After house fire, San Benito couple makes new memories in new home

SAN BENITO — The retired professor relaxes now in the calm and the elegance of her home.

She walks across the new and shiny travertine tiles, past the leather-upholstered seats on their wooden frames.

“These are from Michoacan,” says Enriqueta Ramos, 92.

“We got them in Nuevo Progreso,” says the former modern language professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and protégé of Civil Rights Activist Cesar Chavez.

And then she looks over the rough wooden sticks bent around the back and the slaths of wood zigzagging to the floor.

“See how they put the bark?” says the professor, her white hair flowing to her shoulders.

The furnishings are new, the floor is new, the brick archways outside are new. The house surrounded by the ponytail palms and the grapefruit tree outside and the Mexican wild olive tree is new. The trees are not new.

The house and the floor and the furniture are new because a fire destroyed the other home two years ago in which Ramos and her husband Miguel Jimenez had lived for 19 years in the Sombra del Mesquite neighborhood. They had built that hacienda-style home in the design of their own creation. Now they’ve built their new home on the foundation of the old one, adding new memories to those cherished moments of the old house.

The fire destroyed that home in June 2022, completely destroyed it except for a few random pieces and some very notable pieces. A fountain survived, and a stone image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

An especially poignant image which remains is that of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.

It is poignant because the professor and her husband were awakened the night of the fire by their loyal dogs. She and her husband Miguel were asleep in their home about 2 a.m. on a Wednesday when their dogs’ loud and frantic barking awoke them to their burning house.

The first dog to erupt into loud barking was Valentina.

“She alerted the other dogs and Miguel came to the kitchen door and yelled ‘La casa esta quemando salte con los perras,’” she recalls most vividly that moment two years ago.

The house is burning, he was saying.

“I took off knocking on doors and yelling ‘help my house is burning,’” she says. “I finally got a reply. The neighbor from across the street cam out and he had already called the police and the fire department.”

There were flames rushing from the top of their house and thick noxious smoke filled the house and they had to flee outside and watch the fire destroy their “forever” home.

It was forever no more, but there was still another future to pursue, a new house with new memories. And that new future beginning in the present was possible because their dogs, still dancing about the new house even now, sounded the alarm so Enriqueta and Miguel could escape and rebuild again.

Their house and their cars were insured, and so Enriqueta and Miguel quickly set about the task of rebuilding their home. It was a frustrating time with completion dates pushed back while they lived in rather austere but still adequate accommodation and with little mobility.

Their new house is once again a home with small sparrows dashing about the feeders in the back yard.

She points out the fine couches surrounded by the pillows and the hand embroidered cloth and comments on the amount of time and tedious work required for such pieces. She passes the bigger furnishings, the black and shine China cabinets and the coffee tables and the couches.

“My son sent us all this furniture,” she says.

And then there’s another tall chest which Miguel found on Jackson Street. Help has come from near and from very far and from those who love them most, and their world is once again a fine place.

Valentina still keeps watch, as does the image of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.