Luz Maria Yoshiura:  

Life From my family to yours, you are welcomed to share our experiences. Sports rule at our home with splashes of books, music, science and oral history. I think that's a good mix! At the tender age of 3 years old, life began on the 25th hundred of North 7th Street after our family of four moved from 17th and Green Streets. My memory of Green Street was playing in our spaceous 3rd floor apartment brick rowhouse. Being a child everything looked big, I clearly remembered that it was a studio apartment. I guess my parents decided that a house was in the our future, so 7th Street we were headed where a Catholic school (St. Edward's) was only a block away and trees that lined the sidewalks on our block. By age 5, I realized I had to fight for myself or risk being picked on for the rest of my life. When I entered kindergarten (across St. Ed's) though along with my younger brother Joaquin, I guess they couldn't handle two of us from the same family so we both wound up getting kicked out of Kindergarten. Enter St. Edward's, I learned quickly the difference between public school and Catholic school. We wore uniforms which made us easy targets for whatever came our way when it came to public school kids. We all should have been candidates for sainthood, but saints we weren't. St. Edward's with the older seasoned Nuns in addition to the little annex across the street were a little rough on us, but it wasn't until the younger Nuns came in that we began to appreciate the value of our educators. They were the real saints. As for the neighborhood, the trees became infested with thousands of mites that the precious trees and all of their beauty had to be chopped down. Older residences, that predated our arrival to 7th Street, gradually died. These were the champions of community and order. These older, scarfed ladies were of Eastern European roots (some said, Lithuanians or Ukrainians) whom we all recognized as cleaning the pavements routinely each morning. They weren't particularly friendly with us, but I admired their work ethic and ability to endure. They weren't moving anywhere, home was home. And speaking of home, I'd have to admit the best memories were the fire hydrants (aka, "water plugs"). The best retreat any of us had from the summer's hottest days. Strategically positioned behind the water plug, with hands skillfully interlocked at the mouth of the spout to create the best cascade of water. Or with the alternate use of our backside to act as a natural plug at the water spout, guiding the flow of water over our backs just enough to keep our T...Expand for more