Prologue

July 20, 2018
After the decision had been made to yank up our roots, pack our life’s-stuff into a container and go live in Portugal, one of the crucial parts of emigrating to Portugal is to put a stack of details about ones life, in triplicate, and present it in person to the Portuguese consulate closest to our US home.  We had a great, fun and successful trip to San Francisco; got our consulate interview tucked in and enjoyed the usual glorious food. At the airport coming home we met Rocko, age four and Genevieve, age two and their attractive mother, name unknown to us, although she did share with me that she is a professional belly dancer.  
Belly dancer, really?  I’m pleased to know one can make a living these days as a belly dancer. 
Well, I have a reptile act as well.
Ahh, of course.
And we then got on our airplane with very little pain.  It was a full flight and everyone had just gotten settled and the doors locked when the captain came on the PA and said that there was a tiny little ole fuel leak in a valve leading to the starboard engine, but that they thought that starting the engine and then shutting it down again and restarting it would take care of the problem.  
Yeah, I’m thinking…just like getting in the car in the garage and then getting back out again without having moved will fix the problem of having forgotten to buy tomatoes on an earlier trip…go for it, Captain.
Unfortunately, he continued, we can’t do that with you on board so all of you have to deplane and take all your belongings with you.
Or they’ll likely go up in smoke, I thought.  But everyone got off and we went back into the terminal while the captain revved up one engine of the airplane which was parked ten feet from the boarding gate window, pointing directly at us.  While the captain revved, the gate agents gave the children sugar, encouraged them to chase each other and got a spirited session of DO THE HOKEY POKEY going with a giant but good natured possible lesbian.  That’s what it’s all about.
An hour later, once back on the supposed non-leaker, we took off and climbed up smartly which hurt the ears of the eight infants clustered around our seats, but dangling from their mothers, they quieted down soon enough and all was fine.
Until the ten year old kid sitting behind Linda put on his headset, cranked up his music and started slapping his thighs with both hands in time to his tunes.  It was a fast tune and he really went at it…slap slap slap slap slap and so on.  Thennnn, one of his most favorite tunes ever in the whole world came on and he kicked it up to a really loud frenzy of SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP!   He was going at it; he was an effing blur.  Finally I turned around and gave him my number six scowl and both he and his warden glared back at me and he slapped harder, louder and faster.   Norwegie was rolling her eyes.  I wheeled around and in stentorian tones asked the slapper, IS THAT REALLY NECESSARY?  IT’S VERY ANNOYING.
He’s autistic, said his mom.  
Oh, sorry, I offered,
But he was quietly autistic for the rest of the flight…I have a way with kids.
Linda just pointed out to me that I forgot to include the part where we were watching the belly dancer’s kids while Belly Dancer went to the ladies room and I offered Rocko a bag of chocolate covered peanuts and asked him if he was allergic.
Nope, said Rocko and slammed down a fist-full of nuts.  
Jesus, Rick! screamed Norwegie…you just asked a four year old if he WAS ALLERGIC TO NUTS!  WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?
Oh, I said.
And I ripped the sack of nuts away from Rocko.
But we’re home now and I don’t want to talk about this flight any more.

 

September 13, 2018

We fly to Lisbon in ten day’s time.  For this little-town Texas boy those words have a ring, have gravitas. Linda and I have been packing, organizing, filling out forms, writing checks, visiting consulates, selling and giving away the flotsam of decades of our lives together, lived mostly in one place.  Gone are the baby pictures and shirts that fit 15 years ago, her suits with giant shoulder-pads, my great wad of colorful bow ties ever in the closet and now all the color of lint.  My collection of braces so important to me in my thirties and forties, pants no longer pierced for braces, but worn out nonetheless, Spanish tourist cufflinks with bulls on them, a short barreled shotgun that makes such a glorious, ominous scheck-schick sound when primed, but which is unappreciated in Portugal where they don’t shoot each other so much as we do here.  I am pumped up about this adventure, but I’ll miss that shotgun.

 

We are leaving the Pacific Northwest just as the rains commence, heading toward the Atlantic Northwest of Portugal just as their rains commence.  Soon to be our rains.  There is language to be learned, driving manners to adapt (without a shotgun), baby pigs on spits to savor and share among our budding group of Portuguese friends, search for favorite seafood waiting in so many guises, flavors and colors that we can not now even imagine.  Stone houses to pursue, dogs to train.  Porto to walk through, Lisbon for strawberries in a cup.  

24 September

Easy, but interminable series of flights, then sleep then squid, olives, oil and bread, then Trixie thew up in the coolest bar in Cascais (drinking problem), more sleep and now a visit to our Fixer and Banker here in Lisbon, but first another coffee…My God, the coffee…it’s a higher plane, metaphysical truth in a tiny little cup.   Tomorrow we’ll wander up to Viana do Castelo along the coast from village to village, be in love with each other and ever more thrilled with this journey.  I must commend our puppy…she pranced through the airports, up on the muscle like a colt and I had misgivings about her abilities to quiet her mind, to make her long legs fold and to endure the long legs of the flights across America and the Atlantic, but she sat mostly motionless at our feet for both the five hours to Boston and the seven hours to the Azores.  She’s a keeper.  And an ambassador; so far, she’s introduced us to a charming couple from Provence and the most enthusiastic crew of flight attendants I’ve ever met. 

26 September

Norwegie must have prawns this afternoon and the best ones we know of are on the working docks adjacent to Porto, so we’ll motor straight up to Porto on the toll-roads (mostly empty save for the Germans with their left signals blinking as they scream by at 240 kph and better), get our grilled prawns and then noodle the small roads into the verdant  and beckoning Viana do Castelo.  Today’s trip seems a pilgrimage, the first fulfillment of a dream to find a small stone house, near a pleasant village, a serene river, Spain and the icy, boisterous Atlantic.  I am so happy to have this privilege, this experience, to be making this journey with the splendid Norwegie.

27 September

Very funny and bizarre development tonight…Last month I made reservations at a modest hotel in Viana do Castelo from pictures on the internet and after touring up from Lisbon today we punched in the coordinates and GPS’d it to the Quintina Something or Other Resort.  We eventually bounced up a stone path to this place in a hamlet 20 kilometers from Viana do Castelo and were immediately set upon by loud music and a pack of snarling dogs.  Trixie went ballistic.  But it gets better.  We stumbled down a steep cobble-stone path into a tiny inn and bar perched on a cliff overlooking the village. The proprietress showed us up a near vertical set of slick, polished, wooden stairs designed for the physically challenged to the VISTA Room.  It opens onto the village in the valley and when we opened the window we were overwhelmed by hideous, canned, high volume accordion music interspersed with speeches from the Soviet era, broadcast from the village church in very low fidelity with screeching feedback…this is the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of this grim little burg and, Baby, they are celebrating.  The effect is of prison camp torture; very good for tourism.  I slid down the stairs to ask about this hubbub and standing in the doorway were two donkeys. Trix was apoplectic. 
Both donkeys said in unison, 
“We’re quiet old fellows kept here to enhance the ambiance.  One of our ancestors carried Jesus into Nazareth and we would never bite you.”  
“He is speaking truth,” said the other one and they sidled up to me sweetly and bit me on both elbows.  
That called for a beer and the cancellation of the other six booked nights.  The proprietress was understanding and even gracious, but I felt bad for her and when she said, “Please, come into town with my sons who speak very good English.  You will meet the Mayor.  You will talk to the Mayor, please.”
“Sure,” I said.  
“Please tell him that you are leaving because of this broadcast and that we and the entire village are being penalized because of this awful broadcast.”
“You got it,” and we bumped into town with the two sons and Trixie to find the mayor working on a sewage problem with a former employee of the Inn, former because he stole money from them.
Linda, who was emboldened by a couple of glasses of white wine, stepped right up in the mayor’s face and let loose her spiel.  Johan, the older son translated whenever Norwegie drew a breath.  The younger son, who mumbles and does not speak English at all stood there sullen and silent.  I said very little.  Trixie rammed her nose in the Mayor’s crotch.
His response was essentially, “We have a permit.”
We’ll be out of here in the morning to more accommodating digs if I don’t die on these stairs, but Man oh Man, this was a fun night.  Guerilla Theatre if I’ve ever seen it.

28 September

Grilled Polva on the veranda with my Honey last night.  Morning showed with a gauzy marine layer that is already clearing away. Busy work today…flea prevention meds, a little business correspondence and a romp on the beach. Believe I can deal with these kinds of hurdles. 
Too funny…just spoke to a Swedish couple about to set off on a beach trek.  
“Where will you go today?”
“Carminha.” 
“My God that’s over 20 kilometers!”
“Well yes, but then we must walk back!”
And it turns out they were not unusual.  Portugal is filled with exhausted looking people, young and old, trudging along shlepping backpacks and dragging their two walking sticks.  
“Please tell me, where have you trekked today?”
“I come from Africa.”
“Oh my!…And where are you going?”
“Bulgaria.”
“Oh my my.”

29 September

The garden of our Bnb is filled with exotic succulents and bright flowers.  The owners live here as well and are just wonderful people…we get chastised every day if we don’t swim in their pool.  Their grandkids are visiting currently and when we pulled up they all stood in a big window waving to us. Once we let Trix go they came boiling out of the house like it was Christmas…all shouting SIT SIT SIT!  TRIX, SIT!
The shipyard cranes here looks like dinosaurs!
We are tired and happy.

30 September

The Viana do Castelo region opens one gorgeous door after another, a working waterfront with lots of ocean traffic, small-boat builders and a couple of big shipyards, a beautiful yacht basin, magical avenues of cafes, bars and restaurants, markets of all sorts and sizes, neighborhoods that are both attractive and affordable, a roaring ocean beach, eucalyptus forests, mountains that come marching down to the sea from Spain in row after row, temperate weather and a constant sea-breeze.  Daily the feeling grows that this northern ocean-front, border-with-Spain crust of Portugal is our spot.  Can hardly wait to see what unfolds next.

We have no real agendas for our days, but they all seem to be full and sufficiently taxing that we are ready for sleep by 8:30.  Of course, I guess has been true for years…
We are definite that our “turf” is Viana do Castelo.  VdoC is such an intriguing and inviting place.  It is “real” Portugal while being big enough and charming enough to attract outsiders without becoming an Expat Theme Park.  The real-estate chase is a bit frustrating, however…While we’ve ID’d the town, we are not even close to a permanent nest yet, although we are diligent in our search. We’re getting the feeling we’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s available, but the damned Portuguese realtor representation scheme is designed to frustrate.  Each company represents only its own portfolio of houses on an exclusive basis and even if there is THE PERFECT PROPERTY next door to one of theirs, they won’t show it to you if it’s not in their fold.  Exasperating…and the end effect is that we have to drive around the neighborhoods we think we can afford, find a likely candidate and call the new company.  You get to deal with a lot of realtors if you’re going to see a good cross section of available properties and I so love hanging out with realtors.  Maddening, but we’ll play the game.  
Recently, as I lazed through my blog drafts I got an email from my nephew, Dennis, and we just exchanged amusing burro stories…you may enjoy eavesdropping:
Packing carrots at all times seems a very good burro appeasement program, Dennis….you really never know when you’re going to run into one.  Thank you for the tip and my best to Moe (nephew’s neighborhood burro).  I really like burros and mules and I was aware that burros make wonderful sheep-herd guards.  They will take on wolves and dogs as a matter of course…and they are fierce!  We had friends who had a miniature donkey as a pet and they took it about in their car.  Donkey liked to ride with her head out the window at speeds under 30 mph.  Over 30 mph her ears got slammed around too much for comfort and she’d jerk her head back in and poop on the seat for emphasis.  Also, if you let your guard down she would bite you just when you thought she was getting sleepy.
I’ve had some favorite mules in the past (other people’s) but the last and most dramatic mule experience was with an ancient mule who had died a couple of weeks before I came onto the scene.  The deal was, Linda and I were taking care of a friend’s little hobby ranch over in the Methow Valley while they went on holiday.  They had a bunch of useless horses and mules, but his beloved mule, Julie, had just died at 50 years of age!!  (I know, I know, I just took his word for it.)  Bob buried her with his backhoe about eight feet down and piled big, say 200 lb rocks on top of the grave.  He told me he did this because the sow black bear who lived across the road and up the draw, would dig her up and eat her otherwise and she would also raid the garden if we forgot to turn on the electric fence.
We were a few nights into our tenure when Mama Bear came calling…we were in a screened in sleeping porch on the second floor and had a sky-box view of her dealings.  She looked to be about the size of a Volkswagen and she rooted and snorted around the electric fence surrounding their lush garden for the first part of the night, occasionally squealing and cursing when she made contact with the E-fence.   Then she went quiet.  And we slept.  The next morning I walked out into the horse pasture where the old mule’s grave was and the tomb rocks were all safely in place.  Instead of moving any heavy rocks, Mrs. Bear had tunneled down into the soft earth beside the grave and eaten her fill of the vilest smelling putrified mule you can imagine.  I got the backhoe out and filled in the bear tunnel and put a few more big stones on top.  She made a new tunnel the next night.  I filled it in.  She made a new one.  And so on for four or five nights when she suddenly stopped coming around.  Maybe the mule was completely consumed, maybe nobody would play with her anymore because of her breath…I never found out.

14 October

Back in Portugal it stormed last night…the Atlantic Ocean is only a few hundred meters from our little Bnb (The Phone Booth) and last night this ocean raged. There was a constant moan of wind punctuated by the rush of gusts and the crack of broken limbs coming down, but above it all was the double-bass roar and boom of the sea.  One feels these ocean storms in the pit of the stomach.  
Last night we invited our landlady, the effervescent drop-dead gorgeous 70 year old fashion designer, Dona Maria Flora to have some wine and melon and as we sat here listening to the story of her life…textiles professor, couture dress designer, 16 year assistant mayor of Viana do Castelo and president of the local Municipal Assembly…  her lawn and roofs were  being peppered by pine tree limbs.  She sat as if she were being filmed and talked about the gracious life with her bank-director  husband who now has been in hospital for the last 10 months with one dire ailment after another, and her kids…all successful, all happy and  now all seeming to be moving back closer to home.  
Dona Flora said, “Maybe he gets a tiny bit stronger, just a little maybe, but he becomes very emotive.  He cry now and he never cry before in his life.  He is afraid, I believe,” and she teared up for a moment. She is a pillar.
The plucky commercial fishermen who go to sea each night in squatty, burdensome fish-boats, none over 70 feet overall and most of them much smaller, are the stuff of legend.  They all run some mixture of Vasco da Gamma blood and they are undaunted.  In the evenings they  rise and dip in the swell as they pass the outer jetty outbound in the gloom and in the mornings they come steaming past the breakwater accompanied by clouds of gulls feasting on the cleaning scraps being thrown overboard.  It is a happy sight of accomplishment and they blast into fishermen’s basin and spin their boats around expertly, roiling the water and spewing out diesel smoke.  It sounds like a battle between Greyhound Busses.  And then it is quiet and the buyers come down to the cay.   And day by day, Dona Flora’s husband gets stronger and occasionally not every fish boat returns from the sea.

17 October

A couple of days ago Linda and I were wandering the alleyways of the beach village, Carreco looking for house-for-sale signs.  We past a small eclectic shop that looked as though it might offer a Dremel Tool, something we need for Trixies toenails.  They didn’t have a Dremel, but the did have chainsaws on one wall and toothpaste and sundries on the opposite wall.  As most Portuguese are, they were very helpful and tried their best to find a place that sold Dremels.  I was appreciative and bought Linda a pocket flashlight.  As I left, just in passing, I mentioned we were looking for house to purchase and they fell into an excited conversation in Portuguese that ended with shrugged shoulders.  Then one of them said, “Wait!  Wait!  You wait; here is coming Nuno so who speak good English.”  And I watched Nuno get out of his truck, survey his domain and step into the shop.  It is Nuno’s shop and he smiled, put out his hand and asked, “Can I help you?”   We told him we were looking for a house to buy and we liked his village.
Well, that was three days ago and since that moment, Nuno has been our constant guide and interpreter.  He’s shown us house after house, given us invaluable information about how to avoid the Gypsies and all in all been a boon to our spirits and our efforts. 

20 October

Today we are in Lisbon to meet with our attorney in service of buying a house. Daniel dos Reis is a calm, thorough, easy-to-like man of about 40 and his specialty is real estate law. . . just the ticket for the Hendons. He is guiding us through the miasma of Portuguese bank and governmental requirements and “gotcha” dangers in buying a house in Portugal. Some of the properties have been held in families for so many generations and traded back and forth among sons, cousins and neighbors that a clear title is a bit of a joke. We’ll avoid those with Daniel’s help.

Just off the splendid Avenida de Liberdade we found a little guest suite hotel equipped with an elevator the size of a phone booth. Upon squeezing aboard with me, Linda, Trixie and our luggage, the manager closed the door setting off an alarm much like the DIVE! DIVE! DIVE! ah-oog-gah horns in old submarine movies.

“Ah, too much weights. I walk up.” And sure enough when we opened the door on the sixth floor there he was with a fist full of keys and magnetic cards on a lanyard for easy keeping. The cascading marble steps just inside the front doors, the ones with no bannisters, were something of a challenge for me in my doddering state, but I scraped along the wall and escaped unscathed.

Escaped to the Brazilian restaurant across the street where the food was rich and good and that mesmerizing Brazilian music wafted out into the street all the time. People walking by on the sidewalk, bobbed their heads to the 6/8 timbales going Teek-Teek-Bah-Bop, Teek-Teek-Ah-Bah-Bop…the tempos of the rich aromas of fried chicken pastry balls and black beans and pork. The trios or solo guitarists energized the staff, several of whom adopted us and sent us home at the end of the evening with “a small midnights snack on the houses”. It was little squares of corn polenta with a dish of pepper jelly for dunking. . . impossible to describe how good it was.

One of the waitresses, Maria, (of course, Maria) just finished her Masters Degree in Art Curation and hopes to someday be the Curator of a major museum, a goal I think she’ll achieve just from observing her verve, leadership and chutzpah. She is a ring leader of a guerrilla art group that throw off poetry slams, installations and exhibitions wherever they can find a venue. . . a bar, a warehouse, the street corner. I’ve been invited to participate in the upcoming ones…”You can play Brazilian guitar.”

“But I don’t play the guitar.”

“Then you can sing! I call you.” How I love the energy put forth by creative youngsters in early bloom!