My Uncle Rubens House :: Personal Narrative Writing

My Uncle Ruben's House Most people can’t locate Galveston, Texas, on a map, and those who can think of a dirty beach and Dr. Pepper’s national headquarters. You could ask a thousand people, and almost none of them would be able to find something special about G-Town, but I can. Galveston is the home of 156 of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. There was a rumor going around G-town that everyone with a Mexican background was related to the Moreno’s. I spent three weeks every summer, along with Christmas and spring break, at my Uncle Ruben’s house in Galveston. I heard stories all the time about the first encounter I had with him and his house. I was 18 months old when I took my first trip out of New York. As soon as I stepped in the door of my uncle’s two-story home, covered by chipped green paint, my mother’s eight sisters surrounded me, along with her mother, her 18 first cousins, 10 second cousins, and her two aunts, and the most important man in her life, her uncle Ruben. He was the first person to hold me, and legend has it that he nicknamed me Seesaw because my head was huge and it would make me sway left to right, causing me to fall every so often. My Uncle Ruben spent 26 years working two full-time jobs. During the day he worked as a longshoreman, unloading heavy crates from the banana boats. At night he did maintenance work the local gas company. He supported 12 kids, eight of whom were his and the rest nephews and nieces, including my mother. My uncle used to say that it didn’t matter if you were his daughter, his cousin, or his niece, if you were family it was all the same. My uncle’s house sits on the edge of a working-class Mexican neighborhood six blocks away from the beach. In Galveston, the economic differences from neighborhood to neighborhood are extreme. On one side of the island there are huge Victorian mansions separated by big green lawns and perfectly paved driveways. My uncle’s house is not one of those houses; it is marked by a chained-link fence and a dried-out bed of flowers. When looking at the house from the outside, it is hard to tell what kind of family lives there. There are no flags hanging from the windows, but there are toys in the front yard.