Juan C. Portilla

An American flag once fluttered atop the flag pole in the family's front yard in Olivenhain. 'We need a small flag. The old one doesn't fit on our house," Portilla said.

"That was one of our chores," recalls his son, John. "We had to raise it, fold it and not let it touch the ground."

"It's a good country," he says unequivocally, with a clear emphasis on "good." "I am experiencing the American dream," he says.

Portilla was one of six brothers and sisters, born 41 years ago in Mexico City to Julio and Delphina Portilla. He quit school after completing the sixth grade ans spent most of his teenage years helping out around the family's small restaurant.

In 1960, he traveled north to work for a landscape architect in Cardiff. He married the former Betty Gonzales of Solana Beach on Christmas Day, she was the seventh of 14 children of an Eden Gardens family. 'We honeymooned in Ensenada with not much more than $2 in our pockets," she recalled.

Their first "home" was a tiny two-room place in Solana Beach.

A year later, Portilla decided to form his own landscape business, choosing to work primarily in Rancho Santa Fe and La Jolla. His wife, a 1958 San Dieguito High School graduate who never used the state scholarship she'd won, took care of the business paperwork and billing. That was just fine for Juan; he spoke little English and couldn't write it.

For the Portillas, 1962 won't be forgotten. They put $1,000 down on a $12,000 house on Saxony Road in Leucadia.

The same year, son John was born in Oceanside's Tri-City Hospital. With no insurance, the hospital asked them to pay the $250 fee in cash; the doctor was more generous, he allowed monthly installments. The same month, Portilla's mother died in Mexico. With a new baby and an ill wife, Portilla couldn't attend the funeral. He sent the $90 home to bury her.

"I remember when we were counting how many slices of bread we had to make sure we had enough for sandwiches to last the week," Betty says. "I remember those days well."

Those days can be compared to what the Portillas have accomplished since.

Today, the Portillas and their two sons live in Village Park. All work at the Speedee Taco restaurant the family opened 18 months ago. Each family member puts in restaurant duty when they aren't traveling, as Mom does, or running for MiraCosta College's cross-country team, as John does, or wrestling on the San Dieguito High School wrestling team, as son James does, or tinkering with backyard landscape, as Dad is still apt to do.

Portilla owns property in Escondido, near Rancho Santa Fe, in Encinitas, Leucadia and Olivenhain. He has visions for starting a chain of his "Speedee Taco" restaurants.

Mom drives a white Mercedes-Benz. Dad teaches his sons the ins and outs of investments and stocks.

"The American Dream for me is for a person to own their own house for his family. Maybe a car," Juan Portilla says, speaking fluent English from behind the restaurant's counter. "That's precious to me because the opportunity is here in this country, if you're willing to work hard and sacrifice. That's why people like me come to this country, to better themselves. If you're willing to work, you can have anything you want. A lot of education is not necessary. I know lawyers who are starving. This country is so great. The opportunity is here.

Betty agrees, and disagrees on some points.

"I think you have to have an education," she says. "Think of where Juan would be now, given his investment instincts plus the opportunities that open with an education. Education is important," she says.

Portilla became a citizen in the summer of 1975. He was one of 3,500 immigrants who'd gathered at the old San Diego courthouse for a citizenship ceremony conducted by the late Judge Frank Weinberger.

Portilla received his copy of the Bill of Rights that afternoon; the huge flag was ordered later through a mail catalogue.

"I remember working in my landscape business from my home and going to citizenship school at the San Dieguito Adult School," Portilla says. "To me, the biggest thing was to become a legal citizen."

Portilla still can't write in English. Like the early day, his wife handles the paperwork duties. "But he can read everything," she says. "Show him a document on real estate and he knows it like that."

Living and working in San Dieguito has taught Portilla a lot about the local government process.

Portilla favors a guest-worker program that will allow Mexican citizens to travel north and better themselves, as he did.

And he still bristles when mention is made of the protests lodged against his plans to build the Speedee Taco restaurant.

"It's not right," he says. "I own this land. I paid taxes on this land. I worked hard to earn the money to pay for the land. The land was zoned for commercial use. Then some people say I can't build the restaurant. It's not my fault the land was zoned commercial; they should have protested backed when the zoning was done."

The protests against Speedee Taco were done by area residents who'd succeeded in their fight against a Jack-in-the-Box facility in nearby Encinitas.

But Portilla won his fight and many of those same protesters are now regular customers, he says.

Juan and Betty Portilla's lives have changed dramatically since they were married in Solana Beach in 1960.

It took a while, Betty says, for him to get used to American traditions. And it's taken her 20 years to reassess her goals and ambitions.

"We're all pretty independent, which is far cry form the Mexican tradition as far as the wife's role in the family is concerned. For me the American Dream used to be material things. Now, I think it's much more. I always wanted to go to college. I may still be going to school when I'm 60 to get that degree. But even that's not as important as it used to be. I want to be able to give to myself and family the best I can."

Juan Portilla, a devout Republican and a Ronald Reagan booster, says that hard work, the discipline to save money and sound investments have been the keys to his success.

And, as he tells it, a good country.