Cigar City Stories : Tales of Old Ybor City

by Gonzalez-llanes, Emilio

• ISBN13: 9781475950953
• ISBN10: 1475950950
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-28
• Publisher: Textstream

Summary

In 1885, Vincent Martinez Ybor, a Spanish entrepreneur, purchased forty acres east of Tampa and built a company town of tall red-brick factories and small wood-frame houses for the workers. Over the next forty years, this community of cigar-makers from Cuba, Spain, and Italy grew into a thriving industry that made Tampa the "Cigar Capital of the World." The urban renewal of the 1960s, however, struck a deathblow to Ybor City; thousands of cigar-makers' homes and businesses were leveled by bulldozers, and an interstate highway stormed through the dying neighborhood. The narratives, reflecting a coming-of-age in this colorful community that no longer exists, speak of a kidnapping, a hold-up, a shark attack, a deadly duel, and a murder. A teenager comes to grips with his sexual identity, an activist mother resists Jim Crow laws, and an unexpected baby changes everyone's life. In Cigar City Stories, author Emilio Gonzalez-Llanes presents a collection of short stories that provides a snapshot of this lost island in time. Julian stood on that raised platform in the middle of the factory floor, reading to the workers: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Les Miserables, writings of Cervantes, newspapers, and the poems of José Marti. He didn't just read the words; he took on the voice and mannerisms of the characters in the novels, like an actor in the theater. Good performances were followed by the sustained thumping roar of two hundred chavetas, or tobacco knives, repeatedly striking the workers' tobacco-cutting boards. -from "El Lector"

Excerpts

EL PARAISO .....As he spoke, José Sanchez, his straight hair slicked back with Brilliantine, wrinkled the large nose that was the centerpiece of his Cuban face. He'd left Cuba when he was eighteen; a fight in a cane field—dueling with machetes over a woman, he claimed—had left him with a big scar on his jaw and without work. The cigar company paid his passage to Tampa, and he got a job as a shipping clerk at El Paraiso the busiest cigar factory in Ybor City, Perfecto Garcia & Company, nicknamed El Paraiso by early immigrants from Cuba because of the flowering magnolia and paradise trees that surrounded the four-story brick building. In five years, José had saved enough to start a small business selling fruits and vegetables, located just across the street from the factory. José's Fruiteria was a combination fruit-stand, grocery store and commissary. It was housed in a former garage with a back door that opened into a large shaded yard where every day a dozen Sicilian women, all cigar-makers, ate their lunches of salami, cucumber and tomato-sauce sandwiches. Lola Valdez-Riley, a neighbor and regular customer, always shopped near closing time on her way home. I watched her pinch the avocados, smell the cantaloupes and toss a seedless grape into her mouth. "Quanto le debo, M'ijo?" Lola didn't just say this; she sang it, one hand on her hip and her foot tapping the floor with the open toe of her high-heeled shoes. "Two ears of corn, three onions, two sweet potatoes, a dozen eggs, a Spanish chorizo, and a small bottle of sweet vermouth. That comes to two dollars and ten cents, Senorita." I avoided her probing eyes. "Listen hermoso, please don't call me Senorita." She leaned closer. "I am not a virgin, I am not a wife, but a lonely widow. Call me Senora." She adjusted a bra strap and reached for her purse. Her long auburn hair tumbled down her face and stuck to her glossy red lips. "Rafa, Lola doesn't have to pay." José announced from the front door, "Give her the money back." "What?" I was puzzled. José had told me no discounts for anyone. "This lovely young lady is a pillar of our community and has a good position at the factory. We need to be good to her." I dug into my apron pocket and returned Lola's cash. "You'll make a good cashier, machito." She stroked my curly brown hair. "I handle thousands of dollars every week at the factory, but none of it is mine," "Let me walk you home, querida." José picked up her grocery bag, offered his arm to Lola, and the two of them strolled down the street, whispering secrets under her red parasol. Ten years earlier, Lola had spent two weeks in jail for defying a ban on picketing for higher wages in front of El Paraiso. In the settlement, the Union demanded that she be given a clerk's job in the office. On paydays, she stuffed tiny envelopes with cash and coins to pay the workers. Her full figure, curves front and back, made her a constant target for Latin men's eyes. On her three-block walk to the factory in the early morning, cigar- smoking men, flush from their cognac and café solo, whistled and hooted, shouted proposals of marriage, expounded poetic fantasies, or just plain grunted at the sight of this lovely creature. She lived alone, but lately she'd been escorted to the Sunday-matinee tea-dances at the Centro Español Club by Santiago Nuñez, a recent arrival from Cuba who had become the new doorman at El Paraiso. He was younger than Lola, tall, with broad shoulders and muscled arms like a blacksmith. "Is Lola your girlfriend?" I asked José. We sat at the picnic table in the backyard after closing up the store. "That's none of your business." José took a slug from a silver flask he carried in his back pocket. "I'm a married man with three children." I snacked on a Cuban sandwich. José did not eat. He looked tired. "Lots of husbands in Ybor City have girlfriends." I continued. "Not me Rafa. Lola's husband, Patrick, was my friend. You heard about the murder didn't you?" "Murder? What murder?" "They called it a suicide, so Lola got no insurance, no pension." José chomped on his cheroot and spit on the ground. "Lola's husband, a police sergeant, asked too many questions about bolita, the Cuban lottery run by the Mafia. They found him in his squad car on Palmetto Beach with a twelve-gauge shotgun between his legs, his head blown away." It was still dark on Saturday morning when José and I got back from the farmers' market in his '46 Chevy panel truck packed with bushels of fruit and vegetables. With sisal rope, we hung bananas and platanos to the beams that held up the tattered tarp over the sidewalk. José's legs shook as he lifted the heavy stems. Across the street, waiters in white jackets carried large pots of Cuban coffee and steamed milk to pour café con leche for the cigar-rollers arriving at their workbench. Saturday was payday at El Paraiso. The armored truck that brought the payroll pulled up in front of the factory at precisely 8:00 a.m. as it did every week. But that day something was different; the driver was alone, and no guard accompanied him. He lugged big bags filled with bills and coins up the wide wooden steps of the factory to the office. making two trips. When the armored truck pulled away from the curb the driver waved and smiled at José. José did not wave back. Streaks of lightning flashed nearby. Within minutes, large raindrops turned to steam on the hot red-brick streets lined with granite curbstones. People scattered for shelter in doorways, under awnings; wind-driven clouds released slanted sheets of water on a thousand tin roofs, creating a roar that sounded like a speeding freight train. Then just as suddenly as it arrived, the thunderstorm moved on, the sun came out, and people emerged from the shadows. "I'll be back in an hour, Rafa," José said. "I have to go to the bank. Be sure to collect the tabs owed by these women." "Don't worry José, I can handle it." José was sweating more than usual and chain-smoking Chesterfields instead of his usual cigar. "If I'm not back by closing time, lock up and take the money home." He gunned the panel truck and scratched off down the narrow alley. I shelved canned goods and mopped up pools of water that had leaked through the roof during the storm. In the backyard, a hairless dog snored in the shade of a banyan tree, amid branches that had spread like an octopus and touched the ground to root there. When José got back to the store, the streets were lined with people gawking at the ambulances, police cars and vans jammed in front of El Paraiso. The news about the hold-up at the factory spread like brushfire in Ybor City. The workers would not be paid until Monday. Depending on who you talked to, the burglars had taken between fifty and one hundred thousand dollars. The hold-up at El Paraiso made front-page news in all the papers; even the Miami Herald ran the story. La Gaceta, Ybor City's Spanish,/English/Italian daily ran a special bulletin: BOLD HOLDUP AT PERFECTO GARCIA TAMPA - Just before noon on Saturday, two armed men wearing stocking masks broke into the offices of Perfecto Garcia cigar factory in Ybor city and stole the week's payroll, valued at more than $50,000. The doorman, Santiago Nuñez, said he heard a man's voice saying, "Abre la puerta, Santiago." He opened the door and the thieves swiftly chloroformed him and tied him up with sisal rope. Lola Valdez-Riley, the payroll clerk, was also gassed, gagged and tied to her chair. Senorita Valdez said that when she came to, her grandmother's diamond wedding ring was missing from her finger. The two robbers emptied the safe and drove away in a stolen 1938 Chevy sedan.....