Medal of Honor: One Man's Journey From Poverty and Prejudice (Memories of War)

by Roy P. Benavidez

While we kids avoided Uncle Nicholas’s lectures, we gathered around Grandfather Salvador at every opportunity because we loved his stories, even though they, too, were really parables with a point. His favorite theme was that people had to help each other, and one of his stories was especially damning to the people of his own culture. It expressed his belief that they didn’t help each other as they should. He told of a man who sold crabs down near Palacious where the Colorado River empties into Matagorda Bay and the water mixes with the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico. The man had two baskets of crabs for sale, according to my grandfather, one labeled “American Crabs” and the other labeled “Mexican Crabs.” The basket labeled “American Crabs” had a wicker lid, firmly tied down, but the basket labeled “Mexican Crabs” had no lid. A man from El Campo stopped his car and, interested in buying some of the crabs, asked what the difference was between the American and the Mexican crabs. “See those Mexican crabs just sitting down there in the bottom of the basket?” the vendor replied. “They don’t need no lid. They don’t try to get out. Now these American crabs are a different proposition. You don’t put a lid on them, and pretty soon one of them climbs up on the back of another, and another climbs on his back, then another climbs on his back, and on and on, and pretty soon them American crabs are getting out all over the place.”