Our family came to this country searching for a new beginning after the 1954 flood in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico.  Lupe and Juana lost their store to the flood.  Lupe came to work in the field picking crops.  It was the fastest way to make money as a migrant labor in this country.  After two years he moved the rest of the family to Texas.  He had spent a couple of years as a child in the Carrizo Springs/Crystal City area where he attended the first grade.  The family settled Eagle Pass, Texas, just across from Piedras Negras to remain close to Lupe and Juana’s parents.  For the next 16 years we followed the crops north.  During the early spring, the family would drive to Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and other states, working on the beat, onion, and potato fields.  By the fall the family would come back to Texas and work the cotton fields in the panhandle.  During the winter the kids would attend school.  Lupe and his two oldest sons’, Jose and Carlos, would work picking spinach and onions in the Uvalde area.

It was a hard life but it allowed for the family to get back on its feet and the yournger children were able finish High School.  Carlos was the first family member to graduate from college and earn a masters degree.  Eventually most of the Almaguer kids moved away from Eagle Pass to bigger cities looking for better opportunities.  Eagle Pass is now a place where they travel back too, during the holidays to visit those relatives still living in our old home town.