Suns Long Past
My earliest memories of cooling off during summer heat, are of wading in Frog
Pond in a red and blue swimsuit with white trim. And of my mother not letting me get in the water when a redhead older than me was in, topless. From those memories of Boston Common, which was not too far from our apartment on Hanover Avenue in the North End, my head jumps to Castle Island and South Boston. By then my father had gotten his license and we had a grey Toyota Corolla with a red interior. We had also bought a house and moved to Jamaica Plain, where we had two immense maple trees in the back yard. They helped to make the back porch livable in the summer months.
Our cooling-off plan every Sunday that was sunny and hot, involved a lot of heat in the morning. My mother, like every good Galician woman, would cook up a gargantuan meal. In the early years, she also prepared meat to put in the cooler and later grill on the hibachi we also lugged with us. Toward midday, we would pack the car: folding table, folding chairs, folding lounge chair, hibachi, well-wrapped pots filled with food, well-wrapped empanada, plates, knives, forks, napkins, a cooler, towels, extra clothes for me, and a book I just had to take.
At Castle Island, there is the beach, a street that encircles it and reaches the fort, and a park area behind the street, along with a building that I think housed an ice rink in winter, and I believe I remember fresh-water showers in it in the summer. When we got there, we always went to the same parkland spot, close to the street, so unpacking and packing our cars would be easier. We weren't alone. Other Galician families, from neighboring villages in our homeland, and well-known to us, would join us. Sometimes their children would come, and we would all play. My aunt and uncle, with my younger cousin, used to join the group in the earlier years. Soccer games were sometimes organized. I can't run worth a damn, but I would join in, hoping to remember the people on my team and not knock a goal in our own net. The older folk also played bingo, at five cents a card. I sometimes gambled with them, and would some Sundays earn enough money for a small ice cream from the ice cream truck that wandered the area.
Without realizing it, we were mirroring what so many Spanish families were doing those years. The tradition was to make food in the morning, pack everything into the tiny cars of the times, and hightail it to the beach. Those who lived inland tended to get longer vacations then, and would pack the car and spend a few weeks by the sea. But in our neck of the woods, the family gathering places in the summer were the romarías. Or, at least, that's how I remember it from my earliest vacations here in the 1970's.
A romaría means pilgrimage, but it has come to mean a type of festival where families go on a picnic. That is because, originally, on a special date, there was a Mass honoring a saint at a hermitage or sanctuary dedicated to that saint. People would walk to it from kilometers around, listen to the Mass, then eat what food they had brought before walking back home. Some walked for hours. Now, a romaría is mostly known for eating, drinking, and spending time with family and friends in the shade. Many still go to Mass, but it has no longer become a question of walking for hours. Cars park along every lane and byway that lead to the sanctuary. Some places have even improvised impromptu car parks, only used on the days of the romaría. But the most pious still walk, hoping to earn indulgences in the next world.
The two summers I came here on vacation in the 1970's, I have a few memories of the beach, but more of the romarías. I have a hazy memory of when I was five, of being on a nearby beach and seeing the remains of a stone tower. Now, that tower is just rubble on the ground which has been excavated in recent years. The stones that are missing have gone to help construct neighboring houses. We recycle. I also remember reaching the top of a path made of stone steps, and looking around a stone wall at a romaría in nearby Padrón, celebrating Santiago, or Saint James, on the 25th of July. That romaría is called Santiaguiño do Monte, because the Mass and pilgrimage is held on a hill above Padrón, where Saint James apparently preached when he proselytized in these lands.
But the romaría I remember best, is the one in the next-door parish where my father was from, and where my grandmother still lived then. It's called Os Milagros, and celebrates the Virgin of Miracles, a Virxe dos Milagros, another name for the Virgin Mary. It always takes place on the first Sunday in August. Now, the picnic has generally disappeared, though there is a festival at night most years, when the neighbors manage to get together some money. But there are various Masses in the morning, from about seven or eight in the morning until the big one at one, procession included. When I was five I remember going to the Mass in the morning with my parents, getting totally bored and bothered with the hot sun, the rumbling responses, the choking dust, and the pelting heat. I remember my mother bought me a little doll that I saw and liked. We went to eat at our relative's house that afternoon, in the old kitchen. My cousin is over twenty years older than me, but he and his wife had a daughter who is only about four years younger than me. I remember her wanting to play with my doll, but because she was only one, she would try to tear it apart whenever I let her take it, so I put it away for the afternoon. Later, we had pictures taken upstairs in one of the bedrooms, my grandmother with me and her great-granddaughter. I was holding the doll, and in one of the pictures my cousin is looking at it. When we left for Boston later that month, my mother made me leave the doll behind with my cousin. I was put out; it was my doll, not hers.
Another romaría I remember well was the year I was nine years old. It was at the end of August, in nearby Ponte Beluso. The romaría honored San Ramón, who was the protector of pregnant women. The picnics associated with that festival are still alive and healthy. We went that summer, driving a car we shared on vacation with my uncle that year. I remember sitting on a blanket under the shade of the pine trees, eating food we bought at vendors there, octopus and pork ribs. (It's not a strange combination; both taste of the wood smoke where they're cooked and are delicious.)
There were many other vendors, as is usual at these occasions. Beside the food vendors, there were toys, a truck with watermelons (we bought and ate an entire one that day), and baby chicks. Now, it's illegal to sell animals in the open, because of the bird flu, but back then it was completely normal. We bought a couple of them, and took them to our relatives' house, where we had to leave them. (No way were we taking two chickens back to Boston.) The strange thing about these chicks were the colors. I remember green, blue, and I think red or orange chicks. Little fluffs of color, peeping and hopping on stick legs. Four years earlier, I had to have the doll, now I had to have the chicks. I think we bought two blue ones, but I'm not sure now. Ignorant of such things, and seeing something like this for the first time, they seemed a new breed. But we found out, as the chicks starting growing their adult feathers, that the new ones were the normal color of a chicken's, brown and white. The chicks had somehow been colored to sell as souvenirs. Now, the sellers would be abused of animal cruelty. But the chicks were healthy and lived long chicken lives, according to my cousin, so the coloring did them no harm.
Romarías still exist, some are still going strong, others have lost popularity. But they are no longer the one thing everyone is looking forward to around here. People still go to them, and to festivals, but now more go to the beach. Now there are more cars; just about every family has at least one. Summer outings have changed their nature. From local all-day family picnics, we have graduated to family afternoons at the beach or nearby river. When the children become teenagers, the family afternoons are no more. Family reunions are still held, but they're not as common, not as compelling as they used to be. Before, you had to go, yes or yes. Now, it's optional. Families still have fun, but in different ways. Times change, options grow, people decide different things. The past is gone, but it can still be visited through memories and photos.
Our cooling-off plan every Sunday that was sunny and hot, involved a lot of heat in the morning. My mother, like every good Galician woman, would cook up a gargantuan meal. In the early years, she also prepared meat to put in the cooler and later grill on the hibachi we also lugged with us. Toward midday, we would pack the car: folding table, folding chairs, folding lounge chair, hibachi, well-wrapped pots filled with food, well-wrapped empanada, plates, knives, forks, napkins, a cooler, towels, extra clothes for me, and a book I just had to take.
At Castle Island, there is the beach, a street that encircles it and reaches the fort, and a park area behind the street, along with a building that I think housed an ice rink in winter, and I believe I remember fresh-water showers in it in the summer. When we got there, we always went to the same parkland spot, close to the street, so unpacking and packing our cars would be easier. We weren't alone. Other Galician families, from neighboring villages in our homeland, and well-known to us, would join us. Sometimes their children would come, and we would all play. My aunt and uncle, with my younger cousin, used to join the group in the earlier years. Soccer games were sometimes organized. I can't run worth a damn, but I would join in, hoping to remember the people on my team and not knock a goal in our own net. The older folk also played bingo, at five cents a card. I sometimes gambled with them, and would some Sundays earn enough money for a small ice cream from the ice cream truck that wandered the area.
Without realizing it, we were mirroring what so many Spanish families were doing those years. The tradition was to make food in the morning, pack everything into the tiny cars of the times, and hightail it to the beach. Those who lived inland tended to get longer vacations then, and would pack the car and spend a few weeks by the sea. But in our neck of the woods, the family gathering places in the summer were the romarías. Or, at least, that's how I remember it from my earliest vacations here in the 1970's.
A romaría means pilgrimage, but it has come to mean a type of festival where families go on a picnic. That is because, originally, on a special date, there was a Mass honoring a saint at a hermitage or sanctuary dedicated to that saint. People would walk to it from kilometers around, listen to the Mass, then eat what food they had brought before walking back home. Some walked for hours. Now, a romaría is mostly known for eating, drinking, and spending time with family and friends in the shade. Many still go to Mass, but it has no longer become a question of walking for hours. Cars park along every lane and byway that lead to the sanctuary. Some places have even improvised impromptu car parks, only used on the days of the romaría. But the most pious still walk, hoping to earn indulgences in the next world.
The two summers I came here on vacation in the 1970's, I have a few memories of the beach, but more of the romarías. I have a hazy memory of when I was five, of being on a nearby beach and seeing the remains of a stone tower. Now, that tower is just rubble on the ground which has been excavated in recent years. The stones that are missing have gone to help construct neighboring houses. We recycle. I also remember reaching the top of a path made of stone steps, and looking around a stone wall at a romaría in nearby Padrón, celebrating Santiago, or Saint James, on the 25th of July. That romaría is called Santiaguiño do Monte, because the Mass and pilgrimage is held on a hill above Padrón, where Saint James apparently preached when he proselytized in these lands.
But the romaría I remember best, is the one in the next-door parish where my father was from, and where my grandmother still lived then. It's called Os Milagros, and celebrates the Virgin of Miracles, a Virxe dos Milagros, another name for the Virgin Mary. It always takes place on the first Sunday in August. Now, the picnic has generally disappeared, though there is a festival at night most years, when the neighbors manage to get together some money. But there are various Masses in the morning, from about seven or eight in the morning until the big one at one, procession included. When I was five I remember going to the Mass in the morning with my parents, getting totally bored and bothered with the hot sun, the rumbling responses, the choking dust, and the pelting heat. I remember my mother bought me a little doll that I saw and liked. We went to eat at our relative's house that afternoon, in the old kitchen. My cousin is over twenty years older than me, but he and his wife had a daughter who is only about four years younger than me. I remember her wanting to play with my doll, but because she was only one, she would try to tear it apart whenever I let her take it, so I put it away for the afternoon. Later, we had pictures taken upstairs in one of the bedrooms, my grandmother with me and her great-granddaughter. I was holding the doll, and in one of the pictures my cousin is looking at it. When we left for Boston later that month, my mother made me leave the doll behind with my cousin. I was put out; it was my doll, not hers.
Another romaría I remember well was the year I was nine years old. It was at the end of August, in nearby Ponte Beluso. The romaría honored San Ramón, who was the protector of pregnant women. The picnics associated with that festival are still alive and healthy. We went that summer, driving a car we shared on vacation with my uncle that year. I remember sitting on a blanket under the shade of the pine trees, eating food we bought at vendors there, octopus and pork ribs. (It's not a strange combination; both taste of the wood smoke where they're cooked and are delicious.)
There were many other vendors, as is usual at these occasions. Beside the food vendors, there were toys, a truck with watermelons (we bought and ate an entire one that day), and baby chicks. Now, it's illegal to sell animals in the open, because of the bird flu, but back then it was completely normal. We bought a couple of them, and took them to our relatives' house, where we had to leave them. (No way were we taking two chickens back to Boston.) The strange thing about these chicks were the colors. I remember green, blue, and I think red or orange chicks. Little fluffs of color, peeping and hopping on stick legs. Four years earlier, I had to have the doll, now I had to have the chicks. I think we bought two blue ones, but I'm not sure now. Ignorant of such things, and seeing something like this for the first time, they seemed a new breed. But we found out, as the chicks starting growing their adult feathers, that the new ones were the normal color of a chicken's, brown and white. The chicks had somehow been colored to sell as souvenirs. Now, the sellers would be abused of animal cruelty. But the chicks were healthy and lived long chicken lives, according to my cousin, so the coloring did them no harm.
Romarías still exist, some are still going strong, others have lost popularity. But they are no longer the one thing everyone is looking forward to around here. People still go to them, and to festivals, but now more go to the beach. Now there are more cars; just about every family has at least one. Summer outings have changed their nature. From local all-day family picnics, we have graduated to family afternoons at the beach or nearby river. When the children become teenagers, the family afternoons are no more. Family reunions are still held, but they're not as common, not as compelling as they used to be. Before, you had to go, yes or yes. Now, it's optional. Families still have fun, but in different ways. Times change, options grow, people decide different things. The past is gone, but it can still be visited through memories and photos.
Lovely memories! It sounds as if you have the makings of a great memoir here!
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