I think this is a photo from the first grade. My teacher was Mrs. McLaughlin. She lived around the corner from me and my family. There was a bus that bussed me into school. At school, there were mostly Mexicans that did not take busses. This was the opposite thing of what happened to little black girls in towns like Little Rock, Arkansas. Us white kids got bussed in and made fun of. But it wasn’t like we had it bad. These Mexican kids had grandmothers and uncles living in their bedrooms. My elementary school was surrounded by artichoke fields. On one side was the Pacific ocean. You weren’t going anywhere unless you picked artichokes or were one helluva swimmer. There were sharks. We learned this later, on a field trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. My father sold suits. I also didn’t know that then. My only job was going to school, which, as evidenced by this photo, I was not all enthused about. My father said, “Suck it up; I wish I was in school.”

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