Soto recounts one summer while he was a teenager: “I was sixteen and unable to find a summer job, so instead of moping around the house I volunteered to become a recreational assistant for the City Parks Department” (81). He ends up volunteering at Emerson Elementary, a school that most of his family had attended when they were younger. He walks four miles to Emerson, “where the houses, poor and dilapidated, slowly gave way to industry and shops—bakery, auto parts stores, a tire company, machine shop, and the import car dealer, Haron the Baron” (81). This is the area where Soto had spent the first six years of his life, and it gives him a sense of nostalgia.

Once at Emerson, he meets the coach, Calvin: “To my surprise the coach was black—surprise because, aside from garbage men, I had never seen a black person employed by the city” (82). Calvin is in college and seems too preoccupied to be attentive to the children. Despite this, Soto decides that he wants both Calvin and the children to like him, and he spends the summer trying to befriend Calvin and playing one-on-one with the kids. He learns how to play dominoes with Alfonso, and he also plays four-square ball with Marsha and Esteban, a shy sister and brother pair.