I tried to recall my Uncle Tony by trying to remember what he looked like and what he would do. He had dark, curly hair and deep blue eyes. He was around 5'9" tall or he seemed that tall because I was a little girl. He had a soft voice and he seemed to be a gentle soul. Later in his life, he was overweight and walked slowly. He and his sisters, Lupe and Aurelia, lived in Kersey, Colorado and later in Denver, Colorado. I remember he laughed in short bursts and he would repeat things over and over again. When one of his sisters would say that my mother was a good cook he would repeat in his soft voice, sort of like a whisper, "Si la Ramoncita sabe hacer buena comida." He would say this about four times while nodding his head.
My father thought my Uncle Tony was stingy and tight with his money. A story my father told me once was about when my Uncle sold his green model T Ford. Whatever the purchase price had been, my Uncle added on every oil change he had ever done to the car, any repairs and what he paid for tires to the purchase price. Later, a cousin told me how careful my Uncle was with his money. Sometimes I would hear my mother and father saying that an old trunk in Tony's house was probably filled with money. They always laughed so my guess is that it was a secret joke between them!
When my mother would visit her siblings she would take my brother and me with her. On the kitchen table there would be a crystal bowl with butter. The butter would be soft and easy to spread. My brother and I would slab on the butter on a saltine cracker and suddenly, the bowl with butter would disappear. My Uncle had quietly put the butter dish away. I remember my mother getting angry and telling him, "They are just kids, put the butter back on the table and I will buy you some more butter."
I remember being given a large bucket filled with buttons. My brother and I would play with the different colored and odd shaped buttons while my mother talked with her siblings. They talked about farms they had worked and about when they moved to Colorado from New Mexico. My Uncle would contract a farm and all four would work in the fields. I liked to hear the story of when my father, according to tradition, had to ask Uncle Tony's permission to marry my mother. I guess my Uncle made some remark that he would have one less mouth to feed! Evidently, my father also had to ask permission to marry my mother from my Uncle Ben who was the oldest sibling. This was told to me by Josie Lewis, my cousin, and daughter of Uncle Ben.Uncle Tony, and my two aunts, Lupe and Aurelia, sold their land in Kersey and moved to Denver, Colorado. I do not know if my Uncle ever worked in Denver though I did hear him comment something about "old age pension checks." I did not see him often after they moved to Denver, but once when I had taken my mother to visit them, he showed my mother purple bruises on his legs and told her that sometimes they bled.
When he passed away I was not notified and I never found out his cause of death. His sister, Lupe, took care of all the arrangements. On a memory card his death is noted as being on October 7, 1978 but his tombstone shows the date as November 7, 1978, making him around seventy-two years old. He is buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge,Colorado.
.JPG)
