Me, my twin sisters Judith and Sharon on Mom’s lap, and my sister Doris
“Home is wherever I’m with you.” “HOME” by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros
“Home,” by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros
“Home is whenever I’m with you.” Edward Sharpe*
Beginning where we left off in “Pt27: More Memories of My Mama Esther LeBaron-McDonald and My Papa Floyd Otto Spencer:”
In early 1947, Pa was lying incapacitated in a Texas hospital. In order to be near him, Ma hurriedly packed up all her belongings, including me and Doris not quite potty-trained, and moved back to the United States — with two stowaways in her belly besides ... Twins!
On April 18, 1947 I turned a year old, “big” sister Doris 2.5 years old, and Ma 25.8 years old … her hands full and her belly too. She was expecting but NOT twins! Nonetheless, June 21st, 1947 — ready or not — they popped out headfirst to greet everyone. Fourteen months my junior, these twins — darling though they were, a novelty, and an attention-getter — quadrupled Ma’s handful during her time of crisis.
To lighten pressures, Pa’s first wife Eva divorced him Oct. 30, 1944 — a month before my parents’ first child Doris was born November 27 (Thanksgiving Day), 1944. So Pa no longer had to fear being tossed in jail for bigamy. This lessened my parents’ load immensely! No longer polygamists, except in belief, now they lived in the United States without worries of prosecution. It was persecution they had to worry about from then on, being Mormon fundamentalists.
As mentioned earlier, before my parents left Mexico, they turned over to Grandfather and Grandmother LeBaron the land they had bought there in Galeana, Chihuahua — land Pa bought in Ma’s name as she was born in Mexico.
Heretofore unnable to afford to move out of mainstream-Mormon Colonia Juarez, now, thanks to my parents, in 1944 my maternal grandparents were able to finally leave their homestead of 20 years, leaving with it the many years of rejection they’d suffered and halfway survived in the Mormon colonies.
Settling on Ma and Pa’s “ejido,” my scrabble-farming grandparents and their children who still remained at home began building a new life and world. It was indeed a struggle. (You shall hear how they fared in Mexico down past the Rio Grande!) But The Mexico LeBarons (Dayer, Maud, their kids, and extended family) at long last had escaped the rejection and ostracism they’d painfully endured while living in the mainstream Mormon townsites.
Once Mother’s brothers born in Mexico (Ervil, Floren, and Verlan) reached the age they could each own a “parcela” (i.e., government land parcelled out to Mexican citizens to homestead on), they acquired surrounding pieces of property that joined the land my father had bought and registered in American-Mexican Ma’s name. That’s how “Colonia LeBaron” came to be … how it got its start! Many pieces/parcelas came together to make this pie.
By the time my family, “the Spencers,” moved back to Mexico in August 1960, Pa had turned sixty-five, Ma thirty-nine, and I fourteen. Ma’s pa, Grandpa Dayer, died nine years earlier so of Ma’s parents only my Gramma Maud remained. (Born in 1892, Gramma was but three years older than Pa. Just thought you’d like to know!)
Given this bit of backstory, you now know how, when my parents returned to their agrarian Chihuahuan desert home now called Colonia LeBaron, Galeana, Chihuahua, Mexico, they “landed” on property they already owned. It was within walking distance of Gramma — though Pa and Gramma didn’t get along so we didn’t see much of her at our house. But some of Mother’s brothers and extended family homesteading in Mexico also lived near us, including Uncle’s Joel, Ervil, Floren, Verlan, their wives and children, and my Aunt Lucinda’s three children.
Soon after my Ma’s repatriating to Mexico, the land of her nativity, Ma and Pa bought another piece of property in her name* “The Galeana Springs.” It was located within a few miles of our homestead in Colonia LeBaron and had a natural running spring on it!
Once back in Mexico on her Motherland, Ma shed joyful tears, crying, “It’s so wonderful to finally be back with my family again — back home where I belong in Old Mexico with my kids and Pa … on our own ‘rancho’ !”
*My pa, being an American, wasn’t allowed to own real estate in Mexico. Ma had dual citizenship, having been born in Mexico in 1921 of American parents; therefore, she could own property in Old Mexico.
Thanks, cousin Dena McLean, for sending me the YouTube link to this lovely theme song “HOME” !
Continued November 20, 2018, “Pt 29: My Ma Esther LeBaron Spencer and My Grandma Maud
You are not alone. Many of the people who live in Colonia LeBaron think my grandfather started it. That is because my father did not like to draw attention to himself, and my mother did not make it known to the people in that cult either—why I don’t know!
STEPHANY SPENCER: 
Fascinating backstory! I had no idea Colonia LeBaron started that way.
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You are not alone. Many of the people who live in Colonia LeBaron think my grandfather started it. That is because my father did not like to draw attention to himself, and my mother did not make it known to the people in that cult either—why I don’t know!
LikeLiked by 1 person