Mattos Maltos : Labels Make You Blind....

When the Boys in the Band photo arrived I had the odd sense I’d seen it before. I had. In fact, I owned it.  This picture had been sitting my bookshelf for years embedded in the pages of Cinnabar Hills, the Quicksilver Days of New Almaden   

I owned this book by coincidence. It was part of a collection that was assembled years ago by my designer husband William Wells. Before I knew him Bill had learned a lot about the mines at Almaden when he and his colleague, Claudia Jurmain, worked on a history exhibit proposal for the Quicksilver Mines of Almaden. Another odd coincidence as the threads of the past and interwove and tangled with the present. 

My copy of Cinnabar Hills was threadbare, tattered and missing chunks because Bill had removed photos. I went back, picked up the book and thumbed through it. Sure enough, there was my grandfather on page 105. Juan was there in the same photo Jim Riley had sent. I had looked at the photo before, but I had not SEEN it. 

I hadn’t seen it for two reasons. One I was not expecting to find Grandpa Juan sitting on my bookshelf. Juan was a miner's son, not a president, dignitary or outlaw. There was no reason to expect to find him in print.  The other reason was Juan Maltos was captioned Juan Mattos. I had missed him completely him because his name was misspelled.

I had believed the label and was blinded to the fact. 

Led astray by a label... How many times do we let this happen in life? Black, white, mulatto, natural, organic, 100 % double your money back, Good House Keeping Seal of Approval, pure bred, half breed, Mexican, Yankee, Californian, legitimate, illigetimate, native, male, Maltos, Maltos, Mattos, Malto, Malta, Maltoz, Matta. 

So today's lesson: Look past the labels to see the truth. 

Source: Cinnabar Hills, the Quicksilver Days of New Almaden, Milton Lanyon, Village Printers, 1968