Tomato Memories

By Mary Montalvo

In the sixties and seventies, life was very different, especially for a tomato-farming town in California. To help is Paul Gianelli, who tells us about all his memories from eleven to when he gets into his sixties.

It starts with him sitting next to his wife as she is dying. Then he takes you back to the past, to the first day he sees her in a poor neighbor.

His memories are of her as young girl, Mary, that he meets when she is sixteen. She is five years older than him, and he endures many years to become the young man that she might want. It takes a family tragedy and the death of someone very dear to him before she comes and stays in his life.

Throughout the story, memories of tomatoes flash up and intertwine with his memories of Mary and how his loves grows with each time she floats in and out of his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514412268

Mary Montalvo

After twelve years of sitting on a school bus with disabled children, I started to put all the stories I made for them down in book format. After writing the stories I made for them, I started to write stories that I had rolling around in my mind. I have completed seven stories and have seven more that have to be finished, including children’s stories, which I also illustrated. My only hope is that someone will enjoy my work as much as I did in making it.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

O n a soft spring mid afternoon day there laid a small frail older lady in her bed ready to go. Her head of short grey hair framed a small face with closed eyes.

The afternoon breeze flowed through the bedroom door that led to the rose garden that had been her pride and joy for many years. As it’s air perfumed with flowers flowed about the room it blowed upon her nightgown of pink and white baby roses lifting it up around her feet making her gown billow. The body thin and boney had wasted away after months of bad health. Something that had troubled her as a young girl had came back and won.

By her side sitting in a chair was another older person, a man, younger but still in his old age. He was only five years younger but even that can make a big difference in your body health. His upper chest was still strong and he even had a full head of grey hair.

He held her fragile hand and kept her fingers in his. He was waiting because it wasn’t long now for all her vitals were shutting down one by one. As he stared at her face his mind rode back to the day they met about fifty years ago.

It was a day like today and she had been working outside for her mom in the yard. Her face was full of sweat as she pulled the weeds, but really that was all that was growing. It was a poor neighborhood with dead grass and dirt driveways. I was way out of my neighborhood looking for a friend when I spotted her. The yards were dead but they did grow some beauty and she was it.

She had to be about sixteen years old with long brown hair with reddish highlights in a long pony tail. I found out later she was half Irish and half Philipino. Her father travelled the Pacific Ocean and found her mother on a farm in Iowa. She married him even against the law because the Philipino couldn’t marry into the white community. Then he moved them to California and left her mom with six mouths to feed. My mom called them white trash, but with full red lips and hazel green eyes I didn’t care.

Her mom received about two hundred dollars relief money for the month which meant a lot of beans and potatoes. Then there was the Latin stepfather who was a drunk and was always trying to get her to sit on his lap. He didn’t work but would bring a catfish or a goose stolen from one of the public parks in town for food once in awhile.

As I walked along I could feel her eyes on me. I was big for my age of eleven going on twelve. We were Italians and I got black hair from my father and blue eyes from my mother. At that age my hormones would kick in and give me the blues, for as she stared I could feel a fire building and ran home with my heart pounding.

The next day I walked by again and this time she said HI. All I could do was run home again. After that I was so upset at my failure and was determined to get her name. I walked by and she wasn’t there. I went home so long faced and stayed in my room all morning so that my mom thought I was sick. As I laid in bed I only had one thought. I’d find out who she was and try to get to know her better.

It was spring break and my family had good jobs. My father worked all year as a mechanic in the cannery and mother worked seasonal. We were one of the Italians still in our neighborhood. The Gianellis. Also we had enough money to pack up a picnic for recreation at the nearest reservoir or we would go to a mountain creek. The water there is freezing, running fast and all you have to do is put your watermelon in the river to get it ice cold.

I had other plans. As my mom packed in the kitchen I got a great idea. I would fake being too tired and unhappy to go. I walked real slow and sat down real hard and let out a long sigh. My mother was a short little lady with real Italian fire with black hair and blue eyes. Our family came to California in the fifty’s from N.Y. and she could get by with only Italian there, but not here. She still had an accent when she spoke.

What’s a the matter with you Pablo?

I just don’t feel like going. I’m too tired, I said faking it.

"You can sleep on the beach.