Document text
Mori Teasel
YRS, TUBB YOU
The telephone operators' lounging noon,
ilecoloc
ii
V o Vriters' Sect on FHCS
DA. TEL. S.EP 14 1940
is the amend story of a
lain Street business block, was din and *eel. Judy Cleary said, This
wicker furniture is cosy; isn't it? Pal and I are working the sane trick
this week, 7-11, 12.4. This is our relief period.'
Palnira Fernandes lay prone on the davenport. She we. a pretty girl.
Her oval, vivacious face shone with a healthy pallor. Judy said, "You
must have had a date last night, Pal. If you aren't lapping up a ehecolate
milk across the street during relief, it means a data last night."
*Datel' Pal spoke bitterlt. 'Bill couldn't get the star last night, his
father was going to sine meeting. Se had to go to the nevi** and then
hone. You can't Just park in some booth half the night without (ordering
anything. Bill gets paid en Saturday. We were both brake so we went
hone. Johnny -ny brother* had his gang on the porch; pr nether was
holding down the living roes until Dad got back; WI sister and Lucy Cane
were trying out dans* steps in the kitchen. I went to bed as soon OS I
got hone. Bill's sick of supervision. I don't blame his. It's different
when he has the oar. Even it there's no gas we can sit and talk and listen
to the radio. Awes, it's privaey."
*You're better off than Brelya Drandelli," Judy commented. "I was
coning downstreet last night 'round eight. I sae her nest Joe on the
corner. Has to every tins. Re's never been to her house. They're sore
'cause he's not "Italian."
"My folks like Bill well enough," Pal said. 'It's just that they
believe in that eternal chaperoning. They Imre brought up that way in Spain.
You'd think the two of us got so =eh nature we couldn't be left alone a
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minute without starting a family. When they don't care for someone they let
you know. Last year while I was _loing with Pete my father swore the kitohen
blue. Told me not to get serious over a stonecutter, though he's one him-
self- and always has been. He meant well. I mean my father. He's had a
brother and an uncle died from doing that kind of work. lie doesn't want
me to see any more of that.
"I keep telling my father that Bill will get a good job one of these
days. He's been out of High School only two years. And jobs are scarce
in Barre, unles4ou want to go in the sheds or quarries. He had a chance
for a clerking job in Claremont, Mew Hampshire, but his people wanted
him to stay home. He works three days a week at kacbover's filling
station. kacLover used to be a stonecutter. He worked with my father.
When his son finished high School he was in bill's class he left
the sheds and bought out a small filling station. He and his son run it
together. Bill's father operates a derrick and does machine cleaning at
the quarries. He lost two fingers of ils left hand the day bill was born.
Someone came to tell him the news; he got so exoited his hands went care-
less with the machine, and off went two fingers. Snipped off clean.
bill's mother Is. Scotch. She's a cousin of Bill's boss. kacLover.
Whenever Bill's at our house I try to keep the conversation away from
religion. My mother is Homan Catholio to the bone, and she knows his
mother is just as strong a Scotch woman.
"There's a whole clan of us Yernandes in town. All from Santander,
Spain. I've never been there. My folks 011110 over twenty-nine years ago.
A baby brother of mins their first baby orossed half way with them.
An epidemic broke out on board. bone fever. My brother died when they
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were five dayskut. My mother made my father go to the kitohen and ask the
cook for a bottle, and she made him fill it with ocean water, It vas all
she could ever see of the baby's grave, she said. It's still in her
dresser drawer at home. She ta1es it out on All Souls' Lay and Memorial
Day, and sets a bouquet before it.
"We've always lived in the same house on Berton Street. I INAS born
there. My two brothers and two sisters were born there, too. My mother
can't see a hospital unless it's for an operation. Berton Street isn't
an ideal residential seotion. None of the houses have more than two feet
of front lawn, and they're close together. But it's near the shed where
my father works. At first they rented the house, now they own it. There
are about a dozen sheds close by; when they're all going they make an
awful rmoket. Washdays my mother has taken to hanging her laundry in the
attic. She insists that the stone dust from the sheds sticks to the wet
+clothes.
"My sister Rosin& is two years older than I am. She's entered the
convent in Burlington. Next year she takes the black veil. I MIAS her.
We
see her only one Sunday a month.
"I wanted to teach, and look where I aid I started working here right
after graduation, and planned to work only for the summer. It seemed so
good to be earning my own money that I decided to stay the year. Then I
stuck. It's not a bad job. It was complicated at first, hard to get
used to the switchboard. You get darn sick of saying 'Number, please,'
and 'Yes, thank you' all the time. At first it was just 'Thank you.' Now
it's 'Yes, thank you.' You get so used to those words they're apt to roll
out of your mouth anytime. I was shopping in the dime store the other day,
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and when the clerk handed me my change I said, 'Yes, thank you.'
a telephone operator but my mother has never got used to a phone.
There's only one number she'll call and that's my aU*s. If she needs
groceries she'll go downtown herself and get them, or she'll wait until one
of us is home to phone the order. She doesn't speak much Lnglish. She's
afraid of being misunderstood over the phone. She isn't the only one.
You'll find plenty of foreign born old people in town who hate to use a
phone."
Judy laughed. "My mother is just the opposite. She calls up Mrs.
Carty on ram Street and thy talk for an hour at a time. She and my mother
were •Jrlhood chums in Ireland. They have to tell each other every bit of
news. She was brides -maid for my mother in Ireland. My father died the
second year they were in this country, two months after I was born. ky
mother got a job doing, house work. She wrote letters to Abbie-- she wasn't
Mrs. Carty then-- and within two months Abbie left Ireland and came over
here to live with us. For three years, my mother says. Then she married
Dan Carty and made a new home for herself. But they're just as good
friends as they were in the old days. If they aren't talkirg to each other
over the phone, they're talking to each other across a table in our apart-
ment, or in Mrs. Carty's house."
Pal's smooth brow creased into a frown. "It's a job to get my mother
to 7,o out of the house except for her shoppin. She won't go to the movies.
She's been twice in all the years she's lived in isarre. Dut she heard my
brothers talking about that new Chaplin movie, the one where Jack Oakie
takes the part of Mussolini, and she surprised us by saying she'd like to
see it. She has relatives Spanish ones who live near Mussolini's
S.
sumner home. Oocasionally some friends of my mother will drop in for the
evening. They talk and crochet. And once a month faithfully she goes to
Women's Night at the Spanish Club. Except for that and for 6unday 140.$18,
she's content to stay home ane sew."