Changing My Destiny
Frank
E. Padilla
Assistant Professor of Education
I remember riding in the back seat of my grandfather’s 1952 Chevy listening to Riders On The Storm by The Doors wishing it was raining, like in the song. It was August. I was ten years old and on my way to pick grapes with my mother and three brothers. I wanted my mother to keep driving or get lost so we would never arrive. Spanish is my first language, but after mastering English in school the year before, I’d read 95 books and had quite an imagination. Despite my wishing though, I knew rain was the only reason we would turn back and go home where I could have a normal summer day like other kids my age.
Cesar Chavez and his influence were not yet strong in my area of Sanger. How could I possibly do this for a living, I wondered. Working conditions were terrible.
I have told this story to many people and some can relate. Others ask innocently “don’t they have laws against children working at that age?” They do. But when I worked as a grape picker, no one enforced them. Cesar Chavez and his influence were not yet strong in my area of Sanger. How could I possibly do this for a living, I wondered. Working conditions were terrible. I resented having to go to the bathroom out in the open because no portable restrooms were provided. Once, a black widow spider crawled up my leg. I jumped in absolute fear until my brother saw it fall to the ground. Because of the heat, I had to constantly deal with a bloody nose.
When I complained to my father, who worked in agriculture also, he told me “you better go to school and learn something because you won’t make a living this way.” That’s what gave me the idea about how to escape a kind of work that didn’t suit me yet seemed like my destiny. I would go to college.
That didn’t seem likely though. My father valued education. He attended schools in Mexico during his youth and finished his second year of college before he had to return home to help his family. When I was in elementary school, he bought us a set of World Book Encyclopedias and he often used them to point out important historical events to us. I remember him describing the advanced civilization of the Aztec people and their downfall through Hernan Cortez. It was important to my father that his children were familiar with world events. I remember watching the helicopter liftoffs of the wounded troops being evacuated, Walter Cronkite crouching down as he reported because they were under small arms fire in the jungles of Vietnam. When I was in high school, in the 1970s, my dad knew drugs and alcohol were temptations and his threat to kick us out of the house if we used them helped me resist peer pressure and focus on my studies.
The problem for me in going to college wasn’t a lack of support from my family. My parents were loving, provided a good home, and food to eat--my favorite pastime--and my aunts, uncles, and grandparents showered us with attention, carino, and presents during Christmas. But my father could not imagine how he could afford to send anyone to college. Even though he worked union jobs in the large packinghouses that processed the valley’s fruit or helped maintain the Gallo winery, with five sons, a wife, and a house to provide for, there was no money to spare. His advice was that I go into the Air Force like my brother or work in any job the valley had to offer. Most of my uncles were veterans, so at family gatherings everybody talked about what they’d done in the military. That encouraged me to follow suit, and eventually I did.
At age 17, I entered the Air Force Reserves and Fresno City College at the same time, at my brother’s recommendation. “That way you can try college,” he said, “and if you don’t like it you can quit and go on active duty.” Based on the military’s aptitude test, I was trained as a jet engine mechanic. While I was in the reserves, I traveled to Japan three times and to Hawaii, for two weeks each time, to service airplanes. Like our annual trips to Mexico when I was growing up, this travel helped me see that there are different ways to live in the world. Books did this too. When I was young, I read lots of travel books and fantasized about going to different places. The contrast between a life working in the fields and the possibility of pursuing these dreams was a motivating factor for me to attend college. While I was in boot camp, I received notice that I had substantial financial aid. That’s when I knew I would be able to go to college and serve my country at the same time.
I graduated from Fresno City and transferred to Fresno State. I still didn’t have confidence in my academic abilities though so I made sure I stayed on top of my studies by not wasting time socializing on campus. I worked thirty hours a week doing gardening, landscaping, trash hauling and painting. As one of my jobs, I cleaned a building in downtown Fresno at night. I would nap in my car after school as I waited for people to leave the building. It was lonely work. Sometimes, watching them leave, I wished I could go home too.
During my time at the university, I knew that I held my future in my hands and any setback or failure was my responsibility. I wanted to change my destiny and the military made me realize I had what it took. Boot camp is very demanding and rigorous, but I never thought of quitting. Nor did I ever think of quitting college, once I’d started. Both were challenges, and I intended to succeed and change my destiny.
Upon graduation, I had to take the teacher-qualifying test: CBEST three times until I passed. It was the only obstacle to my chosen career. I had decided to become a teacher. I wanted children to learn early on that education can be fun and beneficial. I wanted them to see that, through reading, they could escape to other places without leaving the room. And because my possibilities after high school seemed limited to military service or agricultural work, I wanted to let students know that there are other possibilities. In the 1980s, when it became evident that bilingual, bicultural teachers were needed to serve Spanish-speaking children, I took courses toward that specialization. I want to give back to others what I have learned in my own life.
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