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Town Boy By Lat
This comic book by our very own local cartoonist Lat was first published in the year 1980 and reprinted for the seventeenth time in 2007. A reminiscence of Lat’s teenage years, the story starts with Lat, telling us in a short text, that he was born in a kampong and stayed in the school hostel in Ipoh when he was 10 years old. He quit the hostel and stayed with his family when they moved to a new Government-built house in Sungai Rokam, Ipoh. Being a new town boy, Lat loved Ipoh and knew every nook and corner of the city by the age of thirteen.
This book also tells us the ‘in’ things of those years, how he met Frankie, a Chinese boy in Anderson Secondary School and not forgetting, the cheeky things they did together. He and most of his school mates had an eye on a girl known as Normah and eventually, nearing the end of the story, Lat managed to go out and watch a "Tarzan" movie with her in the now-defunct Sun Cinema in Old Town.
Among the buildings and landmarks of Ipoh that Lat drew in the book were the Jubilee Cabaret, Lam Looking Bazaar, Anderson School’s canteen, hall, and classroom, his kampong house, Hollywood Hotel, Frankie’s father’s coffee shop and house, the Round Market, Jubilee Park, Jalan Yang Kalthom (now Yang Kalsom) bus station. Lat and his classmates were not so academically inclined but they were quite active in extra-curricular activities. Lat was in the school band. The story ends at the Ipoh Railway Station where he bade goodbye to Frankie who was going to pursue his education in England.