THE DALLES — J. Carmen Gamez has not missed a Northwest Cherry Festival Parade in The Dalles in over 40 years, but in a first for him this year, he won’t be riding a horse.
Instead, he and his wife, Carmen A. Gamez, will be astride a car as the parade’s royalty, King Bing and Queen Anne.
The parade takes place Saturday, April 25, starting at 10 a.m.
“It’s very exciting that for the first time ever in the parade I won’t be riding a horse,” Mr. Gamez said. “We feel pretty privileged for the community to give us an honor to be the king and queen.”
Mr. Gamez doesn’t ride the dancing horses that are well known in the parade, but he’s the one that first got them to enter the parade decades ago.
Instead, he rides a quarter horse, the breed he’s been riding for decades in Mexican rodeos – considered Mexico’s national sport — where his specialty is roping, an event called charreada.
Unlike in American rodeos, Mexican roping involves roping another horse. He’s taken championships at rodeos and is often a top-5 finisher. When bringing a roped horse to a stop, the rope spins so quickly on the rider’s saddle pommel that smoke rises up, he said.
He’ll be wearing the elaborate riding outfit worn by charros, as Mexican charreada riders are called. His wife will be wearing the equally elaborate costume of women rodeo riders, who ride in an event called escaramuza.
Escaramuza riders perform in teams and do elaborate, synchronized routines all while riding sidesaddle.
Gamez and his wife grew up in villages about 15 miles apart in Michoacan state in Mexico. Their dads were horse people and knew each other, so they actually met when they were kids: he was 10 and she was 8.
Some years later, they both found themselves working cherry harvest at Omeg Orchards in The Dalles in their late teens. They started dating that year, and married four years later.
They ended up staying in The Dalles. He worked for Omeg Orchards for 22 years and then was a supervisor for McClaskey Orchards for about 6 years, and now works for Orchard View Farms.
There, he’s the outside grower field manager. He coordinates when cherries at outside orchards can be picked and taken to the Orchard View packing house, and he advises on the type of pruning needed.
Mrs. Gamez works for the Oregon Child Development Coalition in The Dalles as a childcare provider and has been there 25 years now. She works with toddlers there. “They’re cute, I enjoy it, I like it,” she said.
Mr. Gamez has also sat on several boards locally, including the OCDC board, One Community Health, and the Columbia Gorge Community College board.
In 2010, the Gamezes bought their own orchard, which they’ve named Gamez Orchard. “I am a full-time employee of Orchard View and on weekends and afternoons I do whatever I need to do in my orchard,” he said.
He thinks this year’s crop won’t be as big as what was expected earlier, but “there’s potential for a good crop out there.”
Mr. Gamez is grateful for what his family has been able to build. “We’ve been working really hard to be right where we are and we’ve been so blessed from God, he’s given us maybe a little more than we deserve.”
He added, “I can probably say that the cherry industry is the thing that changed our lives for the best because we went from just cherry pickers, regular workers, to becoming growers. We’ve been really, really successful with that.”
He actually credits his wife with making the push to buy a house here. “I was kind of afraid to buy a house and make payments,” he said. But they took the plunge and bought a house and orchard.
They typically vacation in Mexico, where they also own a house, but in recent years they have instead taken family trips to Cancun and Europe.
They have three adult children, all of whom graduated from Seattle University. Daughter Marta Isela lives in Seattle and works in public relations for Amazon.
Elder son Luis Alberto, 40, teaches high school Spanish, also in Seattle. Their younger son, Alejandro, works as a facilities manager for CBRE and lives in Hillsboro.
While their kids don’t do Mexican rodeo, their grandchildren — Naya, 10, Ruben 7, and Gia, 4 — like to ride their horses. The Gamezes have 14 horses, an amount Mr. Gamez said, “Is a few too many, let’s put it that way.”
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