VOCES

-1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. My name is Maria Moreno. I am a mother of 12 children. I've been a worker all my life. I know how to handle a man's job like a man, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm American citizen, and I'm talking for justice. -The photographs had been waiting in the dark for decades. I found them when I was working on a film about the farm workers and their charismatic leader, Cesar Chavez. There were hundreds of images of a migrant mother full of passion and determination. She was making her way in a world of men. She was speaking her mind, and they were listening. A crusader in rubber boots and a big skirt. I didn't know her name let alone who she was, but she seemed to be telling a story that was different from the ones I'd read in the history books, about forgotten struggles and women working behind the scenes for social justice. Back in the depression, Dorothea Lange's photograph of a migrant mother had become America's symbol of suffering. But these photographs, taken a generation later, had a different spirit. They were bold, provocative. Their heroine was staking a claim. Why hadn't I ever heard of her? -Who is this woman? -Maria Moreno, organizer for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. Late '50s, early '60s. I think the first time that I saw Maria was on the shape up in West Fresno. She was an organizer for AWOC. I was a part-time organizer. But I also was mainly a photographer. I decided to document her work because it was so unusual. She had this raft of kids, and she was taking them around to union meetings and so forth like that. I thought, "Wow, this is a hell of a story." I remember all those kids. I remember all those kids. How many were there all together, finally? I don't know, were there 12, 14, something like that. I'm not sure. Anyway, it was like, "Okay, that's the way it is, and that's the way we live, and we'll just do this thing." And her husband usually did the driving and she did the sleeping while we were on the road, right? Bakersfield, Delano, out on the west side. She could move a group of people. And she was very good with the farmworkers, but she was especially good when we went on the road, like to UC Berkeley and talking to students and intellectuals. She'd have

chuckles

these people in tears in five, six minutes, right, telling her story. And then one day she disappeared. Pah! And I don't know what happened. -When farm workers travel, they don't leave forwarding addresses, because they don't know where they'll stop or how long they'll stay. So trying to find them can lead to an endless succession of crossroads and dead ends. The world of farm labor organizers is a small one, one that Gilbert Padilla knows well. -Oooh, this is an old one! That's Maria. She used to wear that hat a lot. It's like a jungle hat. As we all know, you see somebody that's active, you bring them in, right? Anybody that gets in the meetings and starts speaking and starts bringing up issues, you bring them in closer to the organization. That's why she got hired, and she was good. I mean, she was a good advocate for workers. She was out there in the fields, she was out there in the meetings. -When I went to these public hearings as a spokesperson for AWOC, I was nervous. But Maria Moreno didn't seem to be bothered. She, I think, had had no more than one or two years of formal education. But she was fearless. Here's what she said in a speech in Berkeley -- "I am Maria Moreno, 40 years old, mother of 12 children. Born in Karnes City, Texas. Since 1928, I start working in agricultural work. I've been a worker all my life. I know how to handle a man's job like a man, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I am American citizen, and I'm talking for justice." I always feel like a Gothic novel up here, with a crazy lady in the attic. Except in this case, it's a crazy man. These are all reel-to-reel tapes, and I have reason to think that a couple of these have Maria Moreno on them. Well, let's see here. They don't make these anymore. -The subject today is problems of the farm laborer in California. We're living in the richest and most productive agricultural state in the nation. Yet there exists in the fertile interior of this state a sprawling rural ghetto, which some have called the longest slum in the world. Maria, how long have you been in California? -Since 1940. -And you've been doing farmwork? -Farmworker all the time. I've been working in all kind of fruits and field. -Are you working right now? -Yes, I'm working. And two of my married sons and my husband and I, we earned $114. -You made $114 for the day for the four of you? -No, for a week. -For a week? -Yes. No, if I had to make $114 a day, I don't have to worry about nothing. But we don't get that much never. -Hearing Maria's voice for the first time is a revelation, but it's hard to reconcile the poverty she describes with the postwar abundance that surrounded her. At a time when the shelves of supermarkets were overflowing, farmworkers were struggling to feed their own families. -Sometimes you work a day, sometimes you don't work nothing. They forget us. We don't belong, in other words. They don't treat us any better than they do dogs. -How much were people making down there? -90 cents an hour. -How much? -90 cents an hour. -59 cents a bucket first picking. -People were so eager to tell their story. They knew they weren't getting a good deal, and they were happy to tell me about it. And at that point, I decided, "Well, I'm going to go out and see what I can do to change it." -Ernie Lowe was a radio producer and a photographer. Like George Ballis, he was part of a generation of activists dedicated to using their work to awaken the conscience of the public. -Tell me something about what it was like in El Centro this winter.

Indistinct talking

-We don't know what...

Laughter

-One and one is two. Bluebells, cockleshells. -Ernie remembers interviewing Maria, but like everyone else I've talked to, he doesn't know what became of her. Sifting through people's memories of Maria gives me a feeling for who she was, but it doesn't get me any closer to finding her. -Maria Moreno is a very, very common Latino name, so we have a couple of factors. We have a very common name. We don't know a middle name. We don't, of course, know a Social Security number. We have an age range, which from what I understand with the material that I've seen so far, is actually narrowing it down to about a two-, maybe three-year period. In 1961, Maria announces that she's 40 years old, so maybe she was going to turn 41 in 1961. We don't know that, so in other words, she would have been born in 1920 or 1921. She says that she was born in Texas. So if we run a search in the state of Texas using these parameters alone, that there are 273 listings for a Maria Moreno that would be between 88 and 93 now. Unless you have an awfully long time and an awfully big budget, that's an unworkable number of records. -But scanning through endless data online, I find a promising lead. A labor archive in Detroit lists an activity report for Maria Moreno in their farmworker collection. It's not much, but it gets me on a plane to look. There are documents listing meetings, telephone messages, flyers that she handed out, but nothing that tells me what happened to her. One week, she's on the payroll, and the next week, her name is gone. And then finally, deep in the archives, I find audiotapes -- dozens of them that no one has ever cataloged or listened to. Maybe it's fate, or maybe it's just luck, but I find Maria's name on one of them. -Our next speaker, Maria Moreno. -I have a lot of things to say on agricultural workers, the way we work, the way we suffer. Not just me. I could show you the places and show the people the way we've been treated. We start working real early in the morning, that the children don't have enough sleep, not even have enough to eat, not even clothing. We had a tiny little house 14 by 16. 14 people live in that little small shack, just barren inside, without nothing inside. I'm talkin' you the truth, because truth been hided. -

Speaking Spanish

-Farmworkers everywhere listen to the radio as they work. I had hoped there would be a response to my announcement, but no one has come forward. -

Singing in Spanish

-The farmworkers today are generations removed from Maria, who worked in these same orchards many years ago. -

Shouting in Spanish

-Maybe the distance from here to the past is just too great. Searching for Maria is like looking for a needle in a haystack or finding this worker singing deep in the orange grove. -

Whistling

-The song has ended, and the workers are gone. It seems that Maria has disappeared again into the past. And yet maybe she'll step out of history's shadow if I can piece together the fragments I've found. Just when it seems I've reached the end of the trail, a package arrives from Maria's granddaughter. She heard about my search and tracked me down. She writes, "Thank you for taking an interest in the greatest woman I've ever known, my grandmother. She wrote her own history. Only history forgot to include her." There are letters and clippings and an obituary. I feel a sense of loss that I'll never meet Maria, but I'm excited to meet her children. I wonder what she was like as a mother. How did she juggle her activism and family life? -This is too much. This here is me! And I'm wondering why was I frowning.

Laughs

-I like this one. This is so pretty. -Isn't it? -Yeah. This one. -Ooh, that's pretty. -Isn't that pretty? -I can't even tell you where these were. I don't remember. -I'm 73 years old, and I miss my mother still. -Oh, Tito. Look at how beautiful. -We were a very proud family. You know, we might have been poor, but there was a lot of "humph" into everything we did. -Remember that time when there wasn't any food again? And we saw that bird just coming. And remember, Libby? We would tie ourselves behind that truck.

Laughs

-It's okay. -We would tie ourselves so we wouldn't fall off the truck. And then all of a sudden, we just saw this bird flying out of I don't know where, and all of a sudden, he just dropped a rabbit right in front of the truck. -

Laughs

-And my mom says, "There's our meal." Remember? Says, "There's our meal." And I learned how to skin a rabbit. -Seeing the photographs brings a rush of memories and sends Maria's children on their own journey into past. - Going home Oh, yes, I'm going home And there is nothing to hold me here I've got a glimpse Of that heavenly place Praise God I am going home -What a song. I love that song. -I do, too. I love it. It just brings so many memories. -I know. We'll be going home one of these days, but I hope it's not right now, because I want to see the ending to all this. -Okay, you looking for birth records? -Yes, we are -They would be in this book. -This one right here? -Yes, ma'am. And so we can look here. -These would be the names in this side, right? -Yes, uh-huh. -So it's not here. -Okay, so let's go to the next page and see what we find. -Let me see, Martinez. -Look for her first name, Maria. That's it. -Oh, right here. There it is. Oh, my goodness, October 22, 1920, yeah. Oh, my goodness. My mom and Aunt Sally. Wow, my heart is up here in my throat. Oh, my goodness.

Sniffles

-I heard that my grandmother came from the Mescalero Apache. She was dark complected and always wore a bandanna on her head. My grandfather was born in Mexico. He was 13 when he came to live here in Texas. My mother always told us that when my grandfather would go out -- because he was a minister, he was a Baptist minister, my grandfather -- and she would always go along. I think that my mother got it from my grandfather, because my grandfather could preach up a good storm, I mean a good one. He would preach, and my mother I think would be singing, because that's what she did most of her life, she sang. - Que bonito es conocer a Cristo Que bonito es sentirlo en el alma Es un gozo que viene del cielo Una cosa que s explicarla Que alegria siento en mi alma -My mother was about 15 when she got married, so she was very young when she got married. My dad was 21. We used to have an old car, and we would move from one place to another. My mom would pack the car, and they would make something like a bed for us. -The road is our home. The ground is our table. Any place we go, there's our home. -I don't remember riding from Texas to California. I don't remember that. But I do remember when we got to Holtville, that's when one of the brothers, he died at maybe about 3 months old. -When my first child was born, had no doctor, was born alone, me and my husband. And I didn't know that the woman was supposed to go to the doctor. The second child born, me and my husband alone. The third one born, and the same thing. -My mother was a twin. Aunt Sally was like a second mom to us. She supported my mother in many ways. She was proud of her. If we needed something, we knew that we could count on Aunt Sally and Uncle Chito, her husband. 'Cause we knew -- there were so many of us. -You know, our family was a big family. Dad couldn't afford by himself. So we all got involved in working. I started working in the fields maybe when I was 5 years old. We used to follow the crops as far as Colorado, Utah, then back to California to start the tomato season. When my brothers and my sisters went to school, they actually had to hide to eat their lunch, because everybody ate at the cafeteria this and that, and they came out with their little burritos. And way back then, people would make fun, you know. -This is the way that Maria and her family got by. But what was it that drove her to fight to change things? Ron Taylor is the only person I've found who wrote about Maria, and he was there when she first spoke out. -Well, I used to drive around the county, stopping in little towns just looking for stories, any kind of story. And lunchtime comes around, and any one of these little towns has got some place where everybody congregates for lunch. And this caf in Woodlake, and I sat down at the counter by myself and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich because that's about the only thing they couldn't ruin. -Gus West, the chief of police, sat down beside me. And we had been friends in an adversarial kind of way. He knew I was out stirring up trouble, and I was convinced that he was covering stuff up. But he mentioned this woman and her 12 kids going hungry, and he didn't think it was right. -We lived in Woodlake when there was rain, and rain, and rain, and rain, and more rain. So we didn't know when it was gonna stop. When we got out, it was ankle deep out of the house. We couldn't take anything. Nothing. Just the car. And when we came back, we couldn't even go in there because the water was inside the house. Beds, everything was gone. Then my mom went to ask, you know, for help. And no one would help. -I got a real good witness. I guess you people remember last year that we had a big rain. I had a baby a year old, feeding him three days with water and sugar. We got nobody to talk with us, we don't got no place to earn money, we don't got no way to get it when we're out of work. When this weather come, we just go hungry. -3,000 workers were hungry, and the food was sitting in the warehouse. Why? Why don't you open the door and feed these people? It's against the rules. The rules are if you can't work, you can't get aid -- to keep the people from cheating. You son of a bitch. I can't feed them with food, but I can write about them, and nobody else would write anything about farm labor. -So I got something that really proves, and I want somebody to read it before I go a little farther because I cannot read very good English. -Police Chief Gus West of Woodlake reported a 19-year-old boy starved himself so his 11 brothers and sisters could eat. He collapsed and had to receive medical aid. -That's my son, 19 years old. After we passing that big starving, he went plumb blind. He was blind for three days, and that's causing because he hadn't eaten anything. After they opened the doors, I got something to eat. We start feeding him while he get his eyes back. -My mom, I guess, started talking to people. Where is the justice in the United States, the richest country in the world? We need help, and we can't get it. Maybe that's when things started happening. -Maria's testimony created such a stir that the welfare agency reversed its policy and offered food assistance to the farmworkers. This was Maria's first victory, and it brought her to the attention of AWOC, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. AWOC was the latest effort in a long struggle to unionize farmworkers, who'd been excluded from the protections won by most other workers in the 1930s. One of the biggest obstacles to organizing had always been the segregation of camps and crews that pitted one ethnic group against another. -We can't have a union of the hillbillies, one of them Mexican Americans, and one for the Filipinos, and one for the Negroes. They must be all one union. -AWOC at the time was a pioneering thing. They hired Filipinos, they hired Anglos, so-called Okies, African Americans, and hired her. -Although a handful of Anglo women had worked as professional organizers in the fields, Maria Moreno was the very first farmworker woman to be hired as a union organizer.

Applause

-I believe I was about 13 when my mother started to work for the union. She would leave to different meetings. And we wondered, "What are all these meetings for?" -Sometimes I see the people that buy delicious apples, bananas, all kind of good foods. And then I take a look at my table -- beans and potatoes. Just imagine, how do you think that I feel seeing my son blind only because we don't got nothing to eat, while some other tables are full and wasting food. -We would go to different places, and sometimes we would go with her because we were kind of curious. But the first time that I understood that she was somebody different, she was doing something different was when she went to Berkeley, that I realized who my mother really was. Not just a woman trying to make things better for the agricultural workers, but for everybody. I said, "Wow, here's my mother, second-grade education, and she's doing this." It was just like "Wow." It blew me away. -I guess we got rights, and it's time to ask for justice. And I hope that you understand the things that I've been saying to you. -That's my mother.

Laughs

Oh, my goodness. -

Speaking Spanish

- I can't stop loving you - I've made up my mind -We didn't start living comfortable until after she started getting paid from the union. Have plenty on the table. When my sisters and my brothers knew what a good pair of shoes was, you know. - I can't stop wanting you -There was this album that came out, Ray Charles, and there was a song that my mother, I don't know for some reason she loved it. It was "I Can't Stop Loving You." We put on that particular song, then all of a sudden, we saw my mom and dad waltzing in the living room. And I remember that I looked at my mom and I thought, I said, "That's funny because our church doesn't allow" -- well, our beliefs didn't allow for dancing. We were all looking like "Wow." - The long ago -My mother was never alone when she started her job in the union. I mean, days would go by, but I knew that my father was with my mom, and if anything should happen, we knew that Dad would be there. -She was so excited, very excited, about how she had met these people, how they had treated her. I knew when she was gonna go to Washington. I knew when she was gonna go to St. Louis, Missouri, also. And I told her, "You better put a diaper on because you don't know, you've never been on a plane before." And she was very scared to go on the plane. -With Maria and the other organizers making AWOC's case to the public, the fledgling union was winning strikes and raising wages. But trouble was brewing in the fields. This innocent-looking notice of a film screening was going to create a major crisis for AWOC, and Maria would be at the center of the storm. -How would you like to live here and pay $26 a month? -A decade earlier, Hollywood unions had made a documentary to support a strike at DiGiorgio Farms, the biggest agricultural company in the nation. -We haven't a chance as individuals, but in organization, we'll have strength. -DiGiorgio sued for libel, and the filmmakers were forced to destroy all copies of the movie. But one copy survived. -In 1960, AWOC organizers stumbled across a copy of the film, and they thought, "Oh, great, this is perfect. All the same issues are still in place here, all of those kinds of conditions, faced by farmworkers. We could use this film in our organizing." On May 12, 1960, Maria Moreno spoke at a screening of the film. In the audience was a spy for DiGiorgio. The company sued for libel a second time, and Maria was one of the defendants. It was the first of several lawsuits against AWOC and its sponsor. George Meany, the President of the AFL-CIO, was never very happy about funding farmworker organizing. And when these various legal setbacks began mounting up, that combined with the fact that they hadn't really organized enough people to bring in the dues that would make it worthwhile, gave Meany the excuse to pull the plug on the project. -AWOC members met to forge a strategy to save their union. Henry Anderson and Ernie Lowe were there, and their memories of the conference are still vivid. -I was at KPFA at that point. And when I heard about the conference, I was very excited because it sounded like a really new approach. So I got clearance to record the conference. Didn't have a fancy piece of equipment like this. It was a primitive old RadioShack recorder. -It's been quite a while. -Quite a while. -Now I have heard remarks that you've had the rug pulled out from under you. Well, since when did the agricultural workers ever have a rug?

Laughter

-Right to start with, I'm gonna make you a flat statement. If the AFL-CIO quits this organization, this local here is going to be a union. I'm not lying a bit. Sister Maria? -In order we had a good interpret this morning, I'm gonna talk in my own language. -So, if we are going to have an organization, we have to suffer some hardships. -In the past, we fought each other too much. We didn't know how to get along with each other. If we didn't like a fella, we just turned our backs on him and walked away. We got over that. We'll fight like cats and dogs in a meeting, but when we walk out of that meeting, we're still friends and can get along with that man. -Hold it just a second. -

Laughs

-I made a mistake. I left out one resolution. -We here at the Agricultural Workers Organizing Conference are of different races and religions. We have many members who are also Mexicans. Some of us here have families in Mexico. We are working for a democratic union. We believe in a union of farmworkers, by farmworkers, and for farmworkers. -All in favor raise your right hand. All opposed?

Applause

-Somebody made the motion that we elect delegates to the national AFL-CIO convention, which was going to take place in Miami Beach. Our delegates would be instructed to try to restore support for AWOC. And that's where Maria Moreno was elected to head this delegation.

Applause

-The convention's main speaker was the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. -One of the great qualities about the United States, which I don't think people realize who are not in the labor movement, is what a great asset for freedom the American labor movement represents. -That is why the labor hater and labor baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature. -We could save a great many more people than we do, if there was more understanding and less fear. -There are millions and millions and millions of unorganized workers in America who need the protection that only a trade union can provide them. -Don't you think that our children have their stomachs full like the rest of you people that has a union or had decent wages. We don't. I hope that you people help us. Brothers, I'm very glad to be here tonight. Thank you for your kindness.

Applause

-She was such an effective spokesperson at this national convention that, in fact, support for AWOC was restored. The aftermath was a complete restructuring of the AWOC as an organization. A fellow named Al Green was brought in, who was an old labor hack. -What Green wanted was for the workers to come to him, and then he would go to the growers and say, "Give us a dollar and a quarter an hour, or we'll strike you." Maria Moreno and her people would just go out and throw a picket line up and say, "We'll go away after you give us a raise." She was a pain in the ass, but I say that in a nice way. She was aggressive, and she would not back off. -She wasn't afraid to say whatever she had to say, whether it was a politician or a worker or whatever. And I assume that's why they got rid of her. -There seems to have been a report picked up in some quarters that Maria had been fudging on her expense accounts, and I don't believe a word of it. She was an utterly honest person. I myself had been fired by Al Green, and there were a lot who resigned. And in the case of Maria...

Exhales deeply

...my explanation would be that Green had to find some rationale for letting her go, and that was a convenient one. -Under Al Green's iron rule, AWOC's organizing drive collapsed, and with it died the dream of a democratic union for farmworkers. The same year that Maria left AWOC, Cesar Chavez, Gilbert Padilla, and Dolores Huerta launched a new organization that would eventually become the United Farm Workers. Wouldn't they have recruited a charismatic organizer like Maria? But in a letter to a colleague, Chavez said that their paths had crossed and that he considered Maria a rival. -She just said goodbye to the AWOC, and she said, "I'm going to start doing what is my vocation, what I should be doing." Which would be the same thing, you know, only in a different way, because she still helped people. She still advocated for the people in everything that she could. -In the middle of the night, she left. She took the youngest, which was Tito, Eva, Yolanda, Libby, and Alex with her. And she put a letter under our door. Like, she had left us, you know, wow. -I remember her putting us in a little Falcon, and blankets in the back, and we fell asleep, but looking up at the stars. When I woke up, we were in the middle of the desert. Like nothing. I mean absolutely nothing. But God is so good that he led her to this place where there was a huge tank of water. And she says... Every morning, Mom would leave with her Bible. She would go consult God and see what he wanted from her. She would draw a huge circle and tell us, "You stay in this circle, and as long as you are here, nothing can harm you." -When everything goes out, the only hope we have is God. Whenever we're lonesome, we pray. Whenever we don't have nothing, we sing. We get together, and we start singing a song, "Everywhere I Go Is My Home." -

Singing in Spanish

-My dad couldn't leave his job. Somebody had to support us. So he stayed behind with the older kids because they were working. But later on, you know, he had to. He had to follow because that was also his vocation. -Eventually we ended up over there with her, because, you know. First of all, because we missed Mom and because -- well, we just missed her. -And then later on, people started coming. They would cross the border, cross the desert, asking and looking for work. And then they didn't have a place to stay, so Mother would bring them to our home. And she let them know, "Hey, I am a Christian woman, I believe in God. So we have a time for worship, so I would like for you to join us." -

Singing in Spanish

-This is the original infrastructure. -Yeah, uh-huh. -To the camp. -And this one, too. -And this one right here. Look at the house, Chubby. -Yeah. -We actually built that house. -With Daddy. -I can't believe it. This is really pretty. I like this one. -Oh, Martie, these pictures go back a long time. -Here's where we started the altar, with what, four little stones. -Four. -We learned to defend ourselves with prayer. -So true. -Prayer. -She would say, "There's nobody's going to help you on this earth without God. You need Him in your life." That was Mom. Martie, every time I see these pictures, I don't know, something quivers within me. -Yeah. -For over a decade, the family lived in the desert while Maria pursued her calling as a Pentecostal minister. It was a return to her roots. Her father had been a preacher, and she was following in his footsteps. Then she moved her family to the border, where she felt she could do the most good. She called her ministry Pregoneros de Justicia, Cryers for Justice. -Oh, my God, I saw this truck coming down, and I just thought it was the Mexican Hillbillies. And they came in an old, old truck, and they had tires piled up on top of the truck and everything. They would stop along the road and either pick tomatoes, onions, whatever they could, you know, to make a dollar here or there. Her ministry took her all over, from San Jose, California, all the way deep into Mexico. They would go from town to town. It was like the Church of the Four Winds because there was no walls, just chairs. -

Singing in Spanish

-As the years went by, we built a mission. From there, we would distribute clothes and food that people would give us. So if you go across San Luis, Arizona, across San Luis, Mexico, there's very few people that don't know about my mother because she touched a lot of hearts. -She used to tell me, "Tienes f hija?" You have faith? "Come on with me," she goes, "'Cause I have to be at this church service tonight." And I would go with her, you know, with my baby strapped on my back. And we would stand on the freeway, and she goes, "Ahora s hija, levanta el dedo. Boom. Ese carro." She knew that car is gonna pick us up. "Ese carro nos va a levanter, alza el dedo." And I'd go like that, and boom, sure enough. We'd get a ride all the way to the border, get off. And as soon as we would get off, it seemed like somebody was waiting for us. -

Singing in Spanish

-My mother, when she found out that she had breast cancer, that didn't stop her. -

Singing in Spanish

-

Singing in Spanish

-She had started a mission a few months behind, back. She had started a mission with another brother, another pastor. And she'd always say, "Cuando me levante de aqu" -- When I get up from this bed I'm going to finish this, I'm going to do this. Of course she never did, but she knew that we would. -My mom was a unique person. And, uh, no one can top her. One day, they asked me to go speak, and I told the congregation, I says, "You're gonna hear me speak. Maria Moreno is no longer here. You all knew how she spoke, how did she carry herself," I says. "But her shoes are still too big for me." So, and then this man told me, he says, after I spoke and all that, he came and gave me a hug. He says, "Don't worry about your mother's shoes." He says, "You'll make your own." -There's one more step on the journey. The family travels hundreds of miles from Texas, Arizona, and California. -And the house was right about here. -Yep. -'Cause the water pump was right there. -They're returning to their desert home for the first time in 40 years. -There's nothing that shows. -Nothing. -I don't want to break my neck. I'm not gonna -- -Run to the tank! Somebody's coming. -Somebody's coming. -I'm trying to look for some handprints, initials. I don't see nothin' here. -Here, let me try. -No, Libby. -I trying to look for some -- -Can you make it? -Yeah, I can make it. -You're gonna break that thing. -There should be water in there. Remember when Joe used to get in there, one time he got in there and started to clean it? -You're not going to be able to make that. -Yes, I am. -By doggone it, yes, I will. -But you're not gonna to be able to get into the top. I'm not gonna try it. -Libby, be careful. -Go ahead. I got you. -Ah, Libia. -I made it. -Hold her by the pants. Got it? -It's got water. -Well, duh. -You don't want to go up there any further? -No, let her get down. -I think this is a -- -

Speaking Spanish

-Yeah, right here. -All the way over here. -Oh, Mama.

Sighs

-I want to make sure you guys -- -Are there any bobcats right now? -No.

Laughter

-Ay, no.

Speaking Spanish

-Are we gonna make another fire here? Better close the door. -Tranca la puerta. -Tranca la puerta. -Tranca la puerta. -Okay, this is the last time we'll come back, I guess. We better make sure it's locked. Well, I'm gonna go sit down bef-- -Before you fall. -No, not yet.