To learn more about our neighbor to the South, I enrolled in a class in Mexican-American history at our local community college. Our professor, whose parents were born in Mexico, was a dock worker until he was 27. He then enrolled at a local junior college, went on to the University of California and Yale, and then got his PhD from Stanford. He is one cool dude who brings passion and the Mexican-American experience to the classroom. For most of the young students, including many who are the first in their family to attend college, he has been an inspiration.

One of the course assignments is to interview a Mexican-American and take an oral history of his or her life experiences, including stories told by parents and grandparents about life in Mexico and the migration across the border. All too often these memories are much different than what is written in our history books.

I called my friend, an ex-Texas Instruments marketer, and described my oral-history assignment and asked for his help. Excited by the project, he shared his parents' stories about life in Mexico during the Revolution, how his father, an orphan, had crossed the border when he was 15 and made his way to Pennsylvania to work in the coal mines. Then, at age 17, my friend's dad returned to Mexico, where he met his future wife at a dance in the village square. My friend's mother and her mother worked as domestics in a hacienda in Monterey, Mexico. His mom and dad married in 1918, in the midst of the Revolution, then moved to Laredo, Texas. My Texas-born friend told stories about growing up there in a gringo world, his early education, the good people who helped him along the way and his later life as an entrepreneur.

The project has been a delight for both of us. My only regret is that until now I had never taken the time to record those stories my own parents and grandparents told about their lives before the turn of the last century. And about my dad's experience on the railroad, as a doughboy in France in World War I and family life during the Depression.

When Frank isn't collecting stories about life in the old neighborhood, he can be reached at fburge@cmp.com.

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