VALDEZ: I was sixteen years old when I went and joined the Cs. Of course, I lied a little bit.

OFF SCREEN: I was going to say—were you supposed to be eighteen or were you supposed to be— VALDEZ: You were supposed to be eighteen, but I was born in '17, so I scratched the top of the seven and put a six, a little curl on the I was born in 1916, so I was eligible to join.

OFF SCREEN: Okay.

VALDEZ: I cheated a little bit.

OFF SCREEN: I'm sure you're not the only one that did that. It got you a start. That's good.

I guess your pay that you sent back home was real helpful?

VALDEZ: That's when they only paid five dollars in CCs, sent twenty-five home to help my family with food and stuff. Buy food anyway.

In them days, twenty-five dollars could buy a lot of food.

OFF SCREEN: So you were quite a hero in your family, I guess.

VALDEZ: Yeah. I was the oldest one of the family.

OFF SCREEN: So you were taking care of them but from another place.

VALDEZ: I put in about three and a half years, I guess, in the Cs.

I left when I was, I think, eighteen, and I didn't come back until I was twenty-one, back to San Antonio. I worked in California on the railroad.