Onward to the hacienda...

In this third excerpt, Paul remembers his years as a newlywed and his new,challenging job as a rancher.
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We were engaged in a year. I was in service and I was in the group that was sent to Georgia during the Cuban missile crisis. So we corresponded from Georgia. I was there just a short time, about a month, a month and a half. I was stationed at Fort Steward in Georgia. Once the crisis was settled, I was moved back to Texas, where I was at Fort Hood. But I was amazed that a whole division of over 17,000 men and all the tanks, trucks files and everything including the personnel were actually moved in seventy-two hours from Texas to Georgia. It was amazing. We had trained to do that, and we were called a STRAC unit, Strategic Army Command. But we had never done it before, and to my surprise we actually did it. All the troops went by chartered plane. It was amazing.

(You just stayed in Georgia? You never had to fly to Cuba?)

We never had to—the expression is, “the balloon going up.” If the balloon had gone up, we would have gone immediately. We imagined, but we were never told for sure, that the battalion guarding the equipment at the dock twenty-four hours a day would be required to be the first to board the first boat headed for Cuba the moment the balloon went up. So we never knew what the pick of the lottery had in store for us. We could have been the first or last to attack. We had no idea. We spent about five or six weeks engaged in extreme amphibious training, and to all of our surprise, we weren’t scared about going to war. We were kept so busy, and it was a matter-of-fact thing that I didn’t feel nervous. But I know I never smoked more than I did during those weeks in Georgia. I was smoking cigars at that point, and I was chain-smoking them, one after the other. And of course when the emergency was over, that came to an end. So I guess my nervousness showed itself in that way.

(So after this Cuban missile—after Georgia, you returned to Texas?)

Right.

(And then what took place?)

I discovered a little-known law that if you go back to college and the school term begins three months before your effective release from the military, then they can’t hold you back as long as you show proof that you are a matriculated student in a bone fide university. So on my leave, I went ahead and reregistered at the college I was attending, which was City College of New York, and brought back the documentation, and my company commander swore at me, in a friendly way, and said, “Dammit, Feldman! How’d you find out about this?” Because they don’t give this law any publicity. I was released three months—better said, after twenty-one months instead of the twenty-four months. And then, to my great luck, since Ruth and I married right after that and came to live in El Salvador, because I lived more than sixty miles away from any active reserve unit, my four-year active reserve obligation was nullified, and I got my good conduct release after only twenty-one months of active service.

(Now, before you married Ruth, was it understood that you would go to Salvador?)

No, no. We had talked about it, and her father had put the bee in my bonnet about it, but I hadn’t really considered it to be something I was going to do. I wanted to think about it, discuss it with my family. I didn’t speak Spanish but to me it would have been a grand adventure. And when I saw that my parents were of a mind to—well, they tried to make me feel that it was OK. They said, “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead and do it.” And so I thought long and hard about it and ultimately decided to give it a try. I was very foolish becauseI told Ruth’s dad, “I’ll give it a three months’ try.” And when I got here, I realized that you can’t give something as comprehensive and important as this, a three-months’ try. So I immediately told him, “Let’s be more sensible. Let’s make it a two-year try.” And we never discussed it again. (laughs) And I wound up being here fifteen years.

(Did you get married in the States or in Salvador?)

We came down here to marry.

(And your parents came as well?)

My parents came, and one of my brothers and his wife were able to come.

(And what did they think?)

Oh, I don’t know anyone that’s ever come to Salvador that hasn’t loved it. My parents through the years made many trips down here. They were here for the births of all of our children and they just loved it. As I always have.

(Could they communicate with Ruth’s parents?)

Ruth’s dad spoke a little bit more English than her mom , but they communicated as machetunim do. Speaking about the kids and about their hopes and dreams for us.

(So here you are, you’re newlyweds and you’ve moved here. What does your life look like?)

I was tossed right into work as soon as I got here. I was working in the hardware section of the company. We had Central Ferretera. Also on the weekends I was working on what the family called the farm. I had heard about the farm before leaving the States, and my mental picture of the farm was a few acres and a few things being planted. I had no idea that it was a hacienda the size of Talcualhuya, which was about fifteen square kilometers and was a major, major responsibility. So I was out there every weekend. Free weekends didn’t exist. And I had—the whole time that I was here was a learning process. I don’t think I ever stopped learning. For a kid from the Bronx, I really loved being out there. I loved the out of doors. I loved the people. The people always made me feel at home from the word go. I just loved being on—riding around on the Jeep and on horseback and learning about all the things that we did there, being part of it. It was really an adventure.

(Just for the record, Talcualhuya is T-a-l-c—)

—u-a-l-h-u-y-a. Talcualhuya. (laughs)

(I wanted to make sure we get that spelling correct.)

And it means, “Those who eat dirt.”

(In Nahuat)

I’m not sure what the correct name of the native tongue is, but apparently the land where Talcualhuya is located was very sacred for ceremonies of that Mayan group, and they would come from all over Central America to meet there. I don’t know how much of the earth they would be required to eat, but they did eat some of it as part of their ceremony. That’s where the name Talcualhuya came from. And that’s why, over the years, when we would make land usable by removing brush and boulders to make it ready for planting or pasture land, by just lifting the top layer of the land, we would find many Mayan artifacts that often dated back hundreds and hundreds of years. The Mayan custom back then was to come from all over Central America and bury all their clay utensils and make new ones. We uncovered so many beautiful small, big, medium-sized pieces, and the tools they used to work with leather and other things. We found little jade tools that still had their sharp edge on them after having been buried for so long.

(So what type of work did you do at Talcualhuya?)

It was a lot of learning. I helped in supervising the work in the cane fields, the handling of the cattle and all of the daily operations of a large industrial farm. We would plant corn and beans, mostly to feed the people. We had sometimes twelve hundred people on the payroll during the sugar season. We had a sugar mill on the property that we ran ourselves. It processed all of our sugar cane into crude sugar that we would ship off to the local refinery. At that time Salvador had a refinery, and we were members of the cooperative that ran it. We also had bees. Believe it or not, our little farm was the largest exporter of bee honey to Germany for many of the years that we were processing honey. And we also had—we were milking by hand twice daily between 450 and 500 head of cattle. Each cow had her own name and responded to it when her turn came and was called in to be milked. Every cow had her favorite milker and would respond to her name when called. It was amazing for this city kid to see all this.

(What kind of names did they give them?)

Gloria, Francesca—women’s names, typical women’s names. (laughs)

(And did you have a cow that you milked?)

I learned how to milk. Not as good as the milkers. I didn’t do any of the milking. I would receive the milk every afternoon. I was at the dairy at three when the milking began and we had this list that we used to show the cows production for the last two weeks. So I would quickly look up the name of the cow that was being milked when the milk was brought to the scale. If the milk production was below the cows average of what she was doing in that two-week period, I’d send the milker back telling him, “No, we need another two pounds. We need another pound at least.” We were able to keep a pretty good control that way.

(How many people worked at that ___?)

We had close to 50 people working full time in the dairy. During the sugar gathering season and the time when the mill was running, we’d have about twelve hundred people. It was a payroll paid by hand, with cash. There were no branch banks back then, so the money had to be divided up from cash that we’d bring in from the capital city of San Salvador and placed into their envelopes, for each and every employee.

(And did they live on the property?)

Most people did. They had homes that were built for them. We had a very elaborate irrigation system that was built by Ruth’s dad from bricks made on the farm. It was a very self-sufficient property. It was an amazing thing. To be able to milk five hundred lactating cows, we had to have about fifteen hundred head of cattle, being fed all the time, being herded, being put out to graze so that they could come into the lactation cycle. It was a large responsibility. We made all of our own food concentrate for the cattle. Truckloads of ingredients were brought in, and blended with the ingredients we would produce ourselves. Then we would mix it ourselves with molasses from our own sugar mill. Again, we were very self-sufficient.

(And how long did this go on? You were working in the hardware store and on the weekends at the hacienda?)

Right.

(So this went on for—?)

All the time I was here. Fifteen years.

(Fifteen years?)

Until we sold our share of the store to one of our partners in 1975. At that point my life changed and I became an exclusive farm worker. I’d leave for the farm on Monday morning and sometimes remain for five or six days.. so our life, Ruth’s and mine, turned topsy-turvy. I wouldn’t see the kids or Ruth for sometimes four or five days at a time. And during the sugar season, I was out there twelve days straight sometimes. I’d come in only to bring in my laundry and then go back out. And Ruth would come with the kids on the weekends. They had a beautiful life on the farm.

(Can you tell me about it a little?)

I’ll do my best. ‘Cause I wasn’t able to spend time with them when they were at the farm. What I would love to do with them was while going out on horseback to inspect the work, I’d sometimes take a pillow and put it in front of me on the saddle and put one of the kids, when they were small enough, in front of me, and we would ride together. When they got bigger, they would have their own horses and they’d ride alongside me. And since we didn’t go very fast and we had very tame horses for them, we felt confident that they wouldn’t have any trouble being on the horse by themselves. I would imagine for them it was a wonderful childhood, being on horseback, going through this beautiful property, manzana [?] after manzana of beautiful sugar fields and in season corn fields and bean fields and seeing all the operations, seeing the soil being tilled, seeing the people working, seeing the people having their lunch and having their breakfast.

In the morning on the farm, we’d have something like, just during the regular season, six hundred people lined up, each with their chengas, that’s what we called them, these very large tortillas covered with beans and cheese and salt, and they would eat the three tortillas beginning with the one on the bottom. By the time they got to the top they would have eaten all the beans and the other food with it. They ate breakfast before leaving for their assigned work and we would send lunch to where they were working in the fields We had a complete kitchen that prepared this food. There were three large vats cooking beans. With women working full-time making close to two thousand of these large tortillas for breakfast and the same amount for lunch. All of these were made by hand. That’s a lot of corn used daily and all of it was planted on the farm. It was incredible. When I think about it today, I really wonder how we did all that, with the primitive means we had at hand. When I think about Ruth’s dad having come here and starting all this, I’m just amazed. What tremendous capacities this guy had!

(And did he treat—how was the relationship with him? He was quite a personality in the sense that he was a huge—a very important man, not only in the Jewish community, but in El Salvador as a whole, very, very respected.)

He was very respected, and rightfully so. I’ve often said he was probably the most intelligent man I’ve ever been able to get close to. And I guess because of that, he had a very demanding, very difficult personality. Sometimes it was a joy to work with him, and other times it was very hard because he had such a very strong personality. Sometimes it was hard to get through to him.

(But all in all you would say it was a positive relationship?)

I would say so. I learned a lot from him, gained a lot working with him, and I hope I adopted a lot of his working habits, because he did so many things right.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.