Train Child
a woman now she
lives each day that is given
past has no import
to a young farm girl
nor the woman she became
husband, ten children
it would change nothing
the moment is what matters
today’s crop is all
the long train ride west
just words from a past long gone
that child’s tears long dried
lineage of blood
incarnations of the soul
paint her here and now
One day my mother recounted a long ago conversation with her own mother, Herminia (Minnie). She said she was a Bohemian* and adopted into by the Lozanos, a Hispanic farm family. Any memory before that was long gone, and now she is long dead.
Was she one of many of the Orphan Train children, sent out to work the land, and forever to never know her roots?
Bohemian? I always knew that old photograph of my grandmother and grandfather, Minnie and Blaz, looking for all the world like the famous ‘American Gothic‘ seemed somehow not to fit into the mold of the neighborhood where she and he were raised. According to my father. Her husband, Blaz Guzman, was referred to as the squarehead*** by some neighbors.
Notes: *Bohemia, Czech Čechy, German Böhmen, historical country of Central Europe…
**Orphan trains. East Texas became a significant milestone in the children’s journey. Between 1854 and 1929, over a quarter of a million orphans and unwanted children were taken out of New York City and given away at train stations across America.
*** Squarehead. An ethnic slur directed at German and Scandinavian immigrants.
Perle Champion 