This novelette is a fictional historical work. The situations and characters are taken from real life. My purpose is to present the life of Mexican families during the difficult transitional period at the turn of the 20th century. This period, which was so exciting to the fast moving Americano migrating from the Eastern and Midwestern states, was painful to the Californians of Mexican descent. They had to face a new, unsought way of life with its foreign language, traditions, and customs. The romance of early Spanish-Califomia rancho days has been dramatized and glamorized, and, indeed, it was a period full of drama, but the day-to-day events that unfolded through the descendants of those colorful families are also significant. The skills possessed by the sons of those rancho days did not equip them .to compete with the energies of the builders of the West. They were forced to take menial jobs that pushed them down the social ladder. The humiliating experience of becoming foreigners in the land of their birth and having their native language become a foreign tongue brought bitter feeling. Some were never to rise above these handicaps. They closed their patio gates and their hearts. Through glimpses of family gatherings, fiestas, funeral customs and lifestyle, I have tried to reveal their joys, struggles and sorrows. If there be any mourning to be done, any wishful thinking about the past, let it be done for some of the fine traditions and customs that have been lost. To quote William E. Smythe in his History of San Diego, published in 1908: 'The social customs which flourished in the midst of these conditions were so deeply marked with the spirit of common kindness that something has been lost as well as gained in our present-day struggle to get ahead as individuals and communities.' Their deep religious convictions of right and wrong and their beautiful manners were the last to go in their desire to be included and to imitate the Americano. My hope is that the adva