Photo (above) and text by Corey Amaro:
The evening was just beginning when I sat down at Annie's kitchen table. Rarely do I know where her stories will take me, though disappointment is never mine. I asked Annie if she had lived in our village since she came to France from Greece.
The Fish Monger 1889
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Annie arrived from Greece by boat to the port of Marseille. She paints a lively scene of their arrival on the Canebière (The city's main street), "I remember getting off the boat, my mother was shocked when she saw the fishmongers carrying large flat baskets on their heads loaded with fish. Their provençal boutis skirt, their blouses open, the smell of the port… it was too much for her! She told my father that their daughters didn't travel from Greece to become fishmongers!"
Photo: Corey Amaro
"We moved to the countryside, staying here until I was ten years old. Then we moved into the city. Though every summer my parents would rent a house out in the countryside, even though we had a garden in Marseille it wasn't like the open space of the countryside. My mother, my champion, wanted us to profit the richness that the countryside could give us. Our friends and neighbors thought we were rich… such a luxury to spend two months out in the country."
As Annie talks I can tell she was loved as a child, "My Father stayed in the city to work, though he would take the bus out to see us every weekend. It was a luxury he afforded us by his labor.
(Postcard via the internet.)
"On the last day of school, we would pack our knapsacks for the two-month stay in the country. My parents would rent a house, a different house each summer, and there was never any furniture. You could say we camped inside." As Annie talks, I can see by the look in her eye that she is back in her memory. Happily, I tag along, into the image she paints with her words.
Annie continues, "We would take the tramway from our home to the bus station. Then we would take the bus to the village. It was a very long ride… hot… cigalles constant chatter… my mother would pack a picnic, we ate on the bus."
Interrupting Annie's memory voyage, "Annie, wait a minute if the house you were going to was empty, what did you use for plates, how did you cook? Where did you sleep.."
Annie laughed, as she filled in the missing blanks, "Each of us had to carry our own clothes, our sheet and duvet cover. We each carried our own plate, cup, bowl, fork, knife, spoon, and napkin. My mother would give each of us something from the kitchen to carry too… a pail, or a pan, or the skillet… There were seven children… plenty of arms to carry everything we needed. Though my Mother and Father carried the heavier things."
"My gosh Annie your knapsack must have weighed a ton!"
"We carried more joy than you can imagine. We loved going, so carrying everything was worth it.
When we would finally arrive, my Father would go out to the forest and cut some trees. He arranged a deal with the carpenter: My Father would bring the fallen trees, to the carpenter, the carpenter would make him some planks.
In the meantime, my mother, brothers and sisters and I would find some wooden boxes. Wooden boxes (cagettes) were easy to find back then, better than the cardboard ones now. We would carry them home, and my Father would lay the wooden planks on top of them to make us beds.
At the end of the summer, my Father would give the planks to the carpenter, that is one of the ways we economized."
photo: Corey Amaro
Annie's childhood is like a page out of Marcel Pagnol, a famous nineteen-century author from the south of France.
Annie's childhood memories continued to unfold, "Then we would carry our duvets out to the field to stuff them with straw. We made our own palliasse (mattress). The more straw the softer the planks." Annie's eyes sparkled.
to be continued…
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