Fatima’s stories
June 15,2015, Monday (1 week before I go to the Azores)
Tammy has just arrived from NYC (showed off dresses, dinner at Marios, shower-ready for bed)
The below is what we came up with, after exploring the map she drew of the house!!
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Sitting at the kitchen table, talking about life. I hear a bird (I feel like I haven’t heard bird since I’ve been in NYC for 2 weeks, all we have are pigeons!!)
But the sound was so sweet and clear
(She gets up at 4 and the Mockingbird is singing his head off!!)
Mom begins telling the story about how she’d interuppt the birds, by running into her backyard.
“There is a bird singing in my house/yard in Waltham. And its song reminds me of the birds that I used to scare/scatter going up the stairs to the 2nd level of the house/orchard in Horta”
Mom is DRAWING her house
Story of birds
Antonio in backyard
reaching to get the Autumn berries, and tearing off the branches
(Oh my god, I planted one of the branches!)
If he couldn’t reach, he would have a .. . thing to grab it
We were very, um
>Resourceful? Destructive
Resourceful! Yes,
>She didn’t care about the branches?
SHE DID!
She put up a line of iron spikes along the whole of the roof,
and when there was an earthquake, part of the wall came down
and took it with it.
She made my Mom pay for it
(and she paid it bc she didn’t want to deal with lawyers!!!
NEIGHBORS!!!
>>Also, you cannot make another person feel bad in the way that you want them to (through emotional manipulation, maybe through PAYING or overt control of things in the real world
Installing spikes is getting long term revenge
==
Stepping Back in Time BY Fatinha Freitas Rose
Rua da Sao Paulo #6 (or 3)
The front wall of the house was very thick, 3 feet wide
It was thick enough to fit a caixa de roupa/a chest of clothes (Hope chest)
If we want to run away from my sister (any) we close the door and we lean against the door and stick our foot at the edge of the hope chest so she couldn’t open
There were no locks on those doors, IMAGINE!!
Between Quinta do Matos (his orchard) and a casa do Senhor Leal
A casa tinha tres quartos grandes
The house had 3 large rooms
2 bedrooms and a dining room, quarto de jantar
Dois quartos de cama
When you come in the house
Entrava-se na casa pelo corredor da porta da frente que dava para o quarto de cama, quarto de jantar e o corredor de traz.
Fugiamos pela janela do quarto do meio, saltando para a rua quando minha mae trancava a porta da rua/frente.
“MJose caio esta janela”, da janela do quarto da mae (the room closest to Quinta do Matos)
(Pai estava na Terceira quando tinha nove anos)
Quarta de jantar tinha a janela
con rede (screen) durante o verano
(Antonio’s house has a metallic cover, the mosquitos could get thru)
All the windows had jaousias/jealousies
Shutters!! Functioning, though!!!
BUt the mosquitoes, again, would come through the shutters, we had to kill the mosquitoes before turning off the lights for the night!
I still dream about it, the windows had double panes-it was so tricky to open it, because you had to pull it all up and twist it so it will hold on a little piece of wood, It was very tricky until I found the way to do it.
Arvora de groselha-
by the end of September, the tree was LOADED with red berries and we looked and we couldn’t reach!! (cry in her voice!) And the streetlight was shining on them, it was a SIN!
We could hear the birds in the morning, sweeping aroind, eating, having a ball.
But we just couldn’t get it, but my brother Antonio did!!
He climbed on the stone wall and the house (the peak?)
So he could grab some of the branches
so we could eat them!
Later on, I stuck the pieces of the tree all over our yard (like in Waltham, too!)
In the back of the house, there was a long storage corridor, divided in 2.
O corridor de dentro
O corridor da forra (inside and outside, ha!)
Dentro=havia a
(something with shelves, with potatoes on all levels)
We had 3 levels in the backyard and in the very top, my mother used to have potatoes growing
and we’d have potatoes for the rest of the year
5 feet long with 2.5 wide
I remember bc one time my sister said it was a bunk bed, my sister put me there (MJose, she’s the one who played tricks on me) Prob why I have claustrophobia . That’s where the cat slept!
When we had what-you-call a banana bunch, we’d hang it up close to the end of the corridor.
One time, My sister Maria Z, found out the bananas were ready to eat, she didnd;t tell us, we found a bunch of peels outside the window!!! She was lost!!
bastante comprido por que tinha lugar para a coisa das batatas storage bins, lugar ou bao-hope chest-treasure chest, round on top, and smaller one. That was built with 6 whole pieces of wood. MZ has it!!!!
That’s where I spent my summer days reading the Reader’s Digest, start being published in (Brazilian) Portuguese in 1940!!
There is a story I never forgot, that I read every summer, called How Sweet is My Heart/
A boy brought up in Louisana woods or something
Huckleberry Finn? A boy with a black sheep . . . (You have to read it!!)
Brought up by his grandmother, who had a friend
a country fair, needed money to go to country fair
had to go in wods, find a beehive
followed the bees, found lots of honey
fume out the bees
Went to the fair, entered the contest,
day of the fair, polished the hooves of the sheep
Judge said we have a VERY special prize for sheep, “it’s not the race of the sheep, or the color, it’s the way it was brought up”
Grandma kicked the sheep out of the house
Prize never been given til now
Grandmother got prize for her blueberry jam
“So CLose to My Heart”
My best summer reading (like Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer)
Oh, so you related bc it seemed like the farm life in Portugal.
I’ve never lived with sheep. (dead straight!!! LAUGH!!)
My grandmother had a farm (father’s mother) Lived in Horta, a farm in Horta
She was in America twice!!
She had pigs that you’d feed with corn to fatten before they died.
Nice thick layer of fat. We didn’t put weight on!!!!
Walked to school 4 times a day.
Story of Mom’s Paternal Grandfather
My grandfather
I think his name was Antonio Freitas
was a very good (not a mechanic??)
in his job
and in Horta, there were 2 companies assisting the ships that needed repair
Faial Co, and the BeneSaude
The rival company came to him and said, we’ll give you a trip to America, and when you come back, we give you a job.
He came to America WITH HIS WIFE, made a lot of money, as a Pipefitter (late 1800’s? Did they come to America twice??)
in Providence
He had a brother in Providence, BURIED WITH HER FATHER!!!!
(Father was born 1902)
Money enough to buy a farm at the edge of town (Horta)
called “Boa Vista”, it was, it had a BEAUTIFUL view
(fell down with the earthquake)
We visited in 1984/2002!!!
We did!!
Right at the top edge of the crater
they have been selling lots and building brand new houses, of course
I don’t know how big it was
ASK MCHICA
We sold it little by little, that’s where Vovo got money to send us to school, high school had to be paid, “My father had no sense of finances”
Then he went to Horta, got a well paid job again
Think he came to America later on
My father had I don’t know how many brothers & sisters,
the only one who survived (past 20??) or kids??
A picture of him and an older brother of his-when they were boys, 6,7?? 8 and 5?
The older brother looks just like Antonio!!!!
Vovo had a house in Angustias, just before she got married, lived there with her father!!!!
Porto Pim.
to go someplace out of town, we had to have a car
he had 3 cars before the war, he sold the cars, bc there was no rubber for the tires
sold them to a guy who made lots of money with a taxi station!!
Dream w/Ruben I was looking at my father’s store-not bookshop/ not newspapers-delivere daily to houses, sold paper goods & pencils and perfume and cigarettes
Fatinha went there when she was 2!!!!
