<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Okay, we're gonna come back to that later, but let's go on. So 1952, this is about the time you graduate from high school.

BS: Yes.

TI: And so you --

BS: Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

TI: Sure.

BS: Junior high, I'm playing basketball at Maryknoll, St. Peter Claver Center, and Pauline asked me to go, whether I'd take her to the junior prom.

TI: [Laughs] Okay, this is good. We have to finish up the Pauline... wait, wait. She asked you?

BS: Yeah, to her, to the junior prom.

TI: Well, was that common? I would think the, usually back then I thought the man would ask the woman.

BS: This is Bob.

TI: [Laughs] Okay.

BS: What can I say? I owned a car.

TI: So when you were in junior high school she asked you to the prom.

BS: No, it was --

TI: Junior high school.

BS: It was the high school prom, but it was the junior, junior class would have a, they would have their own prom.

TI: High school, junior class. Okay. So all those, all those attempts back in first grade...

BS: It worked out.

TI: But took you, what, ten, eleven years before it...

BS: Yeah. Then we started, then we dated.

TI: Okay, good. So let me ask you, in high school what kind of student were you?

BS: Bad. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I was, my mind was just racing, 'cause all the stuff that was happening in the International District, Manilatown, Chinatown, all this stuff is happening. You discovered girls, and I was not, I was a bad student. I graduated right in the middle of the class. I got by. I studied for the exam. I never did homework, never did that. Crammed for the exam and just barely passed, so that was not a very good experience.

TI: How about discipline, in terms of getting in trouble in high school? Was that a problem for you?

BS: It was a problem for my aunt and uncle and my dad, but not a problem for me. One thing I remember, I went to O'Dea High School and I was this kid who wasn't really -- with the teachers, the Irish Christian brothers, and the coaches because I was on the boxing team -- I wasn't really this Filipino kid. I was just sort of accepted there as somebody, as an athlete. And I'd hear some of these comments. I went to school with the Laigo brothers and a guy named Albert Mendoza, Filipino, our Filipino kids that we grew up, all went to Maryknoll, and they would come to school in dress pants. They were slacks, the black slacks. And they weren't wearing tennis shoes at that time. They were wearing regular Oxford shoes, dress shoes, and always had nice clothes. And the coaches would, they'd comment, "Here comes the hotshot jitterbugs," the Filipino kids, you know? And it always, it really got me then because these kids after school would have jobs in the restaurants downtown, right? Or at the athletic club or Ivar's or some of these places, and there were no lockers at that time at these restaurants, so the kids that worked these restaurants had to dress up to go to school and then they went to work, and then that was their working clothes that they went. It always bothered me that they were termed "hotshot jitterbugs" because they dressed different from all the other kids at school. The white kids, right? And so I wrote about that in my book, I think, about, you learn these little things about little, just little things and it bothered you, little comments that were made about people, brown people, black people, and so it starts to sink in that there's two different worlds here as you're growing up. So that always bothered me. That's why I didn't have very good memories of O'Dea High School, because of that.

TI: And you would think the coaches would know better because a lot of these people, especially if they wanted to do sports and they said, "No, I have to go to work," they would understand that these people are, they're going to work and they had to wear these things. That's interesting.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.