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Great Storyteller

Recently, I had the pleasure to meet a great story teller. Gabriel Brambila reminds me of my uncles in the Brambila side of my family. He is my first cousin twice removed. He had a story to tell about his grandmother Josefina Garcia. We knew through oral family tradition and genealogical research, that she became a widower at a young age. She was married to my uncle Gabriel Brambila in the early 1900s. Gabriel died in a horrible train accident in northern Mexico.

Somehow, he relates, his grandmother Josefina migrated to the United States with her two children. She then remarried a grocer named Joseph P. Garcia (a.k.a.) J.P. Garcia. The grocery store was located in Laredo, Texas.

My cousin relates with vivid recollection that his grandmother had a stoic appearance; not much of a talker. I remember, he reminisced, one could always find her behind the counter at the store, dressed in a crisp, heavily starched apron. Always cognizant of the patrons and their needs; perpetually recording every sale in an old leather ledger.

Eventually, the Laredo store closed and re-opened in Corpus Christy, Texas. My cousin remembers when the old house in Laredo was ransacked of all the beautiful antique furniture. He often wonders what happens to all the pictures of his family that were disposed during the ransacked home.

It was such a pleasure to hear him talk about our roots.

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