Character of a Shoeshine Boy

Thomas Zuniga was a kid who grew up in Los Angeles, California. He was nine years old with learning difficulties when he started shining shoes and hawking newspapers in 1963. On Saturdays, he carried his homemade shoeshine box bar to bar in Lincoln Heights, then walked to downtown Los Angeles. All the while, his household was on the brink of collapsing with parents fighting regularly. Terrible things happened to him in his backyard, like the time when someone hanged his dog from the clothesline post, and sometimes, he got into trouble with the law. He takes you through his adventurous shoeshine days in smoky, loud music bars where he is witness to an adult world of men and women drinking, arguing, and laughing. In downtown, he wanders the streets and in large department stores, and he shoeshines in dingy bars with cat-size rats running around. While walking back home, he saw his second dead body of the year. He was chased by a junkyard dog, and in Elysian Park, he believed that he heard the voice of the White Lady crying for her dead children (folklore). After his parents divorced, he played baseball at Downey Playground and had a paper route. Then he had a sensuous experience with a good-looking female customer on collection day. The reason for writing his book and interring his divorced parents together next to their baby son Larry can only be told by a son whose character came from lessons learned on the streets of Los Angeles.