Tales From The Simons Brickyard
By kiki
My friend Richard came from a big family of 8 or 9 kids, and like most people in Simons, it was hard for Richard's parents to buy new clothes and shoes for all their kids at the same time. So one at a time, the parents in Simons would clothe their children. Back in the late 1940s-early-'50s, most people didn't have TVs to entertain themselves, so we kids, out of boredom, would build a lumbrita "a small fire" (one night we stole a rooster and roasted him) every night in an empty lot.
One night at la lumbrita, one of Richard's younger brother's kept putting his foot on a burning piece of Nacho's fence, his parents had just bought him a new pair of shoes, and none of the guys had said, "Hey, nice shoes." So hence, by putting one foot on the burning log, I think he was hoping that we would notice that he had new shoes, well we all saw alright, his shoe caught on fire! And being that times were tough back then, it would be nine months or more before he would get another pair of shoes.
HaHa! Poor kid.
ReplyDeleteMy Uncle Joe (he's your age, Frank) use to pretend that he was going to step on our new shoes. We'd scream and run from him as if he would really do it. He was a lot of fun too. He lives about 7 miles from me in Seal Beach. I haven't seen him for 4 years now.
PD
Go visit your uncle Joe!...Yeah, the poor kid probably didn't get another new pair of shoes for a year. Things were tough in that brickyard, but us kids had allot of fun living there. There was always something happening around that fire!!
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