cortez10

The scared look is because I had just been exposed to Navy boot camp Seventeen years old and away from the comfort of my dirt streets.

The second picture is 45 years later now scared by looking at the ravages of time.

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I am Miguel Cortez and the one that is keeping up this site. I started it when in the interest of finding out information on my family I realized that growing up in Smeltertown was filled with memories of ‘family’. Not only did all my family come from Smeltertown but also the families of everyone that was a part of my youth.

From the first day my mother Ernestina walked me to EB Jones School. (Our one and only school) I started forming these memories. The school was right next door to Cristo Rey Church where we went to mass every week. The first day I got my first ‘spanking’ with a ruler to the back of the hand for banging on the table I sat at with that huge blue pencil we had just been given. At noon I went home vowing to never come back to the room of torture where they spoke a strange language. Big mistake. My mother walked me back to school at the end of a belt. I would take a couple of steps, stop, then ‘whack’. I would start up again. I never skipped school again. Not even in high school. A few times I would stay home but I had to help around the house. This was 1950. I was going to be 5 that October. That day I met Nacho Duran who told my mother he would walk me home when school was out.

At this time we lived at the west end of Smeltertown in La Cuadrilla, which was the blockhouses past the YMCA and the drainage canal. Our water was from the river delivered by gravity feed from ASARCO and the restrooms were outhouses. Each family was responsible for digging their own. Here my next-door neighbors were the Rojas family, about 4 houses up the De La Cruz family. Across the street was my aunt Perfecta and my cousin Chayo Antunes. He died from drinking at about 30 years of age when they moved to Rafael Perea St. (By the bakery).

In about 1953 we moved to 207 Willie Barraza St to the nice side of town. Still had an outhouse but now we had clean city water. The set of 3 houses were made of concrete. They were sure cold in the winter. Had a kerosene stove and heater there. Next door lived Miguel and Juana Fierro, daughters Chela and Kika. A couple of houses up live the Ontiveros family. Benjamin was later to marry Maria Elena Delgado from EB Jones St. The Corderos lived across the street. Lala, Lalo and Willie. Francisco “Cano” Cordero owned the bar that was at the end of the street towards the railroad tracks and later in the 70’s when Smeltertown was shut down he built Cano’s in Buena Vista (El Rojo). Lala tried teaching me to dance a few years later for my 7^th grade graduation from EB Jones. I found out I was born with 2 left feet.

My dad Tomas never owned a car, so it was the bus for everything out of town. The grocery store at the end of Willie Barraza , still Calle “B” at the time. The streets got the name of a fallen war dead sometime during these years. I can’t quite remember when. Bertha Bryants mother, Pepa, used to run the post office that was inside the grocery store at the time. The blacksmith shop was next door by the rock wall to the Water Commission. Down the street going west was another grocery store. Doña Chencha used to make lunch for the workers at ASARCO. Some of us would take the lunch buckets up to them at noon before the noon whistle blew. In the mid-50’s I became an altar boy at Cristo Rey church with Fr. Lourdes Costa. Lots of funerals, lots of baptisms and in October trips up the mountain to Cristo Rey in his old WWII jeep. Talk about a scary ride . Fr Costa was getting up in years by then. Tony and Fernie De Santos were also altar boys at the time. Later Lencho Roman came into the fold. I seem to remember that Richie Gonzalez was also there at the time. Fifty years is a lot of time to lose memory cells. Good memories. The school even took absent notes from Fr. Costa when we had to serve at a funeral. Many trips to Smeltertown Cemetery. I have many family members, including a brother buried there.

After 7^th grade we were bused to high school. I went to El Paso high. Others went to Bowie or Thomas Jefferson. Quite a few went to El Paso Tech when it was open. Nano Herrera and Beto Chacon went there. It was a good technical school. It was between El Paso High and Austin High. It was only open for about 5 years. Can’t be sure. I graduated in 1963 and joined the Navy two weeks later. Richie Gonzalez and I were in boot camp in San Diego by June 13^th . We were both 17 at the time. I remember we both had to take remedial swimming. Hey they kept me. I can still swim like a rock.

Electronics school, time on the ocean and got out in 1966 the day before I turned 21. Came back. Bought a 1967 Ford Fairlane and in 1968 went to work for what was at the time the Bell system. This job lasted me until January 1996. In the years in between, I married, raised 5 kids, moved around a bit and got old.

In this little bit of my life, I really miss the time from my first day of school at EB Jones and all of the people that in 1970’s were taken out of my life by the lead problems in Smeltertown. I often wonder how many of us would still be raising grandchildren in that dusty town that now in my memory was my whole world for the first 20 years of my life.

My interest in my roots and those individual that I grew up within Smeltertown is more than just reminiscing about my youth. While those memories are still vivid when it comes to events that molded me I think of the lesson learned as a town. I am trying to get others that came from Smeltertown to write down or just post anything that come to mind here. Make it a bucket of Smeltertown memories that anyone with an interest can come back and pick through in their own quest for identity.

Anyone that reads this and remembers a bit of these times, please email me. The YMCA, the pool hall, the ‘molino’ by Irene Mier’s house, la pompa negra, The playground behind EB Jones. The bakery at the corner of the street that Julie Alva lived on. Knock the dust off those memories and put them down before it is to late. The one eyed cat that used to roam around Benjamin’s house and hunt kids. All the broken glass in the alley against the Water Commission wall.