Now Is Not The Time, Donald Trump

I sent my aunt, Tía Irma, Donald Trump’s taco bowl tweet:

Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yApic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016

This is what she had to say:

RE tweet from the twit- No está el tiempo para chifletes, ni la gente para aguantarlos. (one of Tata’s favorite sayings)

The word “chifletes” means an annoying high-pitched whistle, and translates to batty or crazy ideas, so the saying goes: “Now is neither the time for batshit ideas, nor for people to put up with them.”

My grandfather, Jesus García González (above, far left, known to us as Tata), first came to the U.S. seventy-three years ago, in the second year of the Bracero Program, a joint program of the State Department, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Justice (through the I.N.S.) to admit migrant laborers from Mexico. Tía Irma wrote:

Tata first arrived in California in 1943. In Mexico he had been buying and selling “bracero passes.” The process of applying and receiving a pass was so long that many applicants changed their minds buy time the passes were granted. Tata bought the passes and sold them to newcomers to the city for a quick transaction. One such pass was about to expire at the end of April so Tata use the pass to come to California (under another name). He once described the train ride to northern Ca and one job in Corning where he bunked in a boarding house with a cook from Oklahoma. He traveled from town to town following the harvest.

He picked fruit and harvested almonds. He often mentioned places like Red Bluff, Tipton and being told that if California was invaded he would have to defend the women and children. He once told a story of visiting a POW camp and striking up a conversation with a prisoner who asked for tobacco.

Eventually he came to Pasadena area where there were many citrus packing warehouses surrounded by orange groves. He worked in the fields during the day in Pasadena and washing dishes in a restaurant at night — -where he first met Mama — around 1947.

I cannot imagine that my grandfather ever ate a deep-fried tortilla, molded into a bowl and dumped full of ground beef, shredded iceberg, and grated cheese preserved with powdered cellulose. But I could be wrong! I’m just glad he made it here and had my mother so that I could be brought into a world where Donald Trump could run for President of the United States of America and I could exchange emails with my family about it. Tía Irma added:

Oh I also recall that Tata told me that the request for farm workers was also answered by American men, but they did not last even one day as farm work was much to hard. I did not believe him until one day in 1990’s I overhear several older men describing how they had enlisted in the 1940’s the day after walking off the fields.

Donald Trump wants to build a wall to keep people like my grandfather out of this country so he can eat his taco bowls in peace. But who does he think picked all the lettuces?

Photo: Gonzalez Family