First-time voter: Pompeyo Castaneda, 50, Carrollton

ISLE OF WIGHT

Pompeyo Castaneda took the long road to citizenship – barefoot through miles of cactus and brush, fending off rattlesnakes and surviving on jack rabbit and armadillo. He was 11 years old.

Thirty-nine years later, on Sept. 4, Castaneda accomplished his proudest achievement – his U.S. citizenship.

Married with two sons, a successful roofing business and a 4,000-square-foot home that he built in Carrollton, “Shorty,” as he is known to almost everyone, said he counts the right to vote as one of the most precious rewards of his arduous trek to citizenship.

His wife, Jeanette, 45, and a North Carolina native, never followed politics and never registered to vote.

“I felt that if I didn’t know what was going on, I shouldn’t be voting,” she said. “But Shorty’s enthusiasm in wanting to vote inspired me.”

The couple studied the candidates and will vote for the first time in Tuesday’s elections.

Castaneda, one of nine children, was in fifth grade when he slipped into the United States with his father and brother via a 172-mile route from the Rio Grande to San Antonio. For 17 days, they walked at night, often lost and without a compass.

Once in the U.S., they followed the crops, picking from the orange groves of Florida and the produce fields of California, to the tobacco farms of North Carolina.

Two years later, his father and brother returned to Mexico, but Castaneda stayed, alone, at age 13.

“I learned a lot a lot of things without my mom and dad around,” he said.

He struggled to learn English.

“You want to speak your heart out, but you can’t,” he said. “I didn’t speak English, and I was unaware of the American system.”

Without a green card, he could only get work on farms. And despite being deported several times, he always returned.

Finally, with his favorite president Renold Reagan in office in 1986, Castaneda received his green card and a cleared record. But he was illegal in the late 1970s when he met Jeanette, the woman he calls his backbone and destiny.

“The bossman would take us into town on Sunday to buy groceries,” he said.

It was in the supermarket’s baking aisle that he spotted Jeanette, 16, buying ingredients for a home economics project.

The handsome young Mexican was smitten. He doffed his cap, smiled and said, “My name is Shorty.”

He wanted to talk, but her family had warned her to stay away from field hands. So she smiled, said hello and walked away. He was crushed.

Three weeks later, Castaneda’s work crew stopped at a country store for soda and honey buns. Hot, sweaty and covered with yellow tobacco juice, Castaneda could not believe his luck – Jeanette was in the store, which happened to sit a short walk from her grandparents’ home.

Once again, he pulled off his cap, smiled and said, “I’m Shorty. Remember me?”

“He was persistent and so handsome,” she said.

They dated for three years while he continued to travel the farm circuit.

“Sometimes I’d run out of English and she’d run out of Spanish and we’d just look at each other,” Castaneda said.

But love bloomed through language barrier.

He proposed on the Fourth of July as the fireworks boomed overhead. They married in 1981, and he went to work in a Hampton roofing business owned by her uncle.

They had two sons and, about 16 years ago Castaneda started his own business, Amigo Home Improvements. They found land in Carrollton. There, he built a home for his family, constructing most of the house himself. And he did it all without a mortgage.

“Shorty always said that if you can’t afford something beforehand, you can’t afford it.” Jeanette said. “He’s a workaholic – seven days a week.”

He even was reluctant to take time off from work to study for his citizenship test until recently.

Jeanette, who drives a school bus for the Hampton City Public Schools, said she printed out the citizenship study material in Spanish and English.

“Shorty put the Spanish aside and studied from the English one,” she said.

The morning of Sept. 4, Castaneda was “sweating bullets,” he said, nervous about the naturalization proceedings.

“I was afraid the room would be full of Mexicans and it would look like we were the only ones doing this,” he said.

As it turned out, only three of the more than 140 people receiving their citizenship were Mexican.

“There were people there from all over the world,” he said.

The Castanedas celebrated with a big family and friends party but the most meaningful celebration will come on Nov. 4 when they cast their first ballot.

“I came here because I wanted to change my life and I didn’t want to follow my Mama and my Daddy,” he said. “But never in my wildest dreams did I think my life would turn out like this.”

“I want to thank the good Lord,” he said. “And the American people.”