The boy had to get up before sunup to ensure his mom had enough firewood for the wood-burning stove she used to cook for her family. After that, the boy's mom would get up at quarter to four in the morning to see her husband and her children's father off to work. The boy's father worked at the Simons Brickyard, about two hundred yards north of their front door. In those hot 1940's summer days, the Simons Brickyard workers would start working at four in the morning to get off before the sweating heat hit. They were off work around 11:00 AM. The boy's mother would start preparing breakfast for the boy's siblings, four girls; one sister was older than the boy, and soon after, her husband was out the door. The boy would have breakfast with his father when he was done delivering breakfast to other workers.
The boy would go out into the warm summer dawn and gather firewood for the stove as his mom made tortillas for breakfast. When his mom's head was turned away from the tortilla basket, the boy would steal a hot tortilla, put some hot chili salsa on it and run like hell, laughing as he did; his mom would try to grab his ear to give it a twist, sometimes she missed, other times she didn't, when mom didn't miss she would give his ear a playful twist while both laugh at their playful banter. While the boy would be eating his tortilla, he would go about feeding the family animals, rabbits, chickens, a goat, and a hog their morning feed. He, too, would water his mother's victory garden.
By six o'clock, the boy's mother would have his father's breakfast ready, including some for the boy; sometimes it was eggs in hot salsa, other times eggs and chorizo, but always with beans and always in tacos. Then, about a quarter after six, the boy would walk out with a lunch pile and a big jar of coffee; he would go around the side of the wooden shack that was their home; he would then take his wagon that he had made out of a wooden box out of a small garage that he had constructed for it on the side of the house. He would put the breakfast and coffee in the wagon and head out to other workers' homes to pick up breakfasts that he would deliver to the hard-working men for their 7:00 o'clock breakfast break. In every home, he would stop to pick up a breakfast; he would find a woman hunched over with her rolling pin-making tortillas as she listened to Ellena Salinas play Mexican music on her radio show. The ladies would give the boy a hot tortilla to eat on his way to the next pick-up.
After delivering all the breakfasts and having breakfast with his father, the boy would return home to chop some firewood, enough for a couple of days. Done with the wood chopping, the boy would join other boys at the rackas (racks) to turn the bricks to dry. While turning the bricks, he would go through a daily ritual that he was not happy to partake in. Still, to keep the other boys off of him, he had to do so, so daily, he had a fistfight with a boy who was his next-door neighbor; most of the time, the boy would kick the neighbor's boy's ass. Of all the boys in Simons of his exact age, twelve, thirteen years old, he was the only one without an older or younger brother, so all the boys would pick on him, figuring he didn't have a backup, but he soon earned their respect by beating the neighbor's boy more times than not. Turning bricks, delivering breakfasts, and shining shoes at Nacho's Pool Hall on the weekends gave him enough money to go to the Royal Theater in East Los Angeles to watch his beloved western movies. So yes, the boy would fight on to earn enough money to go and watch his favorite silver screen cowboy heroes.
Done turning bricks by noon, and after having lunch, the boys would head out to their local swimming hole if they didn't have a baseball game with their Vail Elementary School summer team. The boy and his friends would ride their bikes to the swimming hole by the railroad tracks, about a hundred yards east of Sycamore Street and Bluff Road in South Montebello. In the days of passenger trains, the boys would look for approaching trains as most were skinny dipping. As the trains were coming, most of the boys would jump in the water lest the passengers would see their brown butts, but not all would jump in the water; there was always one or two that would turn their butts to the passengers and moon them.
Getting back home in time for dinner and the late animal feed was a must for the boy. So after feeding the animals and having dinner, the boy spent the rest of the daylight hours picking on his younger sisters, pulling their hair and ears; he didn't pick on his older sister because she did some picking back.
At dusk, the boy would head to la lumbrita (the fire-pit), which was about one hundred yards east of his house; the boy would carry with him his boxing gloves, hoping to get one of the boys to box with him in the dirt floor ring they had constructed next to the fire-pit. Sometimes there were takers; other times, not; it seemed like none of the boys loved boxing the way the boy did. The first boy arriving at the la lumbrita would start the fire. After that, the boys would start arriving as soon as the sun was over the horizon; as they did, they would set out to gather firewood. Sometimes firewood was hard to come by. Because all the houses used wood-burning stoves, wood was like gold in the Brickyard. When there was no wood to be had, the boys would go into the rakas and dump the bricks of the paletas (pallets); using paletas for firewood was not taken kindly by the local Chota (cop), who would chase the boys when he caught them burning paletas. When they couldn't burn paletas, they would burn somebody's white picket fence.
There was always something new happening at the la lumbrita, a boy burning his new shoe, looking for ways to get back at the Chota, stealing somebody's rooster to roast over the fire, throwing 22 caliber bullets into the fire as the boys circle the la lumbrita; the boys would try to dodge the flying shells. Sometimes one of the boys would get hit by a flying bullet shell.
The boy would return home at about ten o'clock to find his parents and siblings sitting outside by the árbol de chavacne (apricot tree) as it was too hot on those 1940's summer nights to get any sleep inside their wooden shack.
After sitting and talking for a bit, the boy would go into the house to try and get some sleep in the bedroom he shared with his four sisters; which sometimes was hard to do because his older sister would lay in the dark room chewing and poppin' her gum, to get some sleep the boy would get under the blankets and cover his head with his pillow. Then, finally, the boy would go to sleep, and tomorrow would be another hot 1940s summer day in the Simons Brickyard for the boy.
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