Two American Families
By
Gerry Niskern
“That’s the last bag”, my young friend yelled, as she flung a bag of sweet oranges on top of the huge pile on my patio table. She has been picking my lone tree every January since she was nine years old. She is now fourteen but still needs her mom and dad to help with the top most branches. They aways come but won’t accept any pay. After all, this is her project.
This family is one of two Mexican American families that I count as friends. They are part of our diverse community. Their other daughter graduated from college last year after attending on a full scholastic scholarship. The young orange picker attends an Honors Academy. She also helped me learn to navigate my new iPad last year! We exchange Christmas gifts and this caring family has helped me many, many times since my husband died.
The other Mexican family I’ve known even longer.We met the mother when she was a teenage hostess at a local restaurant. She was brought to the United States when she was four years old. She has raised two sons with her husband, who is a construction worker. Their boys both graduated college. They are now grandparents and she and I go to lunch often. We exchange stories about her kids and my grandkids.
We all know this country was built on the labor of immigrants, many millions of them undocumented. When my grandparents came here in the 1880’s, immigrants were asked to sign a “letter of intent” :meaning that they intended to become U. S. citizens someday. Many followed thru and many didn’t. How many people can say they have actually seen their grandparents citizenship papers?
Many undocumented laborers have lived and worked here in this country for generations. They have bought homes, raised families, were good citizens paying taxes on everything, including payroll tax. My friends know their rights, but those seem not to matter anymore, with ICE raids getting worse with masked men grabbing people and throwing them into unmarked cars. With the telephone numbers available, it takes days for their families to make contact and get information.
We have THE BILL OF RIGHTS for a reason. Basic constitutional rights can’t be voted away in one election. Everyone one is entitled to Due Process.
On this Labor Day, in 2025, we need to think about all the workers who have contributed to this nation of ours. Millions should not have to live in fear in their own homes.
It is not fair. It is not right.

One Day in August
By
Gerry Niskern
“Do you remember what you were doing the day the war in the Pacific started?” I was surprised by that question from my new doctor, but I answered quickly. “ Sure, it was a Sunday morning in December and I was trying to practice a song for a Christmas program with a neighbor on the piano. Her husband kept turning the news on the radio up louder and louder and when she asked him to turn it down, he turned it louder still.” Of course he did. Pearl Harbor had just been attacked. We were at war!
I was nine years old. I remember going to school the next day and learning that a friend’s brother was stationed aboard the USS Arizona that sank at Pearl Harbor. I remember my cousin Billy, 18, immediately joining the Marines and going to fight in the Pacific. We soon learned that Uncle Joe who was a gunner on a destroyer was ordered from the Atlantic campaign to the Pacific battle, without a leave in between. His younger brother, Uncle Harry, was serving on a tanker in the navy too.
This past week marked the 80th year since the United States dropped the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Much was written and televised about those momentous days this week. The devastation to the Japanese in those cities was unbelievable and staggering. Thankfully, no country has suffered the fate of the bomb since that infamous day in August, l945. Right now, nine countries around the world possess nuclear weapons. Many world wide organizations actively oppose nuclear weapons and Japan is a leader among them.
The Japanese started their war of aggression against neighboring countries in the Asia Pacific area in l93l. It culminated in their attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, l941. 111,606 U.S. servicemen were killed in the war that lasted almost four years. Without the bomb our country was facing many more months of death and destruction.
Then, when I was thirteen, I have vivid memories of people out in the streets, laughing and crying. The Japanese had surrendered. The war was over. On that day in August a Jeep load of young guys, from Luke Field, training to be fighter pilots, pulled up in front of our house, laughing and yelling to my older sister and a group of girls they had been dating, “The war over. We’re going home!”