Nivaldo - Short Fiction

PICKING UP THE BOTTOM OF THE TRUNK

The City
In the fifties São Paulo was forming the city of nowadays. There were car industries, among others, being established and exploding an atmosphere of progress on all sides. At that time, an environment was being created in which the new middle class was generated.
Geographically saying, there was the city center where all things went on and where the commerce shops, offices, bars and restaurants and cinemas and theaters were settled. The people worked and played in the center.

The neighborhood
I used to live in Vila Pompéia, at that time considered outskirts of the city. The place is quite hilly. There were a lot of hills then transformed in streets all unpaved.
On one side in the valley there was a mulberry tree in the edge of a stream that snaked through the streets where the public school and the ice cream shop received the children
At the top of one hill, there was the center of the neighborhood where the church rested out along with small commerce around and the bus stop with long lines of the people struggling to enter in the CMTC bus, the metropolitan company of buses. On the other side at the top of another hill, today Cerro Corá Avenue, there was a house where someone was killed and his spirit was there asking for vengeance. On the valley between the two hills a small farm was placed where people would go to buy fresh milk.

The People
There were child groups as the street top group, street down group and so on. The children had two or three pastimes to spend the afternoon after the school homework. We played soccer on the street, today Pompeia Avenue. Eventually when a car came the game stopped and we waited it to pass. There were also games of season as flying kites or releasing balloons we had made, all those mixed with playing tops and marbles.
On Sunday morning the people surrounded the church, at first to watch the mass and after to flirt with the girls leaving the church. In the afternoon guys went to the banks of Tiete River to play soccer on the place where today the Marginal Tiete is.

The Family
My grandfather by my mother´s side was Italian and arrived in Brazil in 1920 with a lot of Europeans, perhaps fleeing out the first Great War. He married a Brazilian girl, my grandmother, and they had 14 children. My grandfather and grandmother by my father´s side were Spanish and they had 3 children in Spain, they passed through Argentina and more 3 children and finally they arrived to Brazil and more 3.
The families of the brothers were so close. They helped each other and economically grew with the development of São Paulo. In general all the family was together in special occasions having lunch, often homemade capeletti, and drinking red wine which my grandfather had bottled at home.
These pieces of live explain a bit the nature of the formation of our society, with a lot of immigrants that arriving to São Paulo and mixing with the people from here. It generated new workforce, new ideas, new ideals, and a new life.