"El Hoyo Soto"

By kiki

El Hoyo Soto was a Mexican-American barrio at the southeast corner of Whittier Boulevard and Soto Street.  Just one barrio of many was found in the ELA/Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles in the 1950s. Its streets were all dirt and full of holes. And as far as we knew, El Hoyo had only one street going in and out.

Around 1953 my buddies and I met some girls on Whittier Boulevard; they said they were from El Hoyo Soto; after talking for a while, they invited us to a house party for that coming Saturday night; we, of course, said yes.

On Saturday, six of us jumped in my buddy Freddy's '41 Ford convertible that he had bought two weeks earlier. We arrived at the party, and soon we were dancing with the girls we had met, well the vatos from El Hoyo didn't take kindly to that. Soon a fight broke out; there were too many of them, so we jumped into the '41 Ford and took off down the dirt road leading out of El Hoyo; it was the only way out that we knew, then the Ford died out, we looked back, and there were guys following us in cars, some were chasing us on foot. The Ford wouldn't start, so we bailed out and hauled ass out of there as fast as possible. Finally, we got to Whittier Boulevard and jumped on a streetcar lumbering by. We all made it home safely. A few days later, we returned for the Ford; damn! It had been burned to the ground!!