Viewing page 20 of 73

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

When we played we always wore shoes that we had outgrown. Our school shoes became our play shoes. Our toes curled under as they met the end of the shoe. Our feet were shoved inside shoes that once were too big but now were to small. The former dress shoes gave the impression that we were wearing the wrong clothes on top, hand me down shirts and shorts worn by an older brother or sister. Shoes were important in Arizona. We might go outside without a shirt or in our underpants but the shoes were our protection from stickers, cactus and nails coming through the boards lying in the backyard. We were outside with our legs and arms open to the sun but never our feet. When summer ended our whole bodies would be tan, except our feet where we had worn shoes and socks. By the end of the day we were dirty, scratched and sunburned, and our feet hurt from being put in shoes that were to small. The final evidence was when the shoes were taken off, an impression was left deep into our skin.

Our attention shifted from the back yard to the middle ground, the road behind the house. At the end of the road was a small grocery store that stocked basic food supplies. The larger grocery store that was owned by the mining company was down the hill on Chase Creek Road. My brother and I found empty Coke bottles and wanted to redeem them for two cents. There was danger between the store and my grandmother's house and it needed to be considered. It was a hundred yards to the grocery store and Mexican kids waited to throw rocks at our bare legs. We never played with these kids or knew their names. We just called them the "Mexican Kids". Before we would start running to the

19