My father’s magazine
Today I dreamt on my memories.
My father, when I was small, was owner/director of a sports magazine, four thousand prints per month. We were going, every month, to the printer shop, where big cylinders printed the pages, put them together, staple them, cut the borders and, at the end, an example was out. Repetitive noises. While waiting for my father magazine to be ready I walked around and mainly school books where printed. It was now time to put one magazine in one envelope, already addressed to the subscriber. There was a box of envelopes per zip code, first the islands (Azores/Madeira), then the North, then the South, then Lisbon, where there was a box per neighbourhood. Maybe it was the other way around, I don’t remember. We were usually three to help – my father, a friend and I. After couple hours we charged our car with the boxes full of envelopes full of magazines. The printer shop was in a narrow street, somewhere in Lisbon, I could not say anymore where. The car was full, almost touching the ground. It was a Citroen Visa 10E. I had to go somewhere in the middle of the boxes, bent to shape with them. Next step was the post office. Take out all the boxes from the car, give them to be sent. Last point of this monthly journey was passing by the stadiums of Lisbon where we would leave some copies of the magazine to be sold directly to the people.
This monthly ritual end one day abruptly. I was in London with my grandmother. I just discovered that, against my initial will, I was going to the university in Coimbra. On the return to Portugal my mother, father and I went all to a bar, Pavilhão Chinês, at Bairro Alto. My father tells me he had sell the magazine.