How easy is to think about times gone by. Times that were beautiful, ugly or just plain boring. In our memory they all have something nice, something to remember that makes us smile, other will provoke sadness and watery eyes.
Tears will come down on our cheeks when a poignant fact touches our soft database when some data was addressed by mistake as our operating system tries to avoid black spots in the cloud.
Too bad, my friend, these things really happened and are here to stay forever or as long as conscience is present.
It will shut down though, so enjoy it for as long as you may.
Forever is here and now.
As magic I see myself playing with the other boys in the patio of our “conventillo” -big house with only rooms where tenants live one on top of others- with an inner patio for all the tenants.
This patio, owned by everybody and no one, it’s a small disaster as all kinds of utensils are left behind, buckets, casseroles, clothing ready to get washed and all kinds of things needed for these tasks are here and there making our game even more interesting as we have to avoid these obstacles to make goals and win the game.
We play and shout at every nice dribbling, shoot or anything that in our eyes is just a wonderful move. Shoot, shooooooot, goal and blasphemies to our teammates or to the enemy…
I am the goalkeeper, my tasks is to avoid the ball hitting the wall were my golly has been drawn with an iron spike, making a rough contour of the real thing.
We play for fun and to forget the hungry as many of us just have had a piece of bread and some tea for breakfast.
We are a bunch of sorry looking lads, with our clothes – a pair of trousers and a shirt of sorts, buttons missing and more than a few stiches that hold the garment more or less looking like a shirt.
We play barefooted, our ball made of rags does not bounce with ease but serves well enough to makes us happy for a while.
All the shouting laughs and blasphemies have called the attention of my stepmother, Gloria.
She appears suddenly and with one resounding shout calls the whole feast to an end.
Her animosity to people having fun is well known and being a woman how can change from being sweet (sort of) to a raging mad witch in a matter of seconds is known to the people of our conventillo so silence arrives as a thief in the night.
Everybody works again, women washing and talking softly to her neighbors on duty.
Not a glance towards sweet old Gloria!
I was left in her charge by my mother who died of silicosis a few months back. Sadly, this sickness is common in our neighborhood as the big factory of porcelain is close to our leaving quarters and quite a number of the conventilleros are working there or have done so for a number of years.
The factory denies any wrongdoing claiming that working conditions are safe at all times.
Gloria, I call her auntie, has been somewhat friendly but of late this friendliness has begun to change to apathy and I sense that soon I will have to start working in the adobe-making- field under the big fat eye of her new friend “Curly”.
Curly has a pitch-black hair with small curls giving him its nickname. His completion big, skinny and dark, with face pried by pox. A small moustache that tries to cover his upper lip that suffered more damage during the pox-epidemic.
Curly is a drunkard from Friday night to Monday morning and the rest of the week with more than a few drinks of chicha of red wine bought at the bar in the corner to keep him going..
A wet lunch and a wet after-work aperitive. This makes him dangerous and violent overreacting to the smallest sign or wrong feedback from his alcohol damaged brains.
Well the day came and this hotentote will bring me to the adobe-fields so I ‘will earn some pocket money, Not my pocket though.
He shows me the ropes, shows me the big chief there and giving me a friendly touch on my head that brings tears to my eyes says goodbye…
The adobe mud is made in a big space and brought to “nice mud” according to the chief by our feet’s in a constant dance on top of the mix of clay, water and dry grass.
Then the stronger boys will put the mud in a case open on both sides and handed over to the youngest to put the adobe to dry in the sun. Big and log rows of adobe will lye there till they are dry and ready to put then on one side to complete the drying.
After a break for lunch, a miser piece of bread and all the water you may drink, the chief send us to the next field to put the adobe on their side. We start and start taken the adobe and put it upright, the first 20 or so its not so bad but your favorite hand will start hurting, your fingers are shouting with pain and you want to stop.
The sun on our backs does not help very much and we are all thirsty and short of breath. The chief notes the discomfort of his crew and urges us to do some more.
He shouts to us “one more row and “we “shall have a break!
A sotto voce we all say “thank you son of gun” … plus other nice sounding words in the worst slang of street wise lads.
Football was our entertainment, the first touches with a football made of leather, with the “zip” made of a long thin leather cord was something really new.
It bounced, it rolled, you could do things with your feet and suddenly happiness was there.
Wow.
The name of our club was “The willow Tree”, where the bar of the same name was found, very significant as some of the older players went to the football pitch clearly drunk but succeeded in playing the full game (though a small glass of wine after 45 minutes was administered by the trainer to keep things smooth).
We, youngsters, only played 35 min. of so and no refreshment…
The referee – the cross-eyed Joseph-Mary, a known thief and knife branding idiot – was assigned regularly to keep the youngsters-play in check – and must say was very successful in his efforts.
Nobody dared to argue his wisdom with the whistle.
The total absence of a place to change your clothes made it imperative that watches or other valuables were put in a sack and given for safekeeping to our cross-eyed friend.
Semper fi! Nothing ever got lost.
The pitch was a nice field, sandy with some green patches here and there but mostly very fine clay (almost sand) and had an incline of almost 50 cm from north to south, which made that you could run faster going down the hill – to give it a name – to the surprise of the visiting team.
The other surprise was that the field was made on a road to the local market, and sometimes a cart pulled by horses would cross the field prompting the game to be stopped.
Every boy started to shout jokes and cascades of different puns and name calling of all sorts. Hurry-up so and so.
The Horse-wagon and his “driver” just crossed the field slowly and with a big smile.
We all cheered when the cart left the field, and we could start playing again.
A joyful intermezzo in our youth.
Miguel
Sept 2022
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