My Grandfather, now 74, is a retired cab driver after around forty sum odd years on that specific job. At the beginning, he was just another Mexican immigrant wandering around towns aimlessly searching for a job. He hadn’t lived in El Paso until about thirty-five years ago when he had my mother in this town and my Uncles in other towns. His three children my Uncles Raul, Joe, and his daughter Brenda (, my mother,) continue his name through their children or his grandchildren. I sat there in his living room eating burritos for lunch as he had agreed to meet with me at his house around two o'clock in the afternoon. His house is a mobile home which resides near Concordia cemetery in a mobile home park. I had already planned on what I would be asking him generally ahead of time so that I could get all the information I needed before I met him at his house.
I began by asking him what kind of culture he was mixed into while he was a cab driver. He told me there wasn't a lot of different cultures clashing at his job because everyone was either Mexican or Anglo-Saxon. Other cabby drivers were like him, illegal, trying to obtain there U.S passport to be legit immigrants. He told me that his friends consisted of mostly other Hispanics because they had his sense of humor. When I asked him where he was sent to drive he told me that his day or shift began with him waiting for someone to hail him at the airport and once someone caught his attention, they would have him go from the airport to anywhere in the city including portions of downtown up to the west side. After telling me of where he would drive, I then asked him of what kind of decor he placed in his cab and he told me that he would have a picture of the virgin of Guadeloupe on his das...
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...freedom to do what he wanted throughout the day but because it also granted him the time to hang out with his friends. Then he continued to respond by saying that even if he could go back in time to pick a different profession, he would not be able to because he choose to be a cab driver since they were the only ones that would not ask to see if he was an illegal immigrant and at that time he was not in the United States legally.
In the end, I learned that my Grandfather had been a man’s man by preferring to hang out with his friends a lot and that the question of why he choose to be a cab driver was more of a question of what job would hire him without asking too many questions. During the interview my Grandfather did not express any serious facial expressions but was calm throughout the interview.
Works Cited
González, Raul. Personal interview. 24 March 2014.
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Williams, Norma. (2009). The Mexican American family: tradition and change. New York: General Hall. (Primary)
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