CHAPTER 1

In the Beginning God

You would never have imagined just by looking at the littlethree-year-old ball of fire that, when he grew to the young age ofsixteen, he would literally start his journey through the valley of theshadow of death. The year was 1964. His mom and dad were both intheir early twenties and from a small border town in South Texas bythe name of Las palomas in Starr County. If you went to the outskirtsof town and—since the Texas riverbank side was so much higher thanthe Mexican riverbank side—if you had a good strong arm, you couldliterally throw a rock from the United States to Mexico. The father ofthe little boy—who had been born on July 24, 1961, and given thename Johnny Zapata—would take him to that river often. I was thatlittle boy.

At that time, I was the older of two children, and our parentswere migrant workers. In winter or early spring, depending on howthe weather was behaving, they would travel to different places theyknew of for work. Or if they heard from other people that some workhands were needed somewhere, they would go quickly and find out ifthey could get the job. You know how that old saying goes, "The earlybird gets the worm." That way, they could make some money in orderfor us to live more comfortably.

My parents' work would usually be some kind of manuallabor—out in a field dealing with some kind of fruits or vegetables,baling hay or stacking it, picking cotton or asparagus. They tookwhatever kind of work they could get and that they were both willingand able to do. And they always did their very best. They were taughtto be light on their feet; that teaching came from my grandparents onmy dad's side. Our houses were right next to each other. My mom hadbeen taught to work as long as she was able to stand up. What I meanby that is, even if she was in her eighth or ninth month of pregnancy,she was working out in the fields doing something. Keep in mind, shehad a total of nine children. She was a strong woman.

My mother's name was Anna, and my dad's was Beto Jr. Whenthey went to work, whichever one of us Zapata children had beenborn most recently would get to stay with either my mom or myGrandma Zapata. They would take turns staying at home andwatching us. Depending on where they were working, if otherfamilies had children who needed to be taken care of, either my momor grandma would be willing to watch them also. At first, there wasn'tvery many of us Zapata children, but as the years went by, we beganto grow in numbers. If my mom had just had a baby who needed tobe nursed, then, of course, she would be the one staying at home.

Since my Grandma and Grandpa Zapata would travel with us,they would also be ready to work at the drop of a hat. Because ofthem, my mom and dad learned to be hard workers; also, a lot of ourways of thinking came from them. One lesson my grandparents stuckto firmly, which we too believed, went like this: "If you think you'reman enough to stay out drinking until the next morning, you betterbe man enough to get up in the morning for work." My dad, in turn,passed those words and beliefs on to his children, and since I was thefirstborn, I heard and saw those words in action the longest.

In our hometown of Las palomas, just about everybody wasrelated in one way or another. For the most part, everybody got alongwith each other. But there were times when somebody drank toomuch or did some kind of drugs. Then it was the alcohol or the drugsthat were in control of them, instead of them being in control of thealcohol or the drugs, so that meant they were out of control. That'swhen the stuff would hit the fan, and the negative situations wouldstart manifesting, even between the best of friends or relatives.

One day, my aunt Norma came over to visit at our house. Whenshe got there, I was playing with some of my action figures on thefloor. I overheard her telling my mom about an incident that herson, Sammy, had witnessed from the playground. Apparently, duringrecess, two men had been cleaning a piece of land across the streetfrom the school. The men were working with machetes. "A friend ofhis who was at the far end of the playground started pointing andshouting, 'Fight! Fight!'" my aunt said. She went on to report that thetwo men went at each other with the machetes and did nasty damageto each other. "Thank God it lasted only for a brief moment."

"What happened?" my mom wanted to know.

My aunt leaned over toward my mom and said, "Wheneverything was finally over, one of the men had a gash on the left sideof his face and was trying to get up off the ground. The other one hadquickly started walking away. He was bleeding very badly from thetop of his left arm. The poor children who were outside for recess gotto see graphic violence in action; it was terrible."

"My goodness," my mom gasped.

After telling her story, my aunt said she had to get home to startsupper. "I will see you all later, God willing." She waved as she left.

My mom said, "okay, you make sure to say hi to the family."

Later it was known that both men were brothers and had beendrinking since early in the morning. That didn't help the situationout. All of that because of some alcohol and a small piece of land.

My dad would always repeat the words he heard my grandpasaying, and this was one of his favorite sayings: "Whatever it is thatyou're doing, always do the best you can. Be light on your feet,and people will take notice of you and the work you do." Since mydad both heard and did that everywhere he went, eventually theright people did take notice. And that's why he ended up being thenumber-one boss man at a tree and shrub nursery.

After a year had gone by, my parents and grandparents thoughtI was old enough, so they would let me help out; that way, I couldlearn by experience. One day, my grandpa saw that his house neededto be reshingled; he chose wood shingles because he thought theywould last longer than the other types of roofing shingles that wereavailable at the time, and he liked the way they looked. My dad andgrandpa decided to do the job themselves. Besides, at the moment,they had no extra money to pay someone else to do the job. Theyhad a ladder leaning against the side of the house where they werebringing the bundles of shingles up, but curiosity got the best of me,and that wouldn't be the last time either. I saw them going up anddown the ladder, so when they were busy on the roof and nobody onthe ground was paying attention, I decided to climb up the ladderand see for myself what all the hammering noise was about.

When they saw me, they were surprised. My dad said, "Hey, whatare you doing up here?"

I said, "I just wanted to see what was happening because I heard abunch of noise up here."

They hadn't heard me when I was climbing up because I wasbeing extra quiet and really careful, so I wouldn't miss a step while Iwas on my way up.

They told me to go back down slowly, and that was my first ofmany daring adventures. They kept an eye on me from that time onand told me not to climb up the ladder unless a grown person waswatching me. They started noticing from that day on that I wasn'tvery easily intimidated.

It didn't take the two men that long, and soon, they'd reshingledthe entire roof.

This was during wintertime, but where we lived, wintertimewasn't that cold. Once the sun came up, the day would get warm.But sometimes, on certain nights, it would be downright cold. Mymom and grandma would get some wood together and make a fire.That would keep us warm if we were outside, and we didn't have aheater in either one of our houses. After the fire had been going for awhile, the wood would get burned up really well, so no more smokewould be coming out of the burned wood, but it would have turnedinto red-hot embers. Usually it would be my dad who would get thetwo biggest washtubs we had and then fill them up about a quarterof the way with dirt. Afterward, he'd scoop up some embers from thebottom of the fire and put them on top of the dirt in the washtubs.Then my mom and grandma together would put the tubs in themiddle of the room where we were going to be sleeping. They wouldplace each tub on top of four bricks spaced evenly apart on the floorin the shape of a circle. The bricks created extra space between thehot embers and the wooden floors. The tubs were set in the middle ofthe rooms so that the heat would be distributed evenly all around thearea. We would make sure furniture and other things that could catchon fire were not too close to our heaters.

When my mom and grandma first brought the tubs in, we wouldbe able to stand close to them and warm ourselves up for a couple ofminutes, but then we would have to get away. They weren't the mostmodern heaters at that time, but they did work for us.

Our homes were humble but clean. My mom and dad's houseconsisted of just one big, open room. We didn't have any wallsdividing the kitchen area where we would eat from the area wherewe would sleep and watch TV. On the other hand, my grandparents'house was a little bigger; they had a kitchen and a living room/bedroom area, which were divided by a wall. When you came in thefront door, you would walk into the kitchen. There was a wall there,but if you walked in through the doorway, you would be in the livingroom/bedroom area. In the middle of that space was where we wouldput our washtub heater. I always thought my grandparents' house wasbigger and just so cool!

I really didn't know any better. The year was 1965, and we didn'treally get out that much. The relatives that we did go visit sometimeshad houses that were built a little different, but all of them hadtheir kitchen, living room, and bedroom areas. We didn't ever envywhat other people had; we weren't raised that way. Our parents andgrandparents would always say, "If somebody else has nicer thingsthan you, be glad for them. It is good that God has blessed themlike that." For instance, my grandparents on my mother's side, theLusianos, were a lot better off when it came down to money than mygrandparents on my dad's side, the Zapatas.

I always thought of my grandpas as being the last real, livecowboys in the world; the best part of it all was they were mygrandpas. My Grandpa Luciano always had horses and cows to takecare of. His two sons and, if necessary, hired hands at times, wouldhelp him out. We would go and visit them sometimes, and theirhouse was bigger than what I was used to seeing. Close to the endof that year, my grandpa had a new brick home built for his family.When you walked in the front door, you would be in the living room.If you kept on going straight and through a doorway, you would be inthe kitchen with a small dining area; that's also where the back doorwas. When you were back in the living room, instead of going straightinto the kitchen, if you turned to the left and went down a hallway,you could either go to a sitting room with a nice-sized console TVand a brown vinyl couch that could be turned into a bed or, if youkept on going, you could pick from one of three bedrooms. They eachhad their own little electric heaters in case we had a cold front comedown from the north. But I didn't ever once think or say that I wouldrather live at their house or that we should have what they had at ourhouse. I thought it was great that God had blessed them like that, andI felt blessed to have both sides when it came to grandparents. As faras I was concerned, I had the best grandparents in the world.

Another thing I felt good about was that we always had fresh fruitin the house; if we didn't buy fruit when we went grocery shopping,we'd see a man by the name of Nacho who lived in town. He wouldgo and buy bushel baskets and sacks full of Ruby Red grapefruits,oranges, and tangerines. Then he would drive his truck all aroundtown, honking his horn to see who wanted to buy fruit from him ata nice, low price. That would be another big-time blessing and a halfbecause, if the people who had gone grocery shopping had forgottento get fruit, they could always flag down Nacho the fruit man, as hewas known. They could choose from what he had inside the cab orthe back of his truck. He would make it available to whoever neededfruit, and as that old saying goes, "That was better than a jab in theeye with a sharp stick any day." We always had fresh fruit, and mostof the time, it was thanks to Nacho.

I remember the first time I ever tried a cooked orange. That wasone of the times that my grandma had asked me, "Will you help megather up some wood so I can start a fire?"

"Sure, Grandma," I said. I would be right there whenever she wasgoing to do anything, especially if she was going to make a fire.

Later on that evening, after my dad had gotten home, he waswarming himself by the fire. He went in the house and got five nicebig oranges. The fire had been burning for a while, so the flames hadgone down quite a bit. He put three of the oranges around the outeredge of the fire. That way, they could get warmed up on one side.Then he turned them on their other side for a few more minutes. Hetook one of them out and replaced it with one of the two that wereleft. He carefully peeled the one he took out and asked me, "Do youwant to try some of my orange?"

"Sure, Dad." After I tried it, that was it. From then on, I foundone more thing in life that I really liked—cooked oranges. Well, theyreally weren't cooked, but I called them cooked. The outside of theorange would get a little burnt-looking, but after my dad got the peeloff, the inside was nice and warm. It would also have a little mesquiteflavor to boot; we always used mesquite wood to make the firesbecause mesquite trees grew freely all over in that part of Texas.

One day, I was in my grandmother's kitchen, and I had an orangein my hand. My grandma knew that I couldn't peel oranges by myselfand I needed someone to start it off for me. She asked me, "What areyou going to do with that orange?"

"I'm going to eat it," I told her.

She said, "You can't do that; you can't peel it yourself."

Without missing a beat or saying anything to anybody, I justgrabbed the orange in my right hand, nice and tight, and, bam,I threw it on the kitchen floor, as if I were a major league pitcher.When the orange hit the floor, it split a little, but that was all I neededto peel it myself. That was one of many confidence builders for me.

The next day, some of my dad's friends came by and invited himto go hunting. They left around eight o'clock in the morning, andafter a few hours, about twelve o'clock, they returned, just in timefor lunch. They brought with them a bunch of mourning doves.They knew what fields the doves would gather at, so that's where theywent hunting for the birds with various-sized shotguns. My momand grandma helped out by starting a fire. They also helped clean thebirds and season them up. Meanwhile, the perfect amount of timehad passed by so that the fire was just right for cooking. They wouldspread out the embers and have me go find four empty tin cans. Thenthey would put them on the four corners where the evenly spread outembers were ready for the grill. The grill we had was constructed froman old refrigerator, which we would use whenever cooking anythingoutside over an open fire. At the time, we had plenty of meat—dovemeat, but nevertheless meat. That was a big-time blessing.

Five days later, at the perfect time, when we were almost runningout of meat, my dad's friends came by the house once again. Theywere all talking about going fishing. They put an old fishing netthey'd been given, which was stored at our place, in the back of mydad's truck. They'd already fixed up the net, adding long boards alongboth ends, so that two people could easily hold the net open and dragit in the water. Our small town was right next to the Rio Grande,and every once in a while, the river would overflow its banks andsome fields in low areas would get flooded. That would be a blessingand a half for my dad and his friends, all of us really. After the waterwould start drying up, what would be left over in those low spotswould be fish, lots of fish, and some of them were nice and big. Themen would go down to the low spots, and two of them would holdtheir net open wide on one side of the flooded field. The rest of themwould get into the water a little distance away and start making noisewhile walking toward the net. Whatever fish were in front of themwould start heading toward the net. The young man farthest awaywould bring his end toward the shore, and success. That was the planfor this particular day—to check out some of those flooded fields.

After driving around for a little while, my dad and his friends sawthat something was making a big wave in one certain spot. It was alittle distance from them, but it got them all excited. They all lookedat each other and said, "It's time to go fishing." All of them startedpointing and yelling, "Look over there!"