Arturo Primero

I was not the first. Arturo Primero became part of the family during their eighteen months in Panajachel, Guatemala in 1963-1965. 

I have heard that he flew all over the Mayan village, coming home in the evening to his perch on the veranda. He sat in the coffee tree in front of the little blue adobe house, eating red coffee beans. Bananas, mangos, papayas, oranges, fresh tortillas on weekdays and popcorn on Sundays ... what a delicious life! Like I, he was especially fond of Julia.The family returned to the United States by truck and trailer in the spring of 1965. They had forgotten to get papers for Arturo to enter Mexico and the USA. Since he flew everywhere anyway and returned in the evening to sleep, they decided to let him fly across the border into Mexico. They drove drove across the border, and he joined the caravan on the other side. The procedure was repeated at the border into the USA. This time, however, he did not return to the family. They waited as long as they could and then reluctantly decided to continue their journey without him. Just as they were driving on, Arturo Primero came flying onto the truck's side mirror. He just wanted to make the family a little nervous! He took his usual position on the steering wheel of the truck and onward went the family, northward to Iowa.

That summer was spent in northwest Iowa, where Julia's grandparents farmed in the Quaker community called Mapleside. I have heard about the drama of the first time he flew there. The local crows and jays circled around him, wondering if this new green arrival was friend or foe. His family watched anxiously from below. Arturo was able to defend himself and was given free access to the sky.

He would land on farmers' shoulders as they drove their tractors in the fields of corn and soybeans. He would swoop down onto women's backs as they bent over their strawberry patches. He became a familiar presence in the community. He flew once into the silence of Quaker meeting for worship and landed on Julia's shoulder.
Arturo left the fields of Iowa in the late summer and traveled with the family to southside Chicago, where they lived for the next two years. They moved to the university town of Lawrence, Kansas thereafter. Summers were spent at the grandparents' farm in Iowa and Arturo died there, having eaten some poisoned corn that had been treated against rodents. He was buried in a shoebox outside the veranda of the grandparents' farmhouse, where Julia's mother was born and where Julia spent her first weeks of life.
Arturo Primero had become part of the family and the community. He was missed! And I replaced him in 1968, when I was just about four months old.