The Bomb Shelter

People are not going to stop drinking just because you tell them to. You might be better served to figure out why God made drink and then figure out the best way to handle it. There was a neighborhood of Cape Verdean people in New Bedford who gave it a good try.
Everybody knows that members of the Cape Verdean people were snatched off their rocky islands to serve on whaleships and ships of other kinds. We here in New Bedford are concerned with whaleships.

Everybody knows these Godfearing salt of the earth people made excellent whalemen. So they settled here and sent for their families until gradually a sizeable community took hold.
Everybody knows the Cape Verdean people are good Catholics and go to Mass on Sunday and sometimes Wednesday and honor the crown and do the good works of the church.
Everybody knows they are also clannish as Hell and superstitious and behind closed doors light extra candles in closets and mutter spells and read signs.

Everybody knows the Cape Verdean people like to party and never miss an occasion to party. The women like to drink and cook and drink and fool around and drink and have their hair done. They are one group of people where the women like to drink as much as if not more than the men.

All these elements came together at the Bomb Shelter.

As is wont to happen, groups of like people form neighborhoods in cities and go about their lives as much like they are back at home as possible given they are in a foreign climate. They start up churches for their own brand of Catholic. They open stores where the aroma of their own native foods cooking flavors the air. Beauty parlors and barber shops perform rituals on hair that won't conform. And they open social clubs. When prohibition told them they couldn't drink they just went underground- literally.

Mojel and Richard had managed by hard work to buy their own house. They lived in the first floor tenement and rented rooms out on the second and third floors to mostly single people and a couple once in a while who needed a place to live but couldn't afford a house just yet. Like in most neighborhoods, every few blocks there was a social club where after work the men would go to play cards and drink. On weekends the women would join them to drink and listen to music and dance. When prohibition came along everybody was stunned.

At first they tried to comply but it didn't take long to figure out they liked to drink too much. On the Avenue it was decided that Mozel and Richards house was the most likely spot. So the black -out curtains went up, the basement was cleaned out and painted and a bar was built and bootleg liquor was snuck in the bulkhead under cover of night. By the time the wars came along and along and along the word was" I'm going to the bomb shelter." Wars came and went , as did prohibition, but the place just stayed. A dance floor was laid, a jukebox carried in and little tables with straight chairs crammed around. The place was so crowde you could hardly walk in there. More illicit affairs took hold in there than you could imagine. Such a story was Rhonda and Lamar.

to be continued