Railroad workers housing
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By Ken Stephens During and after World War I, a wave of immigrants from Mexico was welcomed to the United States to help build and maintain railroads across the nation. The pay was a dollar a day, six days a week. But they lived rent-free in boxcars roughly converted into housing. Later the railroads built housing areas, named ranchitos, where their Mexican workers lived in town after town, including Newton. The first ranchito housing in Newton was built of railroad ties for walls and railroad “grain doors” for the roof. Around 1919, three housing blocks, each with eight four-room homes, were built of brick or concrete blocks nearby on the south side of First Street, between the Santa Fe railroad tracks and Sand Creek. “There were 12 of us in four little rooms,” Josie Victorio recalled. “All the boys slept in one room, and all the others in the other room. We had bunk beds. My sister and I slept with
Photo by Ken Stephens
Mario Garcia’s uncle lived in a Newton ranchito.
mother and dad.” There was no running water and no electricity. Each home had one large coal stove for cooking and heating. Oil lamps were used for lighting. Water was carried from a nearby well for cooking and laundry. Outhouses were nearby, and each block of homes had two showers, one for each
gender. For a bath, water was hauled in, heated on the stove and poured into a big tin tub. “We never lacked anything,” Victorio said. “Those were good memories for me.” The last ranchito homes were demolished about 1960, and the Harvey County Historical Museum and Archives is working to preserve their all-but-lost history. Last year museum director Debra Hiebert asked Dr. Antonio Delgado, who has a doctorate in urban planning/public policy analysis and a master’s degree in history, to talk about the Mexican railway workers and the communities they created in the United States. She said they had to turn people away because there wasn’t room in the museum, which is in the old Carnegie Library. “Anybody with memories of living in the ranchito community is elderly, See Ranchitos, page 10
Faust-Goudeau continues pushing her mother’s legacy
Carlin took a seat on By Ken Stephens the floor with the women State Sen. Oletha and listened. Faust-Goudeau likes Faust-Goudeau to tell a story about said her mother was her mother, related to a tireless campaigner her by former Gov. for civil rights, welfare John Carlin. rights, women’s rights, It seems that equal rights for all. She Carlin returned to his was honored by Carlin office in the Capitol Courtesy photo in 1981 for her work one day to find FaustOletha Faust-Goudeau toward elimination of Goudeau’s mother, “poverty in the midst of Oretha Faust, seated at plenty.” In 1989 she received the Marhis desk and a group of women sitting tin Luther King Jr. award for commuon the floor in front of the desk. nity activism. “I couldn’t stop them,” Carlin’s It’s a legacy Faust, who died in secretary apologized. 2001, passed along to her daughter, “I’ve got something to tell you,” Faust said, “and you’re going to listen.” See Senator, page 26
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Central Plains Area Agency on Aging or call your county Department on Aging: 1-855-200-2372
It’s New Year’s resolution time ...or not By Elma Broadfoot People have been making New Year’s Resolutions for hundreds of years. The tradition was so popular that the U.S. government set up a website offering tips on achieving some of the most popular resolutions: lose weight, volunteer more, stop smoking, eat better, get out of debt, save money. However, a recent survey of a dozen Wichitans, ranging in age from their 50s to 70s, follows the current trend that says resolutions are falling out of favor. A CBS News Poll three years ago reported that 68 percent of Americans don’t make resolutions. People under the age of 30 were more likely to make them, but only about half kept them. Pat Woodward says he doesn’t make New Year’s Resolutions because “I don’t keep monitoring them, and I move on to other things as the year progresses.” However, he regularly resolves “to be a better husband, father and grandfather.” “Maybe every few years I will consider” making a New Year’s Resolution, says Mark Metz. Running a marathon was his most recent successful resolution, and then there is the ever-present effort to lose weight. “Some years I do better than others; it was easier when I was younger.” See Resolution, page 12
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