This Mexican immigrant was a successful tailor (and he got a hit off Bob Gibson)

Salvador Moreno was 22, living in Monterrey, Mexico, when a friend killed a man in a cantina brawl. Moreno visited the man in Nuevo León Penitentiary and, after a few visits, decided to teach him tailoring skills. (Full disclosure: Moreno was my father-in-law.)

Moreno attracted the interests of other prisoners who asked to learn to make clothes. Prison officials approved the lessons because it kept the inmates occupied. For two years, he visited the cells, teaching them to create new wears, new images.

Despite not speaking English, Moreno decided to ply his tailoring skills in the United States and immigrated with his family to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1956. Eddie Williams hired him at his haberdashery shop in Arlington but the language barrier proved insurmountable and referred him to R. H. Shelby, owner of a local tailor shop. The two tailors communicated by pointing and sharing an implicit understanding of how to transform silks to suits to bucks.

After a year, Shelby retired and sold the business to Moreno. Borrowing $250 from a friend, he opened a checking account and started Moreno’s Caballeros Shop in downtown Arlington on Main Street. (Caballeros literally means horsemen but translates to gentlemen.)

With his wife Eugenia at his side, leaving the care of the younger children to their eldest, Dora, the business grew. He eventually employed 15 people, eight alteration specialists and seven tailors. He worked 30 sewing machines, allowing for an average output of eight suits a week and 25 pants and coat alterations per day. Moreno parlayed his $250 investment into a thriving business in the American Dream City.

Over the years, Moreno attended language night school and joined a Toastmasters club. He soon mastered English — never shedding the accent — and nurtured a conversational style that attracted customers. He negotiated contracts with American Airlines and the Texas Rangers Baseball club to tailor uniforms.

An admirer of American baseball since he was a kid in Mexico, he enjoyed following Mickey Mantle’s feats and was saddened at his demise. He eventually attended a fantasy baseball camp wearing a Yankee uniform, where he hit a single off Bob Gibson.

University of Texas at Arlington professors and a Tarrant County judge frequented his shop for custom fitting clothes and to banter with him on political issues. It was caveat emptor (buyer beware) in discussing politics with the highly opinionated tailor. Although forced to leave school to help his mother with their tailoring shop in Mexico, he was an avid reader.

In his tailoring years in the U.S., he found Shelby was the sole native-born tailor he had met. “And he was left-handed,” Moreno said. “It’s hard to be a tailor and be left-handed.”

Wishing to take his business to the next level, he opened a tailoring school in 1985, receiving accreditation from the Texas Education Agency. At the time, Moreno’s Caballeros was the only state-approved tailoring school. He accepted students at all levels from the Texas Rehabilitation Commission and UTA, allowing them after three months to sell their work and to keep all their earnings.

Psychological studies have demonstrated what we wear affects how we act. Moreno understood this transformation when he taught Mexican prisoners how to sew new images. After all, Yankee stripes earned him a hit on the field of dreams and a home run in business.

Author Richard J. Gonzales writes and speaks about Fort Worth, national and international Latino history.