Richard Abbott:  

We even attended summer school, which was easy and fun. They would had talent shows in the school cafeteria, which had a stage, microphone, curtain, and piano. Since my voice was still undisturbed by puberty, I had a clear clean sound. I religiously practiced such songs as ¿Buttons and Bows¿, and ¿Too Young¿. The rec program included pingpong, carroms, checkers and chess tournaments, games, watermelon, snacks, and Baker, Clemens, or a woman in charge. Clemens and I sat down, read the instructions on chess, and began to play. Later my grandfather played with me regularly and sometimes maybe due to his inattention I won. I remember playing pingpong with Art Gerardo, the big muscular Mexicano. I was slightly afraid of him, but when he tried cheating me on the score I challenged him, we fought, and I won, much to my surprise. I realized that he was a chicken himself at heart. I had another Mexican friend, Matt Magana, who played tackle on our football team. I ran into him many years later in a store. He seemed to be exactly the same as when he was a kid, modest, quiet, unassuming, although he had a kid of his own. Another friend, Roy Kato, who returned from the concentration camp along with a lot of other Japanese-Americans, was the only kid who was smarter than me in math, although I was better in English. June Tamura, another returnee, and I competed for first in spelling and English. I was the fastest in racing also, until a new kid, Aiji Moto, beat me. When Tex(Jerry Westmoreland) came he was a new competition. Although we were pretty well matched intellectually, he was better in sports, better looking, and when we both ran for class president, his campaign of ¿Vote for Tex, or we¿ll hang you¿ was more popular than my devious idea of passing out Tootsie Rolls(like cigars) and asking for (trying to buy) votes. Once when we had a substitute, Tex and Doug Haskins, another buddy from El Nido, started scuffling in the back of the class. When the hassled teacher asked if this was the way they behaved normally, Tex piped right up, ¿Yes Ma¿am!¿ 50 -13 Eighth grade, Mr .Porter. I had lost my popularity since so many new kids had moved in from El Nido Terrace, the Truman-Browning tract, and surrounding area. The first inkling I had that things were changing was when Porter had us play football, and I was put on the line against Dick McNeese and was kneed in the huevos by the overgrown hulk. He was bigger and older than everyone else and was a bully. I remember getting into a few fights. The last fight I had was with Melvin Sibley, the Okie who had told me a couple of years before that I shouldn¿t be chasing after Rose Ayala since she was a Mexican, and they didn¿t even have electricity or running water. She and I had spent a day picking string beans together one summer, and spent most of the time throwing beans at each other. Being an incurable romantic I fell hopelessly in love, all at the age of 10 or 11. Anyway, Melvin had crossed me in some way, and in the new tougher atmosphere I chose him off after the bus had let us off at the corner of 182nd and Hawthorne Blvd. There was a crowd around us as I knocked him down, straddled him and demanded he say quit. His mother came rushing up yelling at us and I jeered ¿Your mama¿s calling,¿ thereupon he slugged me good on the jaw. That ended the fight and his mother took him home.