|
Book Review
Sharing an ordinary life
Local Catholic’s autobiography makes for a good read
Reviewed by Andrew Junker, ajunker@catholicsun.org
October 2, 2008
Local author Dan Salazar makes no claim to greatness in his autobiography “Before the Silver and Beyond the Gold.” But the 78-year-old parishioner of Blessed Sacrament in Tolleson felt that his experiences and witness could make for an enjoyable story.
“I’ve discovered that not always does a life story have to be totally romantic to make it a romance novel, or totally flamboyant to make it a ‘rags to riches’ story, or not even totally paradoxical to make it an exciting adventure story,” he writes. “I think that my life has been at least ‘different’ enough to make it worth writing about.”
Thank goodness he had this thought, because “Beyond the Silver and Before the Gold” makes for a surprisingly touching and moving read.
The book centers on Salazar’s life growing up in work camps in Litchfield Park and California during the 1930s and ’40s. He was born to an unwed mother and was raised in large part by his grandmother.
At a young age, Salazar moved from the Valley with his family — which now included a stepfather and several half-siblings — to a sugar factory in Betteravia, Calif.
Here, Salazar roamed the open land with friends, playing drawn-out games of cops and robbers, making rafts and floating on nearby lakes. The rafts were important, as many of the kids didn’t know how to swim.
“We played with tops (the spinning kind), and sometimes the game would become vicious because we would sharpen the points of special tops that were used to gouge the sides of the losers’ tops,” he remembers.
“We played ‘walk the wheel,’ where we made a ‘slider’ out of an old beer can and a stick and scooted an old bicycle tire rim down the street. We made our own stilts. We had huge open fields in our backyards where we would dig tunnels to crawl in, through and out of for miles and miles…” he writes.
Salazar left high school as a 17-year-old to join the Navy with some friends of his and toured everywhere from the Caribbean to the Arctic. Meanwhile, the other main character in the book, Charlotte Camacho, was growing up with middle-class parents in Los Angeles and later in Arizona.
When Salazar was discharged from the Navy, he returned to Phoenix to find work and met Charlotte on Valentine’s Day in 1952.
“As we look back on those times, and especially to that particular evening — dancing, talking, laughing, and occasionally but cautiously looking into each other’s eyes — we’re convinced that there is such a thing as divine intervention,” Salazar writes.
“God does play a part in how we meet, why we fall in love, why we become a married couple, why we bring life into the world, and why we grow more in love with each other as we grow old and gray,” he writes.
It’s clear that Salazar found his Beatrice in Charlotte, and their story is all the more poignant for the simple but heartfelt prose he employs throughout the book. It’s clear how much she meant to him and led him to become a better man.
It’s also clear that their marriage was not without its rough patches.
“Complacency is one of the worst things that can and does happen in a married love relationship, or in any true love relationship for that matter,” he writes. “One very common result of complacency is when the couple begins to take each other for granted; that is, they think they know each other so well that they begin to not communicate any more.”
This can lead to bitterness and rancor, and did, in the Salazar’s marriage. After 22 years of wedded ups-and-downs, they went on a Marriage Encounter retreat, which Salazar writes changed their lives.
Afterwards, they became involved in the Marriage Encounter ministry and helped scores of couples overcome the difficulties in their marriages.
Again, as Salazar warns the reader, his story is not a blockbuster action narrative or paean to romance, and it might be similar to many others.
But there’s something gratifying about listening to someone tell his story well. Salazar’s voice is unselfconscious, humble and honest throughout the book.
And the love he has for his wife Charlotte — who passed away on Ash Wednesday in 2006 — shines through as a bright example for anyone.
Andrew Junker is a staff writer for The Catholic Sun. Comments are welcome. Send e-mail to letters@catholicsun.org.
|
