It was the day before Labor Day and unseasonably warm when I pulled up in front of Serafin Venega’s house located near downtown Los Angeles. A member of the greatest generation, Venegas is a WWII veteran with an uncanny eye for capturing faces in line drawings. It wasn’t until well after he joined the Army, that he discovered his talent with a pencil charcoal and pastels. The illustrations in this article are all his. 

I opened the metal gate at the foot of the stairs that led up to a neat little house. Venegas was at the top step of several brick and mortar stairs sweeping up the fallen leaves from an arbor vine that framed the entry way. He continued to sweep as we exchanged pleasantries.

“Did you have any problems finding me? I’m just going to finish my yard work if you don’t mind.” he said with a melodic Spanish accent. 

“No,” I found myself fabricating in my reply, finding your house was pretty easy.” Actually, it was a good thing that I had an accurate map. “Please…go right ahead,” I replied.

Venegas used a small broom to collect leaves and twigs toward the center of each step, then began sweeping the clippings into a dustpan set on the stair below leaving each brick landing clean. When the chore on each step was completed, he invited me in.

As I entered the house, I noticed framed drawings in nearly every room. There must have been nearly one hundred throughout the house. The portrait below of Maria Felix ( A well-known Mexican actress) immediatly caught my eye.  Most of the art I saw that day was in sepia tones.  This one used pastels.




We decided to sit at the wood table in a cozy, dining area just off the kitchen. The hazy afternoon sun shone in a window and warmed the area as Venegas reminisced about how he, an American by birth, left the town of Corona in Southern California to go live in Mexico when he was about seven years old.

 
Serafin Venegas

He spent most of his subsequent growing years in a very remote Mexican village. It was isolated and too small to support a school. Without any education, Venegas did not know how to read or write. His primary language was Spanish. He had very little exposure to spoken English because he left shortly after he started elementary school in Corona.

“In the 1930s my father got tired of working in the orange groves. His income was very low because of the depression,” Venegas explains. “He also worried that he would lose touch with his family and wanted all of us to be with them. So he decided that it was time for my mother, my older brother, my two sisters and I, to move back to his village in Mexico. Somehow we all packed into an old Model T Ford and made the drive through Arizona to El Paso, Texas, and then south.”

The life style for the family living in Mexico was one of bare subsistence farming.  “I wore heavily patched trousers and hand-me-downs. Most of the time I had no shoes. My mother cooked over an open wood fire on the ground. She toasted tortillas on a small grill propped up by tin cans. It was very primitive. What we were able to plant and harvest is what we subsisted on; beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes, corn, and so on.” 

“From time to time, I would ask my father, when are we going back to Corona?  It seemed to me, even as a child, that our time there had been better before coming to Mexico. At least I had regular shoes to wear. But my father would reply, ‘We are never going back to California. Never.’ His words made me think more seriously about the notion of going back to the place of my childhood; a happier place. “In Mexico we were so poor. I had no money and no real plan on how I would get back, just a desire based on the fond memories of my early childhood.” 

“To avoid my father’s anger, I kept the idea of leaving to return to California to myself. I loved my mother and I knew it would hurt her very much if I left her…still, as I got older, the need to move on was growing inside my heart.”

Venegas also considered going to Mexico City where his older sister was living. But when he casually raised the idea, his father strongly discouraged him by saying it was a very dangerous place to go. That stopped any thought of going. 

His “get away” savings account began at age fourteen, although when he started it, he had no plan to leave. It just seemed like a good idea. Under the fence in the back corral, he had hollowed out a secret place to stash his money. The cash he collected would be inserted into a well-hidden earthen jar.

He figured out creative ways to feed money into his bank. For example, Venegas would load fire wood onto the backs of two donkeys. Then he walked the two-hour trip each way into the nearby town to sell his load. He asked his mother for any extra vegetables or candy as additional ways to raise cash. He took silver Spanish coins that had been found. He even took old, broken clocks (without his mother’s permission) and attempted to sell them in town with little success.

When his brother-in-law came to the farm take the annual harvest into town to sell and raise cash for the family, he had an idea.

“Encarnation, I asked him, may I take a load of corn that I will harvest to sell along with the crops you will be selling?  I won’t tell anybody what we are doing. He agreed and I was able to add a small incremental amount to my savings.”

 Over the years, Venegas had managed to save 50 pesos along with some spare change.

 The Train Comes Through Sacatecas

The name "Sacatecas" rolled off of Venegas' tongue in such a comfortable way. “I had never been in Sacatecas City in my life. But I knew that the train came through this town and I could ride it to Juarez, Mexico.  It would get me close to the border.  I found out that the fare to take the train was exactly 50 pesos. Using up most of my life savings, I purchased a one-way ticket to Juarez. I figured that the extra change left in my pocket would permit me to get something to eat.”

Wearing hardscrabble clothes an old hat and showing a farmer’s tan, Venegas hardly resembled an American citizen but, when the Border Agents checked, his birth certificate and other papers were in order. They let him in to the country.

“It was easy to cross the border. When they asked where I was born, I answered immediately. I knew that I was born in Corona. But later, I marveled at how I must have looked and sounded. As to why they let me into the country without any delay or conducting a further investigation, to this day, I am simply amazed.” 

Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso

Walking the streets and parks of El Paso, the young Venegas was reminded of how famished he was. He noticed in a city park how Americans ate part of a hot dog and then discard the remaining dog and bun.  He was sorely tempted to pick up the discarded food but decided it might draw attention so he painfully passed on the opportunity. 

It was early during 1942, after Pearl Harbor when he learned (speaking to kindly strangers who spoke Spanish) that he needed to register for the war in order to get a job.  So he found the government office and promptly registered. He never gave the process much thought. After several odd jobs, he landed a job as a dishwasher at the El Paso Hilton Hotel.  This employment was a Godsend.  He received more money than he had managed to save over all his previous years in Mexico. He also had new-found access to incredibly large portions of food.

“The elevator doors would open and out rolled these huge trays loaded with exciting things to eat. Pickles…Oh, how I fell in love with the taste of dill pickles. Fresh sliced bread was another favorite of mine. I could eat a whole loaf of bread at one sitting.”  

After a short but profitable stint in El Paso and an opportunity to fill his stomach, Venegas was ready to initiate the next stage of his journey home.

“I had earned fifteen bucks. So I went to the bus station to see how much it would cost me to get a bus ride to Corona.  ‘Fifteen bucks, buddy,’ the ticket man said. So I reached into my pocket, plunked my cash in the window and bought a ticket.”

While Corona was initially his destination, Venegas realized that there were very few jobs during the war years and the small agricultural town was not a practical place for him to live. He needed a cheap place to bunk, so he traveled to San Pedro, southwest of Los Angeles, to stay with his sister until he could earn more money.

“I was only there for about four months,” Venegas explains. “Then I was inducted into the U.S. Army at Fort Macarthur.”

Above is a self portrait. After induction, he was sent to a language school near Riverside, California to be trained for four months learn English. The training, however, was limited to specific Army terminology he would need.

“I learned new words such as ‘chow,’ ‘rifle, ‘mess hall’ ‘right flank, left flank, ‘about face’ and such. I was not taught and so I still couldn’t make any English phrases. Regardless, I was highly motivated because I did not want to be sent back to Mexico.  I genuinely wanted to be in the Army.”

Because he was very intent on remaining in the U.S, he became a very good soldier. He perfected his ability to call out cadence and marching commands.

“They often would put me in front of our squad to have me call out directions for how to drill on marching.”

Venegas was shipped back for intensive physical training in Camp Cook in South Carolina where he excelled. Then he moved closer to the war front.       

“I was sent to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. That is where I met Betty Grable.” 

Venegas relates how he saw her at a USO show and she came backstage where he was hanging out with a group of fellow soldiers.



“We caught sight of each other. She took a look at me and said, ‘Dear boy, My dear boy.’ And then she patted me on my cheek. Wow!”

“From Hawaii, our unit was shipped to the New Hebrides off the coast of Australia.” 

Editor’s note: New Hebrides was the colonial name for an island group in the South Pacific that now forms the independent nation of Vanuatu.

To reach his Pacific Theater combat destination, he was sent by ship to a location just off the coast of Okinawa. Once there, he was directed, along with other soldiers from his company to board a landing craft. He joined hundreds of soldiers who were also climbing down the rope netting and into the craft. His true combat experience took place fighting the Japanese in Okinawa.

 “We landed on Brown Beach.  I was told, ‘Stay here on the beach and watch our duffle bags and equipment until we come back in a day or so.’ I could see the Japanese planes shooting machine guns and strafing our ship. Some planes came and strafed the beach so I had to duck for cover. Then I had to move all the equipment and duffle bags so that the tide would not wash them out to sea.”

Like so many World War II veterans, Venegas does not care to talk in detail about his war experience.  “The way we fought and killed is not something I like to think about. It was awful, but we did what we had to do…I feel bad about those who lost their lives on both sides. I hate war.”

 An Unanticipated Artistic Ability Emerges

Throughout his army experience, lack of English kept Venegas isolated from others. Even though he was in the company of many fellow soldiers, life was a lonely existence.

In a letter from his father (delayed for several months before delivery to his unit), he learned that his mother was possibly dying. He wanted to cry and tell someone about his heartache, but he had no one to confide in. Worries about the fate of his mother added to his loneliness.

“I could not get together with the other soldiers and joke around and drink beer with them. I missed my family. And so I spent a lot of time with nothing to do. One day, I was just sitting on my bunk, before I was sent to Okinawa, and I took out a picture of my girlfriend. For some reason, I decided to use my pencil to try my skill at drawing a larger version of the wallet-sized photo. Of over a thousand really bad starts, I kept one or two that were bad, but at least I could sort of recognize her face. The others I threw away.”

Other soldiers began noticing Venegas’ budding artistic ability and asked him to draw pencil renderings of their sweethearts so that they could send the drawings home. 

 “’Are you an artist?’ they would ask me. No, I’m just learning how to draw, I would reply.’ Well, just go ahead. When I started I was lousy. But they seemed to like what I tried to do. Girlfriends wrote back to say that my drawings were good.  I think they were just being supportive of the war effort to be honest.” 
                                           


Venegas was subsequently assigned as part of the occupation forces in Japan.  In Japan, he learned, to his immense relief, that his mother’s health was much better. In 1945, he returned back to the U.S., his homeland, through San Francisco.

Upon his return to civilian life, Mr. Venegas returned to Mexico but decided, based on his Army experience, that he did not fit the lifestyle on a farm and could no longer live in poverty. He took a bus to Long Beach to stay with a sister.



Subsequently, he began a long career serving meals at La Fonda, a very well known Mexican restaurant located in Los Angeles. He purchased a house.  When he retired, he picked up his pencils and began to draw again.  He continues to draw and exibit his art at various venues throughout Los Angeles.