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MN: Now, I know you were really active in a lot of extracurricular activities, and one of them was the Manza-Knights. What were the Manza-Knights?

BK: Manza-Knights was a boys' club and it was made mostly of boys from the downtown area and Boyle Heights, and they had different groups from different areas. We had the group from San Pedro and the Yogores, and then they had names of fish, and we had the other people who came from different areas, San Fernando Aces and the Bel-Airs, so each area tried to develop a name for the group. And so the Manza-Knights was a East L.A. and downtown group. It had more than just one group of players and different ages, so you had the Manza-Knights and the older fellows, and then the Manza-Knights that were in between, and then the Manza-Knights that were the younger group, so we did, we joined different categories of activities based on age. So the Manza-Knights were basically made up of downtown, Boyle Heights people.

MN: You got in trouble one time as a feature editor of the Campus Pepper, which is a school newspaper. Can you tell us that story?

BK: Oh yeah, well, we had a contest to name the school paper, and the person that won out was entitled the Campus Pepper. You know, pep, pep the people, to cheer them up. And the Campus Pepper had different kind of editors. You had the editor that wrote serious things about what could happen in school, and I became an editor for, not humor, but feature editor. I would write things about certain people and certain couples, just to keep the names in front of the group, and one time I ran across a poem. And this poem was in some editorial or some newspaper, and I thought it was good because it was the world's shortest poem. The title to it should've been "World's Shortest Poem: (Fleas)." And at that time when the paper came out we had to use a stencil, and the stencil you had to have a stylus put in the heading of a different subject. And Nori Kuriyama was supposed to be the artist to put the headings in. Well, he forgot to put in "World's Shortest Poem," which he should've put in, but it just came on "Adam, Had them." And the vice president, she called me in and says, "Bruce, what is this 'Adam, Had them? It sounds pretty bad." I says, well, I tried to explain it, "Nori Kuriyama should've put the heading in, 'The World's Shortest Poem: (Fleas).'" She said, "What does that mean?" I said, "That's all. That's the, that's the name of the poem. '(Fleas).'" I said, "You could make it whatever you want, but that's the direct copy I got from another newspaper." And she was really miffed, and I said, "I don't know what you're thinkin' about. I don't have any thoughts about it. Just '(Fleas) Adam Had them.'" [Laughs] Oh, boy.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.