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Remember when you made a personal discovery, one that set you on your life’s journey, filled with passion?

I’d like to think that many people have. But I suspect few have.

Enrique García Naranjo, a 20-year-old Pima Community College student, encountered his and has embarked on his road.

It was just a few years ago when García was a student at Pueblo Magnet High School that he connected with words. Poetry, to be precise.

He heard two local slam poets give a presentation after school and the power of their words, the images they created, and the rhythm and cadence, left García mesmerized.

“I want to do this,” he said while sitting at La Pilita, in Barrio El Hoyo on South Main Avenue, on Thursday.

Poetry, he discovered, possesses special powers.

“Youth individually feel like the world’s against them. But as a unit, like always, la comunidad, bringing youth together empowers them. They see that they are not alone,” he said.

The road that leads to words and writing is different for every writer. García began his with his family as they traveled across several states and into Mexico.

He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, where his Mexican-born parents had migrated to work. His parents came to the United States without legal permission. But his father, the son of a bracero worker, received legal residency under President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty program.

From Utah the family moved north to Idaho where there were fewer people who looked and talked like his family, which was one of the very few Mexican families.

But when he was 13, his family had to make a major move. They left for Juárez, México, where his mother could make her application for legal residency. Told there would be a long wait, García moved to Jalisco, the Mexican state where his parents were born and where the young García was a foreigner.

In school, García helped teach English while he improved his Spanish. He also saw the effect of global trade policies and practices that destroyed small Mexican farmers, forcing them to migrate north, like his family had done.

Within a year his mother received her residency card and the family came to Tucson in 2009. He enrolled at Pueblo and poetry came to him though the slam poetry of Sarah Gonzales and Logan Phillips, co-directors of Spoken Futures and organizers of the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam.

With poetry came political awareness. By the time García graduated in 2013, the state Legislature had banned Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District. He had become active in supporting the program, which was designed to provide critical thinking skills and to teach Chicano history and culture.

Now García is channeling his experiences and knowledge into poetry and acting.

Last month he played the role of “Poder” in “Más,” presented by Borderlands Theater. Written by Milta Ortiz and directed by Marc David Pinate, the play encompasses the development and demise of TUSD’s Mexican-American Studies. García played the roles of two male high school students with UNIDOS, the youth group that galvanized much of the public support for the program.

The play, he said, helped him heal from the pain of what he believes was the state’s abusive hand in eliminating Mexican American Studies, a program that resulted in higher academic progress for students.

“Our history in Tucson is full of hurt and pain. So this play reiterates that idea of resiliency and resistance,” said García.

He has performed successfully in slam poetry recitals, participated in the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival in New York City, and won the National Association for Bilingual Education Essay Award and La Zona de Promesa Promising Leader Award in 2013.

Last year he published a book, “Tortoise Boy Says,” a collection of poems about his familia, the barrios, immigration raids, summer rain.

He shares his poetry with other young people in after-school programs, hoping to inspire, as he was inspired at Pueblo when he sat in the classroom of former Mexican American Studies teacher Sally Rusk. He believes that through poetry young Chicanos and Chicanas can express their experiences, fill in the missing parts left out of the historical narrative and make profound personal changes.

Poetry has the power, he said.

“It can open them up to this universe of literacy achievement in our culture.”

Daniel Neyoy Ruiz, his wife and son are on the move.

The family, which had spent nearly a month in church sanctuary to protest a deportation order last year, is moving forward, on and up. The family is moving into a new home, Neyoy is working without the fear of being deported to Mexico and the family is looking ahead.

“It’s been better,” said 13-year-old Carlos Daniel Neyoy, the U.S.-born son of Daniel and his wife, Karla Stahlkopff. Lots better since the family walked out of the Southside Presbyterian Church and into a hopeful future. Daniel Neyoy Ruiz’s deportation stay was issued in June.

The eighth-grade student at Challenger Middle School was joyful when I met with him and his parents Thursday night in their new home near South 12th Avenue and West Elvira Street. Their lives have turned from uncertain to tranquil.

“We were in the shadows but when we came out, it gave us a chance to breathe,” Stahlkopff said in Spanish.

Now the Neyoy family wants the same for another Tucson family.

The family has joined with others to push the U.S. government to grant the family of Rosa Robles Loreto the same opportunity to move beyond fear. Robles Loreto, a wife and mother, has been in sanctuary at Southside since Aug. 7 last year, waiting, hoping and praying for a stay of deportation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Keep Tucson Together intends to widen the campaign to support Robles Loreto, using social media, hashtags #LetRosaStay, #KeepTucsonTogether, letter writing and good ol’ fashioned lawn signs with the words “We Stand With Rosa.”

The Neyoy family has been in near daily contact with Robles Loreto. They visit, talk by telephone or exchange spirit-lifting messages on Facebook.

“She’s been down sometimes, but she is a strong person,” said Daniel, who came with his wife to this country without authorization. They came to work and improve their lives.

While the Neyoy family was in sanctuary together, Robles Loreto’s husband and two sons visit her. And a large circle of support surrounds the Neyoy family and now Robles Loreto, said Daniel, 37, whose father is an evangelical preacher in Mexico.

Karla, 34, said that while in sanctuary, “Strangers, total strangers, gave us the feeling that we, too, have rights.”

Immigrant families, regardless of their legal status, have universal rights. The first one being keeping families together.

The push for a deportation stay for the Neyoy family, as well as the family of Francisco Perez Cordova, who was in sanctuary last year for 94 days at St. Francis in the Foothills United Methodist Church, transcends Tucson. It’s a movement in support of millions of immigrant families across the country, who face the prospect of deportation or who have already been deported and separated.

Neyoy struggled to maintain his family together after he was stopped in 2011 by an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer. Daniel’s vehicle was emitting smoke. He was turned over to ICE. His story is typical of too many other undocumented immigrants who are detained by local and state police officers on minor vehicle violations and then, when they can’t prove their legal status, are turned over to immigration officers.

The family remained steadfast. The family did not bend. The family sacrificed.

“The value of the family is universal,” said Karla.

The future is clearer. Daniel is working and paying taxes. Still he has to renew his stay of deportation. If his stay becomes permanent, Daniel and Karla can apply for residency and eventual citizenship when Carlos turns 21. By then Carlos said he expects to be in college, preferably in California.

Even if a second deportation order were to stun the family, Carlos said he would gladly re-enter sanctuary with his parents.

“Me and my family think we should be together,” Carlos said. “As long as we’re together, we have a chance.”

When Mauricio Vergara was growing up in Tijuana, Mexico, he wanted to be a singer. He dreamed of being on the “American Idol” television program or on the same stage as a backup singer to pop star Britney Spears.

He didn’t reach those stages, but he made it to the stage as a performer anyway. Vergara is a professional dancer with Ballet Tucson.

“I feel like I am back home,” said the bilingual, 27-year-old Vergara, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico.

Tijuana’s loss became Tucson’s gain.

In September he joined the local ballet company after stints in Mexico City, Tijuana, San Diego, New York City and most recently in Montgomery, Alabama.

When his last company dissolved, Vergara went looking for a new home and auditioned in Los Angeles. As chance would have it, overseeing his audition was Mary Beth Cabana, the founder and artistic director of Ballet Tucson.

Vergara, with his radiant smile, beaming personality and upbeat presence, danced his way into her artistic heart.

“I just fell in love with this guy,” said Cabana at the busy ballet studio on South Tucson Boulevard. “I had to have him.”

Tucson, with its large and growing Latino population, and home to a large number of Latino artists, musicians and performers, is a match for Vergara. He is one of a growing number of professional Hispanic male ballet dancers across the country.

Cabana said the number of Hispanic men in ballet has grown in the past 20 years. Like Vergara, they come from abroad: Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, among other countries. While ballet does not have the cache in this country, Cabana said ballet “is understood and revered” in some Latin American countries “as an authentic art form.”

Vergara understands ballet’s lack of appeal among most people. Popular culture overwhelms ballet and the dance is seen as “outdated and boring.” Vergara strongly disagrees.

Ballet is an appealing art, graceful and athletic, visually stunning. And today’s ballet, while based on classical technique, is wide ranging and eclectic, Cabana said. “We have to do everything,” she added.

Vergara realized ballet’s allure and power when he was approaching 17. He had been dancing hip-hop and singing pop songs.

A dance teacher suggested Vergara take ballet lessons to learn the basics. Vergara, who had not been exposed to ballet, initially balked but followed the advice.

It wasn’t long before Vergara experienced a visceral transformation. He emotionally and physically connected with ballet. He discovered the beauty in its movements. He found resonance in its fluidity. More important he discovered himself.

“I felt alive,” said Vergara. He blossomed, he added, using the Spanish word brotó.

Unfortunately his parents didn’t share his new-found enthusiasm. His father, a doctor, and mother did not see ballet as a potential career for their teenage son. Neither could they envision their son, in tights, jumping, twirling, and holding and lifting ballerinas.

Despite their opposition, Vergara turned his full attention to ballet. He practiced and practiced and practiced. He developed discipline and devotion. While he discovered his passion, Vergara believed that he was arriving late to the rigorous life of a ballet dancer.

Still, without his parents’ blessing, he persevered. “I wanted to dedicate myself,” he said.

When he was 20 years old, Vergara earned his first contract with California Ballet in San Diego, his birth city. Just as important, his divorced parents saw him dance. His father saw him in “The Nutcracker” in San Diego and his mother saw him dance perform in Tijuana the grand pas de deux in the second act of “Swan Lake.”

His mother cried. His father fought the tears. He had gained their support.

Vergara joined Ballet Tucson at a good time. The company is nearing its 30th anniversary. Cabana has plans for wider dance programs, including more Latino themes. She said Vergara’s future is bright and unlimited because “he’s hungry for it.”

His hunger for ballet is clear as he waxes about the dance and his dreams. He wants the lead role in “Giselle,” the mid-19th century French classic. He wants to perform on the stages of Radio City Music Hall in New York City and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

And he wants to mentor future male ballet dancers, and serve as a role model. Vergara wants to tell them dancing ballet beats standing behind Britney Spears any day.

On this Easter Sunday, this day of renewed hope and life, the family of Marta Ureña will attend Catholic Mass to give thanks and pray.

The family will pray for Alberto Ureña, Marta’s husband and father to their children, Ana, Nora and Oscar. They will recall his love and joy, which they have missed since his death nearly 15 years ago.

In their prayers they will give thanks to God, because it was their faith that sustained them in the years since Alberto’s sudden death, which for a brief period, left the family unsettled. They will swell with thoughts of gratitude for the friends who assisted them through that period when uncertainty compounded their grief.

And they will again, as they have so often, silently pray for the unknown angel, who after Alberto’s death, gave Marta and her children a home.

I first met Marta in the summer of 2000, the month after Alberto died of a heart attack at the age of 39. Through Habitat for Humanity and its volunteers, the Ureñas were building a three-bedroom house in the “A” Mountain neighborhood. Alberto and Marta had invested 375 hours of “sweat equity” when he died.

However, when Alberto died, so did the prospect of owning a new home. Marta was undocumented and could not legally work. Habitat feared she would not be able to make the monthly payments.

I wrote about the Ureña family’s disappearing dream that July.

Then the Ureñas’ angel came forward. The donor paid the $60,000 mortgage.

To this day, the Ureñas do not know the donor’s name. The Tucson woman asked to remain anonymous.

But the donor’s generosity afforded the Ureñas more than a home. She gave Marta and her three children an optimistic foothold toward stability. She gave them the confidence that they could take advantage of the goodwill and opportunities.

They have.

Next month, Ana Ureña, 22, will graduate from the University of Arizona. The Mexican-American studies major, who earned a full-ride college scholarship, hopes to enter nursing college or maybe become a doctor.

Through Ana, who is a U.S. citizen, her mother initiated the process of acquiring legal residency. Last New Year’s Eve, Marta’s work permit was approved, and this year she expects to receive her legal resident card.

Dec. 31 was a tearful, celebratory night for the Ureñas.

“We were all crying because we were so happy,” said Nora, 20, the youngest of the three children.

While the angel donor gave the Ureña family some footing, Marta has worked hard to keep the home. In the years after her husband’s death, she cleaned homes, made tamales, and cooked other foods to earn income. She paid the property taxes and insurance on the house.

She also kept her children focused on their education. All three graduated from Cholla High School, a few blocks from their home. Oscar and Nora have taken classes at Pima Community College. Their mother wants them to continue.

“My parents always told us we had to do better than they did,” said Ana, who was 7 years old when her dad died. “Education is the only way to get out.”

Along the family’s journey, a small circle of support has buoyed the Ureñas. Habitat volunteers continued to pitch in even after the house was blessed by a priest.

Other volunteers came from Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church, where the Ureñas worship.

Church friends drove Marta to work when public transportation was not an option, and drove the children to religious education classes.

Ken Moreland, a deacon at Most Holy Trinity, said that because of the Ureñas’ strong faith and commitment, “they didn’t see obstacles.”

“They always looked at everything they had as a blessing from God,” said Moreland, who, along with his wife, Linda, has consistently been at the Ureñas’ side.

Also at the family’s side is Alberto. The husband and father is never far. His wedding day photo hangs on the living room wall. There are other photos of him in the house.

Tears flowed when Marta and her children talked about his spirit and cheerfulness.

“He would be proud of me for helping mom with the bills,” said 21-year-old Oscar, who cherishes the memories of the son and father weekend “man trips.”

On this day, as every day, the Ureñas will resurrect thoughts and images of a husband and father, and assure him that they are strong and moving forward.

Mom, you lucky gal, happy Mother’s Day. Sunday we celebrate our mothers, whether they are with us or not.

Julieta Bustamante Portillo turned 80 last month and fortunately for her, being the proud Mexican-American mujer that she is, can also celebrate Día de las Madres, which is observed in Mexico on May 10.

Most mothers are special. Mine is very special.

Julie B., as we call her, was born in Tucson, in the old Storks Nest, a birthing center downtown on North Court Avenue at the corner of West Council Street. The building is still there and houses a hydrogeological consulting firm.

Mom has never let me and my siblings — Carmen, Mario and Carlos — forget where she was born. In fact, mom reminds us constantly of the Tucson she knew and loved as a child before World War II and as a teenager in the postwar years.

That Julie B. loves Tucson is an understatement. She’s a one-person chamber of commerce. She’s Tucson’s unofficial No. 1 cheerleader waving University of Arizona red and blue pompoms. She is Tucson.

Her boundaries, however, go further than the mountains and desert surrounding her birth town. They extend south into Mexico, where my grandparents, Carmen Macias and Miguel Bustamante, and my father, Ernesto Portillo Sr., were born. And her roots branch out to Los Angeles, where my grandmother’s family, like thousands of other Mexican families, settled after they fled Mexico’s turbulent political and social unrest that persisted after the 1910 revolution.

But the Old Pueblo was and continues to be Julie B.’s center of the universe. She filled us with stories of her blissful childhood:

The kids and teachers at Safford elementary and junior high schools, and mighty Tucson High. Watching cartoons and cowboy serials at the Mickey Mouse Club on Saturday mornings at the Fox Theatre. Craning her neck from outside my grandparents’ second-story apartment to listen to what was being presented on the stage next door at the Temple of Music and Art on South Scott Avenue. Walking downtown with her older sister Alva.

While she relishes her memories, madre’s love for Tucson is not simply based on nostalgia. It’s always been about its people, friends or strangers.

Mom liberated herself in the 1960s by going to work. One of her first jobs was as a teachers aide at Mission View Elementary School in South Tucson.

It was the dawn of bilingual education and mom was all in, helping the students and their parents, some of whom were immigrants.

She left Mission View, with her commitment intact, to serve as the office manager at Pueblo Gardens Elementary School near South Campbell and East 36th Street. She later worked in the district’s human resources office.

Public education was paramount for her. I can still hear her berate Tucson voters who turned down school bond proposals.

Later she moved over to the Arizona Daily Star, where she spent more than 17 years as the administrative assistant to the publisher and editors.

She was a news junkie and was in heaven in the busy, energetic newsroom. Every person at the Daily Star was her daughter or son, and she called them mija and mijo.

In her capacity, she connected nonprofit organizations with the Star. She would do what she could to assist groups in the arts, education and child development.

And when she couldn’t help give away the Star’s money, she made sure to contribute what she and my father could afford to community groups. She would say that philanthropy is our duty, regardless of the amount. And if we cannot give money, we have time to give.

These days Julie B., grandmother to four girls and two boys, spends much of her time with her new passion: quilting. She continues to get together with her girlfriends and remains active with Club Duette, a social group of women, many of whom mom grew up with in the days when it seemed that everyone knew each other.

My politically opinionated and liberal mom continues her love affair with the town that gave a beginning to her parents as well as to my father, who had a long career in Spanish-language radio. Her unabated attachment still is infectious and inspires my love for my Tucson.

Gracias, madre.

Tucson is one of the oldest communities in the country. Heck, people have lived in this desert valley of ours for more than 3,000 years. Probably longer than that.

Bet most Tucsonans don’t know this bit of trivia. It’s not taught.

Our long history surrounds us. History, the memories of the everyday lives of people who called Tucson their home, is a graveyard-dead subject to many. For others, it remains alive.

Last Saturday was one of those living days.

The day started by celebrating the valley’s agricultural past on a patch of the west bank of the Santa Cruz River. The nascent Mission Garden Project, on South Mission Road at the foot of Sentinel Peak, just north of West 22nd Street, is a re-creation of a colonial Spanish garden.

It was here where the first Spanish colonizers made contact with the Pimas who lived in small clusters along the life-giving river. The Spanish established Mission San Agustín at the base of “A” Mountain in the mid-1700s, before the founding of the Tucson presidio in 1775 across the river.

Inside the walled garden, the Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace honored our historical past by celebrating St. Isidore, the Catholic patron saint of farmers, whose feast day was May 15. But the Mission Garden is more than recognizing the Spanish and European aspects of our history. The fruit trees, some of which are heritage descendants brought by Jesuit explorer Eusebio Francisco Kino, also reflect our Native American, Chinese, African-American and Chicano heritage.

In a similar multlcultural celebration later that same day, I joined other Tucsonenses at the Sosa-Carrillo-Frémont House Museum on South Granada Avenue, on the grounds of the Tucson Convention Center. We were there to hear the oral histories of people who once lived in the downtown barrios, but whose lives and homes were razed to build the cold, brick complex in the late 1960s.

The stories of the elders were delivered by the voices of nine young students from the Trio Upward Bound Program at Pima Community College’s Desert Vista Campus: Idaena Castro, Monica Tan, Karelia Gil, Ruth Ballesteros-Saenz, Diana Vega, Haredo Mohamed, Mana Abdi, Batula Abdulkadir and Amina Shiwoko.

The students, Latinas, Asian and Muslim, recited monologues, shaped from interviews they conducted with the former residents of Viejo and El Hoyo barrios.

“Oral history has power,” said Milta Ortiz of Borderlands Theater, who taught the Pima class “Theatricalizing Oral Histories.”

While oral history, handed down generation by generation, possesses that power it acquires over time, it is absent from conventional historical conversation, Ortiz said. The oral history of Tucson’s ethnic minority communities was ignored, and only in recent years have there been attempts to document those stories.

“The monologues honor that history,” Ortiz added.

Much of the beauty of that afternoon in the backyard of the Sosa-Carrillo home, which was built in the 1870s, occupied for generations by Tucson families, and now managed by the Arizona Historical Society, was the diversity of faces of the students who presented the oral histories.

Four students were born in Africa. One student was the daughter of Cambodian refugees, and the four others were Chicanas whose roots extend south.

While their backgrounds varied, the students were united through their exploration of the history of people’s lives and their memories of their families, neighbors and businesses that formed la calle, a name some residents give the barrio. This experience piqued the students’ interest in exploring their families’ histories.

Ortiz said, “They really didn’t know each other or anything about Tucson, and this class brought them together, establishing new friends.”

These barrio stories did not end at the conclusion of the presentation. The monologues, which hopefully will include the voices of the Chinese and African-American residents who also lived in the barrios, will form the basis of a Borderlands Theater play next year.

That’s living and breathing history for Tucsonans to take and share, and to encourage others to discover theirs.

The halls were buzzing with young musicians and music at Davis Bilingual Magnet School. The mariachi summer camp was full on when Daniel Buckley walked into the classrooms.

Many of the students recognized him instantly, and some greeted “Mr. Buckley” warmly.

Buckley, a tall 62-year-old with a full white beard and white crop of hair, may not be your idea of a superstar. But to many of these budding mariachis — and to many older and accomplished mariachi musicians — Buckley rocks.

However, he doesn’t play the guitar, violin, trumpet, vihuela or guitarrón. He doesn’t sing or dance. Yet to many in Tucson’s wide mariachi and folklorico dance community, Buckley is the champion of mariachi music and culture.

“He’s like family,” said Jaciana Fimbres, a 17-year-old senior at Pueblo Magnet High School and a violinist with Pueblo’s Mariachi Aztlán who was tutoring at Davis last week. “He’s always around.”

For the past three years, Buckley, with his video and still cameras, has recorded hundreds of hours for his documentary film, “The Mariachi Miracle,” which he hopes to debut during next year’s Tucson International Mariachi Conference.

Buckley, who began exploring and writing about mariachi music more than 30 years ago, probably knows more about the music’s history and players than most mariachis. He likely has done more to promote the music, which is embedded in Tucson, than most people have. And if there are some who love mariachi music more than New York-born Buckley, it surely must be a very short line ahead of him.

“We need someone like Dan. If it wasn’t for Dan we would not be here right now,” said violin instructor and longtime mariachi David Gill at the Davis mariachi summer camp.

While the music’s roots are deep in Mexico, mariachi music in this country can trace its lineage to Tucson, the birthplace of the first mariachi youth group, the incubator of mariachi festivals and where mariachi curriculum was introduced into public schools.

The inclusion of mariachi programs in schools has led to lower drop-out rates among students and has propelled many high school graduates into college. Mariachi school programs, led by graduates of Tucson’s youth mariachi groups, can now be found in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere.

But Buckley’s mariachi chronicle is more than the story of youths performing on stage. The history of mariachi in Tucson is the history of desegregation, urban renewal and Chicano social and political changes, said Buckley, a former writer for the defunct Tucson Citizen.

“I have learned more than I could have ever imagined,” said Buckley, who was inducted into the Mariachi Hall of Fame in 2013 and was 2014 Artist of the Year at the Arizona Governor’s Arts Awards.

To complete his project, Buckley needs to raise some serious money, to go along with funding he has already received from the Tucson Pima Arts Council, the Southwestern Foundation, The Chann Foundation, Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, a 2012 Kickstarter campaign and money out of his own pocket.

Next Saturday, Buckley will be joined by some of his many mariachi and folklorico dance friends for a daylong fundraiser, from 2 p.m. to midnight, at El Casino Ballroom at 427 E. 26th Street.

Buckley plans to present his film at the Fox Tucson Theatre in April during the annual mariachi festival, in conjunction with a two-day national summit on mariachi education in collaboration with The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, Buckley said.

Linking the music to education is critical, he said. Musical excellence and classroom achievements are inseparable, he added. Many of the mariachi students Buckley has met over the years are now in college or have earned their degrees working as professionals.

“It’s just fantastic,” he said.

At our home the ol’ swamp box cooler is heaving and groaning, marking the arrival of the summer rains and raspados. As the chubasco clouds gather in white billowing towers, the cooler growls.

And with this comes a flood of memories of summers past when I was oblivious to the heat, in awe of the power of the rains and enchanted with the cacophony of the thunder.

As I was growing up on San Rafael Avenue, north of St. Mary’s Hospital, a wash ran behind the house. For most of the year it was dry and invited the neighborhood boys to explore, hide our treasures and re-enact the black and white war movies we watched on television. But during the monsoon season, the wash became our torrential river, full of fury, screaming danger.

When nighttime arrived and the thermometer seemed reasonable, the street became our playground until we drifted back to our homes on our own or at the call of our mothers.

Years later when the family moved to Armory Park, the old downtown library on South Sixth Avenue became my summer haunt. To escape triple-digit temperatures, I found the perfectly cool respite.

For many Tucsonenses, this is our season to enjoy and to remember.

Charlotte Leon Weakland remembers the summers of her youth with relish. Her family lived in an apartment on West Cushing Street, in the old downtown barrio now covered by the Tucson Convention Center. This was during World War II, in the days when there was no cooling for many Tucson families.

“We left the doors open, to the front and back,” she said. The night breeze would flow through the high-ceilinged apartment, cooling it off.

When there was no wind to chase away the heat, the family would sleep outside on a bed.

“Not even mosquitoes bothered us.”

As a child, Weakland loved Tucson’s summer nights, playing in the water-filled streets, walking to the old Cine Plaza on West Congress Street to see the Mexican movies and stage acts.

What Carmen Soto Sieger remembers the most about the summer was the scent.

“The smell of rain was greater then. We used to get that smell in the early afternoon,” she said.

Many older Tucsonans will tell you the same thing. The smell of the desert floor and the flora was more pronounced back in their day. There was more desert, and less concrete and asphalt than there is today.

The Soto family lived on the corner of South Fifth Avenue and West 25th Street. There was a screened porch where the family slept on hot nights.

“There was a big bed, and my mom and dad and me would climb in there,” she said. When it wasn’t raining they slept outside on cots.

While some of her neighbors fended off the summer heat by improvising, the Sotos had a swamp cooler.

“My dad was so proud when he got it,” she said.

But it required work. Her father wrapped the cooler in a burlap bag that had to be constantly soaked. If not, the cooler just blew hot air.

A special memory from those summer nights was hearing the older boys in the barrio strum the guitars and sing popular songs. They would gather on the corner or on empty lots.

Some of the boys, she added, would later ship off to war in Europe or the Pacific. A few did not return.

Tucson-born Mina Estevez Felix grew up in Southern California but spent her summers at her grandmother’s downtown home on West Council Street off of North Stone Avenue.

“It used to rain every afternoon. As soon as the rain would stop, my girlfriend and I would stand under the Chinaberry tree and shake it very hard. It would rain again,” she said.

They slept outside whenever they pleased and she especially loved to hear the pinging of the tin roof when rain pelted her nana’s house.

For Felix’s afternoon nap, her nana would have her sleep on a damp mat on the floor. The house had a swamp box that her grandmother tended to, making sure the straw mat did not dry out, Felix said.

“The heat wasn’t a big factor back then like it is today,” she said.

A summer treat was to drive out, slowly, to the Sabino Canyon area where small farmers grew produce. Felix especially loved the tomatoes.

“I didn’t care about anything else but the tomatoes.”

On Saturday afternoons, she and other kids would fill the Fox Tucson Theatre to watch cartoons and serials, and live acts and talent shows. It was the gathering of the Mickey Mouse Club.

“Everybody belonged to the club,” Felix remembered.

And everybody has a summertime of memories and experiences. It’s our special time in the desert.

You can excuse Lorenzo Torres if he seems a tad obsessive.

He gets up early every morning, makes a cup of joe and walks out into his backyard to say hello to his girls. He talks to them, feeds them and freshens up their water. He’ll let them out of their large enclosure to roam about his fallow garden.

Torres is crazy for his chickens.

“I always wanted chickens. Growing up in Mexico my grandmother raised chickens,” said Torres, a 52-year-old retired career U.S. airman.

Torres acquired his first three chickens from a neighbor in January. Now he has six: five Rhode Island reds and one white Leghorn. And if he has his way — which he probably will — Torres hopes to double his lovable flock.

He can’t stop talking about his girls and his family is amused.

His wife, Anita Torres, shrugs her shoulders. “These are his babies. I don’t deal with them.” His 14-year-old daughter, Lorenna Torres, a high school freshman, said, “I make fun of him.”

I feel him.

Since February I’ve gone chicken crazy, too. Like Torres and a growing cadre of urban chicken owners, I get up as the morning light arrives and I go outside to greet our four girls. They cluck and squawk in response. I give them clean water, scratch to eat and let them roam our backyard. Then it’s back to sleep.

Whether it’s to relive their childhood or engage in a more sustainable lifestyle or simply to have a new kind of pet, Tucsonans have gone hog wild over their chickens.

Alli Swanson knows the elation of having chickens.

“I wanted a third baby and didn’t think it could happen so I got chickens,” she told me over the phone.

That was late last year and, yes, after the chickens arrived so did her third child. She converted her garden shed into a coop where her five fluffy Silkies hold court.

She wanted chickens as pets and for eggs but they’ve become part of the family. The chickens are especially ideal for her two older children who have learned something about where their food comes from, Swanson added.

That’s one of the driving factors why city dwellers have turned to chickens and other fowls, said Megan Kimble, managing editor of Edible Baja Arizona, a Tucson magazine devoted to local culinary themes, and author of her just-released book, “Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food.”

“People are getting into chickens for the same reason they’re gardening. They want to reclaim food cultivation,” she said.

Kimble doesn’t see backyard chickens as a fad. If anything, the movement will grow, she said. It is also relatively easy. While some chicken coops are elaborate, a simple coop of recycled material and wire is all that is needed. That was our first coop.

Kimble said the increasing interest in urban hens is seen, for example, on social media. Local chicken and fowl owners have a Facebook page named Tucson CLUCKS.

“It’s a permanent change,” said Kimble.

With this change also comes changes in city regulations. The city is considering altering zoning regulations regarding small farm animals in residential areas. The city currently requires a 50-foot setback for coops and shelters. And no roosters are allowed within the city.

The reality is that if a neighbor were to complain about my chickens and a city inspector were to visit our backyard, the law is on their side, not mine. Some chicken owners have lost their birds this way.

We don’t intend to lose our chickens, however. We’re part of a growing movement of urban farming which will ensure that Tucson residents will be able to keep a reasonable number of birds in our yards. As it is, my chickens, which we named Valentina, América, Daisy and Tropic Thunder, are less of an annoyance than loud barking dogs and feral cats in my west-side neighborhood.

Beyond the question of zoning regulations, having backyard chickens is just plain ol’ fun.

The girls have personalities. They have their cute habits. Fluttering their wings, they run up to greet you. They gobble up bugs and they eat all the leafy scraps from the kitchen. They are cheap entertainment. They lay eggs, enough to share with family and friends.

Feel like taking a whack at Donald Trump?

If you do, Manuel Alvarez has something for you.

A Donald Trump piñata.

Alvarez, owner of Funland Express Party Rentals on West Irvington Road east of Interstate 19, has a 4-foot Trump piñata, replete with red tie, blue suit and a pompous pompadour. But it comes empty, like the real Trump, and candy to fill the void is extra.

“We have sold some,” said Alvarez.

Trump piñatas began popping up, not coincidentally, soon after his June 16 presidential candidacy announcement for the Republican Party.

In case you missed it, here’s part of what he said:

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” he said at the tower bearing his name in New York City.

Whack!

That was the sound of the many potential voters who took their swings at the man who wants to lead our diverse country.

But not Alvarez.

“I do not care about what he said,” Alvarez said, but he added that Trump’s slap against Mexican immigrants was disrespectful.

“What I care about is my business,” said Alvarez, a 42-year-old immigrant from Agua Prieta, Mexico, across the border from Douglas. Alvarez, who has been in Tucson for nearly 30 years, has owned his business for three years, has a son at Tucson Magnet High School and pays his taxes.

Alvarez said he doesn’t want to pass judgment on Trump. However, Alvarez is more than happy to sell his $45 Trump piñatas to people who do want to pass judgment on the leading GOP candidate, who has been sucking oxygen out of his rivals.

Mexican-Americans, and by extension Latinos, are not the only ones who are taking their turns at Trump, the candidate.

At Thursday night’s raucous Republican candidates’ debate — a record- breaking program for the Fox News Channel — Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly whacked Trump when she suggested he was not presidential timber because of his sexist remarks about women being “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”

Trump quipped, to applause from the audience, that he was referring only to television personality Rosie O’Donnell, but Kelly took another swing when she said, “Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees.”

Those thud sounds you hear are women and men across the fruited plain taking their turns at the Trump piñata.

Trump went into spin mode that he doesn’t have time to be politically correct and that is why the U.S. is in trouble and why this country is losing to China and — ta-da! — Mexico. You know he had to get in his dig at Mexico.

The non-contrite Trump, twisting like a piñata in the political wind, later complained to anyone who cared that Kelly was unfair to him.

At the opening bell, Kelly’s co-moderator, Bret Baier, asked the 10 candidates, “Who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican Party and pledge to not run an independent campaign?”

The human piñata raised his hand and the Republican faithful may start raising their hands to take their turns at the Trump piñata.

The billionaire real estate magnate, as an independent candidate with deep pockets who is attracting a populist, conservative following, could derail the candidacy of the eventual Republican nominee (say, Jeb Bush?).

As long as Trump remains a visible candidate, the line of people waiting to take their turns at the piñata will grow.

But for Alvarez, he’s not looking to sell many Trump piñatas. Among the large collection in his candy and raspado store, the Trump piñata is not his top seller.

Minnie and Mickey Mouse top Trump.

Agnes Uwamahoro has put in about half the sweat equity necessary to be eligible for a Habitat for Humanity home. She holds two caregiver jobs.

For several months, bewildered, scared and with thoughts of death, Agnes Uwamahoro walked across the harsh land from the Congo to Uganda. She and the other refugees with her walked blindly without water, without food.

When it rained, she turned her face upward and opened her mouth to absorb the precious drops.

“I could not even move,” Uwamahoro said.

She had lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa, for two years. She fled there in 1994 with her mother and four brothers from their native Rwanda, where genocide marked a brutal civil war during the early 1990s.

But in the Congo violence found them. Her mother and four brothers were killed there, forcing Uwamahoro, once again, to flee. In the following years she would be forced to find refuge in another country, and death would take another loved one from her.

Friday, surrounded by dozens of people sporting hammers and hard hats, I met Uwamahoro, 41. She also was wearing a hard hat. A carpenter’s cloth utility belt was wrapped around her waist.

She had taken a break from nailing together wood studs to frame a Habitat for Humanity house in Tucson.

Habitat for Humanity began erecting four homes in a Sunnyside neighborhood on Friday. It was Habitat’s annual Building Freedom Day to commemorate the U.S. loss of lives on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since 2002, more than 7,000 Tucson Habitat volunteers have gathered on this day of service.

“It’s really exciting we’re able to sustain this,” said T. VanHook, Habitat’s chief executive officer, speaking in the midst of the hammering and sawing in the Copper Vista II subdivision, near East Drexel Road and South Park Avenue.

Habitat, the first affiliate of the national group to locate west of the Mississippi River, is celebrating 35 years in Tucson. In that time it has built nearly 400 homes, VanHook said.

Families selected to become homeowners are required to contribute “sweat equity,” 250 hours in helping construct a Habitat home. Future homeowners are also required to make a down payment and take homeownership classes before they take on mortgage payments.

Uwamahoro, who has invested about half of her sweat equity, hopes that one of the four homes will be for her and her two young children.

“In my prayers I asked God to give me a stable place to live,” she said.

It was on Sept. 4, 2013, when Uwamahoro and her two children arrived in Tucson from Malawi, a small country in southeastern Africa. Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona, through its refugee resettlement program, relocated the family here, ending her 19 years of flight.

She and her children were refugees in Malawi, where she had no work permit, no legal rights. In Malawi they also were without a husband and father.

After Uwamahoro made her harrowing escape to Uganda, she continued on to neighboring Kenya in 2000. A year later, in Kenya, she married a refugee from Malawi. He worked for a United Nations’ refugee program in nearby Tanzania and they moved there.

Uwamahoro’s husband returned to Malawi to continue his work with refugees. A month after their son was born in January 2005, she made the three-day trip with their two tots to join her husband.

But when she arrived in Malawi’s capital city, her husband was dead. She said his death was suspicious. She didn’t know his cause of death. There was no investigation, no autopsy.

Again, Uwamahoro’s refugee life continued. She and the children lived a life of uncertainty in a camp. While in Malawi, she applied for relocation through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which helps resettle refugees from global conflicts, like the current crisis in Europe.

“I know how hard it is to lose a home and country,” she said.

After an eight-year wait, the U.N. agency approved her relocation to the United States. She and her children boarded an airplane and landed in Tucson. She had spent half of her life as a refugee.

Uwamahoro and her children live in Pio Decimo transitional housing, provided by Catholic Social Services, in Barrio Santa Rosa south of downtown. The children, now 12 and 10 years old, attend Safford K-8 and Drachman Montessori K-6 magnet schools. Their mother has two jobs as a caregiver and dreams of becoming a nurse.

Above all, she has faith in God after surviving her long and arduous ordeal. She laments the deaths of her family and husband, but she and the children have a future. They have something to hold on to.

“I do not have to lose hope,” Uwamahoro said.

Memory is a beautiful gift. It awakens images, events and words from our past, even if our memories are imperfect and our recollections are slightly altered.

It is still a worthwhile exercise to remember when.

Thursday was such a night at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library on the campus mall. This library features an exhibition, “Tucson Growth, Change and Memories,” curated by librarian and Tucson native Bob Diaz.

The exhibit contains photos of Barrio Viejo before its destruction through urban renewal in the late 1960s, a grainy black-and-white film of some buildings being torn down and other Tucson-centric memorabilia from that time.

In conjunction with the exhibition four Tucsonans shared their memories of growing up here before and during that period.

Writer, actress and former City Councilwoman Molly McKasson, business owner and preservationist Katya Peterson, UA Professor of Mexican American Studies Lydia Otero and I talked about our shared and different experiences in our coming of age.

“Memory is much more nuanced than the truth. It can take us down strange roadways,” McKasson said a day after the talk. Memories conjure up sadness and happiness, feeding our emotions, added McKasson, who grew up in the Himmel Park area and graduated from Tucson High School, where her cultural awakening took flight.

“This new awareness came to fruition at Tucson High where I learned what it was to be a tolerant, diverse, committed, loving community,” she said in her remarks.

Thursday’s talk was nostalgic, yes, but the testimonies were also a reminder of errors in political judgment and leadership that led to the eradication of an historic neighborhood of homes and businesses of multi-ethnic families who for generations had called the barrio home.

Otero, a descendant of Tucson pioneer Sabino Otero, grew up near West 22nd Street, on the southern boundary of Barrio Viejo. But on Main Avenue stood the majestic home of her ancestor, where the Tucson Convention Center parking lot sits today.

“I’d look up at the house. It looked grand and important. I never got to go inside. I felt proud of being connected to legacy and a people who were from this place and I felt a sense of belonging,” Otero said, recalling times she walked to and from downtown as a child.

Memory inspires Otero, who authored the groundbreaking book “La Calle” published by University of Arizona Press, which explored the civic forces that insisted on the eradication of the barrio’s 80 acres. In great part it’s her mother’s memories that motivate Otero.

She said her mother had a built-in GPS memory app. During their downtown walks, Otero’s mother would point out homes and talk about the history of families living in the 100-year-old barrio. Sharing these stories of our past “grounds us” and counters today’s public hype over immigration and wide-spread public misconception that Mexican-Americans are recent arrivals, Otero said.

“That’s why I try to keep memory alive. Memory preserves our past in a tangible way,” Otero said after the talk.

The old downtown barrio may have been a critical part of Tucson’s history; it nonetheless disappeared from our midst. Its demolition was invisible to many Tucsonans.

The barrio was a whole other world, said Peterson, the daughter of Cele Peterson, a well-known and popular figure in Tucson for many years.

“In fact, it was a world that I didn’t really know until I realized it was being totally torn down,” said Peterson.

In our rear-view mirror of memories, we can still see the Chinese corner markets, Ronquillo’s Bakery on Court Avenue, the Belmont Hotel and El Charro Restaurant on Broadway, Garcia’s Cleaners on Meyer, the Jacobs family’s two-story Victorian house at Meyer and Alameda, Rosequist Galleries on South Convent, the Ying On Club on South Main and the office of Dr. Floyd Thompson, the city’s first black dentist.

And we can also see Flores Pharmacy at South Meyer, La Plaza Cinema, the Legal Tender bar and La Selva Club on Congress, Nick’s Barber Shop, Pekin Cafe, Perri’s Jewelers, Reuben Gold’s Furniture store, Myerson’s White House department store and KEVT, Tucson’s first Spanish-language radio station, at Congress and Convent. Nearby is Jake’s, a burger joint.

The memories of the barrio are blurring for many Tucsonans. For others, those who were directly violated by the mass destruction, a dark cloud hangs over their reservoir of recollections. The loss of the family home or business still hurts.