Category Archives: Memoir

Memoir

Los federales let us go

In a recent post, I shared a story of how we managed to get out of a jam in Mexico when our VW van toppled into a brush-filled ravine. Now, let me tell you about how we escaped being arrested by los federales.

In the mid-’70s, Hank and I, new in our relationship, and my daughter, Sarah, only 2, wandered around Mexico in our vintage VW camper van we named Rosalita. (The photo above was the one on Hank’s passport he obtained before we left.) We decided to settle for a while in San Cristóbal de las Casas located in Chiapas, a southern state in that country. We had delivered a gift a friend wanted us to bring her brother and decided this would be a good place to stay a while.

I don’t recall how we did it or what we paid, but we rented a small house on the outskirts. The house had water, but the toilet drained into a backyard trench that didn’t work well. I used a gas camp stove to cook our meals, and because of the rats, we kept our food locked in a sturdy case in the VW. We could hear rats running across the tin roof at night, and Hank kept a flashlight and hammer next to the futon we used on the floor to kill them. There wasn’t any furniture, not even a chair, except for a woven hammock we strung beneath the courtyard’s porch.

Every day we walked to the mercado, usually stopping at a café in the town’s center. We met a few other gringos, including a friendly man who was our guide as we traveled to indigenous villages in the mountains. He also taught us some basic Spanish. We also met a family of hippie types who rented a large house in town and hung out there a couple of times.

Interestingly, locals sometimes thought I was Mexican, thanks to the looks I inherited from my Portuguese ancestors, and would comment I was lucky to have found a gringo.

One day on a walk to the mercado, Hank and I were approached by a young man dressed in what I would describe as fake hippie garb and who asked us if we wanted to buy marijuana. No thanks, we told him. We didn’t smoke, which was the truth. We also noticed the same day another man, older, who wore one of those fringe suede jackets, driving a dirty, beat-up American-made car. It got even curiouser when we noticed those two talking on a side street like they were sharing a secret.

A night or two later, after Hank pulled into a Pemex gas station, our van was surrounded by armed federales. I recognized the man with the fringe suede jacket was among them. We were told to leave the van, so they could search it.

We had been warned that whole American families were being arrested, and then they had to pay a ransom to get out of prison. That is what we were told happened to the family who rented that big house by the way.

I held Sarah as we watched the federales dig through our stuff. We didn’t own anything illegal, but perhaps they would plant something. I knew this was a serious situation. 

But, instead, they let us go.

Hank and I were relieved as we drove away. We hadn’t done anything illegal in this country, but we decided it was time to return to the U.S. So, we packed up and left the next morning in the VW van that had brought us here.

Once again, good luck had been on our side.

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Memoir

My Cheating Job

My first job was changing labels at a pants warehouse in New Bedford, Mass. When an order came in that required, say, a hundred pairs of men’s size 32 W 32 L and the warehouse only had sixty, the pickers would bring a stack of 30 W 30 L. Or 34 W 28 L. Or frankly, anything close enough.

I ripped off the old labels neatly and sewed the new ones with this nifty machine.

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Sometimes the sizes weren’t even close. I remember an order of boys pants for a military PX down South. We scrambled to turn size 12 boys into size 8 and so on.

Because of that experience, I know better than to trust the label on an article of clothing. I have to try it on. You should, too.

Did I feel we were being dishonest? Of course. But I was 18 and waiting out that summer between high school graduation and my freshman year in college. I was going away from home for the first time, a big step for a shy girl. Every cent I made went in the bank.

My Dad called in a favor with the foreman, so I could get this job. I don’t recall how they knew each other but I do the Christmas tree the man gave our family one year. The tree’s needles all dropped within a couple of days and my mother took photos to record the experience.

I was paid minimum wage, which in those days was $1.60 an hour.

Once, New Bedford used to be a hub for textile mills. My mother’s parents, who came over the boat from Madeira, were weavers. So was my mother after her parents made her drop out of high school. By the time I came along, the textile mills had moved down South, where labor was cheaper. Now, they’re overseas. 

So, what was left were distribution warehouses. Among their biggest clients were military bases all over the U.S. This was during the Vietnam War.

The warehouse where I worked was situated across the then-polluted Acushnet River from my hometown of Fairhaven. The stairwell had an interesting assortment of profane grafitti like “Maria sucks dead Portagees.” I’ll spare you the coarser stuff.

The building didn’t have air-conditioning so it got hotter as the day progressed. Large fans kept the air moving in the area near them but they didn’t help much for the rest of the building.

My co-workers were for the most part lifers. A few were young like me, including a friend from high school who worked in the office, but they weren’t going to college. I was mindful of that so I did my job and tried to be as friendly as necessary. I met some interesting characters for sure.

And I scored my first pair of bellbottoms, gratis, of course.

I worked two summers at this warehouse. When I went to the unemployment office on the third, I was sent to another pants warehouse. This time I was a picker who filled orders and made ten cents an hour more because the owner liked me.

About the photo above: That’s me after I became indoctrinated into the alternative scene at college but I still went home for the summer to work in a warehouse.

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Memoir, Uncategorized

Father’s Day at the Mental Hospital

My grandfather was hauled off to a state mental hospital after he went after my grandmother with a hoe. The story goes my grandmother knocked him out with a bucket and thought he was dead. When the police came, he was taken away to one of the state mental hospitals that existed then. His diagnosis, I believe: clinical paranoia.

I didn’t see Vovô, as we kids called him, very often after that incident, but I recall visiting him at the hospital on Father’s Day. (Vovô was the grandfather on my mother’s side of the family, which included two sisters.)

On that day, my father drove our family to the hospital. My uncle brought his, which included my aunt and two cousins, plus my grandmother. One time, another aunt, my mother’s youngest sister, came.

The family brought Vovô a carton of cigarettes and made a picnic of the visit on the hospital grounds, with food, croquet, and a game of Wiffle Ball. Vovô insisted on taking us kids to the canteen for Hoodsie Cups ice cream and to introduce us to his friends. I felt half-afraid and half-curious by the experience.

By the way, the photo above is a family portrait my mother took on one of those visits. Vovô wears the suit. My grandmother, Vovó, sits on the bench holding my brother. I was only 12 and the girl on the far left.

Let me tell you a little about Vovô. He came over on the boat from Madeira when he was young and married my grandmother, who came from the same island, here. They worked in the textile mills of New Bedford, Massachusetts. A hard worker, during the Depression he bought a home in the small town of Acushnet, where the family grew and raised much of their food, plus took in boarders. He and my grandmother took English lessons and converted to a Protestant religion. Vovô made his two oldest daughters drop out of high school so they could work in the textile mills or watch the house when he and my grandmother were at work.

I don’t recall Vovô being a warm man. But then again, I imagine it was a huge adjustment emigrating to a new country and one so different than the Portuguese island where he once lived. One of my cousins told me recently our grandfather was bullied by his co-workers.

Vovô spent the last years of his life at Taunton State Hospital. He made a life for himself there. He had a job working in the laundry and even a girlfriend, whom we kids met one Father’s Day. She waited beside a tree on the grounds to meet us. My grandmother refused to divorce him.

He tried coming home once but that didn’t last long.

Vovô died while he watched a movie at the hospital. The lights came on and he was already gone. I went to the wake but not the funeral. I was a teenager then.

Years later, I worked and lived in a psychiatric halfway house, which took in patients from state and private hospitals. At that time, Massachusetts was closing its hospitals and placing people in such places. The staff was untrained and inexperienced. We were supposed to be role models and helpful roommates, I suppose. That experience inspired a novel I wrote, The Swanson Shuffle, but have yet to publish.

The halfway house’s staff had a ring of keys that unlocked every ward in the closest hospital, Foxborough State, so we could come and go freely. When I did, I thought of my grandfather and how he got used to living in one.

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Memoir

My Grandmother Learns to Read

As a girl in the Portuguese island of Madeira, my grandmother Angela Ferreira was a companion to the child of a wealthy family. Her older sister was a servant in the household. My grandmother or Avó was the youngest of a large, poor family. I am guessing her parents didn’t mind having one less child to feed at home.

My grandmother’s job was to play with the little girl and carry her books to and from school. While the girl was in class, she sat in the back of the room until it was time to return home.

One day, the teacher caught my grandmother trying to read with the rest of the class. But instead of getting her into trouble, the teacher approached the wealthy parents, who consented to let her attend the school. That was how my grandmother learned to read when so few did then.

When she was 16, Avó left with the same sister, Maria, to live in the U.S., and never saw her family in Madeira again. I heard the story of the large storm their ship encountered in the Atlantic, how people were swept overboard and everyone prayed to get through it. My grandmother and her sister stayed mostly below. The photo on this post shows my grandmother Angela, on the right, and Maria shortly after they arrived in the U.S.

My grandmother settled in New Bedford, Mass., where she worked as a weaver in a textile mill when that industry was booming there. She married a man, Manuel, from her village in Madeira and raised three daughters, and later a grandson.

She and my grandfather moved to a small town where they lived off the land while they continued to work in the mills. They took classes to learn English. It was not a happy marriage, however, due to my grandfather’s problems. I am surmising it was a struggle for him to adjust to life in a new country. There’s more to that story, but this one is about my grandmother.

We called her Vovó out of affection. She was an interesting grandmother, with a goat barn, grape arbor, a field for ballgames, and interesting nooks in her home. We saw her almost every weekend. She baked us chocolate chip cookies, always enough to take home when we were done visiting. However, I can’t say my sisters and I enjoyed her main dishes, which always had an odd flavor. We used to say it had “grandma’s secret spice.”

Avó had a poodle named Sonny Bono, a series of shelter mutts called Lassie, and a bird named Bobby Vinton. She loved TV wrestling, Elvis, and because she could read, the National Enquirer. She saved the copies for me since she knew I loved reading about celebrities.

It’s been many years since Avó left us, but I am still inspired by her quest to read.

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