On a hot summer day, sometime in June 1973, I was picking peaches at Mr. Oliver Bowman’s ranch near Modesto. I had been picking all morning, and I felt tired and physically exhausted. I was dehydrated. I started throwing up and felt like passing out.

I sat down for a bit when my father happened to glance at me. He came over and berated me, saying not to be lazy, to get up and act like a man. I must have been 12-years-old.

From an early age, I worked.

I did not mind working hard. I had a strong and positive attitude toward whatever life threw at me. The way I saw it, working and carrying that weight — peaches or other fruit — up and down the ladder was good exercise. It made my legs stronger, and it made me stronger.

Plus, when the day ended, we got to swim in the irrigating canal, which was big and refreshing. I loved swimming. That was also our bath because at that time, we were living, sleeping and eating in the storage barn, along with the rats, right next to the fertilizer that was used on the crops we were picking.

Like I said, it made me stronger.

Shining shoes in Ensenada

I started working when I was a young boy in Ensenada, Baja California. I worked as a shoeshine boy to help my family, which was poor.

I was around 7-years-old. I worked with my older brother Salvador; he was around 10, and I became his trainee. Sal taught me how to work and took care of me in the absence of a father figure, since my dad was working in the U.S. My mom had joined him there, along with our baby brother and sister, while the older siblings — my sisters Olga and Eva, brothers Sal and Armando, and me — stayed in Mexico with our grandmother.

The author, second from left, with siblings in Ensenada. Left to right: Eva, Arnulfo, Alfredo, Martha, and Armando.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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My father used to send money home all the time, but it wasn’t enough for our large family. Back then, it was Sal and me against the world, watching each other’s backs, shoe shining, selling gum, newspaper, handcrafts, fruit from door to door, even washing and waxing cars.

Weeknights, after school, and on weekends, we would hit the town to work.

Sal and I would go to the Malecon, the fishermen’s landing, and offer our services to the gringo tourists coming back from a long day at sea, helping them carry their fish, ice boxes, and fishing rods.

I could say, with a strong accent, “Can I help you?” and “thank you” and a couple of other English words. They would give us a couple of quarters, a buck or two if we were lucky. On one occasion, someone gave me a $20 bill. The word spread among the rest of the kids doing the same odd jobs, and soon I had a line of kids wanting me to teach them English — which I did, as much as I could.

We used to dive between the boardwalk and a floating restaurant called the Kon-Tiki. There was a small arched bridge where the tourists would cross, and they would throw us coins. We dove for them, retrieved them, and the crowd would cheer us on. More coins would follow. It was just a couple of us kids, and we would end up with a pocket full of coins.

My siblings and I would help Olga, the eldest, make empanadas and popcorn that Sal and I sold at night at the local baseball stadium, a few blocks from the house. Olga gave us a cut of the profit. My sister was like a second mother, who along with my Grandma Casimira, helped raise my siblings and me until she turned 16 and left home for the U.S.

Luckily by then, Olga had taught us how to live and work in any place with whatever resources we had. She was a resourceful young woman who presented a strong role model for what someone could accomplish. Both she and Sal were very influential in my upbringing.

Up to L.A.

Around 1969 or 1970, my father decided to bring the rest of us to the U.S. Sal worked out a deal with a teacher at a school that organized humanitarian school trips to Disneyland; included on this trip were Sal, my sister Eva, and me. We came to the states via Disneyland and remained in Long Beach, where my parents were living.

I remember upon our arrival we were not allowed to go outside or sometimes even look through the window curtains for fear of “La Migra.” I was around 11 then. During the day, I attended Garfield Elementary School. Some evenings, my father would take us all to work.

The author as a boy in Long Beach, back to visit after he and his dad left to go north to the fields.

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He was working at a potato processing plant called Joy Potatoes, and he had a contract to clean the plant after hours. Most times, the employees would complete the orders at night or in the wee hours of the morning, then we would help him clean. After three to four hours of work at the potato plant, I would not go to school that day.

We moved to Paramount for a while, then to L.A., where we lived close to downtown, near 2nd Street and the 110 Freeway. When I was around 12, I was robbed while going to the grocery store, by local gang members. They continued to harass me afterward. Little did my father know the trouble he saved me from when he and I left for Modesto and the fields.

Learning business in the fields

There was no real time for school in Modesto. “School is for pot smokers and worthless lazy people, you have to learn to work to become a real man,” my father would tell me.

My father’s first journey to the U.S had been to Texas when he was 11 or 12, after which he ran away from home and went back to Mexico. The next time, he came back as an adult under the Bracero labor program. He kept coming back until one day he stayed.

I learned a lot about business from my father. He was an unlicensed farm labor contractor, doing business in whatever field work was available throughout the year, in whatever town, all around California.

He used to rely on me to translate for him, and from this, I learned how he negotiated his contracts. Little did I know that through this, along with the shoe shining, cleaning and washing cars, and selling knick knacks at an early age, I would learn about work, responsibility, and the art of negotiation, skills that would last me a lifetime.

The author circa 1975 at 14. His dad, a farm labor contractor, occasionally bought and sold cattle that the author helped raise.

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For five years, we picked just about any fruit or vegetable that was grown in California, from Porterville to Ukiah, living around Fresno, Clovis and Selma. While picking grapes, we met Cesar Chavez and joined the farmworkers union. We joined the boycott for the causa, went on marches and attended conventions. I remember seeing some ranchers pointing shotguns at the workers marching to intimidate us.

During that period I must have gone to well over 10 to 12 different schools, whenever I had the chance, as we migrated to wherever there was work.

At one point, my dad ran boarding houses for field workers in the San Joaquin Valley towns of Exeter and Farmersville. He provided them with jobs and rides to and from work, along with room and board. My mother and siblings had joined us by then. We would get up around 5 a.m. to make flour dough, and then hand-made tortillas, so we could make lunch burritos for the workers. Then we would come home after a hard day’s work and make dinner for as many as 20 workers, depending on the season.

I have vivid memories of some of the migrant camps we lived in, on the outskirts of towns like Parlier, in Fresno County, and San Juan Bautista, east of Monterey Bay. We lived with migrant families from Mexico, Texas and California, people like us, who chased work throughout the West.

The summer that changed everything

In the summer of 1976, when I was in the 8th grade in San Juan Bautista and already 15, I was invited through my school to participate in something called the Migrant Education Program. My parents agreed to let me attend.

The author's Stanford student identification card from when he attended the Migrant Education Program there.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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It was a pilot program for around 50 migrant students from all over California to attend a summer session at Stanford University. Most of us were Latino boys and girls between 13 and 18, along with three Portuguese kids and a Filipino student. A goal of the program was for us to get a feel for university life.

At that time, in the mid-1970s, the school dropout rate was excessively high among Mexican Americans — and especially among migrant students.

The experience at Stanford was eye-opening for me. We took classes in Mexican American studies and culture, art, drama, and music, along with academics. We took field trips, one of which influenced me the most: We went to NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where we saw an early model of the Space Shuttle being tested in a wind tunnel. I was fascinated by the idea of flight, especially to outer space.

The author when he attended the summer program for migrant worker kids at Stanford University.

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This was the first time I did not work the whole summer in the fields. Attending Stanford that summer changed something in me.

Onward and upward

The experience sparked my desire for higher education, and pushed me to continue my high school education so I could get there. It was not going to be easy, having missed so much school with all the moving and migrating. But I was determined.

Starting at 16, I spent two years at San Benito (now Hollister) High School, where I completed my freshman and sophomore years.

The author, bottom row, far right, with members of the Club Estudiantil at San Benito High. His brother, Sal, bottom row second from left, was club president. Several club members also attended the Stanford summer program.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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From there we moved back to Long Beach. I was already 18 then, so I went to night school at Wilson High School for my GED. I started a full-time job as a mechanic at the Neill Aircraft Company in Long Beach. I was working toward my dreams.

After graduating from night school with my GED, I attended Long Beach City College, where I studied mechanical and aerospace engineering.

It was 1979 when I started working at Neill as a sheet metal mechanic. Meanwhile, in school I learned basics like drafting, tool and die design, and engineering. Eventually, I worked my way up to the office. Then in 1982, I was hired — then right away fired — by McDonnell Douglas Corporation in Long Beach, let go once they found out I was not a U.S. citizen. Immediately, I went to downtown L.A. and began the process of eventually becoming one.

Over the years, at Neill and other companies, I had the opportunity to work as an engineer on important contracts, including newly developed fighter planes, the International Space Station, and even the Space Shuttle.

The author, center, with brother Armando and nephew Ismael, circa 2006 shortly after founding his aerospace company.

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All the experience I gathered through the years eventually put me in a position where I could start my own company — in Long Beach, where I had my humble beginnings as a newcomer to the States.

After an aerospace career that has spanned 44 years, I still own and operate my own company, A&A Aerospace, Inc., which makes airplane parts for commercial aircraft.

The author in the photo at left; the clipping is from a 2014 Long Beach Business Journal article featuring his company.

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Mine is a story of success despite adversity. The young shoeshine boy who went north to toil in the fields of California made it, and he did so by believing and investing in himself.