Brad Schmitt

USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

He was 5 when his mother died giving birth in a hut in their tiny Mexican farming village, three hours from the nearest hospital.

Jose Luis Ayala saw some of his older brothers and sisters cry, but the boy got confused when mourners started filling his house with food.

“I thought it was a party,” he said.

His dad was left to raise 10 children by himself, growing beans and corn — like most people in San Jose de la Paz — to survive. Often, three or four children shared one bed. They ground their own corn to make tortillas, cut their own logs to start fires to cook them.

No electricity, no telephone service, no plumbing, no cars, no roads to speak of.

At first, Ayala didn’t know anything different. He and his best compadre, Ray, kicked around old soccer balls and laughed and played.

The small brick school that only went to sixth grade? Ayala loved it.

He was blown away by descriptions of different cities all over the globe.

“For me, learning was amazing,” he recalled, eyes sparkling, lips curling into a small smile.

“I didn’t know nothing about the world. You learned there were other countries and other cities. It was great.”

That sparked a wanderlust in the boy that eventually brought him to the United States.

Ayala, 59, ended up in Nashville, where he has opened nine Las Palmas restaurants.

The thriving businessman who’s both humble and ambitious operates the largest Mexican food chain in Nashville and one of the largest in the South.

The ride here was bumpy.

Walking 2 hours to get to school

Right before graduating from elementary school, Ayala told his remarried father he wanted to keep going to school — in Guadalajara. A city of 1.5 million. Two hours away. The land of tequila and mariachi. The place where one of his older brothers, Ramon, had settled.

Tears sprung to his hardworking father’s eyes.

“Well, you’ve got my permission,” he said, “but I don’t have the money to help you go to school there.”

Ayala went anyway, with dreams of becoming an agricultural engineer so he could design better crops for his neighbors “to help people not be so poor,” he said in his quiet, accented voice.

Once there, the 12-year-old boy hustled, helping shoppers unload groceries for tips, getting a box and supplies to be a shoeshine boy, scraping together money for books. Often, he didn’t have enough cash for the bus, so Ayala would walk two hours to and from school.

Meantime, his best friend, Ray, moved to Atlanta with his family, and the two boys wrote letters to each other every month.

“He was telling me about the nice driving roads and big buildings and how Atlanta was full of trees and rivers and lakes. And I got excited. He was telling me how much money he was making at work,” Ayala said.

In his six years in Guadalajara, the boy sometimes clashed with his brother and sister-in-law, and classes were much tougher than back home.

“My dreams vanished at that time,” he said, head shaking slowly.

Ayala dropped out and moved back in with his father, who by then had had seven more children with his second wife. The teen, using a team of oxen, planted beans and corn.

Learning English by chasing senoritas

That lasted six months before Ayala told his father he was going to the U.S.

His father got a $500 loan from a friend, and Ayala took a 14-hour bus ride to the border town of Tijuana, where the teen gave a coyote — a slang term for a smuggler — $200 to cross the border.

Ayala and five others piled into a station wagon one day in 1977 and drove to Los Angeles without incident.

“I didn’t see any Border Patrol,” Ayala said, adding softly, “I was lucky, I guess.”

He used a Mexican government ID to board a plane to Atlanta, and his buddy Ray was at the airport.

“Big hugs, some tears,” he said. “It was very emotional.”

His first job at the tortilla packing factory paid $2.25 an hour, his next job at the construction company paid $6.25 an hour, a fortune by San Jose de la Paz standards. He started sending letters and money orders to his father each month.

“I learned English on the job, and chasing senoritas,” he said, smiling.

“I had to learn. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to talk to them. That was a good way to learn.”

He started by watched sitcoms, “Sanford and Son” and “Happy Days” and “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Ayala went to the same Mexican restaurant in Atlanta, El Toro, for years, having steak and stew and a margarita or two. Ayala and the owner became friends, and the owner — when he found out Ayala spoke English — eventually persuaded him to work in the restaurant.

'Work hard and don't look back'

In 10 years, Ayala saved a few thousand dollars, got a green card and launched his career as a restaurateur.

He started looking for Southern cities with few Mexican restaurants, and the first Las Palmas opened in 1990 in Nashville.

“People didn’t know much about Mexican food,” Ayala said. “They thought it was too hot.”

Ayala returned to his village 34 years ago and reconnected with childhood friend Angelina, whom he moved to the U.S. and married a year later. They have a son and three grandchildren in Nashville. Ayala became a citizen in 2009.

His father visited the U.S. a few times, beaming with pride, but the patriarch stayed in their hometown village until he died last year, 16 days shy of his 99th birthday.

Ayala has tried to reach out and help other Mexican immigrants, like he got help from Mexicans when he first came to Atlanta. A majority of his workforce is made up of Spanish-speaking immigrants.

Ayala said he never once regretted moving to the States.

“If you really wish and decide something, you can do it. You just have to work hard and don’t look back. If you look back you’re losing time.”

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 and on Twitter @bradschmitt.

4 fascinating facts about the owner of Las Palmas

• His favorite non-Mexican food restaurant in Nashville is Olive Garden, but he doesn't care for pasta.

• On President Donald Trump's proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico: "I have no comment."

• Jose Luis Ayala's favorite local celebrities: Gov. Bill Haslam and Nashville Mayor Megan Barry

• Through his father, Ayala has 17 brothers and sisters.

Las Palmas Cinco de Mayo celebration

What: Las Palmas will participate in the annual Sevier Park Fest by building a 7-foot-long chicken/beef burrito.

When: 1 p.m. Saturday, with the festival itself running 6 to 10 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday

Information: www.sevierparkfest.com