'We'll carry it on in different ways': After 81 years, a feast tradition ends in Rochester

ROCHESTER — The temperature hovered near 80 degrees Sunday afternoon when a DJ at a party just off Walnut Plain Road interrupted a kizomba dance to make an announcement.

"All the kids, head toward the mastro in the back."

A flood of children between 2 and 13 broke away from the remainder of the 250 or so adults on the property to attend the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, the last one in this tiny town in Plymouth County.

As they ran toward the mastro — a large pole decorated with colored ribbons of tissue paper, leaves, sodas, bananas and pineapples — 79-year old Rose Mendes looked on.

"I never got a pineapple," Mendes said, recalling her youth when she rushed towards the pole. "And when you're a kid just getting a pineapple is your biggest wish. I never got one." 

How the feast began more than 80 years ago

Henrietta Semedo, 84, was there for the first one in June 1941.

Slowly, she opened up an envelope and carefully took out a picture and placed it on the picnic table.

In the front row, second from the right, a man in a vest, tie, and white button-up shirt holds a newspaper whose headline reads: "Axis capture Brest-Litovsk."

The headline was in reference to the first major victory for Nazi Germany in Operation Barbarossa, their invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on June 22, 1941.

Next to the headline, a little girl looks away from the camera, as if distracted by something.

"I was about 3 at the time," Semedo said, pointing to the photo.

"I think Henrietta is the last surviving person in that photo," said Rose Mendes, 79, Semedo's sister. "That's the earliest picture we have." 

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The annual reunion commemorates the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, a celebration to mark the summer solstice of great importance to many Lusophone cultures.

According to the sisters (a fourth, Nancy, was not interviewed), the family tradition began with their grandmother, Dominga Lopes, who came to Rochester to work the cranberry bogs alongside many other Cabo Verdeans and Portuguese in the rural areas of Bristol, Plymouth, and Barnstable counties.

"My grandmother was a widow at a very young age with small children," Semedo said. In a search for extra income, two of Semedo's uncles came to live with her as boarders. 

"One of them had very bad asthma," she said. "And it's our understanding that he prayed to St. John or whatever for a cure."

"He would continue having the feast every year to honor Saint John," Mendes added. 

The feast continued to expand over the years until it outgrew their grandmother's property and they moved it to the current location on the property of family friends some 41 years ago. 

Celebration includes many traditions

One of the family traditions is to attend a Mass where a golden St. John's flag — made by a New Bedford woman "many years ago" according to Mendes — is blessed.

Perhaps most prominent though is the mastro.  

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Set on a pole toward the back of the property, a group of men use a pulley to maneuver a manmade "tree" decorated with bananas, sodas, and the most coveted prize of all — pineapples. As they do so, the children, organized by age group, compete to grab the knick-knacks off it. 

"We had one of these at my grandmother's," Semedo said. "They have a drummer and the kids go around the tree three times," she continued, to honor the Catholic tradition of the holy trinity.

Two young girls who fought over a pineapple proved how intense the competition could get.

"You gotta be ruthless to get it," Semedo added, though she could not remember her own experiences with the mastro as a child. 

Farewell to tradition

Underneath a tent near the feast entrance, the Lopes sisters set up a mini exhibit of photos from 81 years of feasts.

Alongside one of them, 27-year-old Ryann asked her mother, Jane Monteiro, what many have asked their elders upon seeing older family photos. 

"That's Ozzy," Jane said when her daughter pointed to one. "He's passed."

Ryann grew up in Rochester with her mother a couple miles away but now lives in Dorchester. Yet even as an adult, she never missed a feast and said it will not disappear from her heart.

"I think that me and my sisters and my cousins will carry on the tradition, the spirit of Saint John's Day," she said. "It might not be here, but [the tradition] very much ingrained in us."

But the toils of age have come to the Lopes sisters, as they do to all. And, they said, their children are too geographically dispersed and too busy to organize an event of similar magnitude.

"It takes a lot of dedication," Semedo said. "A lot of hard work, preparation, money, and I don't think our children have that desire to continue."

"They don't have the time," Antoinette Pina, Semedo's youngest sister, chimed in. "They work. They have children."

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But the tide of age waits for no one, and the Lopes family is no exception. 

"Everybody's hitting 80," she continued. "It's a lot of work. And we're very particular about how everything gets cleaned, etc."

Yet some of the coming generations expressed hope the festivities will be resurrected some day. Among them was Ryann.

"I don't have children yet, so my children won't have this experience, but I think we'll carry it on in different ways for sure."

Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@s-t.com and follow him on Twitter: @KevinGAndrade. Support local journalism and subscribe to the Standard-Times today!