KILLING AZOREAN NOSTALGIA: Photos and comments assembled by Manuel L. Ponte, Olivette, 63132,  Missouri, USA

TOP The SS SMiguel brought me to America in 1946.. Vila Franca do Campo, on the other hand, was S. Miguel's first capital, until an earthquake brought down its position in favor of Ponta Delgada (Below, Right)..

LEFT - As we left Ponta Delgada. on our way to Lisbon Jane aimed the camera out the SATA window, catching this memory-laden scene. It was a random camera shot, but one which can endow one with unending memories. The greatest souvenir from an unforgettable trip...

The City of Ponta Delgada, largest in the Azores, is somewhat between 450 and 500 yrs. old. Its metropolitan population is in the neighborhood of 40,000 inhabitants.

My granddaughter, Dena Soffer, became somewhat curious when she heard me mention that Harvard had admitted me even though to this day I feel I had not been qualified for the privilege... I still don't know if I managed to explain my reasoning to her. Perhaps, now that I have the above photo and the willingness to describe a boy who had come to America from the Azores in 1946 before his 15th birthday will clarify matters and prove to her how culturally confused and lonely I was throughout my Harvard days. Upon our arrival in America, my family and I lived temporarily in the attic of a house at 11 Banks Street, Somerville, Massachusetts. The additional apartments in the building were occupied by the owner, my father's cousin Albert Mello and his family, and a milk delivery man whose background I never got to know, thanks to my not being able to speak English. Unbeknownst to him, however, I admired him for his success, believing that the van which he nightly parked in the backyard was actually his. Somehow I never wondered where he kept his cows and who his farm hands were who did the milking and filled the bottles. Furthermore. whereas the above photo shows only a simple Azorean milkman on a village dirt road accompanied only by his dog and horse, the American was so successful hat he even had his name painted on the side of his van, HERLIHY BROS. It took me about a year in America before I realized that HERLIHY BROS stood for his employer's name and that the van was not my father's cousin's tenant.. In fact, there were several of them with similar markings throughout the Boston area - all driven by different men.. One can just imagine, therefore, what my life was like as I tried to fit in from an Azorean peasant society. where my day to day life was considerably different from my adaptation to America. That I managed to survive the latter, as well as my years at Harvard, still surprise me to this day, often making me wonder if the whole thing was not really a fantasy, or a wild ride of my imagination.Left, Below - THE EMIGRANTS, by Domingos Rebelo, is just about the most displayed symbol of the Azorean soul shown anywhere where nostalgia tells us about who we were, or who we are. Granted that the most recent Azorean emigrants left by airplane for whatever their future destinations would be, but, then, the sadness of one's leaving somehow always seemed the same regardless of the age it was in...

Azorean Farm House Where My Mother, Isabel J. Ponte, Was Born on February 10, 1908. She died in December, 1996, in Bridgeton, Missouri, USA.

Ribeira Grande, S. Miguel's 2nd City - A View of City Hall.

When I was a boy, this building was the office of a somewhat Bohemian Azoren writer, Alice Moderno, a woman who pubolished her own materials and smoked cigars. Later it becme an extension of Cabral's Casket Shops, about whom many jokes were told. Example: Business is terrible. There's no one dying these days. (Statement alleged to Mrs. Cabral). Many years later, after my second, or third return to the island, the building became a restaurant where the best local Azorean food was served. Just as matter of pride I should say that its location is on Manuel da Ponte Street.

LEFT - I went swimming here on the alltogether on several afternoons when I should have been at cathecism class.

Although not shown above, at the western end of this location, across from the old tank where the local cattle would come from the nearby fields for water, there was a building that kept a lot of islanders in touch with the rest of the world - the recption office for the old submarine cables that, during World War II, brought in the dispatches about the War's progress, etc.. Those dispatches were then brought down to the local press by a bicycle-riding courier who would make the trip between the city and S. Roque several times a day and whom the local population named as Manuel, the Advance Man. *AN_AZOREAN_WITHOUT_AN_OCEAN * AN_AZOREAN_IN_MID_AMERICA * MORE MEMORIESt

Below - No matter one one photographs about Vila Franca do Campo, the memory of it stays lodged in one's psyche for a log time.

left - No photo description of S. Miguel Island would ever be complete with a reference to the SETE CIDADES area. Although this section of my page is dedicated to killing Azorean nostalgia, there is practically no way to kill off SETE CIDADES  and its natural beauty.

RIGHT- The elderly woman dressed completely in black is my paternal grandmother. I never saw her dressed in any other color since she had been widowed shortly before I was born.. Such was the fashion at the time for anyone who was a widow. She, herself, died shortly after this picture was shot at the stonesided shore facing the Atlantic. Somehow, although the island was quite green everywhere, its seashore was generally made up of black rocks as seen above. It's also interesting to note that many of the people in the photo died in the United States. RIGHT - I put down this photo because it's one of the most frozen in my mind. It was shot possibly for some relative living in America at an ugly spot, the Calhau, that today has been covered over by the new filled-in marginal avenue that connects downtown with SRoque Parish bypassing for the motorized traffic the Pranchinha and Praia dos Santos Areas. As one can see, the rocks under everyone's feet are volcanic black, although occasionlly mixed in with some whitish ones which some of the waves that occasionally visit the nearby residences bring during their violent winter storms. Most of the people shown - with the exception of my grandmother (dressed in black, and with head covered) and her brother Jacinto, died in America. At this time the only adult still alive is Lidia, Jacinto's daughter (fourth from the right).

*AN_AZOREAN_WITHOUT_AN_OCEAN * AN_AZOREAN_IN_MID_AMERICA * MORE MEMORIES CLICK IRELAND and the IRISH