My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Tarzan and Zorro. Across the street
from the Coliseum, there was a beer factory Melo Abreu. Before
the movie, I would visit the beer factory called, Cervejaria, with
my good friends Eduardo São Bento Furtado, George Bradford,
João Luis Albergaria, Albano Viveiros, Chico Alvares Cabral and
others to drink a mug of beer before the movie. In those days,
there was no age limit to consume alcohol. My favorite movies
were Westerns, especially Zorro.
Sometimes my friends and I didn’t have enough money to get into
the movies, so I would suggest that one of us buy a ticket, and once
inside, open one of the many gates on the side of the building, so
that the rest of the gang come in and see the movie for free. My
close friends called me “street smart” and quite a leader in that
kind of adventure.
Senhor José Bento’s Dancing School
Dancing was a very common way for people to pass the time in the
city of Ponta Delgada. Many young people of my generation
attended Senhor José Bento’s Dancing School, to learn how to
dance to the music of those days, like the Tango, the Fox Trot, the
One Step, the Passé Double, the Quadrilha, and other dances
typical of our generation. Unfortunately the young people of today
don’t enjoy ballroom dancing very much. In addition to the
dancing classes, my friends and I liked to watch the exceptionally
good dancers perform on special occasions. Senhor José Bento
would use these performances to show off to the parents. The
dancing lessons and the dances were where we got acquainted with
one another and perhaps flirted with a girl that we had a crush on.
The girls sat around the large room and the boys, approached them
to ask them to dance. Most of the time, the girls would say yes, but
sometimes they preferred someone else and would say no. This, of
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