Tortilla Tale: | 1

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:31 — 19.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | RSS | More

Hello, and Welcome! This is Song Stories, Quiet Stories podcast, Episode 1, Tortilla Tale, from the brand new musical, Tales of Tila.  

We’ll have a special guest with us, these next seven episodes. I wish she could stay with us longer, but that could only happen if you relatives out there sent me more stories…Are you ready to get your Spanglish on?  Here she is!

Hola. This is Tila Miera Trujillo.  Actually, it’s her granddaughter, la Carolina pretending to be me. She’s too shy to use her own voice, to just be herself. But, because of her, some of you have listened to my stories and my tales, and wondered, “Why the heck would she do something like that?”  My life was ordinary. My first batches of tortillas were crispy, until I prayed for help.

I argued with my mother, and when they sent me away to boarding school in Santa Fe in 1916 to make something of my life, I stole peanut butter from the cafeteria.

I didn’t learn to drive, and never traveled further away than California, and most of the houses I lived in were made of mud, adobe. Nowadays in New Mexico, you pay more money for the kind of house I lived in.

I left in 1971.   My husband, Juan Manuel had already been gone three years. I was diabetic, and my heart was failing. Carolina was 13 years old. She let me have her bedroom for a few months, so her mother, my daughter Nora, could take care of me before I spent my last days in the hospital. My heart eventually stopped.

If you’ve listened to my musical story, Tales of Tila, you might remember that I wrote things down before I left. It’s harder to get things down on paper after you leave. You can whisper and talk into someone’s ear all you want,  but the living always wonder whether it really is you speaking to them, or just their imagination!

So here, you have it. The story behind my stories. Carolina was always interested in our past and inherited the family history records.  She found my personal history that I wrote when I was 57, which included my ‘crispy tortilla tale’, which you have to admit, is a pretty good story to begin a story with.

Somewhere out there in my family’s possession is an old, blurry, unflattering black and white photo of me as a teen, holding a shovel, working in the garden. It’s in that garden  where my first tale begins! Listen!

 In closing, let me ask you,

What did other kids tease you about when you were growing up? Did you ever pray for help? If so, what kind of answers did you get? What were your household duties when you were a child?

Come back next time to listen to  me battle with my conscience at the school. Find out who wins the battle. Do you want to hear the other musical stories, too?  Take a look at the store page.

You can buy all seven of my Tales separately, but save your money!  Get the whole thing together. By the way,….That’s a good photo of me, on the CD cover, isn’t it? That was taken when Nora was a baby, in 1930. My hair is combed, nicely, and I’m not holding a shovel !

Oh, one last thing: la Carolina asked me to tell you to subscribe to this podcast.  I’m guessing you know what that means? Is that like when you order a magazine or a newspaper? Anyway, it’s been nice talking to you.  I’ll come back in a couple of weeks.

You’ve just listened to Song Stories podcast, Episode 1, Tortilla Tale, from the musical, Tales of Tila, with your host, Carolyn Murset, aka, la Carolina.