But very unfortunately the merchant marine died away till even the majority of fishing done about the Cape is in the hands of the Portuguese who emigrated to the Cape some fifty years ago.
I grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. My background was modest, and I worked at a Portuguese bakery in town.
My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to have a Fender amp in his house and an electric guitar. I would spend hours making sounds.
Because of my Portuguese heritage, I have an interest in all of the instrumentation that comes from Portugal and Brazil as well.
My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.