A Nation of Nations by Tom Gjelten

Author:Tom Gjelten
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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INITIATIVE

During the time it took Victor Alarcón to earn the money he needed to bring his wife, Rhina, from Bolivia to America, he worked seven days a week at the Mexican restaurant where he had first found employment. With nothing else to do and nowhere to go, Victor volunteered to open the restaurant early in the morning and close it at the end of the day. He spent almost nothing during that period, living off leftovers at the restaurant and paying only modest rent for the space in the apartment he shared with fellow workers. In just three months he had put aside enough to pay for Rhina’s airplane ticket. The perseverance he showed in those months set the pattern for his approach to work in years to come, and Rhina followed suit. Like Victor, she started as a dishwasher. On her first day as a Burger King employee, the shift supervisor told her to wash some kettles that had been blackened by years on the stove. An hour later, she was still bent over the sink, scouring away, when her supervisor came by and told her there was no way she would ever be able to make the kettles shine. Assigned to clean-up duties, Rhina would routinely stay an hour past closing time, scrubbing the grease-covered floor like it had never been scrubbed before. Employers appreciated an immigrant work ethic like the one Victor and Rhina demonstrated, and they were quick to hire such newcomers to the country, not always checking to see whether their immigration papers were in order.

Victor knew that bosses would take advantage of his eagerness to succeed in America, and he knew he and Rhina would not get far on the low wages they were earning. In the years that followed their move to northern Virginia, Victor dabbled restlessly in ventures that appealed to his curiosity and ambition, always looking for a way to get ahead. Though he had no experience back in Bolivia as an auto mechanic, fixing and reselling cars became an early interest. His first project was a Ford Escort with an oil leak that Rhina’s sister Marilu had driven into the ground, going too long without checking the oil level. With the engine damaged beyond repair, the car wasn’t worth much, but the body was in near perfect condition, and Victor agreed to buy it from her. With no idea how to replace the engine, Victor went to the local library one evening to review some books on auto repair. It was his first library visit, and he did not realize he could actually check books out and take them home, so for three nights straight he sat at a table reading about car engines with a Spanish-English dictionary at his side.

When he was ready to try the repair, he went to a junkyard with a friend, found an engine for a Ford Escort, and hauled it back to the parking lot of his apartment building. Next,

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