My Grandpa from Portugal

00:02 Hello, this is Ryan Burris. I'm 13 years old. Today is November 26th. I'm speaking with Angelo Dos Santos who's my grandfather. I'm recording this in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Grandpa, can you tell me about your childhood? Do you remember any of the stories of your life before you immigrated to.

00:19 The U.S. well, when I arrived in the United states, I was 10 years and one week old. I have many, many memories of my childhood. Back then, we did not start school until the age of seven. When I came to this country, I was in the third grade in Portugal. By then I had learned how to read and write and do some math. There was a lot of basic information about my language and my culture. But then it was cut short by leaving Portugal in 1959.

01:15 Can you tell me what it was like when you grew up in Santa Estevo in the Chavez region of Portugal?

01:26 Santo Estevo is an old village, and it existed over 700 years ago. There were not many families. Most of us, we were related to one another. There was a. A public school, and back then, public education began at 7 and ended at 11. If you wanted to go on to middle school and high school, there were charges involved, and most families could not afford to send their children beyond 11 years. It was an agrarian society, meaning that there was not a whole lot of mechanization. I remember that there were no tractors to till the fields. We used beasts of burden, mostly horses and mules. If you were fortunate and what we considered wealthy, there was a pair of oxen that would plow their fields, and you would lend those oxen to other families. The main activity was really to produce enough food for the entire year so that you could feed your family. My parents owned parcels of land that they had inherited from their parents, and they planted a different crop in in each parcel so that there was enough variety of vegetables to eat throughout the year.

03:19 Did you have a nickname growing up? If so, could you tell me the story of how you got up?

03:24 Well, I'm named after my paternal grandfather, whose name was Angelo which is an unusual name in our Portuguese society, but that was his name. And every family on my father's side had a son named Angelo Again, it was tradition to name your children after your grandparents, whether they were alive or deceased, and then afterward after uncles and aunts.

04:02 What traditions and activities do you remember doing as a child in Portugal?

04:08 Most of our traditions were based upon our Catholic faith. Most of the festivals or festivals were in honor of some saint, and usually there were activities for children that the children were involved in throughout the year. And I'll give you just for instance, it was tradition to have a creche at one of the altars of our church. And the children would go around before Christmas gathering moss. And the moss became essentially the ground where you would put the figurines. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the ox, the donkey, the sheep, the shepherds. And they were a larger scale than the one that was in our own home. We had no Christmas trees. We had no Santa Claus, and our gifts were brought to us on Christmas morning by Jesus. So that was a tradition that obviously is very different than what is celebrated here in the United States.

05:38 What responsibilities did you have as a kid in Portugal?

05:43 Children were expected to be helpful in everything that had to do with growing crops and taking care of the animals that we had. And just to give you an example, I remember when I was about five years old, my dad put me on our mare. And the mare would go to an enclosure. It was where there was grassland that she would eat throughout the day. And so I took the mare down to the enclosure. And the enclosure back then was three strands of barbed wire wrapped around a granite post, and that contained the mare from leaving our pasture into someone else's land. So I remember arriving at the pasture and lowering myself off the mare or from the mare to the ground by holding onto the main and then leaving the mayor taking the. Taking whatever I was using to have the mare follow me or have the mare go on her own. But what was interesting was at the end of the day that day, my dad asked me where I left the mayor, and I said, the pastor, as you instructed me, and he said, well, go get the mayor. And he gave me the.

07:46 I'm trying to think of the word lead line.

07:49 Yeah. And I put it on the mare and. And as soon as I pulled on the mare, she followed me. She was very close. So I was really concerned. Even though I was six years old, I had the notion that she could injure me. So I ended up going slowly, going up the granite post between the strands of barbed wire to reach the mare, and I got on the mare and went home riding on the mare rather than having the mare follow me as I walked in front of the mare. So after I succeeded at that task, that became my main responsibility for the time being.

08:40 Do you remember what your horse looks like?

08:43 Well, our mare was a gray mare, and it was funny because she had a foal just before we left Portugal. And the foal was like the father of the foal, the stallion. And it was a reddish. A solid reddish male foal.

09:14 What's the biggest shock or change? You remember when you first moved to the U.S.

09:21 Probably the language, because I had never heard English. So English was something that. A language that you probably would study in middle school and high school. And I had never been there because, as I told you, I was in the third grade when I came. So the language. But I was not afraid to make mistakes, and I learned to speak English relatively quickly. I recall that we arrived in April of that year and in October I was translating at the unemployment office from my dad. Obviously, I did not speak English like I do now, but I spoke enough to. To make myself understood and to understand what my father's benefits were while he was unemployed during the winter months.

10:15 Is there any differences you remember culturally or maybe in the workplace?

10:21 In the workplace? Well, you know, the workplace in Portugal was working the lands. Whether you were plowing or you were pruning a vineyard, or you were placing manure on the land to grow better crops. So those tasks were very, very different than the tasks that were available here. I recall working in high school at McDonald's. And if you ever eating at McDonald's, you know what the workers do? They create the product that's sold. And then there are cashiers who sell the product. There were no timelines, no clocks to punch. But the reality was that you worked long, long hours, especially in the spring and in the summer to grow the crops that you would need to sustain yourself and your family throughout the year.

11:31 Thank you for doing this interview with me, Grandpa. I love you.

11:36 Love you too.