Why We Live Here
or Life in Big Bend’s tiniest towns:
Valentine, population, 187
As told to and distilled by Megan Wilde ~ Paintings by Avram Dumitrescu
Post Office,Valentine,Texas. Watercolor on paper, 11”x17”
Chuy Calderon, mayor, chemistry teacher and FedEx driver
and Viola Calderon, retired technology and reading teacher
C
huy: I was born in Valentine and
raised in Valentine. I was born
with a midwife, in 1950. There were
still a lot of railroaders around then.
4
Cenizo
This was a railroad town, that’s what it
was. My dad worked in the railroad
too. But then he left to the army. He
got hurt in World War II. When he
Second Quarter 2009
came out, the government sent him to
school to learn how to barber, and he
was the barber here in Valentine.
I was just telling Viola: The sheriff ’s
son is always the one that misbehaves
the most. The mechanics, their cars
are the ones that don’t work. The doc-
tor’s kids are the ones that are the sick-
est. But the barber here, his son was
the one that had the best haircut all the
time. Because every time he needed to
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