Unit 1: Vocabulary from Readings 1

It was that time of year again. Ito, the strawberry sharecropper, did not
smile. It was natural.

That was the name Papá gave his old ‘38 black Plymouth. He bought it in a used-car lot in Santa Rosa in the winter of 1949. Papá was very proud of his little jalopy.

At sunset we drove into a labor camp near Fresno.

“We have work! Mr. Sullivan said we can stay there the whole season,” she said, gasping and pointing to an old garage near the stables.

The walls, eaten by termites, strained to support the roof full of holes.

He wrote down numbers, crossed some out, wrote down some more. “Quince,” he murmured.

I woke up early that morning and lay in bed, looking at the stars and savoring the thought of not going to work and of starting sixth grade for the first time that year.

For the rest of the reading period I kept getting angrier and angrier with myself.

Like Superman, I wanted to be able to fly faster than speeding bullets, to be more powerful than locomotives, to leap tall buildings at a single bound.

To keep warm in winter, I wore a heavy wool coat, a wool muffler, wool mittens, furry earmuffs and—one of my most treasured possessions—a Chicago Cubs baseball cap autographed by a player named Big Bill Nicholson.

On the coldest days of winter, three bullies waited for me after school, just for the fun of terrorizing me.

I took part in dangerous voodoo ceremonies in Haiti.

I created another series called Maximum Boy, about a boy named Max who accidentally touches radioactive rocks that just came back from outer space and who suddenly develops superpowers.