By kiki
In 1950, I entered Montebello Junior High School.
Somehow some of my Vail schoolmates and I got a year behind in our school years. After 7th grade, some schoolmates and I were asked to skip the 8th grade and go straight into the 9th grade. I said yes. My best friend Coy and others said no.
My two years at Montebello Junior High were not very memorable. Besides getting thrown off the school bus for shooting spitballs at the driver, finding a girlfriend that dropped me after a couple of months for a high school guy because he had a car, she told me. And seeing Mr. Martin, our English teacher, and another teacher whose name I can't recall—I'll just call him Mr. Dude—go after another teacher, whose name I can't remember, so I'll call her Miss Dudette. Both were trying to win Miss Dudette's heart. Mr. Martin won out in the end, and he married Miss Dudette.
One day in Mr. Martin's English class, my friend Chano Diaz asked permission to go to the boy's room, which he got from Mr. Martin. On his return from the boy's room and sitting at his desk, Chano bolted up in the air, yelling, "cabron, I am going to kill you!" at me. It seemed like somebody had put a thumbtack on his chair. Why he thought it was me, I've no idea. I was asked by Mr. Martin if I had put the tack on the chair or knew who had done it. I told him, "I ain't squawking." By the end of the class, Chano had gotten over it, and he didn't beat me up, which he could have quickly done as he was a big boy. By the way, Chano is a distant cousin.
The most exciting times at M.J.H. were in Mr. Archer's agriculture class. Mr. Archer had a fenced land plot for his agriculture classes; the lot had a locked gate. Mr. Archer would count the number of students going in at the start of class and coming out at the end. He was short one student coming out; he would look us over and ask, "Where is David?" Nobody would say they knew where David was, so he would send some of us to look for him. Of course, some of us knew where he was because some of us would tie David up in the tool shed during class. We would untie him once Mr. Archer asked for him. Some may say we were bullies, but we were just mischievous. It was all done in fun. Even David used to laugh at what we did to him.
Another fond memory of M.J.H. was trading my lunch with the gabacho boys. At the start of my 7th-grade year, my mom would pack me a "brown bag" lunch with tacos; they are now known as burritos. I would trade the tacos for sandwiches with the white boys. It was a good trade in that everybody was happy. But that didn't last long. About halfway into the school year, I started getting lunch money. Across the school was a mom-and-pop burger joint where we could buy a burger, fries, and a coke for 50 cents, and that's what I had for lunch for the rest of the time I was attending M.J.H.
My two years at Montebello Junior High went by fast. Finally, the spring of 1952 came around, and it was time to prepare for graduation. I needed to buy a suit, but before we could go to a men's store, a tailor making the rounds in Simons came to our door. My mom told him yes that I needed a suit for graduation. "How much?" she asked him. "$50.00," said the tailor. My mom said okay, even though we didn't have the $50.00. With the material picked and the measurements taken, the tailor said he would deliver C.O.D. with a small deposit in two weeks.
My mom then remembered that my paternal grandmother was holding $50.00 from a cow sale for me. "A cow sale?" When I was about 8 or 9, my grandma Lupe gave me one of her calves. After a couple of years, she sold my cow for $50.00 and told my mom and dad that she would hold that money until I graduated. When my mom told her we needed the money for my graduation, she said no, that I only graduated from junior high and not high school. So, in the end, she gave us $50.00 plus $20.00.
With the cost of the suit taken care of, I now needed a shirt, tie, and shoes. I settled on a white shirt, yellow knitted tie, and blue suede shoes to go with the light blue suit that had been tailor-made for me.
Graduation day was in mid-June. Ceremonies were held at Montebello City Park.
We sat on stage, and as our names were called, we walked to the center stage to receive our diplomas from the principal, Mr. Collins. After receiving our certificates, we would coolly walk back to our seats. Mr. Collins' daughter, who graduated with us (I can't remember her name), skipped-hopped across the stage, and after receiving her diploma, she skipped-hopped back to her seat. She had everybody laughing. - With the ceremonies over, it was party time at the Brickyard.
