ITSY BITSIE PIECES OF MEMORIES OF SCHOOL DAYS;

Remember those funny cardboard pencil boxes?  You can see that my sister Kathy and I are holding them for the first day of school.  We are all dressed up....remember when grunge was not the fashion?

(Our hair is in "Banana curls"....set tight in rags the night before so that was hard to find a comfortable place to put yout head to sleep.)

*as Kathy said earlier in a comment, we remember those oiled wood floors kept so clean at Fuller. Everything was wood, those beautiful stairways included.  All kept sparkling by the school custodian, Joe Cardoza. In the middle of the building between the classrooms were wooden parititions where you hung your jackets and left your boots.

*ink well holes in the desks, empty since now ink was no longer used.

Recess: Oh, boy.  Favorite time of the day for all of us.  Cousin Jackie from Texas, who attended Fuller for a while remembers the little cartons of milk and the cookies for snack.

The school yard surrounded the school.  Hard packed dirt with tall trees keeping sentinel on the right side near the fence next to the Alvarnaz home and yard.  The hard packed dirt was great for playing "Red Rover, Red Rover...send Sandy over...:  You aways hoped that someone would call your name.  Also, Red Light and Statue Tag and other run around games.  Scooped out holes in the dirt for playing with marbles.  There was some pavement in front of the main door and that is where the rhythm of jump rope mantras calmed the air and and jump rope (or ropes if double), spun in the air.

I close my eyes and can see it.  I can hear the sound of the hard earth beneath my feet and Mary Jane shoes.  

What do you remember?

More to come......

MORE SCHOOL DAY MEMORIES

Remember this kind of desk at Fuller School?  This is an image I found in Pinterest, but it is close enough, right?  Remember how we could swing the chair around?  Both chair and desk were bolted to the floor.  A wise move, no doubt.

For 90 years Fuller School was the first education experience for most children in the Village.
Now it lives only in our memories.  It was destroyed in 1969 with barely a whisper, just a sigh.
The demolition made way for more business area for Abreu oil which was right behind it.

A few facts are due here.  Fact: between 1895 and 1900, there were no Portuguese graduates of elementary or high school in Taunton.  In 1917, there was one high school graduate and between 1915 and 1929, there was an average of four Portuguese high school graduates with more women than men.
Between 1890 and 1917 there were only three known Portuguese professionals in Taunton: a physician, Emmanuel Dutra who practiced near St. Anthony's for three years then left, and Manuel S. Silva the first Portuguese graduate from Taunton High School to become a civil engineer.  Sophia Dupont may have been the third.  Born around 1890, Miss Dupont, (as we knew her) would have been in her 20's when she attended Bridgewater State Teacher's College around 1911.  No mean feat for a
young woman at that time.  Of course, we never knew all that.  We just knew her as the Principal of Fuller School and our 5th grade teacher. Miss Dupont died in 1975. She was the first Portuguese teacher in Taunton to attain the position of Principal.

Memories of Miss Sophia Dupont: a rich lovely contralto voice and laugh, rings on her fingers which were tipped with red nail polish ( we were not used to that...), kindness and gentleness in her demeanor.

More on the next post about our days at Fuller School: until then anyone out there have a photograph of Miss Dupont???? As always feel free to send in your own memories to augment mine.

The 1910 postcard is of a garage in Taunton at that time.  One notices that cars are replacing the horse and buggy seen in a previous photo.  My grandfather, Joseph Souza, did have a horse and wagon for his wood cutting business in the early to mid-1900's.  Prior to that he and my maternal grandfather, Manuel Mota, both worked at a brick works somewhere on Longmeadow Road.
                                                    Did you know there was one there?  
I learned this in the City Books at the Historical Society.  I could not find any photos or more information of that factory, except that I am told one can still dig up old bricks in that vicinity.

The majority of the people in the Village were Portuguese. They built the Village around them, for themselves and the children and grandchildren they would bear as American citizens.  Many of these immigrant parents would never see siblings and families in the old country again.  They followed their dreams.  Settling near to friends and relatives offered them some of that family 

feeling they left behind.

They shopped their little neighborhood stores and bought from local vendors.

My paternal grandmother Delphina Viera Souza 

probably circa early 1900's