They That Laugh Win: To Dr. Ruben Cobos with Love: A Memoir

By Evelia Cobos

Rubén Cobos is the embodiment of Southwest folklore and linguistics. A well-respected professor at Stanford University, as well as at universities in Nevada and New Mexico, he collected the stories and folklore of New Mexico and Southern Colorado. His research spans seventy-five years of direct contact with the Spanish spoken in the towns and villages of the Southwest. Dr. Cobos is an award-winning author and is primarily known for his "A Dictionary of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish" and "Refranes: Southwestern Spanish Proverbs." Rubén’s legacy “is the inspiration of Hispanic-Americans—even to all Americans—that one can conquer the limitations of poverty and rise to incredible heights.”This is the personal story of Rubén Cobos and his family between 1946 and 1953. These are the stories, anecdotes, comedies, and tragedies that were told to his children: Evelia, Irving, and Héléne. These events helped shape Rubén in his exploration of the folklore and linguistics of the Upper Rio Grande. They also shaped the lives of his children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781936744749

Book preview

They That Laugh Win

To Dr. Rubén Cobos with Love

A Memoir

by Evelia Cobos

Rio Grande Books

Los Ranchos, NM

© 2010, 2014 Evelia Cobos

Published by Río Grande Books, Los Ranchos, NM

www.nmsantos.com

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Paul Rhetts and Barbe Awalt

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cobos, Evelia.

They that laugh win : to Dr. Rubén Cobos with love, a memoir / By Evelia Cobos. p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-890689-72-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-936744-74-9 (ebook formats)

1. Cobos, Rubén. 2. Folklorists--New Mexico--Biography. 3. Hispanic Americans--New Mexico--Biography. 4. Hispanic Americans--New Mexico--Folklore. 5. Tales--New Mexico. I. Title.

GR55.C56C63 2010

398.092--dc22 [B]

2010007169

Special acknowledgements

BECAUSE OF YOU, Music and lyrics by Arthur Hammerstein and Dudley Wilkinson. Julian Stearns Arena Music.

LEADER OF THE BAND, Words and music by Dan Fogelberg.©1981 EMI April Music Inc. and Hickory Grove Music.

UNFORGETTABLE (Gordon), Words and music by Irving Gordon. ©1951 Bourne Co. (Renewed). International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

His heart was known to none.

From the song The Leader of the Band

To my sister, Hélène Cobos Chenier, my laotong

To my sons Christopher F. Salaz Dave R. Salaz

Sean S. Salaz

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Muchisimas Gracias!

To my Dad, Dr. Rubén Cobos, who provided insight, details, translations, and clarifications; and if he guessed I was writing a book, kept the knowledge to himself and did not derail my effort.

To my beloved sister, Hélène Cobos Chenier, who was my memory buddy, my cheerleading squad, my source of inspiration, and my facilitator, who sacrificed her art to get a real job so that the rest of us would never have to do without.

To Lisa Salaz, my loving daughter-in-law, who encouraged me by saying, Whether or not it’s published, I want a copy.

To Tatyana Salaz, my praiseworthy daughter-in-law, who emigrated from the Ukraine to marry Dave, who inspired me to make a leap of faith.

To my son, Christopher, who provides a home for me to live in, food to eat, and a sense of humor to gladden my life, who bought me a laptop computer and patiently provided tech support which brought this book to fruition.

To my son, Dave, who inspired me by his entrepreneurial gifts, his dedication to his business, and his devotion to family.

To my son, Sean, whose profound faith in God and ability to communicate that faith helped me overcome many hurdles.

To my husband, Mo, whose countless acts of thoughtfulness and consideration eased my troubles and made this book possible.

To my brother-in-law, Marc Chenier, who told me I was a goddess, thus putting into my imagination that I could dream big dreams.

To my dearest friend, Judith Florence, the psychologist, who brainstormed with me as I delved deeply into the character of my parents, who contributed profound insight.

To my mentor, Ellen Kesten, the artist, who sacrificed wealth to pursue her dream and who showed me how to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

To my psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Kellogg, who helped me control my anxiety so that I could write.

To my primary care physician, Dr. Mina Haidarian, who kept on top of my diabetes so I wouldn’t die too soon of complications.

To Sandy Dillon who entered half of this memoir into her computer, a Herculean task, who encouraged me by reminding me that we ourselves are our own worst critics.

To the staff at the Albuquerque Public Library, main branch, who helped me with all my research.

To Harry Willson and Zelda L. Gatuskin of Amador Press who took the time and trouble to write letters of constructive criticism which helped me in my revisions.

To my agent, David Schneider, who made this miracle possible.

To my publishers, Paul Rhetts and Barbe Awalt, whose suggestions and guidelines, patient and encouraging directions, shaped this manuscript from that of a novice to one of a professional.

Preface

This memoir takes place between the years 1946 and 1953. I chose these years because they were the happiest years of my childhood. Rubén, my father, had returned from World War II; Rita, my mother, had recovered from TB and was home from the sanitarium; and we were all together in a lovely new house on Amherst SE which had exquisite landscaping and was situated in a neighborhood with people whose values echoed our own.

I stitched into this memoir the histories of Rubén, his wife, Rita, and his mother-in-law, Louise, through stories, anecdotes, comedies, and tragedies told by them to the children, Evelia, Irving, and Hélène, until the tapestry turned out to be a complete, colorful revelation of the events that shaped the characters of the parents and grandmother.

I focused on Rubén because he was the primary influence in the lives of his children: my sister, my brother, and me. I put the spotlight on his love of humor, his extraordinary talent as a concert artist, his sensitive empathy of our troubles, his ambition as a professor, his spectacular ascent from poverty to fame, and his dream of collecting the folklore of New Mexico and Southern Colorado before it became extinct. I was only witness to the seeds of this dream because by the time he was becoming famous as a folklorist, I was married and a young mother preoccupied with the job of nurturing children and continuing my college education. After 1956, Rubén married Elvira Garcia, RN, immersed himself in his new family and his career, and we children lost touch with him until we were adults and free of Rita’s dictum that we children not see Rubén; and when we did, he welcomed us into his loving arms with warmth and a repertoire of funny stories to endear himself to us as though we had never been apart.

There is a dark side to everyone. I did not neglect to record Rubén’s faults, which were normal in those times in everyone, and normal to someone who had grown up in poverty, want, forced to take on jobs too mature for his age, forced to survive by luck and wits. I emphasize in this memoir the astounding ambition, luck, and boldness he possessed in achieving his goals in spite of his childhood limitations.

My desire is to portray Rubén as the tender, devoted, creative, intelligent young father that he was to us, to develop the history of the adventures he provided for us, the humor he brought to our lives, the gifts of music, family history, and stories from his collection of folklore that he shared with us, and his philosophies.

I also chose to write about Dr. Cobos because he is famous in New Mexico. Because of his many books, one of which, A Dictionary of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, was hailed by the Santa Fe New Mexican as A modern literary monument, he received the Humanities Service Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Because of his work in collecting folklore, he was inducted into the New Mexico Hall of Fame, and he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN, the National Association of Writers, Editors, and Translators. His scholarly achievements pale in comparison to the person he is. In this memoir I reveal who he is.

Because this is a memoir, I recorded the ambitions and character of his wife, Rita, his mother-in-law, Louise, and sprinkled in the coming of age of myself, the tender love of animals of my sister, Hélène, and also recorded history of my brother, Irving.

Chapter I

Rubén Cobos, his wife, Rita, and their three children—Evelia, Irving, and Hélène—moved into their new home on 420 Amherst SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the morning of August 9, 1946. The monsoons migrated from the Gulf of Mexico the night before bringing storms to New Mexico. Dark grey skies, harbingers of the coming weather, settled over New Mexico like quail protecting their nests. As the Cobos family packed boxes from their bungalow that night, staccato lightning flashed in the sky above, slicing the sky into a jigsaw puzzle, illuminating the Sandia Mountains, majestic extremities of the Rocky Mountains, until the peaks seemed to the children to be ghosts hovering in the sky, just about to pounce down upon them. They hurried to put the boxes, and with the help of friends, the furniture into the van while the thunder, pounding like tympani, cracked overhead. They worked with a frenzy to beat the rain. When the clouds opened up and hurled the splattering drops with hail upon the earth, they took shelter in their bungalow. They had no wish that night to navigate the flooded streets alongside arroyos (wide expansive ditches lined by the city with cement) of rushing muddy water, churning with turbulence like exploding lava within a volcano, arroyos which carried logs, branches and other debris to the Rio Grande River.

The next morning as they entered their new home, the skies were hazy, grey, like clouds of smoke from industrial plants. Hallowed light surrounded them from glimmers that peeked from the clouds. The air was clean after the rain; it had a fragrance of juniper and sage.

Rubén was a mestizo, a blend of the Spanish from Spain with indigenous Mexican native Indians. He claimed he was descended from Padre Cobos, a priest who emigrated to Mexico from Spain, pollinating native women and converting natives to Christianity as he traveled about Mexico.

Will we have a swing? inquired the children. In their former home on Girard SE, where they had lived one year previously, they had had a black tire hung with a rope tied to the front yard cottonwood tree.

We’ll see, replied their mother. They knew then that they’d not have a swing. We’ll see was their mother’s polite way of saying no.

There was nothing unique about this house with its square concrete porch, its uninspired square white house stucco design, and its flat roof. But the neighbors living in clean houses, although not similar to this for these were not tract homes, did not understand what this plain house meant to Rubén.

Rubén had been born into a grand house in Piedras Negras, Mexico, which is on the border of Mexico across from Eagle Pass, Texas. However, when his father died in 1918, leaving them in extreme poverty, and the Revolution of 1910 disrupted their lives further with soldiers coming into the residents’ homes at all hours to steal their food, and gun shots going on all around them at all times, Rubén’s mother, Lola Medina Cobos, took her children, Consuelo, Lupe, and Rubén to San Antonio (they walked across the border and hitchhiked) to live with her mother, La Wenceslada Pilsuski Medina, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. Rubén lived in poverty in that crowded two-bedroom home with his grandmother and his mother and their families for seven years. He lay on the luxurious lawn of the city park with its bed of blue grass and clover, its outlines of honeysuckles and bougainvillea, the one place he could escape the confines of his ghetto dwelling, dreaming of the day he’d own his own home: a clean house big enough with bedrooms for all his children so they wouldn’t have to sleep on cots in the hall as he did.

Come in, Chuchees, invited Rubén. Come see your new home. Rubén began to whistle. The sound of the melody Cielito Lindo lightened their hearts, spattered the plain, pristine alabaster walls of all the rooms with imaginary hues of exotic beauty. His perfect pitch, gay rendition, airy timbre created an atmosphere of grandeur.

When Rubén and his mother and sisters moved to Albuquerque in 1927 they moved to a tiny one bedroom house on Iron Street SW, a neighborhood filled with alcoholics and people who slept in the streets. Rubén’s mother slept in the bedroom. Rubén and his sisters slept on mattresses on the floor of the living room. This house on Iron Street was a step up from the house in San Antonio, for it had running water and an indoor toilet. In Piedras Negras, Rubén used an outhouse that had a Sears Catalogue with which Rubén learned English.

It’s big, exclaimed Hélène, only four years old.

Rubén and Rita laughed. To them it seemed enormous after the tiny front room of the bungalow they had lived in. Actually it was 12’x 20’. The floors were finished hardwood with glistening new wax. A large window, smaller than a picture window but larger than the one in the dining room, let in the watercolor sunsets that were painted in pinks, oranges, reds, yellows, and purples which floated in over the concrete porch.

When Rubén married Rita in 1936 they went to live temporarily with Rita’s mother on her farm in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque on Guadalupe Trail. Again, there was little room for them for there were also Rita’s two brothers, Ernest and Pat, and at times many of the brothers, sisters, and parents of Rita’s mother. Rubén and Rita moved to Wagon Mound to an unfinished adobe that seemed to them like paradise, for they were all alone in it with their firstborn, Evelia. In this house, however, the mosquitoes came in through unscreened windows in the summer and the roof leaked from rain in the summer and from snow in the winter. They moved to San Antonio during the war where they had to live in a rat infested, cockroach infested apartment restricted to Mexicans because they were not white. In their bungalow on Girard they were alone, but they lived next door to a dog kennel with dogs that barked day and night.

This simple home on Amherst was the embodiment of both Rubén and Rita’s dream. It had three bedrooms, large enough for the children, was clean, with running water, quiet, sans dogs, in a respectable neighborhood where decent people lived.

Rubén looked at Irving, his son, the pride of his life. Looking at Irving was like looking into a mirror and seeing his image. Rubén saw himself at that age: naturally curly sandy blond hair, large inquisitive brown eyes, oak brown skin, and rambunctious in character. Precocious at six, Irving could identify every car on the road by make, model, and year.

A real dining room, said Evelia as she ran through the living room’s archway into the adjoining room. We won’t have to eat in the kitchen anymore. At nine she had romantic visions of living graciously.

We’ll eat it the kitchen; replied Rita, the dining room is only for company.

Rubén turned his attention to Evelia, his firstborn. From where had she sprung? Rubén was 5’3, Rita 5’2 and yet this daughter was almost as tall as they were although she was only nine years old. While Rubén and Rita were dark skinned, Evelia was fair, as white as any of the Anglos who lived on Amherst. She seemed to be an alien in this family.

Hélène ran through the swinging door into the kitchen. She was the youngest, four years old, the delight of Rubén’s life. Rubén identified her with the youngest child of fairy tales: the kindest, most beautiful, and the most spirited. She had Rubén’s gift of mimicry, his sense of humor, his love of life.

She tripped lightly over the yellow linoleum floor, peeked over the linoleum countertops, for she was small like Rubén and Rita, a little sprite. In fact, Rubén called her little Hélène all the days of his life. Her skin was dark, [Dr. Stuart Adler, their pediatrician, called her my little brown nut] as dark as Rubén and Rita’s. Her eyes were brown: beautiful brown eyes as in the song. She gazed now over the sink through the window facing west out over the front yard to the street.

Rubén stood in the corner where they would have a humble table, where they would eat all their meals, watching Hélène.

I want this bedroom, demanded Irving imperiously. He had run through the kitchen into a room that adjoined it. Knotty pine paneling encircled the room. A small window overlooked the driveway, and again, hardwood floors gleamed below.

You shall have it, dictated Rita. Her attitude was, Irving shall have anything he wants.

Irving was the joy of Rita’s life, the epitome of Rubén in every way: Rubén, for whom she had gone against her family’s wishes to marry, Rubén whom she adored. Irving was Rubén as a young, adorable child, one she could indulge and coddle as if she were loving Rubén himself as a young boy.

Rubén, Evelia, and Hélène did not go into the bedroom and consequently did not hear the pronouncement. They went down the hallway to the other two adjoining bedrooms and bathroom.

This is the room you’ll share, Chuchees, he said to his daughters, and that will be our room.

Theirs was a corner room. Two windows on adjacent sides let in plenty of light. Hélène and Evelia looked out the east window. Outside was a luxurious lawn surrounded by rose bushes and gladiolas that had lost their bloom. In the middle of the lawn was a