Mary Ann:
I’ve got to tell you, living around these parts is really depressing. This town really is a little sad, actually. Since this Great Depression thing was announced on the radio, I’ve seen lots of people living in the Street, back alleys, etc. My mother says that, because we are a “good family”, we have this big house, three cooks, two nurses, a guard and a butler. Does that mean that they’re a “bad families”? No, I don’t think so. My father says that those people are just passing though a hard time.
Anyway, what I was going to tell you is that my house has just been restored! I love to be at home, you know. It´s really big, with lots of rooms and a huge backyard to play all day long. The funniest thing is when you get hungry, because you have to cross the whole house just to eat. It’s really tiring, but it’s funny at least. Also, the bedrooms are now bigger that before, and so are the bathrooms and the living room. The only thing left alike is a small, isolated room behind the kitchen that my mom left for one of the employees to stay if they want. The problem of having this big house is that it has to be under surveillance at all times, or there has to be someone in every corner of the property, just for safety, because my mom says that a bad person or a Negro could get in at any moment. To warn us that someone entered the property, the guard has a dog, and there’s a bell in the courtyard. I don’t know why they bother to do this. I think that we should have to use the room at the back of the kitchen to welcome people to the house, since it’s so big and all. The problem is that my mother says that we shouldn’t bring those kinds of people to the house, especially Negroes.
Well, I hope that you are doing great
Sincerely,
Vito
Mary Ann:
It’s been a long time since I last wrote to you. How’s everyone over there? Anyway, I’d like to tell you something great that happened this weekend, so great that we had a party on Sunday, after church. My father got promoted! Now he’s the main surgeon at the town’s hospital. The only problem, the only nuisance about this is that we wont spend much time together, since the hospital is really far away and he’s got to be there earlier. To balance this, I get to spend a lot more time with my mother, because she resigned of her job at the bakery. She said that this depression thing is putting people on a diet, so they wont eat pies and cakes anymore. Well, I guess that what she did was to change jobs, because now she is like my dad’s manager. Since he is very, very forgetful, so he sometimes forgets to charge people for his services, so my mom now takes care of that. Also, now she goes to pay our bills, collect my dad’s paychecks, and a lot of other things that my dad usually forgets. I guess that’s pretty tiring too!
What made me sad is that we wont go to the lake on my holidays to fish like we always did. I really liked to go fishing with my dad, since it’s the only thing we did together lately. Do you do anything like that with any one of your parents? I guess you should…
Always waiting for your reply
Vito
Mary Ann:
I’m writing this letter to you from the detention room. Want to know why? My friend Phillip and I broke a window at the math class today! The senior students were teaching us geometry, really boring stuff, so we tried to survive that boredom. We began playing with our copybooks, hitting each other. Since there were like a hundred kid in the room, and we were at the back, none of the “teachers” could see us pushing each other, throwing one another’s, hitting each other with our copybooks, and some other funny stuff we were doing. Sometimes, one of the “teachers” would hear us laughing, so he went to our desks, gave us a brutal slap at the back of the head, yelled at us “stop fooling around and concentrate!” and went back to where he originally was. Even though it hurt like hell, as son as he got back, we resumed our silliness. When Phillip hit me with his copybook at my face, all that playing turned into fighting. We pushed each other harder, but since I’m stronger than him, I made him fell off his chair. He went straight into the wall, and with his elbow he smashed the window into pieces. It sounded so loud that the “teacher” immediately noticed us. He stopped the lesson, took us by the ear and drove us to the detention room. He threw us in, and of everything that he yelled at us, the only thing that I heard was that we were going to miss this afternoon’s the football match.
At that moment, I got furious at Phillip, because I was going to play at that match! The fact that I’ll be missing will piss off the whole team, and they’ll probably try to beat me up later. Has something like that ever happened to you? Probably not, but I guess it would be funny to have a common anecdote.
It is nice to catch up with you,
Vito
Mary Ann:
This will be the last letter that I’m going to send you. Around these parts, I see lots of poor people, trying to make a living out of anything. The other day, my dad hired some guys that were living at a park nearby, to help him take care of the garden. They were two, a Scottish guy whose name I can’t recall now, and a guy from this town, named Colin. Both of them are now living at the room behind the kitchen. I can see in their faces that they’re truly grateful of what my dad is doing for them.
Anyway, I want to know how are you doing at the United States? I saw the other day at the telly that this Depression is hitting pretty strong, and not only at the US. Canada, Australia, France, the Germans, my beloved Italy, a country named Chile too (I even heard it was a really hard blow to them), and even my new home, the UK! Nobody escaped from it! I hope that you haven’t had to suffer that whole mess. I haven’t, since my dad’s doing well at his job and the fact that we came with a little fortune from Cesarò, at Sicily. The fact that we’re immigrants has not made our life over here easier, though. Even though we got here like five or six years ago, strangers still look down on us. That contempt has recently increased, especially with the looming war against the Fascists. Nobody has announced anything yet, but you can realize that there’s nothing left to do to avoid it. There are lots of issues going on these days. This crisis that threw everyone out of their homes, this incoming war… I don’t know, I guess I shouldn’t bother you with this anymore. Well, I hope that your doing fine.
Sincerely,
Vito
