Voyageur
Cheesehead
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2021
- Messages
- 3,397
- Reaction score
- 2,885
Yesterday, while sitting in the waiting room at the outpatient surgical center waiting for my wife to go in for cataract surgery, my wife and I had a conversation with an older couple sitting across from us. Come to find out he was a 20-year Air Force vet. They met after he got out of the service, in Biloxi, MS. She was working in a casino there in a supervisory position, and he was looking for parttime work to avoid boredom from retirement. They'd started talking in the breakroom and became friends, and eventually dated, and got married.
Come to find out, they now live in the town next to ours named Merced. They'd decided to retire there when she hung it up. Since she had bought and paid for the home her mother lived in for several years at the end, they moved into that home and call it theirs now.
During the conversation, there was music playing in the background and a song by Freddie Fender came on and I mentioned that I really liked the song and said he was one of the first western music singers I enjoyed listening to. She laughed and said, "Baldemar Garza Huerta is my godfather." For a moment I was confused, and then she said that Freddie Fender was his stage name.
That brought on a conversation about what kind of a person he was. Apparently, he had a very rough start in life. He was like 8 years old, the son of migrant workers, who would spend up to 16 hours a day working in fields for next to nothing. Their home was a throw together shack made out of sheets of tin with no floor, and they suffered from the summer heat and cold of winter. He dropped out of school early and lied to join the Marine Corps when he was 16. He ended up being sent home because he couldn't follow the rules. Then he ended up doing 3 years in prison in I think it was Louisiana, before he really started to make his mark in music with a guitar he bought for less than $10.
She told me his experienced with white people hadn't been too good over the years and when he started to make his mark in the Latino community with his music, he was going to head out to LA to do rock as well as C&W. The name Fender he picked because it was the name on his guitar, and Freddie just sounded good he figured for the gringos who he felt would reject him for being Latino.
It was after he began making a name for himself that he came home to visit family in Merced and ended up being her godfather because the woman's father was an old friend of his who played music with him in Latino clubs throughout the RGV. Although Freddie tried to convince her father to go with him in the business at that time, he turned him down because he'd just started his own business and saw it had the potential to be a big success.
An interesting conversation. Another one of those chance meetings that proves that the theory of six degrees of separation is probably right on the money.
Come to find out, they now live in the town next to ours named Merced. They'd decided to retire there when she hung it up. Since she had bought and paid for the home her mother lived in for several years at the end, they moved into that home and call it theirs now.
During the conversation, there was music playing in the background and a song by Freddie Fender came on and I mentioned that I really liked the song and said he was one of the first western music singers I enjoyed listening to. She laughed and said, "Baldemar Garza Huerta is my godfather." For a moment I was confused, and then she said that Freddie Fender was his stage name.
That brought on a conversation about what kind of a person he was. Apparently, he had a very rough start in life. He was like 8 years old, the son of migrant workers, who would spend up to 16 hours a day working in fields for next to nothing. Their home was a throw together shack made out of sheets of tin with no floor, and they suffered from the summer heat and cold of winter. He dropped out of school early and lied to join the Marine Corps when he was 16. He ended up being sent home because he couldn't follow the rules. Then he ended up doing 3 years in prison in I think it was Louisiana, before he really started to make his mark in music with a guitar he bought for less than $10.
She told me his experienced with white people hadn't been too good over the years and when he started to make his mark in the Latino community with his music, he was going to head out to LA to do rock as well as C&W. The name Fender he picked because it was the name on his guitar, and Freddie just sounded good he figured for the gringos who he felt would reject him for being Latino.
It was after he began making a name for himself that he came home to visit family in Merced and ended up being her godfather because the woman's father was an old friend of his who played music with him in Latino clubs throughout the RGV. Although Freddie tried to convince her father to go with him in the business at that time, he turned him down because he'd just started his own business and saw it had the potential to be a big success.
An interesting conversation. Another one of those chance meetings that proves that the theory of six degrees of separation is probably right on the money.
Probably next to Chuck Mangione!
