Spanish speaking peoples in Utah, oral histories: book 13, numbers 135 through 146

Page 62

INTERVIEW: Lujan Page 4 DL: caught the second time for boot legging is when the family left to Arizona. We went to Beachfield Park, Arizona, I was about eight years old ... eight or nine years old somewhere in there, and my older brothers and my younger brother ... and we went down there to pick cotton, because that was a way of making a living that was going to take us away from the embarrassment of our father having been picked up as a bootlegger. Of course, I say this in retrospect because at the time we were young enough to not even care or give a darn about anything of this line. I still remember one time when I was home, I don't remember for what ..• mumps or something and the .•. the revenue officers came in, in the morning, and they asked for a bottle of whisky. And I still remember my dad said, 11No, I haven 1 t got any. 11 But you could ... as I think back you could almost tell he had some by just the way he was answering, no, that he didn't have any. And the guy kept begging and begging and begging and finally dad went and sold him a half a pint. The guy left, the two guys left, and they came back that afternoon about wo o'clock and you could almost tell what they look like. They were the perfect grey suit type of guys, neck ties and so forth. You could almost tell they were revenue officers and they asked again and this time my dad didn't hesitate. But as soon as he went back under the ... they had kind of like a drawer there where they kept dishes and stuff in a sliding door. And when he went out to get the bottle of