[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] My mother nearly had a heart attack she said,
"Those are the prostitutes", and I said,
"That's what they said they were",
and she said,
"Don't wait on them anymore", and I said, "Why?"
I said, "Look, they're not any different.
They eat, they look clean."
I said they always clean up their table,
and all I have is just to pick up the dishes.
I said, "Why shouldn't I wait on them?"
I said, "They always give me good tips. "
I said, "I'm going to wait on them."
My mom went and told my aunt,
"She's waiting on the prostitutes," and my aunt said,
"Well somebody has to Rebecca."
I guess that put my mother off.
On Fridays, my mother would come in
because she liked their catfish,
they'd have catfish, 35 cents a plate.
Those ladies would come in for catfish too.
One time they sat right behind my mother.
My mother was eating her fish and then these real loud,
because they were real loud, they were laughing.
My mother turned around and she saw me waiting on them,
and afterwards, she says, "Is that them?"
I said, "Yeah". She says, "Oh,
well, how much tips did they give you today?"
I said, "Two dollars."
I said their bill was three dollars,
but they gave me
two dollars and they said, "Keep the change."
They gave me a five. "They gave
you that much? " I said "Yeah."
So I continued that relationship with them
up almost until I left Corpus Christi,
because I was going to come to Austin for UT.
On the last day that I was working,
they knew and they came all of
them and they gave me a $100 bill.
Now, $100 bill is a pretty big deal in 1972.
I was glad to take it, and it was a gift.
Actually, a couple of them gave me
a little envelope with a few more dollars.
I got about $150 from them that day.
I remember when I spent the money,
I said to somebody, I said this
is the money the prostitutes gave me,
my friend says "What?
Do you have friends that are prostitutes?"
I said, "Well,
I mean, they were customers."
I said, "I liked them. They were nice to me."
I said, "I would think that if I ever ran for something,
they would vote for me because I wasn't bad to them."
My friend would just laugh she says,
"Well you don't live in Corpus Christi anymore so they
can't vote for you," and I said, "True."
But my life at Del Mar,
I had some interesting.
I was part of speech and drama.
I'm a drama queen, I always liked that.
I'd been in journalism in high school.
I love journalism, but I was supposed to be an attorney,
but I love journalism too,
and I love speech and drama.
I was an artist from the time I was in elementary school,
but in my head I said,
"I'm not going to make any money being an artist.
I'm just going to buy my artwork."
I push that off to the side, until today,
now that I'm free and clear,
I double in art and stuff like that.
I had one other experiences worth telling.
While I was at Del Mar,
I also took a job at the petroleum club.
It was a very exclusive club,
just by the nature of what it is a petroleum club.
I was the person that when you walked into
the restaurant and said,
good evening, do you have a reservation,
and everybody had to pretty much have a reservation.
All kinds of people came in there, very wealthy,
politicians, everybody came in there, mostly White.
I might have seen Hispanics there,
I just don't remember it
enough for it to stay in my mind.
Primarily White men,
and that was interesting for two reasons.
One is I met
Sally Rand and you
probably have no idea who Sally Rand is,
I didn't know who she was.
She was like 70-something when I met her.
She was a fan dancer,
a very famous fan dancer.
Fan dancers would wear,
they looked like they were nude and I
think at one time they probably were,
but they had these huge fans
and they knew how to move them
around where you'd almost see something but you didn't,
and she was a very famous one.
When she came to town,
the clubs sold out the two nights that she was there,
people from all over the place in the county
came. I got to meet her.
She was this little teeny, tiny woman.
Until recently, I hadn't seen anything else
about her until I was up in Cheyenne,
Wyoming; I was up there recently about two years ago.
In the cowboy museum,
there was all kinds of pictures of Sally Rand.
She was apparently very popular at the rodeo.
I talked to somebody there,
an older person that was there.
I said, "Did you ever see Sally Rand here?"
she said "Yes, she was very young though."
The girl says, "No, I didn't, but my mother did."
That's how the story went. I said, "Well,
I got to meet her in person when she was
like 70-something years old."
That was a famous person I met one time,
but the other thing that I experienced there was
on a Sunday afternoon.
I had left my backpack,
for some reason I forgot
my backpack on Friday night
or Saturday night I don't remember which one.
This was a Sunday, and there was a back entrance.
So I'd come in the back entrance which lead you
behind the grand hall because they had a grand hall.
There was a big mirrored wall,
where you can see through the glass.
As I was walking through it
suddenly made me look to the right because there
was a meeting going on and everybody was
wearing white gowns with pointed hats.
I thought to myself, "Is that the Klan?"
I looked again, I had only
heard about the Klan on television.
About them killing Black people and burning
churches and I knew that much.
I had to look again,
and then I just stood there in horror.
Then I started getting creepy feelings and I thought,
"Oh my God, they're meeting at
the petroleum club on a Sunday."
They were talking. Well,
I freaked and I kept on going behind there,
get to the kitchen to get to where my bag was,
and the chef caught me,
the cook, the chef.
He was a Black man. "What are you doing here?"
I said, "I forgot my backpack, so I came to get it."
I had my own key. I said,
"I forgot my backpack. I came to get it."
He said, "You're never
supposed to come here on a Sunday, ever."
I said, "Well,
I know I'm not supposed to come on Sunday,
because we're not open on Sunday."
He says, "Well,
we're not open today either."
I said, "I,
Jesus, don't even say it."
He said, "Get your backpack."
He followed me and we went and got my backpack.
He said, "Get your backpack and get out of here."
So I turned around and I said, "Why are you here?
You're Black. They don't like Black people."
Isn't it dangerous for you?
(laughing) He looked at me, he says,
"I might be black,
but those people like my cooking.
I'm here to cook their meals."
I just casually turned around and I said, "Well,
you should throw some poison
in there," and I kept on (noise) going.
He just looked at me (laughing) and he says,
and don't ever mention that you were
here or tell anybody what you saw.
I said, "Yeah, sure," and I left.
(noise) Of course, I never kept it.
I didn't call a Caller-Times and say,
"Do you know the clan meets at the petroleum club?"
That was 1971 or '72 when that happened.
What would they have done about it?
I don't know.
Who were those people? I can't tell you.
But I would say there was 75-80 people in that room.
I never forgot it.
I never forgot that those people in
the white gowns and the white hats did really exist.
I really didn't have any issues
(noise) with the clan again
until I was working for Ask Me in Louisiana,
and it's a whole different story. It wasn't a bad one.
[Steve Arionus] Before moving from Corpus to Austin,
I want to ask you a couple of things about Corpus.
While you were attending
Del Mar College and maybe when you were in high school,
those were the years when several
Chicano student organizations we're starting.
Were they active in your schools
and were you aware of them? (noise)
[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] I would hear about it because
it was going on in California.
It was going on in New Mexico.
It was going on everywhere except Corpus Christi, Texas.
There wasn't even a mile or a matcha
or anything at our campus anyway.
If there were people who were
activists in it, I wouldn't know.
I was pretty middle-class,
or pretty lower middle-class.
I knew right from wrong.
The main thing I knew about was LULAC.
I knew that LULAC existed
and I knew because they were always on TV,
GI Forum about the veterans.
They were always on TV.
I knew that the Latino Americano, the Mexican-American,
the African-American, or the blacks,
I knew that we were
not the ruling class, let's put it that way.
I knew that we were mistreated.
I wasn't mistreated by anybody,
but I knew that we were.
When I would go to Woolworth.
I don't remember what their letters were, but Woolworth.
They used to exist all over the country.
There there was a sign that said,
bathroom only for whites.
I remember when I first saw it,
I thought well am white.
I didn't think twice, I used the bathroom,
(laughing) almost all Mexicanos did.
Then one day it hit me,
I mean black people.
Black people can't use this bathroom.
That was the only overt racist thing
I ever saw at a business.
But it wasn't until years later that I
realized that when I go into eat there,
because once in a while I eat there too.
I didn't just eat at crest,
the same lunch bar.
The blacks would stand.
In other words, I would go sit.
Never thought anything about it.
But the black people that ordered food would stand
behind us and order food and leave.
It wasn't until years
later that I started thinking about it.
Did I ever see a black person actually sit there?
As I got older, I started thinking
about it. I don't remember.
Actually, most of your older Mexican people,
they wouldn't sit either.
They would just order their food and leave.
Then I thought, man was I
Rosa Parks and didn't realize it?
I just sat right down and nobody said anything
or were we really considered white,
because we're not considered Afro American.
I thought they would say no, your white,
my birth certificates said white. I thought I was white.
I was just a different color of white.
Much been there.
(laughing) It's what I thought anyway.
But my dad, and I love him and everything,
but he was such a racist.
Oh my God. He hated black people.
Why? I never understood
what they could have taken from him,
but he just didn't.
I was the opposite. When I was at Del Mar,
my best friend was a black gay man that was 6'2",
and he drove a pink Eldorado.
Every once i a while when I tell John,
"Take me to my house." We'd get to the house.
He parked that big old pink (laughing)
convertible Eldorado in front, and he'd come in.
My mother just loved him to death.
My dad would get home and he wouldn't say anything.
He'd say, "Hello, young man," and
he'd go to his room or whatever,
but don't bring that man here.
I didn't care, I brought John over and John would say,
"I don't think your dad likes me."
I said, John, "You're bigger than
him. What do you care?"
I would deal with my dad's as a racial.
The thing about my house was that
my father was supposed to have been
half Comanche and on
his mother's side, Jewish and Mexican.
Jewish because, that would be
my great grandmother's lover was
a Jewish attorney that
did their papers to become citizens.
My grandmother was a product of that relationship.
She was half Jewish and half Mexican,
and then my dad, of course, was her son.
My dad was his darkest and he
was real dark red brown color,
black haired, black eyebrows and dark eyes.
Of course later in year he faded.
He used to say he faded.
But he had white blood even though you
didn't see it, it was there.
My mother was half Irish or maybe a fourth Irish,
depends on who's telling the story.
I had Jewish and I have Nwely blood,
they were McNwely originally.
Then Ellis Island story, they changed their name,
they took the Mc off and they were just
playing Nwely, N-W-E-L-Y.
I still am alive.
I'm of mixed blood.
But I can't verify
the Comanche because I never met my grandfather.
My father never met his father.
My grandmother refused to let them meet,
and so they didn't.
Since then, I'm still looking for him. I know he's dead.
But now I'm tracking him trying to find him.
I walked into a Cochise's tribal lands
about 20 years ago,
maybe a little more, and somebody yelled at me,
your cousins went to Albuquerque.
I looked around and I said I think they're talking to me.
I went up to them and I said, "Were you talking to me?"
She says, "Yeah, your cousins,
they said to tell you if you
came that they are in Albuquerque,
just go over to the trailer and the keys under the mat."
(laughing) I said,
"Look, I don't know who you're talking about.
I'm with this man here.
I've never been here before."
They said, "No, you have to be a Buddhist
and I am a Buddhist."
I looked at him, "I said, well I am a Buddhist."
They said, "Aren't
you the (inaudible)," and then he gave me the names.
I've already forgotten the names. I said, no.
They said, "Well, you have a doppelganger
and she's on this tribe.
She's a member of this tribe.
You should have your self checked."
Well, I have never done it.
I did finally have a test.
I am 62 percent American Indigenous.
I have to take another test to find out what that means.
Nineteen percent part of the afro.
I forget how they name it.
That means that my origins come
out of the African nation,
but most of us with color do,
and 19 percent European,
that's probably the Jewish and the Irish blood.
But I'm having another test.