Celebrating 100 Years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009 Page: 24
xi, 420 p. : col. ill.View a full description of this book.
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24 WHAT'S THE POINT? WHY THE FOLK COME IN THE FIRST PLACE
acknowledge in her history lessons that the Mexican government
needed reform, the stories of Villa's ruthlessness made him any-
thing but a hero.
Even if my mother's opinion of Villa was one of contempt, she
didn't discount the idea that the scoundrel might indeed have left a
path of buried treasure from Camargo to Juirez. And since my child-
hood house sat on the old river bed, a stone's throw from the Rio
Grande, when ghosts showed up, she listened. My Mamacita heard
the first one, and after one spooky, sleepless night made us take her
back home. She described the spine-chilling "scratch-scratch" noises
coming from the ceiling, all night long-"scratch-scratch, whimper-
whimper, whoo-whooooo." It not only gave her a restless night but
scared her no end. She announced in no uncertain terms that that
would be her last visit if my mother didn't get rid of the night visitor.
My sensible mother set herself up where my grandmother had slept,
and sure enough, there were noises. So, first thing in the morning she
got on a ladder, flashlight in hand, and found a spot where she could
look into the space between the roof and the ceiling. She found her
ghosts-in broad daylight. One pigeon flew in her face and nearly
toppled her off the ladder. She left it to my father to finish the ghost-
busting, and we had squab stew for several days after.
The second ghost was the soft-shoe-step variety, the kind who
obviously wanted my mother to follow him somewhere, to show
her something. It was only a four-room house, so she didn't have
far to go. "Shuffle, shuffle, creak" this noisemaker went, all in the
direction of the hearth that was the base for a once-operating
fireplace. My mother was used to doing all the house repairs her-
self, so she cracked open the concrete, dug in and around, and
after a few days cemented the space back in after finding nothing.
You'd think the ghost would've been satisfied, or at least given
her better directions. After putting her through all the work with
no reward, the ghost took leave of our house, but didn't stay
gone for long. The first night it was back, my mother got up
from a sound sleep, looked up the chimney, told him in her most
authoritarian schoolteacher voice, index finger motioning for
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Texas Folklore Society. Celebrating 100 Years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009, book, December 15, 2009; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271470/m1/37/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.