“I don’t remember him. But I do remember my grandmother … she used to come up and she’d get mad because we didn’t understand Portuguese.”
“James Emmett was English because he came from Lancashire, England … [my grandmother] was French-Canadian, so she spoke French.”
“French. They all spoke French.”
“My mother was a spinner. She went to work … in the mills … when she was twelve; she had to leave school.”
“I remember my father standing … when we’d get ready to get up to go to school, with our clothes in front of the oven door.”
“You had to go to Thibodeau College, you had classes. You had to go for one year and they would find you a job. Well. I couldn’t afford that.”
“We had a good time in the neighborhood.”
“I went to Durfee Textile School at night to learn how to run the power machines.”
“And for opening night they were giving away a radio. A little table-top radio. And you put your name in. So, all the kids and we went in, and we put our name in, put it in the box. They were going to draw it on Saturday night, who could win the radio. So, anyway, we all went down, the kids. All went down to the store to see who was going to win the radio. Well … one of my friends, went up and they asked her to pull the name. Ledora Isidorio.”
“But then he got sick and died. He died on January 30, 1933. He died in Truesdale.”
“And we lived, when we finally moved a second time, we moved in the six-tenement house [at 1 Monte Street, Fall River, Massachusetts], which was on the banks of the Taunton River, and down below was the Weetamoe Yacht Club.”
“It was the Taunton River, but we didn’t care, that was where we did our swimming. That’s true, everything that was in that beach, we brought down there from our house.”
“My mother was not strict, believe me. I was stricter with my kids than she was with us.”
“And when I started there, I remember, it was twenty-five cents an hour … you got $10 for forty hours. $10 a week.”
“Five girls. They used to say, ‘The house with five beautiful girls,’ and we’d laugh.”
“I’m looking for you. Do you want to go over to the Raynham Auto Drive Theatre tonight? It’s opening night.”
“Well, my first job, [my sister] got me a job.”
“We were on the third floor and had to walk up three flight of stairs. No elevators or anything.”
“You never had any breaks.”
“Each power machine … I think, must have had a starter, but they were hooked to the wall, with a main power switch. And the floor lady would go up to the power switch for each aisle, so these power machines were [on] both sides, [and] you faced the girl who was working them.”
“The only time [you got a break] was when you … could go to the toilet and back. And that was it. We had a lunch time.”
“His outfit [was] all Taunton boys; they stayed together, all through the war, and not one got killed.”
“You’ll have to tell [my mother] that you want to get married. I’m not telling her.”
“What impressed me was the orange groves. Oh, they were so beautiful … beautiful orange groves, all the way.”
“My son a couple of years ago said to me ‘Ma, let’s go to Fall River; I want to see where you lived.’ I says, ‘Where I lived is gone.’”