Spanish speaking peoples in Utah, oral histories: book 11, numbers 112 through 120

Page 71

INTERVIIDv: Ellis Page 30 like this. This is the thing you'll find about Moab, and Monticell now Monticello's kids want to go to school so bad just to prove to the people, especially the school teachers in Monticello. . . I used to have a terrible time with these two school teachers. This Mrs. Walton,. oh she was terrible. She hated the Mexicans and she would not, she was the home economics teacher, and she would not teach anybody but her favorite students, and they happened to be like certain white girls, and they were of the high class. Even low class girls didn't get any, low class white girls didn't get any attention. And we'd have a meeting like, you know, like certain topics, and she'd say, "Well, if you smoke, and she looked right at me, you're going to get cancer and everything like that," and I stood up and I said, "Mrs. Walton," I says, "my mother got cancer and she has never smoked in her life." And she turned around and she slapped me completely off of my stool, and that was the eleventh grade. And I got up and I told her, "You old bitch," and I said, "if you ever touch me again, I'll whip your ass, I don't care how old you are." And this is, they're still teaching, the same teachers that I had are still there and they're old and they're still brought up in the old culture, that Mexicans or the lower white class