Reading Changed My Life - Townsend Press

Reading Changed My Life! Three True StoriesYou had new clothes. Sometimes you even got togo to the movies. If your dad was an OK guy whoworked hard, you were in the middle class. But ifyour dad was the camp drunk, you were the bottomof the barrel. That was us: the trash of the trash.The crew leader’s kids wouldn’t even speak to us.When we ended up in the same schools, they pretendedthey didn’t know us.”Because of the family’s traveling, Maria hadnever gone to school very steadily. She would beenrolled now and then, here and there, for a fewweeks at a time. As her father grew more brutal, sheattended even less. When picking was heavy, shehad to stay home to work. If the younger childrengot sick, Maria was expected to care for them. Inthe camps she heard only Spanish, so her Englishskills weren’t very good. As a result, she fell furtherand further behind in her studies.“I don’t know how I got through elementaryschool, much less to high school,” Maria says. “I only8