Monique Sandoval and Margaret Basoco

00:02 My name is Margaret Rose. Basoco. My maiden name was Dominguez. My age is 74 today's date is Monday December 9th, 2019. I mean location is Yuma Arizona. My interview partner is Monique Sandoval basoco.

00:24 Ask her relationship to me is my. She's my daughter.

00:29 I'm Monique Sandoval the Soco maiden name the Soco. I'm 36 years old Monday December 9th 2019. That's today. We're in Yuma Arizona at the story karp mobile tour.

00:47 My and if your partner is my mom my grandpa so cold but Dominguez her Rose Market girls. That's okay. Okay. So thank you for coming here with me mama trying to get history recorded that we can access later. I have a few questions. I want to ask you but this is mainly for us just to talk like we're just talking at the table as we would have done it in brownies cafe or something. So

01:18 Okay, so, where did you grow up Margaret?

01:21 I was born in Tucson, Arizona, but when I was like a month old my mother while we first of all my mom and dad got married in Tucson, they moved to Yuma when she was pregnant with me. She went back home to her mom in Tucson till I was born and then when I was a month old chick came back to Yuma and I've lived here all my life and Yuma Arizona. So was someone born under the table kitchen table was that you or no? No, but didn't Tucson. We were all my cousins and my brother myself. We were all born in the home. We didn't we didn't go to the hospital.

02:07 Do you happen to know the address of that house in Tucson?

02:11 It was

02:14 It was on McCormick street, but I can't remember the house address. No longer there. They they tore down the the city took over the the whole neighborhood there and they made it the parking lot to the new Civic Center that's in Tucson.

02:36 Okay, what was your childhood like?

02:39 It was fun. It was fun. My father work for the railroad which shows Southern Pacific and when the employees are employed by the Southern Pacific they had passes for the family to travel free from LA to El Paso. And so we used to travel almost every weekend to Tucson to visit my grandmother and my my aunts and cousins and then come home and that's how we did it. We just traveled

03:12 On the train

03:14 Will you tell me I remember some stories you said about the train trouble going to say some scary stories you had. Oh, yeah, when I was eight. I think it was nice. We went to El Paso and in El Paso. The train station is they have the sliding Gates. They close them until the train is ready to board. Then the people the gates are open and people just rushed to the to get their seats and at that time my somebody took our our suitcase and my father we got to the train. We got two seats and my brother and my love my mom my brother and myself were to stay in the seats. Take to save them. Well my dad look for your suitcase.

04:06 But my my mom she wanted to go help my dad. So she went following my dad and she left my brother and I at in the seats to save them but my brother he wanted to go to poke went with my mother and left me there and when the train started pulling moving and they weren't back. I got off the train but I got off on the on the workers side of the train, you know, my not enough to for the passengers come up and got on the other side. So I started running back towards the station crying and my in between the cars my brother heard me crying and told my dad that it was me crying out there. So my dad looked out and he seen me and I'll be up on the trainer kidding me know but that was the story the scariest story.

05:03 Okay, where's the suitcases? Well, he found the suitcase and Link. Someone went through them or don't know. It's just I guess they were the same color whatever anyway, the person took it by mistake. And so we got it exchanged. But yeah, everything turned out okay, we got our seats and sat down and my dad was all upset cuz we I had just got off the train. Maybe he was upset your mom or something. Everybody ghost witch ghost ghost. And that does a headless horseman. Oh, no, that was my mom's story. She said that her and my aunt Mary were going to no gallus for the week best her sister Maria.

06:03 So they were going to to no gallus for the week. But my my my mother my grandmother was not going to go until the weekend or any way. They wanted to go ahead of them. Tell me the other family that was going to hook my mom and my aunt with them, but at that time they had those covered wagons and and so I don't remember but anyway, it was a covered wagon and they were going through the to the whole freeway. Freeway, but the whole Road and my mom said it was during the night that it was sun was setting and there was this Headless Horseman coming and every time he got close to the to the wagon my my other relatives that were driving the horses they started cursing at that thing to go back to go away and it did it would back off but all night.

07:03 Long that Horseman kept coming out and coming at them and so when they got to Nogales I got real so in the morning when they got to no gallus my my mom and my aunt were were so sick with with a fever. They didn't enjoy themselves until later.

07:26 But that was her story from my memory of what you used to know. It would help me to Stagecoach. That's sorry.

07:39 Okay, so I got that.

07:43 Time how did you and dad meet?

07:47 Blind date. I never knew your dad. He was when I was in when I got into High School. It was in 1960. He was a senior then and I was a freshman but I never I had met him because my friend her brother was was his friend and she had told me, you know, Margaret you could come over Archie's here and he's so handsome, you know, so she called me to go eat like on the telephone to her so she called me to come down. So I went to her house and we walked through the back door and walk to the front where they were sitting and then we walked out the front door and and she says, what did you think? So anyway, I didn't meet him until that blind date my friend my friend's brother.

08:44 Tony he was some good my cousin from Tucson had come Irene and they were going to have a date or blind date for us, you know, and I had just got off work and she has Margie you got to get dressed cuz Tony's bringing a friend and we're going to go dancing.

09:04 So I said, okay, so I got dressed and then I waited there and Tony and Tony Archie and tell me if I showed up and helped. I know him. Anyway, he came and he he said those three of us there is little Rita my cousin Irene and myself and those three guys. So Tommy said that Rita was his date and then Tony said Irene was his date. So your dad and I we just look at each other and I said, well, I guess we're left though. So anyway, we are we went out and then after that your dad asked me to go steady and then he joined the National Guard's and he had to go to but is it the for camp for 6 months for it?

10:04 And that's how do you say Fort Polk in Fort Polk, Louisiana?

10:10 So where was your friend that was calling you over? And where'd she go?

10:15 Who's at the print the one that said come over or Gracie? She didn't say she was home. She didn't go out with us.

10:24 That was her birthday is a Matchmaker for brother that I meet.

10:37 Okay, what was I like when I grew it when I was growing up but make that Nike shirt cuz I have no more questions. How are you? Like you were and you are a good kid you were always playing and but you make up independent kind of Virginia independent you like to you planned your own thing and said I want to go here and well, we would take you and everything you did your own planning, you know, it didn't go like for us to the parents to say we're going to take you here. We're going to go there it was you. I want to go there so go to do this.

11:18 Okay, and what were your parents like my parents were hard workers. My dad worked with the railroad and my mom she was a housewife and when I was going to school at 2nd Avenue School which Berg down?

11:37 She used to come with her my dad. They end there was a hums Market down the street from the school and they stopped at the Hans market and got our sodas and chips and my mom had our lunch and right across from 42nd Avenue School was the library and so at lunch time. They would have our lunch ready out there has we go eat lunch with them at the park and then go to back to school, but the school was really a very very pretty school that had the the bathroom was down in the basement. And the the the the school itself was open and the classrooms or like round it around this patio that had a little fountain in the center. I can handle like a house yet and it was really pretty but it burnt down.

12:30 Where was that building at hearing you right there where the new fire station is right across from the library on weird it burnt down and now but they kind of built that fire station to look like the like the school, you know that title that way but it's not the school make the fire station.

13:03 What were your grandparents like my grandparents? I didn't really meet them. I mean when I was little I remember my grandfather he would come down through the alley after work. He'd be coming down the alley so all of us grandkids would run to the back gate and wait for him there on so he would come and he would have always he'd have popsicles for us ice cream. So we are always waiting there for him, and it was fun, but he passed away when I wasn't when I was still young so I don't really remember him that well, but my grandmother

13:44 She will used to tell us poems stories then and then later she had had a cataract surgery on her eyes and she went blind. So she was buying for the rest of her life, but we used to walk with her to the Little Chapel church chapel, you know walk with her to church and

14:08 And she was what time we going.

14:11 I can explain it. But anyway, she went missing her. Yeah, we had her come to you Mom to trade one time and she stayed here for a week with us and then took her back to Tucson. And that's your mom's mom. My mom's mom. My dad's parents. I never I met him because my grandfather on my dad's side passed away in in Gila Bend. He worked for the railroad and he was walking down the railroad track with his two friends and he was struck by lightning and dumb.

14:49 And it wasn't even raining. They said it was just the Cloudy and but he was where he always had like a buckle thing on his hat and and so the lightning struck him and killed him and then my grandmother she lived in my father brought her to Yuma and he lives she lived with him.

15:12 And I wasn't born yet, but the story is that she had gone to church down here on Main Street and going home from church. She was hit by a drunk driver and dragged all the way like a whole block and The Roundhouse is right behind the church where my dad worked. So some people that knew my dad they ran and told my dad that my grandma that his mom had gotten hit so he runs out and gets to her and she passed away in his arms.

15:50 That was a sad story, but I didn't really know him because I wasn't born yet.

15:56 What's your name? Juana Dominguez?

16:01 Wallpaper

16:06 Okay, so you

16:13 You have any questions for me?

16:20 You know how you were talking about the little I know I'm trying to get some stories that you usually tell us.

16:30 Like that of my alarms, I remember tamales. And then what about that chain straight go straight for the one time. We had gone to visit my friend Gracie and you don't we lived up on 2nd Avenue, but we live. Can I heal and she live down in First Avenue, so we didn't have a TV. So my parents said they went we went to visit them and they were watching TV and talking and everything and then my parents said, you know to go home so they called me but my friend says no no don't go don't go. So I stayed behind and they went on home and then I told my friend know I've got to go home. So I started walking through the alley to go home.

17:24 And I heard like little lie noises like a chainsaw Roar Bells something, you know bringing so I turned around and I seen a thing allman-brown, but I couldn't see the face and I thought it was maybe

17:44 I don't really I think it was 10:11. Anyway, I seen something brown walking.

17:51 An end but when I turned around it stopped and and I thought it was great my friends brothers and I call out Tony Andre is it you and they didn't answer so I went on up and when I got to the top of the hill I ducked down and I looked down and that thing walk to the corner and then it turned and went to the metal carport the people had in that corner house and that's all I know about that. But I don't know what a later I found out that that building that home had been a home for the monks back in the old days monks used to live there.

18:35 So, I don't know maybe it was a dead monk or I mean, I'm remembering your stories by the way in just right now. I'm like are you psychic or something? I do actually have all these stories about goals and you're older. So it's not like you're a little young imagination is making maybe your psychic. I don't think so.

19:01 But then both of my dad passed when my dad got laid off for retired from the Southern Pacific. My mom was making tamales to sell to help with our income. And so we used to get up every Saturday and what she used to cook the corn the day before and then wash it and then we get up on Saturdays and grind it and sheep make tamales and then I would go sell it with little bucket. She put some tamales in it and I'd walk down the neighborhood selling tamales and on weekend. I mean under Christmas people really enjoyed her tamales. So they used to order ahead of time for her to have them.

19:47 So she my dad and her got a freezer and they would make the tamales and freeze them. And then when the time was for the people to pick up their orders, she get the tamales out and cucurmin me and I'll give it to them. So that was helpful to my dad and and my mom mean it was not ring them. So when when you were when your dad used to work on that railroad, so recently that railroad that

20:21 Wasn't what do they call the train was when he worked for the railroad? It was steam engines and when the diesel engines came in a beige weren't using steam. So he wasn't. He was laid off because they didn't have no more steam engine. So that was the reason but that big Point train that came a oh, yeah, that's one of those steam engine. So she's up only one now and he's working those in that thing when I seen it here in person that sings giant. Yeah, he's to work on those and dumb. So but they and then the the free pass that we had was good until we turned 18 just so once we were 18, the children weed we didn't have a free pass to go on the trade anymore, but my mom and and dad still had their their free pass.

21:13 4life

21:15 But the the train rides are fun and when we would go to LA to visit our cousins the Southern Pacific ended in LA, but it's from from there on if we wanted to go to Anaheim or or San Francisco. We had to pay half fare on the Santa Fe and that's what we did. We used to go visit our cousins in Anaheim and Fullerton and one time we did travel all the way to San Francisco.

21:46 It was fun Imagine That how long was that trip was a whole day a whole day.

21:55 Well, maybe you can talk about who our family is like your Dominguez. And then the names of who are relatives are immediate relatives like your mom's name. May God's name your sisters and brothers name.

22:11 Will my my mom's family was her mom was called Guadalupe.

22:19 Felix Moreno she didn't she married Jose Mourinho. He was born in Phoenix, Arizona. My grandmother is going to Nogales Sonora.

22:29 And they had three girls. They had my Tia Maria, which is she married at Davila and then she married Monte Davila and then my Tia Petra she married one word.

22:49 A mi Tia Maria had five kids. It was Jody Betty Gilbert Monte and Mary Helen.

23:01 And my Tia Petra had they had three kids. They had David Danny and Irene. My my mom was she had two kids she married Francisco Dominguez.

23:15 And she had two kids. She had me Margaret and my brother Richard.

23:22 And done my on my father's side.

23:28 He they had who I don't know. How many kids they had my

23:34 For one thing my my father came from Zacatecas, Mexico.

23:40 When he was like

23:42 Six or seven years old they came cuz he they were at that time. They were hiring the for the railroad two people to work on the railroads. So they came he brought to all his family my grandfather Tomas Dominguez and my Tijuana and my dad and my dear Louisa and when they were living in in El Paso that my grandmother had my theist and she was born in El Paso.

24:17 And dumb, but my dad had my gallery some ideas stairs, Tijuana.

24:27 Fernanda

24:29 I really don't know all of them because they were most of them died before I was even born but Owen he had a brother so us down. Mingus and they all lived.

24:45 My Olin my aunt Bessie. She lived till she was a hundred and two she passed away that I hate your hundred and two, but it was there in a big family.

24:57 I'm glad you saw remember their names cuz I by the way don't even know who I am.

25:09 So you're not going that whatever your stepsister? Yeah, my dad was married previously because he had a daughter Isabel Leia and

25:22 A son of Frank H Dominguez Hartley Dominguez and their mother was conception Hartley and she passed away when she had my brother Frank. She died of TB.

25:41 And so my dad my Aunt Lisa she was the oldest she took over taking care of Frank and Isabel in Tucson.

25:53 And I'm so when they turned of age, do you know that they could come down after my dad married? My mom Frank came first to to live with my dad for a while and then it's about came and then she married Peter Leia and they had their family.

26:12 But that's it was hard.

26:18 On pink what are some of the songs your mom used to sing?

26:22 She used to sing all the time. She had a loud voice. She still love to sing the Mexican songs like

26:33 I can't think of the name of it, but it was sad that lunarcharge Lavaca remember that song.

26:43 Cielito Lindo to sing that and everything

26:50 What about what are some things that you've learned in your life that you some lessons that you learn? What's the most important lesson you've learned in your life?

27:04 Most important

27:07 I don't know. I don't like how to cook chicken. Cordon. Why you buy your beef. Do I set up? What type of beef chuck roast whatever are you in the London? Broil is good. You just dye sit up and brown it and then you put your your enchilada sauce, which the best one is the Macayo red chili sauce, and you just said it cook and it's your chili con carne salt and pepper.

27:52 What who has been the biggest influence in your life?

27:59 I think my mom.

28:01 My mom and my dad cuz they they worked hard and my mom was like a salesperson. She like to sell her tamales and she like to do that being personable Jose. Yeah. She she like to see that like to sing. She was friendly. She will I remember when we were growing up we go on the train and when we were kids and there was a lot of people Southern Pacific workers that used to have stations where they work the computer for they would fix car to the trains and stuff. So those people would get on the train in Tucson and then my mom left to play cards so they would play cards with her on the train and then when they're station came we know for them to get down they would get down but my mom was friendly where she you know, she made

29:01 Is everybody and she used to play cards with the the workers? They like so hot in here. In her meat. I don't really know how they met. Oh, well, I kind of because my dad's nephew Polo apolonio Garcia. He used to he knew my mom and my DS, you know, cuz he lived in Tucson. So I guess he's the one that kind of introduced them.

29:32 Because my dad was here in Yuma. So Pollo used to go to my mom's and my aunts were they lived on McCormick Street? And they used to sing cuz Polo played guitar and they used to sing out there. So what am I so when my dad guess Polo introduced?

30:02 Song about make Yuma

30:05 How much has it changed a lot. You must really big we never had a car when I was growing up. We didn't have a car we used to walk. We used to walk to church every weekend like to church for rosaries every weekend every week every day. We had a Rosary every evening at the immaculate. So is to walk the whole family we'd walk to the church and then

30:36 And we'd walk everywhere. So.

30:40 Do the farthest that that I used to walk was to the baseball field that was right there for the police station is now on sick on 2nd Avenue and 1st and 16th Street that used to be the I can't remember what they called that is hard. At first. I think that's 1st and 62nd Avenue where the field was? Okay, whatever. So anyway, we used to go there for the baseball and might I used to walk with my aunt with my dad and my uncle Placido and we still go to the ball game and he used to buy me hot dogs. It was fun. Do you said you still walk to the fairgrounds to one time my cousin my niece Ernie Ernestine. We walked from from our home all the way to the ER cuz they was Open Fields who went home server near me? No, not yet anyway.

31:40 We walked from our home all the way to the fairground switches out there on 32nd Street. That's fine. Those I just dirt was just feels open field. So we just how does lettuce fields or what field is field. So so we walked over there and that's it.

32:06 I was going to ask you all so your children, what are their names now my children. I have my daughter Christine Mary Christine Renee.

32:17 She is in Prescott Valley and my son David Frank. He lives in Yuma.

32:24 My son Thomas Benjamin Thomas Mark basoco. He lives in Yuma and and you only take Celeste Sandoval.

32:38 And you have four kids and my son David has no kids but one dog man, Christina never married, she's single and my son Thomas has two two boys, which are 22 and I think an 18 or something.

33:09 Is there anything you wanted to talk about an addition?

33:13 Just remember

33:20 You grew up on 2nd Avenue and 905 2nd Avenue 905 2nd Avenue. And then when you got married, where did you live we got well, we got married and we lived at the Civic behind the Civic Center. It was a apartment. I can't remember the name of the apartment. And then we move to the Garcia apartments with just on Maple Avenue. And then from there I had when I was pregnant with my daughter Christina. I had I went to the hospital have her and when I got out of the hospital, my husband had moved us to my mom's house. He moved out of the apartment. And so we lived at my Mom's till probably two months or so, then we moved down here to the fiesta apartments on 5th and 2nd Avenue.

34:14 And from there the the owner of the fiesta Apartments, her dad had a house on 9th Street to 51 9th Street, which is close to my mother's house and he had it for rent and I had seen that it was vacant. So I had stopped there to talk to him cuz he was there at the house and I asked him how much he would and did the house and he's he made a deal that he would sell us the house with no down and the payment would be the same as what we were renting at his at his daughter's apartment. So my husband and I took up the deal and he left the house partly furnished and we move there until you were born.

35:01 Which it was only like a two two bedroom house, but when you were born your bed was between the the doorways because your crib was so the house went got small for all of us. So then we purchased the house. We're at now. It's a three-bedroom two-bath.

35:23 Cancel you grew up. I know it still feels like home.

35:29 Well, so what do you want to say about yourself?

35:36 How did you meet your husband we met at a Halloween party and

35:50 Well, I found him at that party. I went up to him and me and my friend dominika. Thought I'd be hilarious. If we ended up being forever together like loves of our life finding each other at a party and yeah it is cuz it's not as fun as I thought but end up being together for why is a forever. But anyways

36:22 And

36:24 Your dad are

36:30 Thank you for coming to talk with me.

36:33 Thank you for asking me I didn't want to come but I'm here.

36:40 Okay. Thank you.