American Heritage Project | Teen Ink

American Heritage Project

September 13, 2014
By Ruben Gutierrez BRONZE, San Fernando, California
Ruben Gutierrez BRONZE, San Fernando, California
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

My grandpa's life has been very difficult since growing up “I always worked hard and hard for a little kid.” With his dad since he was about 11 years old started working with him in the fields because his dad was a farmer and my grandpa ended up being one too. The land was big, it was 2 acres. “I woke up very early at 5:30 in the morning.” But my grandpa had a dream and that was to come to the United States. He did eventually after a couple years end up coming to the United States when he was 23 years old.


 My grandpa said “ the American dream for me, is to be wealthy, have a really nice home and being able to support your family.” My grandpa couldn't really achieve this because he didn’t really have an education. He only had education for 3 years and he said “that those were some of his best moments but eventually had to stop going to school because his parents couldn’t pay for his education any more.This is the reason that he couldn’t really achieve his dream because once he was here in the United States he just had to keep on working.The way he kind of achieved his American dream was by having all his family close to him and he was kind of able to raise so that they could have a shelter and food.

He thought that the United States was going to be just with really big homes and nice cars and everything but when he got here it was not really that way. When he got here lived in L.A. That is not really a nice place because that's  where it looks kind of ghetto. He went specifically to L.A because that is where my grandpa's family was like his brothers and sisters.


Then after a couple of years he went back to school because he really liked school. When he was 25 years old, he kind of learned other stuff up to the grade of a 10th grader. “I know it's not that impressive”he said, but for me it felt like I accomplished something big because he never thought that he will see school again.

 

 “I told every single one of my children that education in this life will equal success” which is true because if you work hard at school is how they say that later on it will pay off. After that he got a job at the kind of managing the fields because this time he didn’t necessarily farm, but he was in charge of selling the products to the local stores. “This made me feel like another person more confident of myself.”



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