Local recalls the days when his family lived the lives of
missionaries helping others in the U.S. and Mexico
Local Mario Carota has some interesting stories to tell.
Recently, he decided to put many of his stories together in a book
titled,
”
Diary of a Christian Activist.
”
The book is available from Carota for $5 and tells about his
life, from his birth to Italian immigrants in Pennsylvania to his
family’s many mission expeditions to Mexico.
Local recalls the days when his family lived the lives of missionaries helping others in the U.S. and Mexico
Local Mario Carota has some interesting stories to tell. Recently, he decided to put many of his stories together in a book titled, “Diary of a Christian Activist.” The book is available from Carota for $5 and tells about his life, from his birth to Italian immigrants in Pennsylvania to his family’s many mission expeditions to Mexico.
Carota, a local resident, and his wife Estelle, raised 16 children and always stuck to their Catholic-Christian principles. The chapters are short, and read like diary entries, though the table of contents brings the book in at more than 150 pages. The writing is an earnest, first-person account of some of Carota’s experiences and includes such humorous tales as the time he tried to run an apple farm in Aptos. He borrowed a friend’s truck to bring apples and cider to a San Francisco farmers market, only to have the truck topple over during a sharp turn.
The cider and fruit ended up in the street, and the truck crashed into a bar. Always with a strong faith in God, Carota writes that thanks to God no one was harmed because of the early hour of the morning when the crash occurred.
After that, Carota decided to take a job at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, just as a new lab was being set up in Livermore in 1951. He did not know what project he had been hired to work on as an engineer, but soon learned the scientists were charged with building a hydrogen bomb. Carota writes that he opted out of taking the job because it went against his family’s pacifist sensibilities. He writes about it in a chapter titled, “We refuse to build nuclear weapons.” When Carota said he would have to resign, he was transferred to another department on the Berkeley campus.
Many of the chapters focus on the family’s work as missionaries in Mexico, or even projects in the areas of Oakland and Hollister. The pieces are often dated, with a location included, so readers can keep track of the places Carota traveled for his missionary work.
In 1963, the family took a trek down to Obrajuelo, Mexico. Along the way, everyone in the family took sick with dysentery, except for Carota and one son. When they arrived at their destination, they were told a telegram had been sent telling them not to come. Eventually, they persuaded their hosts to allow them to stay and they built a school house for the farm workers.
“Although the owners wanted us to organize a sheep cooperative for their workers,” Carota writes in his book, “we knew that we should check with the workers to find out their felt needs.”
Many of the chapters refer to the “Christian Family Movement,” a wave in which families got involved in the type of missionary work that had often been reserved for priests. There are plenty more stories about the family’s work in Mexico and in California in the book.
For a copy of the book, contact Carota at 636-5290.
