October 1981

October 1981

“The  Southside Reporter” is a weekly neighborhood newspaper that caters to the southside of San Antonio.  The “Reporter” has advertisements, want ads, and articles of interest to our community. If you couldn’t afford the regular city newspaper, the Reporter was perfect because it was delivered free to your house.  

One fine October in 1981, I was looking for a coupon for 99¢ ¼ lbs burgers from the neighborhood burger joint, and I came across a small article that read…

Leal middle school wins chess tournament

Leal was our rival school, that also fed into the same High School as my own school.  I thought that it would be something if our school could compete; since I’ve been here we really had no after school extracurricular activities other than choir and sports.

My Mom back in the 60’s bought me a “Cyclo-Teacher”, it was a device that tutored you, on math, English, history, and a various set of subjects, including some games like chess.

I set it up and learned the moves and how to set a board. But I still did not have a board.

So I bought a board, and reviewed the moves and some basic rules.  I did this after school. I found myself using the instructions inside the box, (not real good) and the “Cyclo”, and started playing “solo”  

After school I would set up the board and pretended to be both opponents, this attracted the attention of a few students and we started playing. (or we thought we were)  

As I was teaching the kids some of the conversations went like this:

“What do you mean the King guy can’t be taken off the board…”

“Check?...Rice, Corn or Wheat”

“This is the Bishop, Oh my mom says we’re not Catholic.”  “Well just call him religious guy” I replied.

After a while we started having a few kids coming in after school to play chess. (mostly girls)…One rather warm day after school, I asked, “Why don’t we start a chess club?”  

The answer was unanimous ….  

“I wanna be president!…No I do!”  

It was a big deal to be the president of a club even with no idea how to play chess.

During one of our “meetings” four boys were passing by the window outside. The girls saw them and said “hey Natcho …we play chess!” One of the girls who recognized one of the boys.

“The reply outside was one of extreme skepticism and a few cuss words to boot “chest?”… a few obscene giggles

But seeing that it was a bunch of girls in the room these guys couldn’t resist…

Registration that Afternoon

Friday
Late August 1981

That afternoon I was assigned to help with registration of students.  

That consisted of handing out classroom schedules to students who were pre-registered and enrolling new students to the school.   Tables were set up in the courtyard of the school with signs designating where the students to go in alphabetical order. My section was the M,N,O,P section so students would go to the table with the beginning letter of their last name. 

Easy enough.

I would look up their name, check in their name, hand out their schedule…

Exchange a few pleasantries like “hello”, or “yes your hand should feel funny cause you haven’t used a pencil all summer” .

But what got me number of kids that showed up to my line and said this…

”Hello sir” I would state “what’s your name?”

“Mike Suniga” the kid would reply profusely sweating.  

(side note the courtyard was in the sun, the registrations tables were the only part in the shade and kids had to stand in the line in the sun….we couldn’t use the gyms because the floors were new were made with a strange rubber material….and the coaches didn’t want to mark the floor with shoe scuffs)  alas I digress.

“Mike you’re in the wrong line we go by last names.”

Mike just dripped sweat and looked at the other line where the Q,R,S,T sign was hanging, and it was at least 20 deep in kids and parents who were also sweating….

Texas in August has an unforgiving Summer sun.