Fields of Dreams (page 2 of 4)

• Best of America

Out of Poverty

In Atacheo, Michoacán, a town of 4,000 nestled in Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains, hard work could get you only so far. The eldest of 13 siblings, Robledo spent his childhood in a thatch-roofed adobe hut and often went to bed hungry. His father and grandfather were braceros, part of a U.S. guest worker program in effect from 1942 to 1964, allowing them to eventually obtain residency papers. Though they spent months of the year doing farm labor in the States, the cash they sent home was never enough.

Young Robledo left school in Atacheo in the third grade to pick corn and strawberries for local landowners. In 1968, armed with his own long-awaited permit, the 16-year-old went with his dad on the northward drive in a battered Chevy Impala.

They arrived in Napa Valley on a February night, and the next morning Robledo joined a field crew at Christian Brothers Winery. He had never seen grapevines before -- "They looked like small trees," he recalls -- but he was soon captivated by the ever-varying cycle of pruning, grafting, thinning and spraying. He also realized that the craft, if one became skilled at it, could offer a way out of poverty. To his eyes, the labor camp bunkhouse seemed luxurious. But he sensed there was an even better life waiting, if only he could grab it.

And so he came to a decision: Unlike his kinfolk, who frequently returned to Mexico, Robledo would stay. He would transform himself into the best vine tender in the business -- and, in the process, into an American.

To reach his goal, Robledo worked up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, sending his Monday-through-Saturday wages ($1.10 an hour) home to his mother and siblings, and keeping his Sunday pay ($1.50 an hour) for himself. He lingered after his shifts, teaching himself new techniques and practicing on tractors and backhoes. Within a few months, he got a job as foreman for another company, overseeing 35 workers, including his father. His new boss was Frankie Barbera, a legendary grower; the older man mentored Robledo in the arcane world of viticulture.

Three years after his arrival in the United States, Robledo became a supervisor of several crews. By then, he had married Maria de la Luz Ramirez, a girl from Atacheo whom he courted mostly by mail. Their first child, Lorena, was born in Mexico the following year, and shortly thereafter, with her papers in order, wife and daughter joined Robledo in California. The family rapidly expanded.