At Castillo's Custom Upholstery on Queen Anne, a sign on the door proclaims, "Old upholsterers never die, they always recover." Perhaps instead it should read that they never quit.
Jerzain Castillo turned 65 recently and plans to retire this fall. His wife, Ana Maria, will take over the shop at 624 W. McGraw St. How will he fill his time? By helping out at the shop every day.
But he might allow himself to hunt and fish a bit more often. "I love the country," he says, "to see nature." He hunts deer and fishes in the fresh water of lakes and rivers. No oceans for him.
Jerzain (pronounced Her-sa-een) was born March 3, 1939, in Tlal-pujahua, Mexico, a small, picturesque hill town in the state of Michoacan. It was a rich mining center for centuries. Its minerals, including gold, were exploited by indigenous peoples before colonialism, and then by the Spanish. Today 13 minerals are excavated from 35 mines in the area, and there is still a metallurgical plant in town.
Jerzain was the third of six children, and the eldest son. His father was a butcher; his mother, a seamstress in a garment factory.
He remembers riding horses with his father, going from ranch to ranch looking for lost animals: vacas (cows), borregos (sheep) and chivos (goats). He loved the smell of the stables and corrals.
He also loved the smell of the slaughterhouse. He slaughtered his first chivo at the age of 6. "I was not afraid, because it was for living," he says. For him the distinction is clear in his heart between animals that are killed for food and animals that are not.
When he was 11 years old, his beloved father died suddenly of a heart attack. Jerzain left school and went to Mexico City to fend for himself. He found work as an apprentice in an upholstery factory. Upholstering is the skill that has supported him and his family all his life.
He lived and worked in Mexico City from 1951 to 1957. Then he moved north to Tijuana, near the United States border. He was positioning himself for an eventual move to America. His reason was simple: "I wanted a better life," he says.
In Tijuana he worked as both an upholsterer and a butcher. As an upholsterer he was paid a pittance for piecework. In 1962 he bought a 72-hour passport. "At that time," he explains, "they were easy to buy." He went to Los Angeles, and did not return when his passport expired.
He found work in an upholstery factory, and in 1964 he married a Mexican-American woman. The next year a vindictive co-worker reported him as an illegal alien. His marriage to an American did not save him from being deported back to Mexico.
He was determined to return to America and resume his better life. He spent nine months filling out all the required papers. Once the legalities were in place, he returned to L.A. with no worry of deportation this time. All 21 years that he lived there, Jerzain worked as an upholsterer, the first decade in a factory, the second for the railroad.
He and his wife divorced, and eventually he developed a relationship with another woman. They never married, but in 1969 they had a daughter, Mireya. That relationship also ended, leaving Jerzain a single father.
Then he met and fell in love with Ana Maria Lopez. The couple married in 1976, and Ana Maria became a mother to Mireya. In L.A., Jerzain and Ana Maria had two children of their own: Jerzain Jr., now 26, and Daya-nara, 24.
In the summer of 1982, Jerzain and his family vacationed in Seattle. They much preferred this area over L.A. and moved up here permanently less than six months later.
When they first arrived, Jerzain worked for a few months in an unholstery shop in Bellevue. In 1984 he opened his own shop in Ballard. Three years later he moved the shop to Queen Anne, where he has been ever since.
The Castillos' third child, Omar, was born in Seattle in 1986. Jerzain's eyes tear up as he recalls Omar's birth, which he attended.
Jerzain and Ana Maria now have one grandchild, Juliana, whose mother is Dayanara. Juliana, a second-grader at Coe Elementary School, often hangs around her grandparents' shop after school. She parks her purple bike in the shop, among the pieces of furniture in various stages of recovery.
Jerzain's English is sprinkled with the word pero in place of but, putting a little jolt in his sentences. Sometimes his sentence structure is jumbled, as in "I no read right now so much."
What he does read is Spanish editions of The National Geographic and the Reader's Digest. Not surprisingly, he especially likes animal stories.
His favorite music is country music, both American (specifically,c Texana) and Mexican. Mexican country music is called Rancheras. Jerzain especially likes Rancheras songs of the 1940s and 1950s, sung by singers such as Javier Solis, José Alfredo Jiminez and Pedro Infante. Infante was not only a venerated Mexican singer but also a film star who made more than 60 movies in his career.
Although Jerzain is fond of that part of his native culture, he doesn't miss Mexico anymore and is not drawn back there. He has returned to his birthplace only twice since he came here legally, in 1975 and 1995, each time for a funeral. All of his children live in Seattle, and all of his siblings except one live in L.A.
As for the country itself, "There is a lot of grime in Mexico," he says, "and the Mexican government never helps its own people." The pressure of poverty is tremendous there, he says. "It is different in this land," he says, speaking of America. "It is 100 percent better; there is 100 percent more opportunity."
He finally became a U.S. citizen in 1994 and plans to stay here the rest of his life. "I no want to go anywhere anymore," he says, "absolutely not.
"Nobody never taught me nothing in this life - nothing good, nothing bad," says Jerzain. It is an understandable statement from someone who has been on his own since he was 11, but not entirely true. Surely he learned that bad things can happen when his father died young, or that co-workers can be vindictive. And surely it is good that he learned a valuable skill.
It is also understandable that he will have a hard time letting go of exercising that skill after 54 years. So if you go into his shop, talk about rainbow trout.
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