Mario Galindo

Don’t ever quit. Your brain is your bank. The more knowledge you put in is more money you’re going to get in the future. Nobody can take that away from you. So just keep trying harder and harder. Be a good person. Be respectful to your mom and dad.

Mario Galindo

My name is Mario Galindo. I was born in El Paso, Texas. My parents are from Mexico. I lived in Mexico for a couple of years. My dad’s Mario Galindo, my mom’s Marguerita. I have two brothers, Jesse, Phillip. And I have a sister named Elizabeth. My mom lives with me now. My sister lives with me--takes care of my mom, but lives with me.

Right now at this time I’m a phy-ed teacher and a juvenile corrections officer. That means if you get in trouble in Hennepin County a juvenile is 13 to 19.

When I was growing up, I started working when I was about six, walking the fields, hoeing cotton. Just rows and rows of just little plants you had to hoe. You know what a hoe is, right? Well, okay, a hoe. And we had to take the weeds out of them. So we’d walk. We’d take like two of ‘em. The younger we were, of course, we’d take two because we had to see what was going on. We’d go back and forth, back and forth, all day. Get off the bus, you know, we’d go work, pick cotton.

I learned how to drive a tractor, ‘cause I knew if I learned how to drive a tractor I wouldn’t have to walk fields and fields all the time so I learned how to drive a tractor when I was about seven. My dad put me in the tractor and I’d just go round and round and round, you know. It wasn’t our gas so we didn’t care about that.

I learned how to drive a tractor then so then about nine I started driving tractor. So I’d go again, fields and fields and fields and started getting bored and so you know…it was not a fun time. We were dirt farmers. My dad drove a tractor and worked the fields and so forth. Got into a little rodeo-ing when I was young. The men around there would bet on which kid could stay on the calf the longest. They’d throw us on the calf and we’d kinda had a little rodeo. We had hogs, cattle. We didn’t have it, but we had to take care of them ‘cause the farm, the ranch had ‘em.

My dad wanted to get out of there so he, ah, when I was about …Okay, school. School, we’d hop on the bus and one way would take us about an hour sometimes an hour and a half to get to school. We drove a bus because we had a, you know, out in the country, you had to just drive and drive and drive.

And then the same thing to get back. It was hot. No air conditioning on the bus. Temperatures were hot in Artesia, New Mexico. That was where I grew up. Born in El Paso. My grandmother lived in New Mexico and my grandmother, my dad’s mother, was a housekeeper and she worked the cafes in Artesia, New Mexico. My grandmother sponsored my mom and my dad to come to America, so to speak. Because I was conceived in Watis Mexico, but they went across the border so we’d be American citizens. And then we went back and I lived there until I was two.

And then my parents got sponsored to come. Sponsor means that somebody had to be responsible for you, like make sure that you got a job, that you were a productive person in society, that you weren’t getting in trouble and so forth. And my grandma was it. So my parents got green cards.

So anyways, we lived in Artesia. I lived in the rural area like 18 miles from a town, but went to school. You couldn’t speak Spanish in school. You spoke Spanish, like during recess, if you were, if somebody would tell on you that you were speaking Spanish, you had to take a time-out along the school. So sometimes you’d drive by and still, sometimes, that stuff happens. Because I’ve visited before, and Hispanic kids would be standing against the wall. So you couldn’t speak because you’re there to learn English. You went there to speak your own language then half the time most of the teachers and people around didn’t know how to speak Spanish.

Okay Artesia was my school. When I was about in fifth grade, my dad didn’t want to live that life any more, work in the fields, you know. So he took a chance and he came to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to truck. Truck driver, coast-to-coast.

So he was, so we’d get to see him when he’d come through New Mexico. ‘Cause coast-to-coast meant South Dakota to California to New Mexico, all over. We’d have to drive like 50 miles to see him once every two weeks each month. He’d come through there and we’d go up there and see him.

He did that for a while. We lived, you know, we still worked the fields, my mom and my two brothers. We still worked the fields. And when my dad finally got past his probation with trucking and all that, we came to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I was about twelve-thirteen, maybe. I was in ah…yep…twelve-thirteen. Seventh-eighth, yeah, seventh grade.

So went to school, junior high. Didn’t know anybody. Now I had to speak English all the time. And I’d stutter because I’d get so nervous, like you know, I just couldn’t express myself. It was really hard for me. It was hard for me when I was growing up anyway, but it was even harder when you know, there was nobody to speak Spanish to around you.

So, you know, I kinda started school, and people made fun and so forth, but anyway. Then I started getting really good in wrestling and football and all this then, of course, sports. So then, everybody kinda looked up to me, instead of laughing at me. Now they’re kinda just you know, they understood because before I was an outsider so it was easier to make fun of me, but then I started winning all the time, playing football, I mean, I was pretty good.

I think that got me thinking about staying in school and so forth because one time I thought about you know, this is, I had my dad was still a truck driver so he was never home. And half the time we didn’t have enough money so I started working when I was still going to junior high and so forth. But sports and people around sports wanted me to stay in it so that kinda kept me, kept me in school, kept me at least trying.

So then I went to high school, had a hard time with school, but knew that if I wanted to play football, wanted to wrestle, I had to have a C, which you still, pretty much, still have to have a C-average to participate in sports in high schools.

Then I became really good in wrestling. I was okay in football, but I mean, I still excelled. I made all-conference. I wrestled through high school. I was undefeated for two years. I was undefeated for three, but one was junior high. I mean junior varsity and the two that I was undefeated were Varsity.
So then I got a full ride to SDSU, it’s South Dakota State University Jackrabbits, Division I. I got a full ride to go there so I knew I wanted to stay in school. I loved sports and so forth.

I’ve got to back-up a little bit. When I was in junior high, I had a principal that was, my mom couldn’t speak English so, we had to…there was two Hispanic kids and one African American kids in that school and anything that would happen in that school, we’d always get pulled out and they’d go through our lockers.

My brother would work selling stuff. He was just a great seller. Which is not good, but he would buy gum then he’d try to sell it. Of course that was against the rules in school. So that was contraband. So the principal kept coming to our lockers all the time when stuff happened. But he’s the person who kinda directed me toward teaching because somewhere in his life, I think, I don’t know that for a fact, but he was very disrespectful to my mom because she couldn’t speak English and I had to translate. So it was very frustrating for my mom to try express herself, too. She could, she could understand everything, but being able to express it. She wanted to know what I was doing wrong, but he didn’t…you know…he was a busy guy and didn’t have time, really, to sit there and go slow. I kept saying, “Well, you need to slow yourself down so she can understand.”

Well, he didn’t take it that way and one time when mom wasn’t there, he told me I wasn’t going to amount to anything. So he’s kinda the person that got me to wanna teach and make it through school. If nothing else, make it through school.

Not so much teaching at that time. I loved the sports and I was volunteering at the YWCA and I was helping littler kids when I was wrestling, you know. And when I was in high school. It’s a small town so everybody knew me. I was in the paper all the time.

So then, the YMCA knew my dad was a truck driver and that so they kinda give us work, my brother and I. I volunteered. With working and volunteering, helping younger kids or teaching younger kids.
I was in love, I guess. And then I had a son right away. So college was not looking very good. Not a lot of jobs and so forth. So I quit for a little bit and I went back to Sioux Falls and I worked the stockyards, which is where they bring cattle and sell cattle and but it was during the winter so it was kinda like this. Just cold as—I mean it was crazy.

They’d have us out there with no heaters in the trucks and no heaters and we had to shovel manure out of the pens and we had to be out there when they had auctions. It was horrible. So I figured, “Okay, I’ll pack up my family and I’ll go back home.”

So, I went back home to New Mexico just to try to find thinking that there might be better work there and so forth. So then I started hauling hay from the fields to the sheds. Well in Mexico, it was like 100 degrees. I went from one extreme to the other.

So in New Mexico, it was 100 out in the fields and when you go into the sheds, it was like, who knows how warm it was, it was horribly warm. So a lot more than 100.

So then I said, “Okay, do I really want to do this or do I want to go back to school right now while I still have a chance?” So then I contacted, I put my feelers out there and I had a coach I’d known and he knew I wrestled. This had only been…I left school at a semester. And then by the end of the next year, I was already back in school.

It was a Division III school in South Dakota. And I wrestled. I had to wrestle and play football. And do a lot of work-study. And I worked at the stockyards there, too, because, again, there was not very many jobs out there. A lot of older people in the community. So I played football until fourth and that’s where I graduated from.

I’ve got three kids. I’ve got one young man and I’ve got two young ladies. My son was a Minneapolis teacher, but he’s coaching at Gustavus now. Thinks he still wants to teach. He loves kids. And you know, coaching younger men, it’s not the same as teaching you guys. And he might be back.

I have a young lady that is at the U. She’s going to be an interior designer. And then I’ve got a 19-year old—oh, she’s ah, 22. He’s 29 and I’ve got a 19-year old that’s going to Community College in Sioux Falls. And I don’t know what she’s gonna be. Out of trouble, hopefully.

At that time, well, before I even graduated, I had my feelers out everywhere. And so I’d been promised a job in Cheverla, South Dakota. It was a Native American reservation. They’d already found a house for me, found everything. I was all loaded. I was heading there thinking that I had a job and a place to live and so forth. When I got there, some other, well, a Native American guy that came out of nowhere…they had to run his paperwork through and so forth and whatever.

I had no place to stay so I just went back to Sioux Falls and then put my feelers out there again and no, I went back to New Mexico. I take that back. I went back to New Mexico because I had a line on a job working with mentally handicapped young adults. It was from 16-year old to fifty-sixty.

It was kind of a farm for mentally handicapped people. We had a school. And then we had like a thrift store. We had an arts-n-craft store, which I ran. We had greenery. We had chickens. We sold eggs out of there. And all these handicapped people worked at. We had orchards of pecans. So I’d go pick up pecans. We sold everything out of the thrift store.

So I went there and then I was trying to find work in Texas, teaching in Texas. And that never came through and then my son, he came with his mother to where we were down there. My wife didn’t like that, didn’t like New Mexico or the little town we lived in so she decided to come back to Minnesota.
So then I came back with my son and then I put my feelers out there and worked for a non-profit agency, Central Chicano for a few years. And then working with Hispanic kids. There was an event that happened in one of the people, one of the head Minneapolis people at the time, this is in ’89, saw me working with kids and said, “Well, you know, people said that you have a license.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Are you interested in teaching in Minneapolis?” I said, “Sure.” So then I got hooked up, I got hired right away. I’ve been doing that since ’89. I love Minneapolis. I’ve been in a lot of schools.
I like Harleys. I like hot-rods. I used to love coaching. I mean, I coached a lot in the inner city and so forth. We had traveling team. But now between the county and here, I coach at the county, too, so I don’t have time to do that anymore.

The county home school, I’ve been there since ’89 also. It’s a place where juveniles are sent. Back, well, up to about three years ago, you could be there from six to eighteen months. And it’s just like, these units there’s seven units. There’s a female unit, a young lady unit. There’s two male units. The dorms hold 24 residents. Two sex offender units. And one short-term unit, which is four to six weeks.

And the 4 – 6 weeks, you go out there and you stay in a room. You’re told what to do at all times. You get up at 6:00 in the morning. You get cold sandwiches, well, you get breakfast, but then ah, then you clean your area and clean everything and get ready to go. Then you go outside. So weather like this, we could be outside chopping wood. We could be out doing stuff in the different parks.

And then for lunch they have like cold sandwiches and hot soup and chocolate. And then they would come in at 2:00 and then you get ready, you clean up and so forth. Then they get ready to go to school; this is the short-term program. Then they go to school from 3:30 to 6:30. And then 6:30 they have dinner about 5:30, quarter to six and then they clean up and go to bed cause they’re so tired cause they have to get up at 6:00.

The long-term program goes to school. They get up at 6:30. They go to school until 2:00 and then they go into different groups. So if something…if one of your problems is chemical dependency, you go to chemical dependency group. You go to groups; gang group or if you’re violent, anger, you know, there’s groups, there’s all kinds of groups.

They go to groups, they go to groups from 2:30 – 3:00 to the time they eat dinner. Then after dinner, they get large muscle. They might go to the gym when it’s nice out, of course we go to the gym. When it’s nice, we go outside and do stuff out there.

And then we have the sex offender program, which that’s totally different, you know, it’s a lot of therapy. Kids have been abused so that’s all different.

And then the girls are kinda like the boys, not the short-term, but the regular term. They go to school and then they have groups and so forth. There’s a lot of programs.