploring anything that we were interested in creatively, which helped us to become, like, for me, a better teacher or a better writer for Tony, I mean, his imagination goes all over the place. And I think both of us are creative and explore and are more open to creativity because of how you raised us. I remember when Tony told me that he wanted to go to that school. At first I thought, wow, my son's going to go 2000 miles away. And then I thought, but wait a minute, he's doing the same thing I did, turn your back on this school because you didn't like it and going in search of another one. Yeah, we were all really proud of tonight. And so I thought, wow, I've got to do everything I can to help him.

[32:27] TONY DUENEZ: And again, it was very eye opening experience, you know, going out of town. You even said that, you said that everybody should try to go out of town at least, you know, once in their life just to, to experience it. And it was cool. And on the one hand, it was cool being in a totally different environment, but on the other hand, it also showed me that wherever you go, there's not a promised land that is going to be someplace. Every place is pretty much the same. It has the same, you know, there may be different cultures, but it's pretty much the same, you know, you can do, especially now with the technology, you can do whatever it is you want to do, you know, where you're at. And I think that that showed me that I could, I could come back, you know, come back home and, you know, once I got my degree and do what I want to do here in El Paso. And actually, that turned out not to be the case, but it actually turned out to be a better opportunity when I got back. And I really, really love what I do, and I really do attribute it to you giving me that push.

[34:09] DOLORES DUENEZ: All right, womb, is there anything you want to add or talk about? Well, let's see, five, pretty much it covers everything. I was able to teach high school art for 28 years. And, and then when I retired, I started taking classes in horticulture and went off to New Mexico state and studied that for three years, but I couldn't finish because I didn't have the background in chemistry and math. And so I decided to try and open up my own little business. And that's when I started selling plants at the farmer's market. And from there, I started selling on Etsy, my ceramics, and I'm still there. Yeah. Plants on the brain.

[35:10] TONY DUENEZ: So I guess you, in concluding this, I mean, really, the, it's, if there's anything to be learned from this, it's just never stop. Never stop learning and never stop, you know?

[35:27] DOLORES DUENEZ: Yes, I agree. I believe in education to the grave. I don't care how old you are. Take a class, learn something new. Go a different direction. Try it.

[35:40] TONY DUENEZ: Yeah, because, I mean, really, you're only on here. You're only on this earth for a short amount of time. Might as well get the most out of it.

[35:49] DOLORES DUENEZ: Yeah.

[35:52] TONY DUENEZ: Well, cool. Well, thank you, mom. Thank you for.

[35:55] DOLORES DUENEZ: Thank you for coming, Laura and Tony, and sharing your thoughts with me. We've never done this before. We have it. Family dinner, but not to this extent.

[36:06] TONY DUENEZ: Well, now with a bunch of smart alecky making jokes every five minutes. Nice. Cool. I learned a lot.

[36:17] DOLORES DUENEZ: Yeah. See you at family dinner, mom. Okay. Love you both. Love you, too, mom.

[36:26] TONY DUENEZ: Bye.