When Manuel Sandoval was a kid growing up on the west side, he would visit a solitary man who was sculpting religious statues on the bank of the Santa Cruz River at West Congress Street. Today, Sandoval keeps clean the place where they stand - the Garden of Gethsemane, located on the west bank immediately north of West Congress Street.
Sandoval, an employee of the city's Parks and Recreation Department, maintains about a one-mile stretch of the Santa Cruz River Park, between West Speedway and Congress Street. He trims hundreds of trees, cleans the grounds, rescues bicyclists who are stranded with flat tires and befriends homeless people who sleep under the river's bridges or thick brush.
His work is his joy, said Sandoval, whose weather-worn face matches his 73 years.
Sandoval's outdoor workplace is less than two blocks away from his childhood home in Barrio Hollywood. He has that rare view of Tucson as a native son who has spent his life in the same neighborhood.
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"I have seen a lot of changes here," said Sandoval.
We sat and talked Friday morning near the collection of wooden and plaster figurines. He can recall seeing Felix Lucero, a World War I vet who in 1945 made the sculptures as a faithful promise for having survived death on a European battlefield.
I met Sandoval several days earlier while biking along the meandering park that stretches between West Grant Road and West 29th Street. A thorn flattened my bike tire, and Sandoval offered me help - an aerosol can of slime to inflate the tire and patch the leak.
"It happens a lot," said Sandoval when we met.
I returned to talk about his memories of the barrios - Hollywood, El Rio, Menlo Park - and of the river.
"Oh, there used to be running water," he said Friday morning, recalling his youth growing up on West Ontario Street near St. Margaret Mary's Catholic Church.
He remembered the riverbed as wider and shallower than today, and the water sometimes overran its banks during summer chubascos. A narrow wooden bridge on Speedway crossed the river.
Sandoval's words could hardly keep pace with his memories of buildings, bridges and people.
Where the Burger King at West St. Mary's Road and the freeway is today, Sandoval said there was a cotton gin. Not far away, the city operated an incinerator. There were small farms on the west side and few homes, he said.
Chinese families grew vegetables and melons. Mexican families bought small lots to build simple homes. A few black families lived in the pre-World War II barrios.
"It was very peaceful," he said.
The river was his playground, and there was no freeway. But there was little time to play.
A drunken driver killed his father, Rudolfo Sandoval, in 1945, leaving his mother to raise five children. Paula Sandoval worked at a downtown restaurant; Manuel helped, cleaning yards for 65 cents a day.
After Tucson High School, Sandoval served in the U.S. Army. He returned to Tucson after his 1958 discharge and married Tucson-born Maria Elena Reyes.
They became parents to two children, Norma and Manny, who is deployed in Afghanistan.
Sandoval has worked for the city for 35 years as a tree trimmer and groundskeeper. But it's mainly the 1,200 trees in his mile that keep him happily busy.
While the park occupies his work time, his thoughts are with his wife, who died last year on Christmas Eve. "Hita" had cancer but lived long enough to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary - two months before she died.
He finds solace in the river park and the statues of Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane. "I have to find some comfort somewhere."
Ernesto Portillo Jr. is editor of La Estrella de Tucsón. He can be reached at netopjr@azstarnet.com or 573-4187.
