Summer School Programs

By kiki

In my years at Vail Elementary School in Simons (late '40's), the schools were open during the summers with different programs for the kids to partake in. We had marble, tops, basketball, and fastpitch softball et al. tournaments with the other schools in the district. For two years (5^th & 6^th grade), I won the Top tourney, came in last in marbles, but I had lots of fun losing my grandma's marbles. Grandma Lupe had a bucket full of marbles for my cousins and me to play with; she always had to be refilling the bucket.

Same two years, we won the district fastpitch softball tournament trophy. Our grade school was a segregated school from the wrong side of the tracks. Poor because the district wouldn't spend any money on it, but plenty of money went into the schools on the right side of the tracks, so when we would play against the other schools, we looked like a bunch of ragtag kids, whereas the other teams were in nice team uniforms. But ragtag's or not, we had an ace in the hole, our pitcher, little Raulito Martinez. Raulito was small for his age, but he was the fastest pitcher in the district, and with no rules about how many days he could pitch, we won every game in those two years. And even though we always had to play in the other team's home fields, we were undefeated for two years straight! Finally, it got so bad with the kids trying to hit Raulito that the coaches from the other teams started challenging his age; they asked that he produce his birth certificate; he was legal, so he had one. Thus, he was allowed to play, and so we won!!

Bring back the summer school programs to keep the kids off the streets!!

Later in the summer months of the late '50s, when we were in our late teens or just out of our teen years, and with roughly the same grade school ragtag team. Some of the guys with the closing of the Simons Brickyard had moved out of the area, we would play the older guys, guys 25 years and under got to play with the younger guys, over 25 play with the Vetranos (older guys). We would play for beer, with the losing team buying. As with our grade school team, Raulito Martinez was our ace pitcher. Thus most of the time, we drank beer on the Vetrano's dime.