Family

A distant relative wrote a book, Life in Los Sauces. It’s about the area in the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado. The village of Los Sauces lies a short distance south of the Rio Grande and Conejos Rivers

It’s the place where my dad’s parents are from. Both his mom and dad grew up in this area, as did many Marquez’s and Barela’s before them. Los Sauces is a small Spanish village, primarily Catholic, in Conejos County, Colorado. It was established in 1863 by Spanish settlers who came from Northern New Mexico. The village was named for the willows (sauces) that grew in that area. The early settlers landed on the Conejos Land Grant on the west side of the Rio Grande. They grazed their animals on the east side of the river on land that was part of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant. As my father told me and other people, we come from a blood line of sheepherders.

I remember my grandmother telling me stories about delivering milk with her father when she was a little girl. They’d have to get up daily before the sun came up and deliver to people in the area in their horse driven cart. Grandma said she did it because she wanted to be next to her father; she loved doing things with him. He’d warm up big stones the night before in the fireplace and then wrap them in blankets for their feet in the cold winter months to put at the bottom of the cart. Sometimes her mom would bake potatoes to wrap up so she can keep her hands warm.

The more I thought about it the more I realized how much had changed for her in her life time. We all complain about how time flies but really think about how much changed for all of our grandparents. It’s a little different if your grandparents are in their 50s or say even their 40s. The changes from the 1970s and now aren’t all that huge. But I think back to those times my grandmother told me about; delivering milk to her village with her father in a horse driven cart and then later in her life she was able to fly in a plane to different parts of the world if she so desired.

Though, she never did fly anywhere; she wouldn’t step foot into an airplane. She called them las machinas! as she also lovingly called the car, the toaster, and the refrigerator. When she was a child, New Mexico was still a territory. People used horses to get around. The most high tech item they owned was the plow for the fields for the food they grew for themselves. Her whole village and her family all spoke Spanish. They didn’t need to learn anything else. She didn't learn to speak English until she had grandchildren. All of those folks who were children in the early 1900s didn’t imagine the changes ahead of them. I can’t begin to imagine the changes for my daughter in 60 years.