Tony Cardenas

My parents didn't speak English. They learned it little by little. They realized that education was the ticket to a better future in their own rudimentary way. They kept the house clean, kept us on the straight and narrow, and none of us ever got into trouble with the law.

My grandma actually put me in girdles when I was around nine or ten because I had hips even then, and she didn't want boys to be attracted to me. Having hips meant you were a full-grown woman, and I was too young for that.

I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way... so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people.