Juanita and Marie do the town in their war days in LA.
Building a family tree is a lot like baking. Shaking, sifting, combining bits of information. Facts, names, times, places come together and if you are skilled enough .... or just lucky. Eventually the family history transforms from half baked conjecture to a solid story.
Sometime in the 1980's Linda sat down with mom, aka Marie Maltos Allison and took notes on what she knew about her family. Truth was, she didn't know much.
"I don't know. We just didn't talk about this", was her usual reply to my questions.
A decade or two later I ran across those notes, long after mom had departed this world. The notes were a messy lot. There were also a couple of sketches of family trees... as far as she knew.
I looked at them again.
Surprise!
The word "Mazatlan" stared back from my tree sketch.
Mom must have mentioned Mazatlan this in a conversation about her kin. It was my handwriting. I wrote it. I did not remember her mentioning Mazatlan. Ever. But there it was, her words, my writing.
Marie was not a world traveler. Her only trip to Mexico I knew about was to Tijuana in the 1940's. The names of exotic destinations did not roll off her tongue. Looking back, I am surprised she even knew the name of this west coast Mexican port town.
Mazatlan.
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