John Moura 1

Oral History Transcript

Interviewee: John Moura
Interviewed by: Rachael Binning
March 13, 2008

Rachael Binning: Okay, hi this is Rachael Binning and I am speaking with John
Moura at his house … on March 13, 2008 and if you could introduce yourself John that
would be great.

John Moura: Yes, I’m John Moura. Want to know my age?

Binning: Sure

Moura: I’m 89 years old.

Binning: Great.

Moura: And I’m being interviewed by a nice young lady and we will see what I
can do to make the thing fair or good.

Binning: Great.

Moura: Make it a good interview.

Binning: Ok, so just to go over a few things. I showed you the permission slip and I
explained what it’s about so if you are comfortable at the end of the interview than you
will sign it and then you will keep one copy and I’ll keep one copy, and just to prepare for
the interview, I prepared a list of questions that I thought might be interesting to ask you,
but if you want to veer off and go in your own direction or talk about something else, feel
free. We don’t have to, you know, limit ourselves to these questions.

Moura: Don’t let me veer off. I’m a wanderer. I like talking.

Binning: And, if there is anytime that you feel uncomfortable and want to take a
break or you want to stop and then start again, just let me know and that’s not a problem.

Ok, so lets begin the interview. So I was thinking we could start from the earliest period
of your life and then kind of, you know, talk until more recent. So, first of all can you tell
me when and where you were born?

Moura: I was born in Fox Point in Providence, Rhode Island in 1919, July 9th,
1919. And I didn’t have a doctor or hospital I was brought into the world by a midwife
and that was it.

Binning: Great.
 John Moura 2

Moura: It was a long time ago.

Binning: What do you remember, what are your earliest memories from your
childhood. What was Fox Point like?

Moura: From that house?

Binning: Yes.

Moura: That first house. I hardly remember it because I was a year old when we
moved. My folks had bought a house on John Street on Fox Point and 47 John, my
grandparents and we moved all the family moved there, a three-decker house and we all
lived on one floor. We were on different floors.

Binning: Can you tell me more about that? So, was it you and your extended family
all living in one house?

Moura: Yes, well we lived on each floor. My aunt and grandmother and her
husband, yes, my grandfather was alive then, we all lived there and my mother and I
lived on the second floor with my brother, I don’t remember whether he was born or not.
He was only a year younger so he must have been born then and my sister, but that was
the three of us. And then on the third floor there were three rooms on each side. A little
separation between and two aunts who lived up there one on each side. Yes, so it was the
whole family.

Binning: Wow, and did you interact with the family and so did you interact with the
family?

Moura: It’s 47 John Street. It’s still there, it’s a big house, a big old house, it’s a
[…] house.

Binning: Okay, and did you interact a lot with your, was it your grandparents who
also lived in the house?

Moura: Oh yes, oh yes, my grandmother used to treat me like a baby. She would
sit me on her lap and feed me and it was very funny. And when I would, she would get
mad at me I would put up my hands and want to box with her and she’d, she laughed and
turned away, but we had a good family. We had a very good family.

Binning: And did you have brothers and sisters?

Moura: Yes I had one brother, Edward, who died about five, six years ago and one
sister, Hilda, who died about thirty years ago. She was quite young and my mother and
father died in the last fifteen, twenty, no thirty years since they have been gone.

Binning: And you mentioned over the phone that your mother was born in
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Connecticut and your father…

Moura: Yes, she was born in Stonington, Connecticut and I don’t know the address
or place, but it was Stonington, Connecticut and my father was born in Saint Michaels or
Saint, yes Saint Miguels, yes, I guess it was Saint Michaels in Portugal. I forget which…

Binning: Did they ever tell you any stories about coming over to the United States
and ending up in Fox Point, or did your grandparents?

Moura: No, not so much that. It had been so many years before, but my father
used to tell me about his place where he lived. His mother, his family owned a home
there and it was a nice home at the time it was on the outskirts of an airport in Santa
Maria, that’s where it was, Santa Maria and he had a great life there, he loved it. He had
one sister and one brother, I guess, and they’ve been dead for years.

Binning: Do you know why they decided to move to Fox Point?

Moura: Oh they, my folks, I have no idea. My folks, my grandmother had bought

this house. Oh my father, my grandfather had a second hand store on South Main Street
and at the time it was on the corner of South Main and James then I don’t know where it
went after that, but I remember going down there, walking down there from John’s.
Sometimes he would be going to work and would take me in the hand and walk me down
to the store and let me walk back home alone. It was only a couple of blocks but. And it
was a great time. I had a great, great memories of my young life. Never had any
problems. And had a great family. We were not wealthy, we were not well to do, but we
always had enough. It was a large family, we all lived in the same house. My mother
had seven sisters, including herself there were seven sisters and they all lived there and
the money was all for the whole family, the monies they made. They worked in the
jewelry shops, a couple of my aunts did and I don’t know what the others did, but then I
had one aunt that was declared legally blind but she could see and she could sew, she
sewed and made the most beautiful dresses and everything and she’d be [puts his face
extremely close to a piece of paper] that close, inches away from the sewing machine
needle watching it, so, but that was Marion. She was a nice, she was only eh, there were
a few months between us. We were always brother and sister.

Binning: So that was your cousin?

Moura: She was my aunt.

Binning: Oh, your aunt, okay.

Moura: My grand, my mother’s sister, the youngest sister. She only died a few
years ago up here. She lived, she had moved to Seekonk or Rehoboth, Rhode Island, I
guess its Seekonk, Walker Street and that was it. That was the only one. The family
broke up. They moved here and they moved there and one, two of my aunts moved up to
East Providence and one of them lived up on the East side, up on 12th Street and, but we
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were always together though. Holidays and everything, it was always family, yes.

Binning: Yes, I was going to ask. It seems like a lot of your family was living there.

Moura: Yes, the whole family. We would all meet at one house. Usually my
grandmother’s house and we would all meet there and I’d still sit on my grandmother’s,
or on the chair, or one her lap and she’d feed me with her hand and I use to love it. She,
my grandma, so, she’d get mad at me and I’d go come on, come on and I’d tempt to box
with her. Then she’d laugh and turn away.

Binning: So what’s the most memorable or important holiday for your family?

Moura: Oh, I’m drooling.

Binning: Oh, that’s okay.

Moura: Any holiday. Christmases were the, were great and even one night my
grandfather, his last night on earth, he, we’d had a wedding, it was a cousin of ours that
my grandfather had brought over and she lived with them and we all lived in the same
house, but she lived my grandmother and grandfather and somewhere or other she was a
niece, just removed you know, I don’t know how close, but my grandfather she lived with
my grandmother and grand-, and all her sisters, she’d call them, they were all my aunts,
and uh, we had some beautiful Christmases, but I remember one night my well the night
my grandfather died, we had a Christmas party and everybody was drinking. In those
days you had liquor they called it and not the kids, but all the others were feeling good
and my grandfather went to work. He was a night watchman, I forget the name of the
company he was in back of the outlet company at that time, he was a night watchman and
we had a dog Bobby, a Boston Terrier I think he was and he’d walk down my grandfather
would take him downtown and he’d walk back home alone and uh this one morning,
Christmas night we had a party and everybody’s celebrating. My grandfather went to
work at midnight and I remember somebody gave him a ride, my Uncle Joe and he didn’t
come home in the morning.

Binning: Wow.

Moura: And Bobby didn’t come home so they, I don’t know who, my uncle, my
father, they all went down and looked for him. They found him dead. He had, he used
to, he would walk in off Pine Street and into the store and there’s stairs going down the
way his office was and they, night watchman and he’d sit on the top one, there was like a
fire escape thing and the chair must have toppled and he fell down the stairs and they
found him dead at the bottom of the stairs in a cold heap, wet cold. And that was, that
was it.

Binning: And how old were you when that happened?

Moura: Oh, I was about eight, eight or nine, but I remember it vividly, I remember,
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yes I remember all of the hullabaloo, the crying and I loved my grandfather. I used to go
to the store for him and get his BL tobacco and Prince Albert tobacco and the BL paper
for, he’d roll up his own cigarettes. Ah, what a great, when he come, be going, put his
horse away. When he, he had a goat that would carry, that would follow him, and he had
a stable on James Street in Providence and I think the building is still there and he’d bring
from our house, it was like from here to maybe up the corner, not much, a couple of
blocks it went and we’d, he’d pick me up and ride with him and walk back with him and
that was, but it was a great life.

Binning: So it seems like from your earlier memories there were, people were using
horses and there were carriages.

Moura: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, very, very few. My grandfather had a, had a matter
of fact he used to lease it, you know from. He had to take it downtown, he had to take it
downtown and in the back part of oh I forget where, Narragansett Electric, the back part
of it on or the front part of it and there was a building there that used to stable horses and
he’d lease that.

Binning: So was it common for people to have horses or was that privilege?

Moura: Oh, that was, no it wasn’t, it was you had to rent them or lease them or
buy them and not many owned them except people that lived out in the country. My one
part of family lived out in Seekonk or Rehoboth and they had everything. They had
horses and cows and everything you want to think of, but that was it and that was my
youngest aunt. Her husband, he was a, we’d call him a greenhorn, well he’d come over
from Portugal and it took him a few years before he learned how to talk, but he did well,
he did well monetarily too and very well for himself he was a very, very, you know, he
I’m trying to think of the word, he’s a go-getter, he would go out and get it and he would
never be broke, he’d never let the family go without eating and you went to his house and
you’d eat like a king and if you sat there and didn’t eat, you would be told. Yes, he was,
he was in our terms he was a greenhorn, he was a real greenhorn and a young fellow and
he’d come over from Portugal, but his name was Manny, Manuel Reis, R-E-I-S, yes he
was my, my aunt’s husband. She was the one that I say was considered totally blind, but
she could see anything this close and sew, oh she could sew the most beautiful dresses
and clothes, she would make them for everybody in the family. A great. And my
grandmother was a neighborhood giver. You know poor people would always get
clothing and food or anything hardly know where it came from. Most of them did know,
but they’d never, there was no mention, no thanks, you know. She didn’t want to hear it,
but she did, she had a big family and she used the money to take care of others that didn’t
have. In those days the money, maybe they made 25 cents an hour, I have no idea you
know. That was, I was, well it was in the 1918, 1919, 19’s and I was born on 1919.

Binning: Right, do you remember from when you were younger a lot of people
coming over from Portugal into Fox Point?

Moura: Oh I remember a lot of them coming over. Didn’t know them. Matter of
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fact I had a few relatives come over, but they they came over to, they moved, one of them
moved to Stonington, Connecticut. Moses, his name was and his brother Anabel and the
rest of them, a big part of them moved to Bristol. I don’t know where the connection was
at that time they went to Bristol, but they did and but they you’d holidays you’d get the
visits, these all holidays, you know, and they’d, I remember Anabel, Anabel we called
him and his brother Moses come from Connecticut they’d come here for the holidays and
they’d eat here and sleep here and my God you’d have beds on the floor, but you all live
well, we had such a big house, there was so much room there, that house. Five rooms on
each floor and six on the top, three on each side. It was a nice set up. They had a
moonshiners. Yes, they for a few years my grandfather made moonshiner, it was only for
himself, you know for friends and stuff it wasn’t that he was selling it, and because we
even had a place for […] to come and get his pint.

Binning: Oh really?

Moura: Yes, Mr., oh Mr. Healy, yes Mr. Healy, the cop. We call him Healy the cop
and he used to come and matter of fact my grandmother had a little kitchen, well it would
be our dining room today that a few would, my grandfather’s friends would come over
and they’d have a shot of whisky, but they’d always leave some money. She didn’t want
it, but they’d always leave some money for quarter, dime, a nickel, whatever it was and
we had, I remember being there watching them drink and enjoy it and getting a kick it,
and I was well liked by the people I don’t know why although my brother was too, we
were both well liked. My brother was a bit of a headache [?] at the time, yes but he, yes
he used to get mad at me because they’d say why aren’t you like Jonny, why aren’t you
like and he’d say ehh. I remember one day we had a fight. I was going to a bar it was at
the time, I came of age, and I go in really, I have one glass of beer or so, but I remember
walking in one night and I hear, “oh sure, here he comes now, the big shot, everybody’s
boy” and I get mad and we had a fight.

Binning: Was it a fistfight?

Moura: Yes, fistfight.

Binning: Oh really?

Moura: Yes because I had, a fight and I.

Binning: And who won?

Moura: Huh?

Binning: Who won the fight?

Moura: One time I sent him, he had to the hospital I hit him so badly.

Binning: Really?
 John Moura 7

Moura: Yes, I used to get mad, I really did. We were, we were great brothers, we
were fine, we got a long beautifully, but he had a way of getting to me. He had a way of,
yes, and I think it was envy. I think on my part it was envy, I envied him.

Binning: Was he older or younger?

Moura: No, he was a year, a year and fourteen months younger. Yes, yes.

Binning: Why do you think you were envious?

Moura: Huh?

Binning: Why do you think you were envious of him?

Moura: Well because he was slender, tall, he was a year, fourteen months younger,
something like that, but he was slender and tall, handsome, and I envied him because he
could put on the clothes and they fit like they were tailored for him, he had that kind, and
I was a chunky little guy. Ahh shuck.

Binning: So when you sent him to the hospital or when anyone had to go to the
hospital where did you go?

Moura: Oh they just had to take him to the to get some bruises I had made, but it
was one, he just got me, he just, end of the rope at that time. We never had a fight again,
never had any problems and we were always friendly, we always good friends. Yes,
even, even when he passed away I remember one day my, he had passed away a few
months and my wife said, “why I miss Eddy,” that was my brother’s name. I said why.
She said cause he had gotten, he came over one Sunday and he had coffee. “Oh good” he
said because Marion doesn’t make coffee and home and they didn’t drink coffee and so
he started coming over every Sunday and that day she said “geeze I miss your brother
Eddy.” Yes, he had passed away and ahh sucks.

Binning: And when was that that he passed away?

Moura: Oh it’s uh.

Binning: A few years ago?

Moura: Fifteen years or twenty years maybe. Yes, it’s been that long. Like my
father’s been over thirty years and my mother.

Binning: And where they living in Fox Point their whole life?

Moura: Yes they were still, my brother stayed there all his life, yep. And, on John
Street. Was it on, did he finish on John Street? Yes, I don’t think he moved to Transit,
 John Moura 8

no.

Binning: You’re parents, did they stay in the house that they were in with you their
whole, their whole life, or did they move around?

Moura: No we had moved to our own places at the time, right may I had moved up
to Pratt Street. My wife and I got married and we, her folks, her father lived, he was a
widower and he lived on Pratt Street and she had two or three or four brothers that lived
with him so she talked me into moving in with them.

Binning: Oh really?

Moura: Yes so she could take care of her family.

Binning: And how long did you live with her family?

Moura: Several years. I forget exactly, but it was several years and they were
good years and we all got along famously, very fine and nobody, no problems. We were a
big family, they were good people, real good people and then one brother he was a
Federal Hill-er. He lived up in Federal Hill all his life. Tony, he was a, he had a shoe re-,
not a shoe repair, a clothing repair, clothing store that he cleaned, cleansing place, that’s
what it was, a cleansing store, but he was also a good tailor. He worked in a coat factory
and was a tailor, a hand tailor so he, people used to go to him because of the tailoring but
we, we had a good family, we had a good family, yes.

Binning: When you were younger would you go up to Federal Hill or was that
something that you didn’t normally do?

Moura: The what?

Binning: Would you go to Federal Hill or would you stay in Fox Point?

Moura: No I always stayed in Fox Point, yes, until I came up here, matter of fact,
but the rest of them. The only one was my, my brother in law Tony. He was a Federal
Hill-er and he stayed there and almost until he died.

Binning: Right.

Moura: Yes, and then.

Binning: And would you go on and visit? Oh sorry, I apologize. Would you go and
visit him?

Moura: Oh yes, yes. We’d visit quite often and even, I look forward to coming
and seeing him one day and he had died. Oh I was going to go visit him because he lived
around the, matter of fact on Broadway there right around the corner just a little way
 John Moura 9

down the street he had a tailor shop and cleansing place and everything else and he made
tremendous group of people who came there and they all looked for Tony. He’d sew, he
was such a sewing and they had the shop there. Mace Cleansers, he had a cleansing place
and it was fabulous. It was a good life. It was a good life we had, really, yes. Stonington
I only remember vaguely because I was so young, but I’d go, we’d go there a few times a
year.

Binning: Oh, you would?

Moura: Yes we would go there just to, and matter of fact I, I remember, matter of
fact we went to Bristol a lot because the part of that Stonington family had moved to
Bristol and Wood Street, I forget 360 Wood Street I think the address was and then if one
of my greatest friends that’s alive today, Olive, her name was Olive Shore. She had lived
at 360 Wood Street because it was a big six, six family house you know and not that we
were related to one another, she just lived in that house, and I used to go to Bristol. Ollie
is still working, living rather. I haven’t been out. She’s invited me, “come on up and see
me you old son of a gun” and, her son, one of her sons, Jonny, I knew him, I don’t
remember him, he was so small when I saw him last. He, I think he was afraid I was
looking for a wife or something, you know. Yes, he caught me off short.

Binning: And when was this?

Moura: This was only recently. Even in the past year and I had called, well I had
found out that Ollie had moved to not far from here anyway. Oh Barrington and I found
out she moved there and somebody told me and somebody whoever it was Flow Curts,
another friend of ours said “why don’t you call Ollie?” She said, “she’d like to hear from
you.” So I did and her son got on and he sounded concerned and I said “look Jonny,”
because I knew him from when he was that small. I said Jonny “I’m not looking for a
mate, I’m not looking for a girlfriend, I’m not looking for anybody, I just, your mother is
my oldest living friend” and we were friends in, well, in 1934-35. I got married in 1937.
We were friends before then, we knew one another before then. Yes, but eh. [Looks at
the tape recorder.]

Binning: Keep going. You’re doing great.

Moura: Oh yes?

Binning: Yes. No it’s wonderful.

Moura: Boring.

BIinning: No, wonderful. Fascinating and interesting stories. How would you,
when you go visit your family in Connecticut or somewhere far away when you were
younger, how did you get there?

Moura: The train. We would take a train yes. We would go to the station and take
 John Moura 10

a train. And then my father had an automobile too and he was great for.

Binning: Oh really?

Moura: Oh yes, back in then my father had a Moon, a Moon. The first one I
remember was a Moon.

Binning: Is that the type of car?

Moura: That was like a Ford, that was a Moon. I forget what company made it. A
touring car. In other words it was an open seat there were curtains on the side and he had
the Moon and my first car was a 1934, that was mine and my brother’s, a 1931 Ford at
the time. Yes, it was three years old. I paid 105 dollars. Boy, I’ll never forget that.

Binning: Sounds like a deal.

Moura: It was a beautiful car.

Binning: So did other people have cars in Fox Point?

Moura: Oh yes yes, a lot of people. You know, we, like I was saying, I’m trying to
think of my first wise [?] they were 1934 I’m pretty sure because it was about three years
old when I bought it. It was a 1931 Ford and it was a rumbled seat, two seat. I used to
make trips. We’d go to the beaches at Lincoln Woods, Lincoln Woods we’d go to
beaches there and I’d make five or six trips with three or four people in each one and then
come back at night and make five of six trips coming back and as many as I can fit in and
we had a heck of a time. Then we go to Warwick Dells, which is on the way to Gaspee
Plateau went out that way. There was a beach there too, you could stay on, and we’d go
there a lot, but I’d make trips there back and forth bringing them all, eight or ten people
and it was fun.

Binning: So is that what you would do in the summer, go to the beach?

Moura: Oh yes. Oh, always go to the beach. I love the beach. But then I got, so I
got friendly with girls in Bristol when I was younger and that was my seven night a week.
[Both of us laughing]. Yes, but I had relatives there too and they were well liked and
that’s why we get along with them, so many nice girls, because they knew our families
and knew they were nice people, you know? That’s what we used to be told at the time.

Binning: So would you not date girls in Fox Point?

Moura: The what?

Binning: Would you date girls in Fox Point or only girls who didn’t live in Fox
Point?
 John Moura 11

Moura: Well [chuckle], sometimes they were too close to home [chuckling], yes.
Matter of fact, oh, it’s funny. This is the funniest story I ever. A man named Manuel
Mandunsa [?]. He had four, two or three daughters, yes, Alice, oh the one I liked so
much, and then the young one, Mammy. Mammy was kind of a, of that kind of a person
you know and, they had toilets in the basement, you know, and I was in there, while the
middle one, I can’t think of her name, was in the toilet and I’m sitting there and her father
opened the door, “what are you doing in here!?” He gave me a pat on the back of the
head, not, not hurting me or. I said “I’m just waiting for,” what the heck was her name?
Oh geeze, she’s my favorite, she was beautiful. Yes, but that was Mayo [?], but he liked
me, he liked me so much that man. He told me years later too and I knew it. I liked, I
was liked by all the people in the Fox Point because I never gave anybody any trouble,
never and I held my own when I had trouble, you know, and they enjoy that.

Binning: Were most of your friends, when you were younger, were they
Portuguese? Were you ever friends with any Cape Verdeans or Irish people?

Moura: Oh yes, I had Dick Shore and Al Shore and Eddy Soares a black, black, he
was a musician, piano player professionally too, and him then Scotty Hopper, yes I
chummed with those fellahs. The Shore brothers and Al and Richard and Roland was too
young for us and like I say Eddy Soares was a black fellow. He was a, we’d go to his
house, he was older than us and we’d go to his place when we’d bug school [both of us
laugh], when it was too cold out. And he’d always cook for us and everything. Eddy was
the nicest guy. He was well known all around Rhode Island. He was a piano player, well
known, and play with Duke Blair and a lot of well, they were known names at that time,
yes. So, his brother Arthur. Arthur played the trumpet, but Arthur was not never part of
our group. He always had his own group that he chummed with. Nice guys. We had
black and whites. We chummed together, it made no difference in those days.

Binning: There was no tension or?

Moura: No, none whatsoever. That’s why I can’t understand what happens now,
you know? And, even we had Paul Cardoza and Joe Cardoza, two brothers. Paul was a
hell of a nice guy, and so was Joe, but they fought like heck all that time and they called
one another nigger.

Binning: Really?

Moura: Yes. Well Joe he was a fresh one. Joe was a young one, but he’d say it in
Portuguese, prêt, prêt. So he’d call him a prêt, prêt, you you [laughing]. Oh, but they
were funny. But no, no arguments, no fighting.

Binning: Were there certain neighborhoods that you felt like you shouldn’t go to or
that you didn’t like to go to?

Moura: Oh we had neighborhoods that were not, not unsafe, but were weren’t
welcome. Like Ives Street. Ives Street, the upper end of Ives Street or the middle end of
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Ives Street, Williams Street, and Powers Street and I forget the next one. They were not,
they were not, well you almost weren’t welcome there but you could go there
comfortably you know, you wouldn’t get in any trouble and they’d have feasts,
Portuguese Fasts as they called them on Ives Street and we’d go there and if you weren’t
welcome, you weren’t welcome but we went and my brother and I were always welcome
no matter where we went, you know. We got along famously with all the guys. There’d
be battles in the streets, but we would not be part of them.

Binning: And who lived on Ives and Williams and Power where people weren’t
welcome?

Moura: No, I didn’t, we used to chum up there for friends of ours, but I lived, most
of my life I lived on John Street and I was born on 95 Transit so like I say about a year
when we move to 47 John and then I lived on Transit Street, myself, my wife and I lived
there quite a few years at 186 Transit. Then I came up here thirty years ago. Yes we’ve
been here thirty years. We had been. My wife was five months short of being thirty
years. Oh Phyllis. [Motions to photographs put up on the wall next to him]. Here’s are
twins. No, I’m looking at the twin boys with me.

Binning: Oh, that’s great.

Moura: Yes.

Binning: And that’s your daughter’s children?

Moura: Yes, my daughter’s children.

Binning: Oh okay. So when did you meet your wife?

Moura: Wait a minute. My daughter’s children? My granddaughter’s children.

They’re my great grandchildren.

Binning: Oh really?

Moura: Yes, they’re my great, my Kimberly. My grand-, there’s Kimberly and

there’s her sister up there, but Kimberly is the mother of the twins.

Binning: Oh okay, and do most of your children and family live close to you or in
Providence?

Moura: Oh yes, we see the boys a lot. Yes and they come over and Kimmy, but
they’re forty miles away and I tell them, you know I used to tell her. I finally got her to
understand. Kim I said, don’t for one minute think I don’t want you to come over here,
come over seven days a week, but I know the trouble because she’d have to pick them up
now, now they’re in school. She’d have to pick them up at school and at that time a day,
three, three-thirty if they come out of school then that forty-mile ride here, you know. I’d
 John Moura 13

say it’s not worth it. It is worth it to me, but it isn’t worth it for you to have to do that and
she, and I knew she was grateful for that because she’d make every effort to come here at
least once or twice a week, always yes and [pointing again to the pictures] this little, that
gal in there, I can’t see if it’s a little girl. Isabella, she is the funniest little, clever, oooh
my God was she clever. That’s, that’s their sister.

Binning: And how old is she?

Moura: Isabella? About four, three or four, yes, but clever and speaks so well.
They all do. One thing about Kimmy, she’s well educated and educated her kids too. She
lives up in Franklin, Mass.

Binning: Adorable kids.

Moura: They’re beautiful, they’re beautiful. You’d have to see them to realize.
And that’s my granddaughter Kimmy and my granddaughter Bethany.

Binning: Oh okay, and are those your daughter’s children or your sons’?

Moura: Yes, my daughter’s children, both of them.

Binning: And what is your daughter’s name?

Moura: Phyllis.

Binning: Phyllis.

Moura: Yes, it’s Phyllis.

Binning: Oh, okay and then you have two other sons, is that right?

Moura: Let me, let me think, Richard and Ronald. They’re alive. Richard is an
attorney in Texas, Dallas and Ronald’s a retired fire chief from Providence Fire
Department. He retired, but he’s on a jaunt now for several weeks.

Binning: He’s in Florida, right?

Moura: He’s in, well he went, he had gone to Florida and now he’s in Arizona, yes
he’s in Arizona and my daughter’s in Florida right now, yes.

Binning: So you were saying that your, I guess great grandkids are really well
educated and speak really clearly.

Moura: Yes yes, they speak beautifully too I mean they’re not those dem
Mendozas you know but they’re fine, which is nothing wrong if that’s the way you are
brought up, but they do so well and they whatever little schools they go to they love
 John Moura 14

them. They love being in school all of them and the twins are separated, they don’t go in
the same classes. I don’t know whether it was, I guess it was preplanned. I think the
teacher thought it was best for them not to, you know because one of them is a little more
shy than the other. The oldest one, Nicholas. Five minutes older and he’s taller than the
other one too. Nicholas and Steven and the old man.

Binning: So when you were younger did you, did your family speak Portuguese?

Moura: Oh yes, my grandmother did but my mother didn’t. She, I mean she did
fluently but she was brought up English, you know speaking English and my father, he
had gone, he was sort of a greenhorn type but he spoke English. He spoke well, matter of
fact I remember when he had a laryngectomy you know with a pipe in his throat and I
used to take him for walks to keep him talking until he learned he had to swallow, he had
to take orange, not orange juice, ginger ale to make it ferment and then he could talk and
say a few words and finally. He liked it though, he had a friend of his that used to bug
him all the time. He’d say when I go up, when I lived on Transit Street he’d go up
around the corner to go to the bar to play cards and Arthur Sussa, he’d say “my God
Arthur bent my ear for two hours” and he say he doesn’t say anything so it got kinda after
a while I guess Arthur used to see him coming I guess and he’d, he’d hide back and
probably go in so he wouldn’t keep him there, you know. I think he heard about it, but
anyway so he said, “good,” he said “Arthur heard I can talk now and he hides now” but
he said “I don’t let him know it,” but they’re good, they were good friends too.

Binning: What did your father do when you were growing up? What was his job?

Moura: Oh he was a, he was working for Narragansett Electric Company. He

worked on the truck, working manholes, fixing wires underground and so forth so yes.
He had done that and before that he had worked for, oh I forget, oh it was a good job at
that time, but the Narragansett Electric was a much better job. Was more prestigious?

Binning: The Narragansett was more prestigious than?

Moura: Than the other one, laboring, you know, whatever it was. So they’re
proud about those things.

Binning: So my class has been talking to Lou Costa, who I know you are friends
with.

Moura: Lulu?

Binning: Yes.

Moura: Oh yes? [Coughing] Oh I’m getting old, boy.

Binning: Actually he said that everyone had nicknames. Did you have a nickname?
 John Moura 15

Moura: Yes, I was, well Pinky. I was Pinky for a long time, but I was always felt
bad that I was never called Jack. Yes I was never called Jack, but I was called Pinky.

Binning: Do you know why?

Moura: Yes, I know why. Because I was so fussy that I’d always go out all
dressed up on Sundays, you had to wear you’re suit and if I got a little speck on my shirt
I’d go in the house and make my mother give me a clean one and it could be a speck, a
little dot and I would so fussy about and you’d never know it now. [Pointed to stain in
shirt].

Binning: You look great.

Moura: But I was. And I was that way and I’d get mad but I’d yell at my mother
but she would brush it right off, you know so people didn’t know that and they felt so bad
for Ella and I knew she didn’t take offense to anything I did, no matter what.

Binning: And did your brother and sister have nicknames?

Moura: Oh yes, he was her pride and joy too, yes, because he was kind of in
trouble all the time. He used to drink a lot when he was quite young and he was at a
point where he’d have a lot of fights. People would offend him and he’d fight and that’s
why I say they used to say, why don’t you be like your brother Jonny? That’s when we
had a fight, because of that, but no, he was a good guy. My brother was a nice guy. He
worked on the waterfront for years. Yes, he was a checker. You know do all the checking
for records of all the lumber coming in and lumber going out and that was a job and it
was a good job. Oh he made bookoo money. He made five times what I did.

Binning: And what were you doing?

Moura: Hmm?

Binning: What job were you doing?

Moura: Oh, I well like I was on the buses for trolley cars with RIPTA and so forth
and so on. I had worked at the Rhode Island Tool Company as a machinist and
apprentice and I had to give that up because I’d break out with boils. Like I couldn’t
work in oil.

Binning: Oh, was that your first job, the Rhode Island?

Moura: The Rhode Island Tool Company. No, my first job was working the
grocery store.

Binning: Oh okay. Which grocery store?

 John Moura 16

Moura: It was on the corner of Brook and Transit which is no longer there today,
but Mr. Pontis and I forget, oh Lido, Manuel Lido, they were owners of the store and I
lived, I lived right across street, one house up, across street and I worked the store. I’d
work every day after school for, let me tell you. I’d work all day after, every day after
school from four to seven or six-thirty whatever, whatever he’d say go and then all day
Saturday. A dollar fifty, that was my pay.

Binning: For the whole week?

Moura: For the week, yes. A dollar fifty. About three cents an hour.

Binning: Yes was that a lot then? Did you feel like that was enough?

Moura: Well it was enough so, I found out when it was enough one day when I
quit. I quit and I went home and told my mother I quit. She made me go back. Not
because I, not made me for that, but I went back after she said to me, I won’t be able to
buy you a suit for Easter, that’s what I buy your suit every Easter with.

Binning: So when you would make the money, when you made money at your job
would you immediately give that to your family or was that your own money?

Moura: I didn’t have to give it to them but I didn’t spend it either, you know. I
mean, I, if they wanted it, see my mother didn’t want our money, but most families did,
you know. They needed it.

Binning: It was a group collection?

Moura: Yes, but my family was good that was it with the aunts, but it would
become we were individuals after that, money wise, but it was good and, I remember one
time I bought, my mother bought me an Easter suit. Oh I went out and played in the
fence back and I ripped the arm, yes the first day I wore it, I ripped the arm there. Well
my mother took it to Jack the tailor. He was on South Main Street at the time. Oh he’d
beautiful job he did with it but I wouldn’t wear that suit anymore. I’d wear it, I’d wear it
to hang around rather than wear it Sundays, but my mother bought me another jacket for,
but I wouldn’t wear it because of that rip, but you couldn’t see it. He’d had done such a
beautiful and it was underneath, you know, but she said, when I quit this store I wont be
able to buy you a suit Jonny, I can’t afford it.

Binning: When did you work at the store? Was it when you were in high school?

Moura: Oh, yes I was, it was 1932, I remember when beer, when the beer came
back, you know.

Binning: After prohibition?

Moura: They appealed, repealed the eight, nineteenth amendment, or whatever it

 John Moura 17

was I forget which, and the beer came back and beer came back and then shortly after,
matter of fact I worked here at the store and across the street on Brook Street, Sheehans
Drug Store used to be there and I’d go over there and get, they were selling Near Beer
and I’d go buy it for the men in the store because I was too young to have it. It was fun.
It was a lot of fun.

Binning: So were there a lot of bars in Fox Point that you would go to?

Moura: Bars?

Binning: Yes, bars.

Moura: Yes, oh yes.

Binning: Which ones?

Moura: Because in my teens I used to go to the bars and you can have a beer, but
if you went for a second one they watched you and then say no more John and it was ten
cents a year, matter of fact nickel a beer, yes nickel a beer.

Binning: Where did you like to go?

Moura: Oh there was a Perry’s Bar on Brook Street near Pike. Perry’s Bar and
then there was another one there I forgot and then Almeida’s Bar on the corner of Brook
and Wickenden. Almeida’s Bar and Manny Almeida was a fight promoter. He used to
promote all professional fighting around Rhode Island and he owned that bar. I knew
him well and he and I were good friends, but he was my father’s age. A good man. He
lived on the corner of Brook and Sheldon at the time, yes and I don’t know.

Binning: Were there any bars that you knew you weren’t welcome in or that you
didn’t feel comfortable going in?

Moura: Oh no, no there was some you just didn’t go there because nobody you
knew would be all older people, none of the younger guys would go, you know, but no
other reason because you were welcome and you were welcome as long as you behaved
and your reputation followed you and I had a good reputation, thank God for that. I mean
it, because I was good, I didn’t try to offend anyone. I wasn’t a wise guy, I wasn’t a fresh
guy, and tough when I want to be, that’s all, and I surprised many of fellah, yes. One
time I forget […], yes I had a fight with him and he was twice my size and I beat hell out
of him. Oh geeze. Nice kid too. I don’t know how that fight ever started, I don’t know,
to this day. “You picking me up?”

Binning: And you beat him?

Moura: [Pointing to recorder]. What that, how many does that record for? An
hour?
 John Moura 18

Binning: We’re doing good. It records for a long time so we don’t have to worry.

Moura: I don’t mean for that, but.

Binning: Oh, just makes sure that it’s recording? Yes I’m curious about school.
You mentioned you went to the Arnold Street School.

Moura: Yes Arnold Street was a, it was you know kindergarten and so. Matter of
fact we lived, the school yard was here and it was long school to school building was in
the middle as part of the school yard and the other part was school yard and they had fire
escapes on the side of the building and I used to climb because I lived just over the fence.
That’s how I went to school. I was at the fence watching the kids play in kind-, you
know, in the recess, and my aunt was with me, my Aunt Mary and the teacher, Ms. Daley,
became on of my favorite old teacher, Ms. Daley said, “how old is he?” And she said,
she told, she said “you know he is old enough now to start school.” Ah, so the next day I
had to go start school [laughing].

Binning: And did you like it?

Moura: Oh I loved school, yes, I always did. Until I got to my older years, I didn’t
like it but I, I you know, I did and I never had to take a book home. I could study in
school and have everything. I was so lucky, so lucky because it had to be luck. But I did,
I took exams, I took, I never failed any exams I did well and I passed.

Binning: Did you, were your classes with boys and girls?

Moura: Yes, yes.

Binning: And after Arnold Street then where did you go to school?

Moura: I went to Thayer Street School. Yes on the corner or Thayer and Power
and that was, that was sixth grade on, yes and sixth to eighth and then you went, I went to
Nathan Bishop.

Binning: Is that a middle school?

Moura: What?

Binning: Nathan Bishop?

Moura: Nathan Bishop, yes, that, at that time it was junior high school they called
it, but I went to Hope High, the old Hope. It used to be across the street from the one
that’s there now.

Binning: Oh really? So it’s moved since?

 John Moura 19

Moura: As a matter of fact I think the building is still there and it’s an apartment
house across from the front door, no front door’s on Olney Street. I know that. But the
school was right across from Hope and that, where Hope High School is today, I used to
skate there. Ice skate. That was a reservoir. Hope Reservoir, yes. And I used to skate.
Matter of fact one day, oh I had an awful time. When I’d go out, I’d go out to stay and I
went out and skated on Hope Street and nine hours I was on the ice. I got home my feet
were frozen. Because my skates were tight and my feet were caked just the shape of the
shoe. Oh, I remember how I cried when they were thawing it out with cold water, hot
water. Oh, I cried cried. But, alright.

Binning: Something else that Lou mentioned, he was talking about it was so
different growing up as far as taking showers and toilets, not really having any. What
was that like for you?

Moura: Yes, well in the beginning, in the beginning we had the basement had a
nice big sink in there and it was put there purposefully for that too because my dad used
to wash his feet every night and now and then he’d come down there and a little step
latter of whatever it was, a stool, and have his feet and wash them and he didn’t take, you
didn’t have showers, you know, you had to take a bath. Well we, ours was, matter of fact
I was quite young when they installed the bath, the tub, in our house on the first or second
floor and a couple of years later on the top floor, but we lived on the second and that was
beautiful and you took a bath every, every other night and every night you got washed
down by ma [laughing], yes and my mother was very clean that way and the kids had to
be washed and “how’s your hair?” She’s come, “ooh you haven’t washed it this week,
huh?” Ma, but my mother was so easy going oh so nice. Ella, Ella. That was her name.

Binning: So while you were at school or out playing and your father was working
was your mom mostly in the house doing things, cleaning the house, getting meals ready?
What was she doing?

Moura: In those days men didn’t have to help too much with their wives. They
didn’t have to. It only became my generation that happened, that men became more,
more helpful because I don’t think women considered man’s work to do what the women
does. You know it was like helping more. I washed my dishes every day and stuff like
that and sometime I’d get mad because I don’t do them each meal so sometimes I get an
hour and a half to do. My wife didn’t want me to do dishes. She said you take too long. I
say, so what?

Binning: Would your sister help your mother in the house when you were growing
up?

Moura: At the time? Oh yes, we did, well my job, we had the three flights like I
say so you had from the top floor to the second, second to the first, and first down. I used
to have to wash those stairs every Saturday. Every Saturday. Ooh, and that took an hour,
a couple of hours, a couple of hours it took and I had my base in the water and had nice
 John Moura 20

soap and a scrub brush and you scrub and my aunt would come out and check the
corners. Oh, she was a something, my Aunt Mary, oh she was so. My mother was an
angel and Mary was the archangel, or whatever, if that’s the bad one but oh she was
tough. She kept in toe, kept in line. Oh one night we used to go to the movies down in
Boys Club out in South Main Street every Friday and it cost you a nickel to get in. It was
a nickel and I’d get a quarter. Oh you got to have a dime. There was a Sam’s Hot
Wieners from here probably two houses away and we’d go to Sam’s first and have a
nickel hotdog and a soda. That was a nickel each and then I’d have my whatever change
I had with mine to spend, but, oh I lost my train of thought.

Binning: Oh that’s okay. Going to the movies. You’re aunt or going to the movies.
You were talking about.

Moura: Oh my first movie I went to see was “Wings.” I’ll never forget that at
Majestic Theater. My Aunt Irene brought me there. I was about eight years old. And I
think I just went there to be a companion, not to watch the movie because I remember
very little of it. But I do remember it was “Wings.”

Binning: Did you go to movies a lot?

Moura: Hmm?

Binning: Did you go to a lot of movies?

Moura: Yes when I was old enough to go myself. Matter of fact, just before that,
before I was older there was the two brothers like I say, Joe Cardoza and Paul Cardoza
and James Matthews, they were black fellahs. My mother liked them. They were all nice
fellahs and nice boys at that time and she’d call them all over on Sunday. Give them each
money and a bag, she’d make hotdogs and buns, you know, they call them hotdogs and
buns and she’d fill a bag full and gave them to Joe or Paul, whichever was going to take
care of us and we’d all go to the Capitol Theater, way up in Providence, in the city. We’d
go there. She’d give them the money for the show and everything. Ten or fifteen cents
each I think. But they were good. My family, my mother was very good to people. My
mother, I’m telling, we used to laugh at her. One day I got home from, from wherever I
was and I hear a saw. I go upstairs, “ma what are you doing?” She was living on the
second floor at the time. “Ma what are you doing?” She said “I’m fixing my shoes.”
That’s all she said. I go upstairs and she was sawing the heel to make it, to make it. Yes
she would give somebody five dollars to go buy their children a pair of shoes, at the time
that’s all they were, five, six, and she’d go fix her own.

Binning: Very generous.

Moura: Unbelievable, my mother was, she was so miserly about herself.

Unbelievable, but she’d give everybody, the shirt off her back. She was so, my mother
was so, what do you call bashful, well bashful person to you know. You couldn’t, you had
to be known to her for many years. You had to, she had to know you and you know her
 John Moura 21

or she would, she’d avoid you, go hide. She hated talking to people, but she was a sweet
sweet angel.

Binning: She sounds great. So a few minutes ago you mentioned the Boys Club. I
was just curious to hear more about that. When did you first start going and what did you
do there?

Moura: I was eight years old. Yes, I was a midget. They called them midgets.
There was midgets, intermediates, and I don’t remember, yes, junior and then the senior.
The senior was good. You were the big boy, you were twelve or thirteen, but we always
had kids that would take you to if your folk or you know if you weren’t in a gang, even if
you are young you weren’t in a gang, but I remember, I remember coming home from the
club and on a Friday night my Aunt Mary was mean, son of a gun, not not really but I
remember I wouldn’t go around the backyard, I was so scared, it was so big around
corner around and in those days they didn’t have those yards lit up or anything. Finally
they put one in for me and I even broke a glass in the door, you know, so I could reach
and open the door, the front door because my aunt wouldn’t open it. She wouldn’t open
it. “Go around the back.” So I, well my aunt ran up the stairs and chased me and I ran
under the bed and she bit my behind. She couldn’t reach me, but she bit my behind and
we used to laugh and we’d talk about, she’d talk about that so many times. How she bit
my ass. She said, “I bit your ass.” [Laughing].

Binning: That’s really funny.

Moura: Oh they were funny. Oh my aunts, they were very good too, wonderful
people, my aunts. They are all laid out in the cemetery.

Binning: Yes, where are they buried? Where is your family mostly buried?

Moura: Gate of Heaven down Wampanoag Trail down there, yes. But my early
family is up in St. Francis in Pawtucket, yes. My mother, my grandmother, my
grandfather. My mother’s up there, yes, my mother and father are up there, yes, and then
it started here with, with my aunts and only because they lived nearer. They lived in
Seekonk and they go. I go there quite often, I go there quiet often, I’ve gone up to the
other one too. Last time I, one time, yes, I have trouble finding my Aunt Irene’s and it
was the first one I could find and I couldn’t find it and I went to the office and the girl
showed me the diagram, but I still couldn’t find it and I said, “has it been moved?” No, I
said, but a couple of trees had been moved, you know and I couldn’t recognize the place
anymore. But I still go there. I go quite often, at least once every couple of months
anyway, you know, which his often.

Binning: So what else would you do at the Boys Club when you were there?

Moura: Oh we played, we played I forget what they call it, they had a little round
circle thing that you’d ran a table and you’d hit. [Making a flicking motion].
 John Moura 22

Binning: You’d flick something?

Moura: You’d, you’d put them all in the middle like pool, like playing, oh that’s
what they called it, finger pool.

Binning: Oh.

Moura: That’s what they called it, finger pool. I couldn’t remember. And you’d,
they’d have them, they’d bunch them up or whatever the formation was I forget now and
you’d have one for your turn to start and you’d hit it and if one went in you’d take
another turn, not until you got one in, you know so the next fellow would try and that was
finger pool. Regular pool, I loved it, but I never was good at it. I never could, my
brother was a oh, he was, nobody wanted to play with him. My father was the same way
too. He was a great pool player, but, but I used to like my beer when I was young, but I
didn’t get drunk or anything. I was, I’d go down to Perry’s bar, nickel beer. My God that
was great.

Binning: And you would go with a bunch of friends?

Moura: Hmm?

Binning: And you would go here with a bunch of friends?

Moura: No, you’d go alone because you’d always see two or three people you
know in there, you know, you’d, yes because I don’t know. It was something about it not
chumming together. It’s for certain affairs you went to on your own. I don’t know the
reason but, but like I had a lot of friends but I used to like to be alone at times, yes I used
to like being alone a lot. I used to love to read. The Boys Club had a beautiful library
and George Hor, H-O-R, he was a, he was the librarian. He became the superintendent of
the Boys Club afterwards, George Hor, but I’d go to the Boys Club at seven o’clock when
they’d open after supper and I’d stay there till nine reading a book. Then I’d take the
book home. Sometime my father would get up in the morning for work and I’d still be
reading the book, yes. I loved to read. Now what kills me now, I grab a book and I’m
reading it and I hear it hit the floor. I keep dropping the book.

Binning: That happens to me too.

Moura: Yes, but I have a lot of trouble reading and I do read the folk newspaper. I
read every article in it. The old bits and everything and then, I’m saving those for my son
on the chair there. He’s the one, he’s in Arizona right now. Ronald. He’s a great kid,
Ronny. Richard is too. Richard’s a more sedate attorney, you know. More bashful. This
guy is outgoing. Ronny is funny. He’s good, he lives in Barrington.

Binning: So you mentioned on the phone that in high school you ended up getting
your GED and then working? Is that something you wanted to do or something you had
to do? Why did you decide to do it?
 John Moura 23

Moura: No, I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it. Matter of fact I wanted it for
spending money because we used to go to, matter of fact I was still a little young,
couldn’t get a license when I was started fooling around, going to Bristol, but my two
friends, Al Shore and Richard Shore, they both had a license, they were both a year older
or something and we’d go in their car and I’d, I’d give them money for the gas. Yes, my
mother, my mother would say, I’d say to my mother we’re going to Bristol and the gang
and she’d give me fifty cents. That would buy two gallons of gas in those days, you
know. So I, I fed the guys. They loved to have me, but we had a lot of fun on Bristol. A
lot of girls, yes.

Binning: Were there any girl, particular girls or?

Moura: Well Ollie, Ollie was one of them. She was my favorite, but she was
going with Richard and married Richard and he died a couple, few years a back now and
he was a superintendent for Gorham Manufacturing. He became a superintendent,
Gorham Manufacturing. He had a good job. He was a silver spinner. What they called
silver spinner.

Binning: What is that?

Moura: Take sheets of silver and spin them into bowls and everything else. That’s
that beautiful profession. He done it, his, his uncles had been there. His father, his uncle,
one of his uncles had been the superintendent and that’s how he get into that. He send
him to apprentice school. Al, Al was not, but Al was clever anyway and he was the oldest
of the two brothers. Roland was the easygoing, couldn’t get work in hardware stores and
stuff like that. Roland wasn’t as up to it as they were, you know. Not, not inclined that
way I guess. Nice kid though. Lets see, Roland, Roland’s gone, Richard is gone and
Ronald’s gone. The only one that is alive is Ollie and I call her and I haven’t spoken to
her in a month now. Yes, at least it’s been over a month since I talked to her. Because
one day I called and I think I told you.

Binning: About the son?

Moura: Yes. The kid was kind of curt about it and she, “oh no she’s okay, alright”
and he hung up and a few minutes later I got a call and it was him calling. “My mother
wants to speak to you” because she said, she said when he hung up she asked who it was.
He said “Jonny Moura” and she said “well get that old back on.” Jonny Moura, I hadn’t
heard from her in a long time because we were real good friends, but she, she lives right
down in Barrington and I’ve never, I’ve never, she’d always say “come on down see me,
see me,” but I never get down there. Funny, you’d think, well that’s Providence people.
They’re known, you go, you go from here to Barrington and it’s an overnight trip.

Binning: Exactly. That’s what I’ve heard about Rhode Island [laughing].

Moura: Have you heard about that? Yes.

 John Moura 24

Binning: Because it’s so small. Did you have any friends who went to college or
went to Brown or did most people get jobs after high school?

Moura: No I, well let me see. Yes I have somebody that went to college. My own
son, my own so Richard went to college but. He’s an attorney, he’s an attorney, a patent
attorney he was. Worked for the government and Ronald like I say is a fire, he didn’t go
to college. He didn’t want to, but he’s smart. He was very smart. He made chief. He
took a chief exam and was well known for having a good head, for that kind of a job, but
Richard, Richard was always, always loved school, always loved it, yes. And I knew
he’d be a college student, yes.

Binning: But when you were younger it wasn’t common to go on to school?

Moura: To college? No, no. You were lucky when you were, matter of fact,
matter of fact even one time I signed up for summer school and I went one week and
some reason or other I had to, I gave it up because I had to get a little job to help my
family with money, you know and it was, and that’s, that’s when I went back, when
school opened after that summer I went back and the teacher was very nice. She skipped
on grade for me. Yep. She said you were trying. She said you, she said I don’t think
you’ll have any. So I skipped from fifth. I skipped sixth. In other words they had six A
and six B in those day and it was six A and six B and six A for, so she skipped me after
the six A and I went into seventh grade. Oh, I was not a dummy, you know. Not in that
sense.

Binning: Right. So skipping forward just a little bit. You showed me that picture
of you in the navy. Is that correct?

Moura: Yes, that was me.

Binning: Was that during, was that during World War II?

Moura: World War II, yes.

Binning: So when did you enter the Navy?

Moura: Yes that’s me right above that dot [pointing to himself in a picture of men
in Navy uniforms]. My kids used to always look for it so I had to put the dot.

Binning: You’re a good looking guy.

Moura: Yes, yes.

Binning: Still are.

Moura: How times age. How time takes a toll.

 John Moura 25

Binning: When did you enter the Navy? What year?

Moura: That was in forty-four, yes. New York. Yes June 8th 1944 I was already
in that time, I forgot, it was in June of 1944.

Binning: And were you drafted or, into the army?

Moura: Navy.

Binning: Or the Navy, sorry.

Moura: No, no I, no I matter of fact, you got, you got a notice you know. You’d
get a letter that you are subject to go in, you know, you’re subject to go in. Well, I
already had two children. I had two children and I was already married. I married in
thirty-seven so I, what happened? What happened, something happened. Well I decided
to go in anyway. I was, I yes oh because on my dog tags it says, oh heck, what the heck.
I know I put the dog tag, but no it’s a reserve, for reserve volunteers, something like that.
I was a reserve, but I volunteered to go in, you know instead of waiting to be called, yes,
that’s what it was, yes, and so I went in and I went and a few friends that I had worked
with, one of them Billy Haggis, he and I had worked at the Rhode Island Tool Company.
He was in the same day with me and Charlie Holmes, my dearest friend. When I was in
boot camp I hear somebody calling, Charlie, Charlie Holmes, and he was in the other end
of the room we were in, the, what do you call it? Anyway, there’s Charlie. He had just
come in, he had just come in the service then, yes so. But, that was the last we saw one
another until the war was over.

Binning: And did you fight anywhere?

Moura: Oh yes I was a border carrier we were hit by a suicide bomber in April 7th,
1944, yes. The U.S.S. Hancock. That ship right there.

Binning: Oh and what type of ship is that? I’m not very…

Moura: This? It was, it was all up in here, this was the front, the forward deck
elevator. See these planes would get on that and take them to the next floor to store them,
you know and that was the forward elevator and let me see. It got hit here, that this was
buckled, this was buckled. It was, you know probably buckled maybe that high, that
high, but it was not a deck anymore, but we had such good pilots. They’d go back here.
They’d take a, put their props going, going, going as fast as they gone and the guys give
them the signal to go and they come and by the time they got here they could, they were
lifted up, their wheels were coming up and they were only at like that much off the deck,
but we had terrific pilots. You know and these were eighteen, nineteen year old kids.

Binning: So they were taking off from the ship?

 John Moura 26

Moura: They were taking right off over that bump [pointing to picture of a Navy
ship].

Binning: Over that flat part, right.

Moura: Yes, yes. Well which wasn’t flat because inside the bomb had made a
hole and had blown that up and made it concave.

Binning: So the ship didn’t sink or anything like that? It was just attacked?

Moura: No, no. We were just hit and had good, heck of a fire on it. The one next
to us, he got bombed badly. The Franklin, USS Franklin and they took that. We were the
first, first line, first, first line ship that got hit that didn’t go back to the states. Oh that got
me so mad. I even lost a hundred dollars bet, betting that we would go back.

Binning: So you wanted to go back?

Moura: Huh?

Binning: You wanted to go back?

Moura: Well I, I was sure we would go back, yes. Even if we went back a week,
to go home, but when you went back it was, well we went in repairs, we went in a dry
dock, over a month we were there so had we gone home, we’d have been a month at
least, but that was a good old ship.

Binning: And that was the only ship you were on?

Moura: Yes yes. Hancock was the only one. Oh, well the one that took me over.
Yes, I’m trying to, oh the, the little one that took me from wherever we got it, to
California, we went to California. The Dashing Wave. That was her name. It was a little
like, escort ship, you know, what do they call them? I forget what they call them. My
mind is going mushy.

Binning: That’s ok. It sounds great to me. It sounds like you have a great memory.
So when did you meet your wife?

Moura: Did I write? I used to read, I used to write rather. I’d write, I’d sit in my
deck and read and we had like one deck, two, three, they were three high and I was
always in the middle one. I liked that.

Binning: Oh, while you were away?

Moura: On the boys ship, the boys ship. We slept there, sure and I slept, I slept
just, wait a minute [looking at picture of Navy ship], oh this, the boat they had catwalks
now, now a days more modern and had bigger planes and everything else but the catwalk
 John Moura 27

was along here and I slept right underneath where the bomb, where the bomb hit. My
bed was there.

Binning: Were you injured at all?

Moura: No I, we were, well when we were under attack we were all at our
stations, you know, manning guns. We had the pom pom guns going boom, boom, boom,
boom, and I was feeding them and they had clips, they called them clips, would fire.
There would be twenty millimeter, this big, and there would be five of them on a clip and
you pick up a clip and put it in, put it in, boom, boom, boom and that’s as fast as you
went too because, but you had four, five of them going up at the. And we had them fall
right down be, matter of fact one blew up right on our, above our deck and part, oh they
caught, they found part of his teeth, the Japanese teeth and stuff.

Binning: Ahh.

Moura: Squeamish.

Binning: Uh huh.

Moura: Yes, but I mean that’s that’s how bad it was. He got, he got shot, killed
right above our deck.

Binning: Wow, and then you came back?

Moura: Well he was going, he was going try to make a suicide you know, hit the
deck and kill, yes. Then when I came back, what?

Binning: When did you come back from war, from fighting?

Moura: November, November 10th 1945 I guess. Yes, forty-five. My brother

come back on November, the day, one day apart, I don’t remember he was the 10th and I
was the 11th of he was the 11th and I was the, visa versa. But he had been four years in, in
the army, the army.

Binning: That must have been hard for you to be away form your family?

Moura: It was, it was hard, yes.

Binning: And at that time.

Moura: And I had one leave. I came home for thirty days in between, but that was
a long time and it was, it was, you cried, you cried some nights you know thinking about
your kids and let me see forty-five oh thirty-seven, boy I was married in thirty seven. I’m
trying to think who was born, oh Richard was born in thirty-nine and Phyllis was born,
Ronnie was born in forty-two and Phyllis was born in forty-four, yes. Thirty-nine, forty-
 John Moura 28

two, forty-four.

Binning: And so, what did, sorry, pardon me, what is your wife’s name again?

Moura: Phyllis.

Binning: Phyllis. What did she do while you away to keep the family together?

Moura: She lived with her father, you know. She stayed with her father up on
Pratt Street and matter of fact she had brother John, brother Frank, and Albert, yes. She
had them to take care of, they were still with her father. She took care of them and I’m
trying to think what else, but Tony, no Tony had lived, lived up here in East Providence,
the oldest brother, but the three of them she took good care of them.

Binning: So did she have to work while you were away? Did she have to have to
have a job?

Moura: No, no.

Binning: She didn’t, okay.

Moura: Her father took care of her. He supported her. No fortunately. She could
have, as a matter of fact she worked at recreation most of her life when she did work.
Fox Point Recreation. She taught basketball and she was a basketball player in high
school herself.

Binning: Did you know her in high school?

Moura: Hmm?

Binning: Did you know Phyllis in high school?

Moura: No, no I knew her when she came down because the lived in Sharon,
Sharon, Mass. When her mother died she was like eight years old. Her aunt took her in
in Sharon, her father’s sister and she was there until we got married, yes.

Binning: And when did you meet, where and when did you meet her?

Moura: Well I met her one day she came here to visit her, her father in Fox Point
and I lived two houses up and I’ll never, I had a swinging gate. Here I was a show off
swinging on the gate and I saw Phyllis cause I knew she’d come back to visit her father
and we didn’t know one another. Matter of fact she was going with a cousin of mine at
the time. Boy, boy girl, you know and I was going with Betty, Betty Sylvia and Tony
married Betty and I married Phyllis, yes.

Binning: So you switched?

 John Moura 29

Moura: No, not switched. It just happened. Boy whichever one broke up and.

Binning: Right.

Moura: Yes, funny, funniest thing.

Binning: So when did you start dating her? Was there a certain, how old were you
when you actually started dating her?

Moura: No, it wasn’t dating actually, you know. It would be, she lived three
houses down. They had nice front steps like we did and they’d be sitting down there and
I’d go down and sit with them and my mother would say go down Phyllis is sitting down
there and I’d go down and she, she always looked like she was happy to see me so I, it
became a good thing.

Binning: And were you married in the, at Holy Rosary Church?

Moura: Yes, no Saint Josephs. Wait a minute, no, I beg your pardon, Holy Name
Church because that was our parish when we were living up on Pratt Street. Holy Name
Church on Camp Street, yes. Father Gibbons. Mancini Gibbons later, yes.

Binning: But you went to Holy Rosary as a child, your family?

Moura: Yes, I received communion and everything and I got married and then, but
Holy Name when I moved up in Pratt Street, but, yes father Gibbons, he was quite a man.

Binning: And he married you?

Moura: And Father Rebello, Mancino Rebello became Mancino Rebello was in
Fox Point and Sister Swas [?] and she was, my God, I think she died only a couple of
years ago over a hundred years old, yes Sister Swas, she was so nice, yes.

Binning: These are great memories. After you came home from the war is that
when you started your job at RIPTA with the cable cars?

Moura: No I had already gone to RIPTA and I worked with RIPTA about little
over a year I guess when I got called in the service. I got drafted, but I didn’t you know, I
forgot, I told you what it said. Volunteer, yes reserve volunteer, but I had been told I’d be
called, being called someday you know and said maybe six months or something
whatever so I signed up then, that’s what I meant yes, so I did sign up so of a selective
volunteer, that’s what they called it, selective volunteer, yes, it’s on the, it’s on my, oh I
don’t know where they heck they are. I had them, I had them in my hand this week.

Binning: That’s okay. Well maybe later we can find them.

 John Moura 30

Moura: [Gets up and looks for the tags in his dresser drawer]. Let me see, let me
see if they happen to be in that top drawer because that’s where I had them. Oh I’m so
sore my legs. My knees, my knees get.

Binning: Are you doing okay for talking? If you want.

Moura: Oh no, I’m alright.

Binning: Okay, great.

Moura: I had them in my hand this week too.

Binning: That’s okay we can look later, or if you happen to find them.

Moura: Yes, someday.

Binning: Yes, I’m sure they are around somewhere.

Moura: Oh I don’t know. Ah well.

Binning: That’s okay.

Moura: I probably put them upstairs.

Binning: Somewhere yes. So you were working for RIPTA and then?

Moura: Working for?

Binning: For RIPTA.

Moura: Yes.

Binning: And then you left and came back to the job?

Moura: Yes, yes I came back and went back on the job when I came back out of
the service and wasn’t happy. I had gotten so that I didn’t like it anymore, the job, but I
stayed.

Binning: For how long?

Moura: I forget. Yes, that escapes me, I forget, but wait a minute. Well whatever
happened I had, when I left RIPTA I was three months short of twenty five years so, so
I’m trying to remember so it was quite a while then so.

Binning: And what did you do for them?

 John Moura 31

Moura: RIPTA? I drove busses, I drove, yes, I was a, as a matter of fact I started
off on the trolley cars with them, yes. East Side, Hope Street, Elmgrove Avenue.

Binning: I actually, I brought a map of, a limited map of Fox Point or what might
be considered Fox Point? [Pulls out map].

Moura: Yes, oh yes.

Binning: Is it possible, can we kind of, is there a route that you, that you drove that
we could mark on the map? Or is that too small?

Moura: [Looking at map]. Well see it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be a route. Let me

see, I drove, wait a minute, wait Brook Street. That’s where I lived John Street, John and
Thayer. Well I lived up, I lived two houses up from Brook on Transit, on John Street and
Transit Street I was born over here at 95 so, oh wait a minute. Mohawk Lane yes, they
called it Mohawk Street but, but my house here would have been right here at Mohawk.

Binning: On the corner of Mohawk and Transit?

Moura: Wait a minute. Mohawk, Mohawk and Transit yes, 95 Transit. Now what
did you want me to point out here?

Binning: Is, I mean it might not work with this map, but was there any route that
you drove that went through that area?

Moura: Well Brook Street, Brook Street was a route from, from Brook and
Wickenden to Brown and Olney. There was a route there and you get to the tunnel and
you go around the block Thayer Street and go back up Waterman and to the top of the
hill, what the heck, yes. But and then I’d end up at Olney Street, come back. I’m trying
to see, yes, this is part of it, but South Main Street, south, that was Main Street. How
different it is with this, with this? [Pointing to the 195 Highway on the map].

Binning: Yes, how did the building of the highway, how did you feel about that and
how did it change the feeling of the community?

Moura: Oh it did, it was very, I know a lot of us were very disappointed about it,
you know because at one time you’d walk, we’d walk to East Providence but you’d walk
up the E Street, walk E Street and the boulevard, walk right over the bridge to East
Providence and, and it made it made it so long to go there, Transit Street, you had
Mohawk, imagine that. Well, now, I would, I would have been born, I would have been
born probably, now Mohawk Street and Transit. I would have been right here, yes. I
lived on, I lived on Transit right there so that would have been, that’s my house on 95
where I was born there and that would be Mohawk Street going across and right over
here in front is a little store, still a little store there somewhere, I don’t know who owns it
and then I live on Brook wait Brook Street no I lived on Brook and Transit. Transit on
this side, yes. I lived like from Brook Street I lived three houses up, yes it’d probably be
 John Moura 32

up here, three houses. Wickenden Street, Point Street. You looking, you mean you
looking for a route?

Binning: Well I was just curious if there was one on there, but.

Moura: Well yes, well there would, there would be, well Wickenden Street would
a route, you know that would bring you from downtown, you’d go to Point Street. You
wouldn’t go to Point Street you’d go to Traverse Street, that’s it. Wickenden Street and
then you go back there. That’s where you’d be up in the East Side there, yes.

Binning: And so did you, you didn’t like your job as a driver or?

Moura: I, I, I didn’t like driving. I liked the job as a trolley car conductor you
know. I liked it as a trolley car, and you felt like a railroad man you know. You wore the
long coat and all the pockets in it for transfers and you stood up there talking and it was
fun and I had a little seat with a pole that you stick in the ground and you change it at
both ends. You didn’t have the people change it for you, they come up walking up
ringing it for you when you get to the end of the line you had to put it on the other end
and go back that way. Yes, and the buses. I hated the buses but I, I did it, because I never
did like driving, even my car I’d go out quite a bit but I don’t like driving. Never did, but
I liked the trolley cars because you felt like a railroad man. Yes, and people used to, used
to pay attention to you too, you know. They, they, I don’t know, they had a good feeling
about trolley car conductors, I don’t know why. Well, normally when I started they had
all been old men, all old men. I remember Mr. Monahan [?], Monahan had a wooden
nose. Yes I guess he’d had it, I don’t know cancer or whatever it was in those days, but it
was an artificial nose now. He was a nice man. His fire son Chip married Alice, Alice
Tearney [?]. It was on, that was on Thayer Street right across from 28, I forget their
address, 30 I guess. I at least some of them are still around there. Some of those people
are still there. The Tearney, the Hope, the 28 Thayer Street the Holmeses are still there.
But they are not the Holmes, they are their grandchildren, so.

Binning: They are still living there?

Moura: Hmm?

Binning: The grandchildren are still living in those homes?

Moura: Yes the Holmeses are Barbara, Barbara Holmes.

Binning: Oh.

Moura: You know Barbara?

Binning: No, the name sounds familiar.

Moura: Yes because she’s, yes I hear she drinks a lot now. Matter of fact I was on
 John Moura 33

Hope, I went walking to, one day down my H [?] and I went in to the art in John Street
and came around and went about, down on Brook and Arnold and walked up a street and
I got up to the corner, I was going go see Barbara and she was out there hollering. She as
drunk as could be so I never get to her and she and I, no matter where I see here I got the
biggest hug you ever saw in your life. Barbara was so, her husband Eddy he was a
prizefighter. He was a, forth, forth ranked in the world at one time and he become
terrible alcoholic later in life. So, he went on the busses for a while and I guess the
drinking, he had to give it up.

Binning: So after, after you left RIPTA then what did you do?

Moura: [Pause]. Which one was it? Which one was it? What the heck did I do?
Oh I guess that’s when I went to the state. I worked for the state, employment
interviewer, yes. That’s when I worked for the state. I worked at 40 Fountain Street.
The Department Employment Security. I was an interviewer and I got, I got stationed in
Fox Point School on the, yes, next to the school there was a building there that’s still
there and that was my office, and, it’s fading now.

Binning: And you liked that job?

Moura: Oh I liked it very much yes because it’s talking to people all day long and
in and out and some of them were pain in the neck, you know, you always had somebody
that’s trying to clip you out of something.

Binning: And then you retired after that job?

Moura: Yes well I’m trying to remember when I retired. [Pause] Boy where the
heck do I get my retirement checks from? I forget. RIPTA. It is RIPTA, public transport
authority, that’s what that is, RIPTA, but it’s a, I get it from, from the bus company
anyway, but A-S, A-S-F-C-M-E American Federation Street Car, something else, but that
was the, the book. Matter of fact let me see if I’ve got one. Let me see. I don’t know if I
kept the last one I got, but just to show it to you. [Walks away from recorder to find the
union magazine.] I don’t have my cane. See they changed it now. It used to be A-F,
American Federation Street Car Conductors and now they made it In Transit, that’s our
union book.

Binning: Oh okay, so the union that you were a part of is the American?

Moura: A-T-U, Amalgamated Transit Union, A-T-U.

Binning: Oh okay. Great.

Moura: But it used to be A-F-C-M-A, something like that, but.

Binning: So its, it’s Amalgamated Transit Union.

 John Moura 34

Moura: Amalgamated Transit Union.

Binning: So, I’m a little unfamiliar with unions. So you were part of this union?

Moura: Yes, I was a part of this union.

Binning: And are you still a part of it or no?

Moura: From 1943 yes. I never stopped. They take, my monthly check they take
a dollar or something out. Token, token amount, you know.

Binning: Got it, so you?

Moura: Want to take it? Keep it if you’d like?

Binning: Oh, really?

Moura: If you’d like to yes.

Binning: Thanks. I would love to look through it. Thank you, you don’t need it?

Moura: No.

Binning: No?

Moura: I get one monthly.

Binning: Oh, okay.

Moura: Different one, you know.

Binning: Okay. So your family, so you stayed and you raised your children in Fox
Point. Did most of your friends do that?

Moura: Well no I, I raised my children mostly up here.

Binning: Oh, in this house.

Moura: Yes, I’d come up. Not, not in this one. Wait a minute, this is the only one
I lived on. I’m trying to remember. Yes I guess it is the only one I lived here. The only
house I lived in up here. So, let me see. I’ve been here 30 years. 207, that would be
what? 77, huh? Yes, see my kids were all big anyway. 77, but Ronald lived here
Richard lived here, yes because Ronald, yes. Oh no my Transit Street house, 186 written
that’s where my kids start smoking. Yes I’d come up stairs, I couldn’t catch them. They
had their front window, they had the cigarettes hanging outside the window. They would
be smoking there and if they hear me coming up they’d drop them on the string outside
 John Moura 35

the window [laughing]. My Ronald and Richard. Ah they were funny.

Binning: So did the other, did you friends, your friends from growing up in Fox
Point, did they stay in the neighborhood as they grew older or did most people move?

Moura: No, most, most of them had left Fox Point before I did. Yes, yes. Most of
them had left Fox Point before I did and I tell you Phyllis my wife liked Fox Point, she
liked it, yes. She used to say people don’t know Fox Point don’t like it, but she always
did like it because she was brought up in a small little town in Sharon, Mass, a little one,
one, I think they only had one gas station in town and it was beautiful, beautiful town
though. She went to like I say her mother died and she was, her aunt took her in to help
her father out you know, but the boys managed to stay.

Binning: So what made you eventually decide to leave Fox Point?

Moura: We moved up here, because my brother in law, my wife’s oldest brother

had moved in next door and bought that house and so his wife and my Phyllis were
friendly and she said talk to her so when this come up for sale she called us, she said why
don’t you come up and see. I come up and I talk to the man and it felt a couple of weeks.
You know he never gave me a definite answer and I tried to give him a 1000 dollar
deposit and he wouldn’t take it and he said, no I don’t want it and finally one day I guess
he had her call me or he called me and I forget which and he said, I’m ready to sign he
just wasn’t ready to sign anything at the time I guess so, Fellahs, Fellasby, Fallasby that
was his name, Walter Fallasby [?] and, his wife was a lot younger than him. He was a
nice man, she was a nice person, but I don’t think they, I don’t think she wanted to move.
She liked it here, this street?

Binning: Your wife?

Moura: No.

Binning: Or the person living here?

Moura: The man that sold me the house.

Binning: Oh okay.

Moura: And I forgot the reason for his moving. I think it was some son of his
where they moved to from here. They moved to I forgot out town anyway. So that’s how
I saw it. They wouldn’t take a penny until, until the day I signed it. So, I gave them the
bill, the thing showing them I owned the house now. I went to the bank while he was
here. Was funny, Fallasby was here with my two sons, my oldest son and my Ronald had
both had a truck full of furniture outside already from the other house and my son in law,
Rocky, yes, Wagner. The three of them had a truck out there full of furniture. So I got
back from the bank and boom the minute they saw me I said okay and I pulled in around
in with my car and they got out of their cars and they started bringing stuff in, they had a
 John Moura 36

truck, you know and then they made another trip and come back and then we finished it
the rest of the week and I moved in.

Binning: Was that a hard transition, moving from Fox Point since you lived there
your whole life? Was it sad for you to leave?

Moura: No, no it wasn’t no, no because I had had that break a few years on Pratt
Street, you know, but the reason I didn’t mind it here because I was, I, matter of fact I
was looking forward to getting up here because of my brother in law Tony, the oldest one.
He and I were very friendly. Then he died a couple of weeks before I moved here. Son
of a gun it was so. I said it took all of the joy of my wanting to move here and now his
brother, his other brother Al lived over there now he’s, Al died and his brother Eddy still
lives across the street so I’ve still got the one brother in law and the others are all gone,
the ones that lived around the corner, they owned the cleansing plant like I told you and,
but I’m the only one around here. My, I have a, I have two cousins that live less than a
mile from here now I never see them and its not them, it’s me. And they know me, they
know I never go anywhere.

Binning: So do you have any friends who are around here from when you were
younger?

Moura: No, I never did, never did, no, but I used to play golf, see I used to love,
oh I used to play five times a week, oh I did for several years, I played five times a week,
but I started golf oh God I was quite young but I went a lot of years I didn’t.

Binning: And where did you play golf?

Moura: I played golf at oh at all of the courses. I was a member at Sun Valley. I
was a member there. I was a member at Triggs in Providence and then a couple of us had
partial memberships where you were allowed to some, matter of fact one of them you
could be able to play weekends which is a big thing to be able to play a golf course
weekends so, and then, I must have been playing ten years and my wife took it up. She
loved it, oh she loved golf. She’d go up there herself by Triggs up in on Chalkstone
Avenue and drive her own car and go up there and play and then I’d meet her. We never
played together, only once. We had a fight.

Binning: Why is that, because of fighting?

Moura: Yes oh yes. She got mad at me for one hole, that I was there was
something I did and I wouldn’t play with her anymore, but she didn’t mind, she knew it
because she’d rather play with the girls anyway. Oh, I always had a lot of men friends to
play with. Yes, I had it such where I’d play five days a week minimum, minimum.
Sometimes the whole seven days, I’d go to Seekonk. We go all over Massachusetts and
play all the courses, yes.

Binning: So, kind of to wrap, I guess wrap things up a little bit. I feel like this has
 John Moura 37

been a great conversation, but we’ve been talking for a long time. I feel like I need to
give you a break.

Moura: Yes. We get so we start repeating.

Binning: No, it’s been wonderful. You’ve just been so generous with your stories,
but what do you think of, what do you think of Fox Point today?

Moura: I, I, I think it’s a wonderful place, yes, I think so. And one thing about it,
if, if you don’t know Fox, people just don’t know Fox Point are afraid of Fox Point,
afraid of being there or living there or going there. Nothing wrong, Fox Point. One thing
about it, people were never troublemakers in the sense that if they saw a stranger they’d
you know try to make wise cracks or. There was never any of that. You just minded your
business and let everything go as it went, you know and I don’t know. To me, matter of
fact lot of people were afraid of Fox Point, that’s the only thing about it and it was
beautiful. We had the haunted house in back of 38 John Street.

Binning: Was it an old house?

MOURA: Yes, yes. It’s still there too as far as I know. I think they, I don’t think
they even knocked down, in back of 43. 38 is the end, 43, in back of 38 there used to be
an old shack that black people lived in and they, like, like they were down south you
know, it was terrible and, and 47 across the street was some blacks living there and they
were wonderful people. The others were wonderful too but I mean they were they, they,
I’d say low down because they, I don’t know they were no, they weren’t educated at all,
they were slobbing they were dirty they, but they never bothered you. I’ve never had
bother with black people in Fox Point and my mother loved them. She loved the ones she
knew, you know. They were so nice people and my mother would love anybody.

Binning: Would you consider Cape Verdeans to be black people as well?

Moura: Well yes, yes, yes well they’re Portuguese, Cape Verdeans are mostly
Portuguese, you know, and Cape Verde Islands, yes. Some people think, well I had a
lady, but she, we were good friends too because when I first married her, she came up to
my, we had something at the house before we were going to our afternoon wedding
festival so she came over with her son, Sadie Rosenthal and she, she thought all
Portuguese were black. Oh, she was coming up there giving Melvin, her son Melvin
heck. What are you taking me up there for? And so she came up and I met her and we
were great friends for years and years after. She lived on Bowen Street just below
Benefit. Yes, she was a great person. We had some great friends. Old people and young
people. Jewish, I had a lot of Jewish friends up there on Pratt Street.

Binning: Really?

Moura: Yes.
 John Moura 38

Binning: Were they?

Moura: Pratt Street was always Jewish, always Jewish neighborhoods see at that
time and a mixture of blacks. Few, very few blacks at that time and so we moved to 23
Pratt. Wait a minute that was the last one, first we moved to 101 Pratt Street, that’s what
it was. First we moved to 101 Pratt and later on I moved to 23 Pratt. That was a nice
house. Three-decker, but I went there because they had a nice garage for my car.

Binning: So do you think the Fox Point neighborhood, what it looks like today, and
with all of the kind of gentrification and the stores coming in, do you think it resembles
the Fox Point of your childhood at all or is it, is that lost and gone?

Moura: Very, very much so. It still hasn’t changed in its appearance, you know. If
you knew the old Fox Point it still hasn’t changed, no, not too much. The only change
that could be made if new homes were built and everything else but 43 is till the same
and 44, 47, 40 and my house 47 is still the same house. I can’t believe I lived there now.
It’s a big old house and it’s a nice one and it was nice inside. Comfortable for us. In
those days you had parlor heaters, you know big heaters about this big with coal and you
had to tend the heat at night. I remember my grandmother before we went to bed at night
she’d be stoking the coals and putting more for the night and they’d, they knew how to
bank it so it would start coming up in the morning when you going get out of bed.
Unbelievable. Then I lived on Pratt Street. I used to have to go down to the cellar and
stoke the furnace. We were glad to have a furnace there. That was a big house.

Binning: And did it keep the whole house warm?

Moura: Yes, six, six rooms you had big radiators in each room, you know, big, but
it was a nice warm house. John Street was a cold house but we had like I say, we had
those nice heaters, big ones, you know tall tilled heaters with pot belly, yes they’d call
them and you’d have on in the big living room and that’s where. I remember we had four
beds in one big room, it was an enormous room and my grandmother slept in one and
three kids, my brother, sister, Hilda, my brother and I were sleeping together. She died.
She was 31 years old. Over thirty years ago. She had gotten bronch, bronchiectasis,
that’s what she died from, the hardening of the lungs. Yes, it was a, it was a, fairly
common in those days. It was hardly known today, but she got it. She was nice, she was
a nice girl.

Binning: So what do you consider to be the boundaries of Fox Point, when you
think of it?

Moura: Well the old, the old boundaries used to be, well not even Williams Street.
John Street, John Street, Arnold Street, Transit and Sheldon and Wickenden, that was it.
That was Fox Point. Now it extended over to William Street even to Power Street as far
as I know and I’m pretty sure it has.

Binning: Have you been there recently?

 John Moura 39

Moura: I go there once in a while even if I just drive through, but I do, I go to see
what’s happened on Brook Street with the, you know up in there Power Street where
there used to be a store across the street and I used to go there and just to see changes. I
go by 28 a lot and I feel so bad, I’d love to stop there and see. I’d see the Bunny, she’s
there. I forget her real name but, Bunny, I’ve held Bunny in her, my arms in that house
the night she come home from the hospital with her mother, you know and I, her
grandfather was holding her and I, he said “come here John hold me,” old Mr. Holmes he
liked me and he called me and made sure I held Bunny in my arms and she’s a woman
today of, 60, maybe. More than that she must be because I probably was only 15 at that
time.

Binning: So, is there, before we conclude the interview, is there anything else you
want to talk about or you feel is important?

Moura: About two more hours with you.

Binning: No, I would love it, I just.

Moura: No, I’ve taken up a lot of your time.

Binning: No thank you. It’s been wonderful and you have an amazing memory.

Moura: Are you going to make sense out of that?

Binning: Yes.

Moura: Yes, you will?

Binning: Yes. Okay well if there is nothing more then I will conclude the formal
part of the interview and we can talk a little more.

Moura: Yes, that’s fine.

Binning: Thank you.

Moura: Anything you want.

Binning: Okay, I’m going to press stop.

John Moura 40