Norma Cantú and María Davila de Sánchez

C says she was the sixth one to be born in her family, she explains that she got her nickname came from her older brother.

C says that when she was 2, a baby brother passed away, and she says that she came to live in the US in Corpus Christi, TX. She says her father started a Mexican bakery. Her mother developed allergies from the sea algae, so they moved back to Monterrey.

C says that they moved to Chicago in 1960, another bakery since her father’s family had been bakers for three generations. She had been studying secretarial classes in English, and started school in Chicago at 16.

C and N talk about quinceañeras. N says she had one, but C says she didn’t because the family was apart during that year. She says she just had a family gathering at home.

N talks about making conchas during the pandemic, C says she doesn’t bake very often because she only knows how to bake in very big quantities.

C says that when her father opened his bakery, it was one of only two Mexican bakeries. She talks about some of the Mexican businesses and community members in the surrounding area. She lists the Mexican areas of Chicago.

C talks about how she and her family celebrated Christmas, and she says her mother started making tamales in October. She also talks about having all her family friends gathering in the bakery on Nochebuena.

N asks if C believes in love at first sight, and she says yes because it happened to her. She explains that her husband came in with a friend to the bakery and she says that from then on he would drive by the bakery almost every 10 minutes. She describes him physically and also talks about how he asked for her hand in marriage.

C says she has a philosophy that what happened yesterday stays in yesterday. She says that she doesn’t have many regrets.