There's Yukio Kawaratani who wrote his memoirs describing how he grew up in Southern California as a young Japanese American.

We have another author who wrote about a local youth sports program and revealed that life outside the diamond can be fun.

Last week I met a new author. His name is Charles "Chuck" Cordova. He wrote "Coffee at JJ's" and jokingly labels it as a Monterey Park best seller.

Some of you may be familiar with JJ's. It is a coffee and donut shop that also specializes in Thai food and hamburgers. It is typically Monterey Park "fusion."

JJ's is located just south of the intersection of Garfield and Riggin. The coffee shop is a hangout to a group, mostly older men, who saunder by between the hours of 6 and 10 a.m. nearly every day.

As Chuck writes, they are "solving the world's problems, one donut at a time."

In his book, Chuck describes himself as being in his late 60s. He has lived on Montery Park most of life and graduated from Garfield high school.

He is also the author of four memoirs, since one is not enough, as well as the "Call of the Wizard," a fantasy and "Nine Lives of the 20th Century."

His writing in "Coffee at JJ's" is funny, interesting and sometimes, irreverent. Overall it is fund reading, especially as he writes about each one of the coffee bunch, all of whom are real people

I like the episode where they finally get a winner in their weekly lottery purchase. By the time they split the winnings among themselves, they wind up with about 45 cents each. Not bad for a year-long effort to hit the big multi-million dollar prize.

Some of the pages are filled with typical adult male banter. There is nothng unusual about it, but if you are highly sensitive to that sort of cross talk this book is not for you.

They joke with each other, ridicule each other and sometimes insult each other.
But, there are no four letter words or raw comments. I guess if this book was a movie, it would rated "S-M" for semi-mature people.

Like Monterey Park, the group is diverse, though weighted on the Latino side.

What they have in common, is that are retired, or nearing retirement age. Instead of gathering at a park to play chess or checkers, they are an informal coffee gang,

Our author has a new book and is now a full fledge publisher. He's tired of the middlemen taking the majority of the revenue.

His late book is a self-help book titled: " Your Memoriors, How to Write, Edit and publish your life stories in YourRetirement Years."

He firmly believes that we should all write our memoirs - not for us, not for our children, but for our grand children. I doubt that you can find Chuck's books in any library or bookstore. Your best bet is to send an email to Chuck at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .