Rachel Delgado and Cynthia Rodriguez-Martinez

[00:02] RACHEL DELGADO: Hi, I'm Rachel Delgado. I'm 73 years old, and today is December 14, 2022. We are in San Antonio, Texas, my hometown, and I'm having a conversation with my friend Cindy Martinez, who is actually my instructor in a group, in a senior group. I'll let her tell you about it.

[00:29] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Hello. My name is Cynthia Martinez, better known as Cindy Rod Martinez. I'm 70 years old. Today is December 14, 2022. We are in San Antonio, Texas, our hometown, and I'm here with Rachel Delgado, my friend and also my student, in a fabulous group called Seniors in Play. What we do at seniors in play, I go to various senior community centers and teach theater arts to seniors, and Rachel is one of my best. She's talented, she can write, she's articulate, and meeting her has been an absolute delight.

[01:17] RACHEL DELGADO: Well, thank you.

[01:19] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Well, you're welcome. It's all true. It's all true. Seniors in play is a group started by the actor Tony Plana a few years ago in California, and then he brought it to San Antonio and found us the funding and what have you, and so we got started here in March of this year. So we're looking at rounding it off and reaching a year. My goodness, how time flies. And it's really been a delight, because these people, mostly ladies, I have to say, have been a treasure trove of information and entertaining stories. We've shared some emotional times together. We've shared the good, the bad, the ugly, and at the same time, we have created together, we've created little vignettes, little scenes, little plays, and that's where, in particular, Rachel's talent comes to the fore, because she is full of excellent ideas and the way to put them together as well.

[02:35] RACHEL DELGADO: Well, I fell into storytelling accidentally. Esperanza, peace and justice center here in San Antonio, put out a call for storytelling. I went to find out what this is all about. I had been to previous groups, and we would just sit around. They would hand out scripts and stories, and we'd just sit around reading them to each other and talking about them. So I show up at this group. We're all latinas. We are being asked to write our own stories. So I'm there like, okay, so. But I really fell into it fast because I like to really write stories. I am trying to pretty much document our family history. I write stories about my community, my neighborhood, and I'm an animal lover. So a lot of my stories are about animals. They are the characters in the play. I've been told that the way I write about animals is that as if they are human beings. But they are to me. I mean, I'm an animal lover. What can I say?

[03:58] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: They have a soul of their own, and they take on, you know, when you're writing stories like that, Rachel, I think they take on as very easily human characteristics. So. But since they are the animals that they are, they're still different. And thank goodness, they can still be very different from some of our human brothers and sisters. God knows. God knows. I would love to continue working with your stories. I am someone who's been in theater most of my life, been on stage since I was about, I don't know, five or six, all through elementary school. You know, all those little goofy little programs that we do in elementary school, through middle school, high school, I had a wonderful teacher, Elaine Curran, who was a professional in her own right. And then, of course, in college, going to San Antonio College, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, and then back to San Antonio, where I studied under Maureen Halligan and Ronnie Ibs at the incarnate word. At that time, it was incarnate word college. Now, of course, it's the University of the incarnate word here in San Antonio. But, you know, some of the best times of my life. And so when I was given the opportunity, I am a retired teacher also, but when I was given the opportunity to work with people of my age and older, I thought, how cool is that? And like I said, these people have been willing to share their experiences and their information, their life stories, the things that they've been through, thank God. And, like Rachel, Rachel doesn't hold back. And so when I'm there as an instructor, that is, as you can imagine, that is amazing for me. I mean, I just sit and take notes and notes and notes and more notes and listen to the wonderful things that she has to say. So I would love to see some of those animal stories. I haven't seen any of those yet.

[06:19] RACHEL DELGADO: I love to write stories. Like I said, my last reading that I did at Esperanza was a story I wrote about my dog. He. It's called a dog's tail. And the characters, there's, like, seven characters. Like, I think four are animals and three are people. And it's my dog lady who is telling you the story about how she came to this house, how she, like, wormed away into getting into that yard and being accepted. And at the end, she's, like, happy that she's the only dog, but then here comes the cat.

[07:03] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Uh oh.

[07:04] RACHEL DELGADO: And she's, like, trying to get rid of the cat. And she keeps telling the cat, keep moving, keep moving. I'm the only pet here. And eventually the woman in the house comes out, feeds the cat. And lady is not very happy about it. So that's her story. Like how she came to come to this house, how she became part of the family, and now she has to deal with the threat of other animals coming just the way she did and wormed her way into two other dogs that lived there already. So now she's going to have to deal with cats that are coming, other animals, birds that are flying by. She wants to be the only animal in that home yard, in that family. A new story that I'm writing now. There's a house across the street from where I live that's being demolished. So my new story that I'm working on is about the two houses talking to each other, how they were friends. It's just like they're sharing stories about the families in each of the house. And the one that's getting demolished is saying her final farewell because she's going to be gone and it's going to end with them saying their goodbyes. But I'm always thinking of different little stories, like, oh, you know what?

[08:33] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Maybe you could also talk about since that house is being demolished, you could also talk about maybe all the critters that are coming out of that house.

[08:41] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh, yeah.

[08:42] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: The little mice, the rats, the spiders, the this, the that, the raccoons, maybe some possums. You never know. You may have a whole menagerie.

[08:53] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah. But I think because, yeah, when there was that fire, I remember the owner telling me, oh, that they found some dead cats, that they weren't her cats because she had dogs. But they were found. They found some dead cats that burned in the fire. But yeah, there was all kinds of animals. And now my neighborhood has a lot of stray animals, so they're running around and they know that I'm going to feed them.

[09:20] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah. Oh, yeah, I've got those, too.

[09:22] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah. Yep. And I'm trying not to feed them, but I can't let them be crying out there and all night. So. But I have to force myself, like, no, I'm at capacity.

[09:36] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And there never seems to be quite that complete capacity. I know.

[09:40] RACHEL DELGADO: I'm the same way. I'm the same way.

[09:42] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: But remember, we were talking about, I know you and I were having a quick conversation about growing up on the south side. I grew up here on the south side of San Antonio. But of course, back in those days, you know, our driveway was purocalice. Yeah, you know, and so there were a lot of horned toads.

[10:02] RACHEL DELGADO: Ooh.

[10:02] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Of course, back then we'd call them horny toads. Yeah, but the horned toads, I used to love those things. And there's a game that we play that we learn as children. And what you do, you see like these little holes in the caliche, so you take a little stick and you just twirl it and you twirl it and you twirl it around that hole, and the little animal that comes out of that and I don't know, oh, is that a little insect or something? We call them Toritos because they had like, little, I guess. I guess they were pincers on front, but they looked like little horns. So we call them Torito. Torito, Torito. To try to get it out of the dirt. So we play with the horny toes. We'd play with the Toritos. We'd play with so many frogs and lizards and, you know, with the wonder of a child. I was just one of those weird kids who wasn't afraid of reptiles or amphibians. No, don't get me wrong, snakes are not my favorite. And if there were big spiders, it was like, nah, I can do without those guys, too. But, you know, everything else on the ground I always enjoyed, I don't know, what would you say, building a relationship with. Okay, with the critters.

[11:19] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah.

[11:19] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: That's why I mentioned the critters may be coming from the house and having to say goodbye to their home, too. Where are they gonna live?

[11:26] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah, yeah.

[11:27] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: You know, so there's always that. But growing up on the south side of San Antonio, Washington, I think one of the best times, you know, I lived over there by Burbank high school, and at the time, and this is back in the, back in the sixties, late fifties and the sixties, Burbank High School was a big agricultural school at the time. They had huge fields, you know, just like two streets away from our houses. So of course, it wasn't that pleasant in the summer with the pig farm being right there also. And they had kids raising, you know, they had the, what do you call it?

[12:11] RACHEL DELGADO: Four h. Yeah.

[12:12] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Or the FHA, future FFA, future farmers of America. There you go, raising their animals. And of course, the fields were great to go on windy days and get your kites up in the air. We didn't have all the, the wires, you know, the telephone wires and stuff back then, so it was pretty cool. And unfortunately, it's not the same anymore. All of the FFA stuff is gone. But those were great memories and just going by, and you could always tell when piglets were born because you could hear them.

[12:46] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh.

[12:47] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: You know, so it was a big thrill to walk over and try to get a glimpse of the piggies, whatever else they had over there at the time.

[12:57] RACHEL DELGADO: Right.

[12:58] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah, those are. Those are awfully good memories of.

[13:00] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh, yes.

[13:01] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: The south side of San Antonio.

[13:04] RACHEL DELGADO: That's right. Well, I was born in the west side of San Antonio.

[13:07] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: There you go.

[13:08] RACHEL DELGADO: And I was actually born at home. So when my parents came to San Antonio in 1935, they worked at a flower shop on Castorville Road. It was the Elizondo flower shop.

[13:25] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And it's still there.

[13:26] RACHEL DELGADO: It's still there. It's already been there for 100 years.

[13:30] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Wow.

[13:31] RACHEL DELGADO: So that was their first job. My mom, when they finally bought some property, they bought a lot in that area, and when they first got that property, they were not part of the city. They were las colonias.

[13:45] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Oh, shit.

[13:47] RACHEL DELGADO: My parents actually built the house themselves. So I'm very proud of their house. I'm very happy that I actually still live in it.

[13:57] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Oh, wow.

[13:57] RACHEL DELGADO: I didn't know that. Yes.

[14:00] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: That's amazing.

[14:00] RACHEL DELGADO: That's kind of one of the things that leads me into historic preservation. But I was just like, I am just amazed that they actually built their house. And there was a question about, did your mother actually put a hammer to that. To that wall? And I asked her, what was it like, mom, dad was trying to build a house. He would ask contract people to come help put up the wall, you know, all that framework. And I asked her, so did you go up there and hammer, too, or, you know, did you help in the actual construction? And she said, yes, I did. I even went up to the roof with him, and I would help him hammer down the tile she was on hands on. And eventually he would tell her, mujer, vette pa la cocina anda serra Pacomer. He would ask her, you need to get back in the kitchen and cook up something for us.

[14:58] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Oh, my goodness.

[14:59] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh, yeah, the old male robe.

[15:02] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah. Where does the woman belong in La Cocina? In the kitchen.

[15:06] RACHEL DELGADO: She was anxious to get her house done, and a neighborhood there had told her about jobs and garment factories. At one time, San Antonio had so many garment factories and textile factories. Yes. So she worked at different ones. But recently, I was able to tour an old sewing factory that is. It's called basila frocks. It was built by a syrian family. It was, like, in the 1920s when they built it. But it was two story, the top one on Sarsamora. Uh huh. On Sarsamora and St. Martin.

[15:48] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yep, yep.

[15:48] RACHEL DELGADO: So she was able. That was one of the places that she got to work at. But it's just like, I have special memories connected to that, because I would hear her stories about when she worked in that building. And at that time, this would have been, like, in the 1950s, she would drop me off for kindergarten at Christ the king. The church had a little kindergarten, and she would walk to her job. So I always remember, like, crying, like, mom, don't leave me here. I was a big cry baby. So anyway, so I always have that memory. But she got that job, and it helped the income, helped build the house, so that was her contribution. My dad was a house painter, so that was his income. And there was times where during the weather, like, he couldn't work because there was, like, cold weather, rainy weather, that meant he didn't have a job, and mom would have to be the one bringing in the money from the sewing factory. And my favorite thing about her working there, the employees got first choice on the irregular whatever was not sellable at top price. So we always had pretty little dresses. There were three of us, three girls. My oldest sister, I think she didn't get to take advantage of the pretty dresses, but my sister Mary, the middle childhood, myself, oh, we always had those sister dresses.

[17:27] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: There you go.

[17:28] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah. So I loved. I just loved all the pretty outfits that I had access to. And, of course, for the holidays, you had to have your hat, you had to have your gloves for Easter. Oh, you know. Oh, I just love getting dressed up.

[17:44] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite memories is of this little yellow dress that my mother made for me. I still have a picture of me in it with a little hat and the little gloves, like you said, and the little umbrella purse, that whole nine yards. But you know what? You brought up a memory for me that I had forgotten. If I remember correctly, my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, Adela, she worked in one of the textile factories, because now I can remember us going to pick her up. And my mom was always, you know, working in secretarial stuff, so we'd go pick grandma up, and there would always be other ladies. And I want to say, I mean, my grandmother was one of 16, so I had lots of tias, great aunts, of course. So I'm thinking that some of the ladies we brought with us also were either her sisters or, you know, neighborhood friends or something. Wow. I had forgotten that.

[18:51] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah.

[18:52] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: So thank you for that.

[18:53] RACHEL DELGADO: Yes. So that's why I'm so excited about that building being reused. There's a company that's redeveloping it. They're thinking of maybe, like, making workspaces, and right now, there's, like, they're still talking to the community about it. But I went to see the rendering that they have of what they would like to do, and it's just so exciting. I got to take my photo. I had help getting me to the second floor because the steps, there was no rail or anything to hold onto. So one of the people from the development team helped me get up the stairs, and I went to the second floor. So I took my photo in the corner where my mom's workstation was. It would have been in, let's see, of the building, the northwest corner.

[19:48] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Okay.

[19:49] RACHEL DELGADO: And I know that because one year that my niece brought her boys, we went to see the building because I was telling them all about it. That's where your great grandma worked and this and that. We took our photo, and mom told them at that time, my table used to be right on that corner, so we took a photo of our group standing with the building in the background, and, you know, like, that's where her table would have been. But she worked for different companies, and a lot of the neighborhood ladies had those kind of jobs.

[20:23] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah. Because the building that I'm remembering was somewhere downtown.

[20:27] RACHEL DELGADO: Okay.

[20:27] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: So I don't. It wasn't all the way that far west as us.

[20:30] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah. There were so many.

[20:31] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah. At the time.

[20:32] RACHEL DELGADO: That's crazy.

[20:35] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And then we'd get grandpa, too, my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, where those apartments are right now, where jumpstart and blue start are right now. That used to be a sawmill.

[20:49] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh, okay.

[20:50] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And so right there, right by the train tracks. And so one of my favorite. What's the memory that you get when you smell? Oh, I can't remember. But anyway, one of my favorite memories, picking him up all the time. First of all, he had sawdust all over him. But the smell, the smell of the sawdust. I love it. And to this day, if I can ever get a whiff of, like, sawdust that might be on a floor or someplace, we go something like that. Oh, it just brings back the fondest memories.

[21:25] RACHEL DELGADO: Yes. It brings back all those memories.

[21:28] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah. So Grandma and the textiles and Grandpa and the sawdust.

[21:33] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah.

[21:33] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And there we go. Ra ra ra.

[21:35] RACHEL DELGADO: Right, right. Yeah. Well, my neighborhood, there's a lake, Elmendorf Lake.

[21:42] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Oh, yeah.

[21:42] RACHEL DELGADO: It's a beautiful little park. Well, it's beautiful now because they've like, the city has totally redone it. There's a lot of mosaic benches that were done by Oscar Alvarado, who is a mosaic artist.

[21:56] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And I think I know the name.

[21:58] RACHEL DELGADO: Yes, yes, he has in hemisphere. He's the one that did that. Panthere, was it the Blue Panthers? And, you know, his work is everywhere around town. But that was our neighborhood park, so there's always fond memories of that. My oldest sister told me that when she was a young girl, there's a little bandstand, or rather like a little platform. And it's in the style of Donizio Rodriguez, who was the man that did all that Trabajo Rustico, that faux bois, the cement work that looks like tree trunks and all that. He's got a lot of work throughout town. A different person made that one. And at one time I even asked an author about it that had written a book about D'Onozo Rodriguez. And I went to one of her lectures and I asked her, what about the platform at Elmendorf Lake? And she said, I see that it says Donicio Rosales. And I asked her, was that maybe a mistake? And she says, no, that was a different person. And yes, that's who did that particular platform. But there was a picture in the old newspaper, probably in the fifties, where there's, like, students from Our lady of the lake college at that time, watching him work. But that's just a beautiful little park. And then that I mentioned that my dad was a house painter, so he always worked for a company that would do, like, big homes, a lot of public buildings. They did a lot of work at our lady of the lake college, painting the different interiors. And I found out that my name, Rachel, came from a sister that was one of the nuns there at that time. And she, my dad had very fond memories of her, that she was so kind. She would bring the workers, like, something to drink, a snack or something for their break. So he always said, oh, our next daughter will be named, well, Raquel. So that's how I got my name.

[24:19] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Well, there you go.

[24:19] RACHEL DELGADO: There you go. And of course, when I went to school, I got changed to Rachel, and that's what I always knew.

[24:25] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah.

[24:25] RACHEL DELGADO: And that's because a lot of times they couldn't. They would change the names of Spanish to English.

[24:31] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Of course, back in the day. Back in the day, you know, we were talking, too, about when we were going to elementary school. This is back in the late fifties, we weren't allowed to speak Spanish. Do you remember? Yeah, we actually. We would get punished if we spoke Spanish.

[24:49] RACHEL DELGADO: Right.

[24:49] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And so as a result of that, I never learned how to speak Spanish until I was much older and working, working at joskies, by the way. Joskies of Texas.

[24:59] RACHEL DELGADO: That's right.

[25:01] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Because at that time also the peso was still worth something. And so people were coming from Mexico, buying lots of merchandise here in San Antonio and taking it back with them. And so as a result of that, I had to learn some of the words. You know, like one of the funniest stories I can remember is when this lady came in and wanted to talk to me about savannahs de una cama matrimonial.

[25:29] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh.

[25:30] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And I was like, yeah, I didn't know, but, you know, I was smart enough to put two and two together. Matrimonial must be for the two. So it's a double bed. And I was like, oh, na camado. And she's like, yes, yes, a double bed. Okay, well, it makes sense. But learning things like that, you know, as a result of necessity. And I just was always fascinated with those. I mean, working at joskies at the time, you know, that was big time because it was a higher level clientele. Do you want to say? Yes, they had more money. So there was joskies and there was Frost brothers. Remember Frost Brothers was like the ultimate foo foo place to go. And getting a job there, I thought was one of the best things. So I worked there all through college and even after college, stayed there for a little while before I actually started teaching. So I have very fond memories of joskies of Texas.

[26:41] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh, yes, that was the store. Was it the biggest store in the.

[26:46] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Biggest, yeah, it was the biggest store because, you know, there was always the bargain basement too, which was one of my favorites, which we'd go to.

[26:54] RACHEL DELGADO: And of course they had fantasy. Fantasyland.

[26:57] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yes, the ultimate Christmas for Christmas. Outrageous what they would put up in fantasyland. So we'd go to Fantasyland and then of course we'd have to go to Frost. Remember where they had the angel playing the organ up kind of in the right, in the right way. Yes, it was beautiful. And just all the decorations that they would put on the street and everything. The way the city would really do itself up.

[27:25] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh, yes, yes.

[27:26] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: For Christmas.

[27:28] RACHEL DELGADO: I remember when I was a kid, I just love to go downtown. I used to always say, I can't wait till I grow up and I can have a job downtown. And eventually I did and, oh my God, that's when I said, oh, that's when I found out about parking. Oh, where do you park your cardinal like you have to pay for parking. And I did get to work at Frost Brothers at a temporary job in between jobs. I had decided that I wanted to do this trip with my college. Excuse me. And I said, well, now I have to get back and find a job again. So I found a temporary one for Christmas at Frost Brothers. And I got to be in the department where they stored the fur coats. Well, the women that had there would take their fur coats into storage.

[28:22] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah.

[28:23] RACHEL DELGADO: So I got to answer the phone and like, ho ho ho. Somebody wants their coat. Get the information, pass it on. And there was a seamstress in that same little office. She's the one that would touch up the little rips in the fur or something like that.

[28:38] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: The lining.

[28:39] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah.

[28:40] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Silk lining that they all had.

[28:41] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah. And one time, the wife of the president of Frost brothers at that time had little scraps of fur. She asked the seamstress to make a little coat for her little dog. So that was so fun. I was like, oh, my God, the dog gets a fur coat. So I'm there, like, ooh. And of course, while I'm sitting there, like, in between calls and just chatting with the other women in the office, I would get up and go try the coats on. I said, ooh, let me walk around. Let me get this. So I said, she flada.

[29:19] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Can she flada with those shirts?

[29:21] RACHEL DELGADO: Yes, yes. But that was just a temporary job. As soon as the holidays were over, they had offered to move me to one of the business office. But then I never liked working in business. When I was growing up, I was there like, what am I gonna do once I get out of high school? And am I going to go to college? Am I going to get a job? And it seemed like my options would have been that I could have been a teacher or a secretary. And I'm there like, hmm, I don't think I want to do those. And so, of course, I was always trying different jobs. I was looking for something a little more creative.

[30:01] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: There you go.

[30:02] RACHEL DELGADO: Eventually, I wound up walking into joskies because they had a department there that had those oriental rugs, those hand woven rugs from the Middle east, and they needed somebody to do little repairs. Like, people would bring in their rug because their dog chewed the corner off. They would constantly bring in rugs that people insisted on having their potted plants on it.

[30:30] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Oh, jeeze.

[30:31] RACHEL DELGADO: And that would rot out that little area. So I got to do that for 30 years.

[30:38] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Wow.

[30:38] RACHEL DELGADO: I was just enjoying it. And then finally it got to the point to where, okay, it's time to think about retirement. I was having issues with my hands, so I said, hmm, okay, time to retire. But I think that was one of my most enjoyable jobs.

[30:54] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: You know what, Rachel? That's some interesting parallels, because, of course, I graduated from Foxtech High school downtown, and the gathering place after school was right there at Walgreens on the corner of Navarro and what is that? Commerce? Oh, it's Houston. Navarro and Houston. That was the gathering place after school. If you were one of the cool kids, you know, that's where you went. And I also got a job downtown because some of the cool girls were working at Grayson's. Remember Grayson's?

[31:27] RACHEL DELGADO: Yes. Yes, I remember.

[31:28] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: So I got a job there, girl. I was only 16 years old, and I think at the time, we were making, what, $1.25 an hour? Something like that. But it was so much fun and worked there pretty much through the second half of my senior year, I want to say. And then, of course, graduated, and then it was time to go to college and this and that. So, yeah, you know, downtown, because we gathered for a while, and then everybody went to their respective buses.

[32:03] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah.

[32:03] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And I would catch my bus on South Flores, right there at Travis park.

[32:08] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh, okay.

[32:09] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: So I'd catch my bus there, you know, and then go home. And so riding the bus, too, that was. That was a big deal until, you know, I did get a car my senior year. Yeah, I was one of those foofy girls. A 69 Camaro. To top it off, I had a 70 Camaro. There you go. Yeah, that was my first, too, and it was a standard, so I had to learn how to drive that.

[32:36] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh.

[32:37] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: But it was the most fun. I mean, those years at Fox were some of my best.

[32:43] RACHEL DELGADO: Oh, boy.

[32:44] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Some of my best.

[32:46] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah. Downtown was just the place to be with so many things going on. I love going downtown. I mentioned that my mom worked at a sewing factory, so her Saturdays were her day to have fun. She'd take us kids with her. We'd go downtown. We would go to solo serve. We would go eat hot dogs at a place close to the Alameda.

[33:10] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Coney island. Don't tell me.

[33:11] RACHEL DELGADO: No. Well, I think it was called originally Coney island, because when I mention it, my sister always says, oh, that used to be Coney island.

[33:18] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah.

[33:19] RACHEL DELGADO: I remember it as Pete's hot dogs.

[33:22] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: There you go.

[33:23] RACHEL DELGADO: But it was, like, really close to the theater. We'd go and eat, share a big soda bottle of knee high, and then head on to the theater, you know, what? I loved it.

[33:34] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Before that. You mentioned solo serve. Before that, as I was younger, my grandmother would like to drag me along to the Alameda theater. We'd go see cantimplas movies or Pedro Armendares or Lilia Mendoza, somebody like that. But either right before or right after a trip to solo serve.

[33:55] RACHEL DELGADO: Yep, yep. You could always find a bargain.

[33:58] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Absolutely, absolutely. Those are great memories.

[34:01] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah.

[34:02] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: And now they're doing. They're rebuilding the Alameda. They're remodeling it. You know, I can't wait to get in there to see it, because we need it.

[34:10] RACHEL DELGADO: When they were talking about, like, inviting the public to come out and to come in and look around, I took advantage of every chance, but, oh, I love that theater. Of course, you know, mom would take us, and it was the Alameda or the Guadalupe. Yes. I never went to the Guadalupe until now as an adult. But the big deal was going downtown and eventually going to see a movie at Alameda. But, oh, it was such a beautiful theater. And I especially like to go to the ladies lounge because the wall was all mirror.

[34:44] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah.

[34:45] RACHEL DELGADO: They had the little stool so people would be up there primping, and I'd sit there looking at all the ladies, and I could just imagine myself as being so glamorous. Of course. Yeah.

[34:57] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: It was either the Alameda or maybe the Texas. Remember the Texas theater? Oh, yeah, that was fun. And having to go by. Of course, all the boys would whistle at you and everything. So those were the days. Yellow meadow or the Texas. Because the majestic theater was, you know, very, very foo. And the Empire theater, well, it wasn't even a consideration.

[35:21] RACHEL DELGADO: Yeah. I was very surprised when they restored it, because I had always seen it as one of this little sleazy theater.

[35:28] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah, it was.

[35:29] RACHEL DELGADO: It had that reputation when they restored it, they kept showing all the restoration work, and I was. They're like, oh, my God, that's beautiful. I couldn't wait to get in there.

[35:38] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah. You know, just to kind of close this out. I like to tell the story of those theaters, the aztec theater. When I. We would go by on commerce, and so as we'd go by, I saw a big old sign that would say colored balcony. And so as a child, my imagination said all the seats were different colors. It was a rainbow colored thing. And so when I asked my mom, I was like, mom, why can't we go to the colored balcony? And of course, her explanation was, well, that's a very special place, and only certain people can go up there. So, you know, maybe someday. Bless my mother for that sweet, sweet explanation. But there we go. Our sweet memories of downtown and San Antonio, and I'm blessed to be here. Rachel, thank you so much for including me.

[36:35] RACHEL DELGADO: It's a beautiful city that we live in.

[36:38] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Yeah. But I want to thank you for including me on this because this has absolutely been a great delight and a wonderful experience. So thank you, Miami.

[36:50] RACHEL DELGADO: Thank you for giving me, like, guidance of, like, oh, which way to go, because otherwise I'll go crazy with writing all kinds of stuff.

[36:59] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: Let's hope it went that way.

[37:00] RACHEL DELGADO: Anyway.

[37:03] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: So are we signing off? Well, this would be Cindy rad Martinez at StoryCorps signing off.

[37:13] RACHEL DELGADO: All right. And Rachel Delgado coming up with more ideas of what to go right about.

[37:19] CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ: There you go. Ta da.

[37:20] RACHEL DELGADO: Ta da. It's.