He missed this boat. An sister taught him to read, herself having learned from local nuns. From what I later learned of Don Felipe, this may have taken as much as fifteen minutes. He turned out to be beyond bright and to have, if not a photographic memory, something very close to it. He somehow got into a Catholic seminary at age ten, and stayed for four years. When he had to leave at fourteen, due to illness, he comfortably read both Spanish and Latin. Did I mention that he was smart?
One day his father tried to beat him once too often. This is dangerous with male children who get bigger while the father gets older. Don Felipe took the club away and announced that if the son of a bitch ever tried it again, he, Don Felipe, would beat him into marmalade. He then went off to apprentice himself as a machinist. Over several decades he managed to save enough to build a substantial house in Polanco, another poor section. This was pretty much unheard of for a poor worker who should have been illiterate. He married.
Violeta appeared. By this time they still weren’t even almost economically middle class, but neither were they hungry or insecure.
Don Felipe was not an ideal father but, given the circumstances, pretty near. He did not suffer fools, gladly or at all, or suffer much of anybody else. He roared and bellowed a lot, but never hit anyone. He had been hit and, I suppose, had found it unsatisfactory. He taught Violeta to read. This may have taken an afternoon. I don’t know. It assuredly did not take long. Teaching a very smart and interested little girl to read an almost perfectly phonetic language of only a couple of dozen letters is not a work of ages.
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