I HOPE YOU ENJOY THESE RECOUNTINGS OF MY MEMORIES

Fernando Morales, MD

 MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD AND THINGS THAT I HAVE BUILT

Written January 23, 2000

        This last Christmas, my daughter Teresa gave me a book titled “Hammer, Nail, Wood-The Compulsion to build,” and it was the second part of the title that really caught my attention, because lately I have come to realize that I have suffered with a compulsion to build. I have always had at least one, if not two or three building projects and-or, something to fix or something to improve upon and I know that I will leave this world with an unfinished project. I started to think of the many, many things that I have built and of course those thoughts brought me back to my childhood where it all started. I am not a writer, neither do I like to write but I decided that it would be fun to let my memory wander and to put it all in writing. Today, at eighty-one, I have a very vivid memory of my childhood and remember many names of relatives and friends that have not named or seen since.
I was the only member in my entire family, besides my father’s youngest brother, not born in Spain but in Cuba. My parents migrated to Cuba for the second and last time in 1918 and I was conceived at sea, my mother told me. I was born on May 30th, 1919, in San Luis, a very small village near Santiago de Cuba in the province of Oriente, where my father was a physician with a vast culture and a very restless mind. Until I was eleven I lived in my place of birth, interrupted only by a brief stay in Spain and where I had a wonderful and very, very happy childhood.
At this age my obsession was playing marbles, competitive spinning tops and kite flying. I must have had thousands of marbles at one time, and, I may say, was a very good shooter. The game consisted of two or more players; usually five or six, and each player placed a predetermined number of marbles on a circle marked on the ground. Each player had a turn and could keep the marbles that he shot out of the circle (hoya or olla) and he would be out of the game if his shooter stayed within the circle. The player hitting an opponent shooter with his own shooter would collect his ante marbles and that player would be out of the game. It was played on the dirt with the consequent dirty clothes and shoes that made my poor mother furious. There were no washing machines in those days, just a large metal container and somebody to do it for you. The clothes were dried with the sun and the air. With the tops I would spend hours polishing them, sharpening the metal tips and making sure that they were well balanced so that they spin true and smooth with a high pitch whistle. The game was played on the dirt too and consisted on each player putting a top within a circle drawn in the dirt and then by turns, each player tried to hit a top out of the circle as his prize but only if his top must kept spinning; otherwise it went into the circle. I remember seeing tops split in two with another top. I built all my kites with the stems of the sugar cane flowers, called "guines", and a very strong kind of tissue paper that was imported from China. They could be bought or self made. I made my own. It was made on the shape of an elongated hexagon with three half stems crossed in the center The long tail of the kite, approximately one hundred feet, was made of strips of old rags or bed-sheets approximately one half to one quarter inch wide. On the tail we placed double edge Gillette blades split in half for the purpose of cutting the opponent’s line. What a delight it was, to fly up-wind from an unsuspecting victim and zap! cut their line, or vice versa, what horrible feeling of helplessness when, all of a sudden, you will see that long tail with speckles shinning just above your head.
I hunted birds and lizards with slingshots that I made with old shoe leather, inner tubes and Y shaped tree branches. We trapped them too with special cages that held either a bird (siñuelo) or a fruit (cundeamor) that the birds liked. In the summer’s nights we collected fireflies (luciérnagas) by the hundreds. What a thrill it was to run after them and hold a bunch of them in your cupped hands or in your pockets.
I played “beisból” without coach, uniforms, teams or schedules. It was just us kids, and I played catcher. The fad was to collect baseball players cards that I believe came in the cigarette packs. I made baseballs, starting with a very small jack’s ball or a piece of rubber and then wrapped with the thread from old socks. I had “Union” roller-skates that attached to our shoes with a key that we were constantly loosing. My mother hated them, as they were very hard on the shoes. I spent hours cleaning and oiling them. They were very hard on the mosaic floors and very noisy. We hung on cars to the worry of my mother and made sparks at night with sudden stops on the concrete. This reminds me of the time when I had recently arrived in Santa Monica and a girl asked me to go skating at a Culver City rink. The girl turned out to be an excellent skater: skating backwards, dancing, making pirouettes, etc. I was so embarrassed!
Another very Cuban game we played was “cambumbia”. From the name, I gather now, that it must have originated with the slaves. It consisted of a small piece of wood about one inch thick and six or so inches long, sharpened at both ends; and another stick a little thicker and approximately two feet long. The object of the game was to hit lightly the small stick at either end (lying on the ground of course); and hit it, with the large one, as it raised in the air.
I played with a boy, whose family was very poor. He had been burned very badly around the lower face and neck. He developed keloid scars between his chin and the upper chest and we called him “pegao”(stuck one) and made him to look up to a bird or something up and then laugh because he had to open his mouth in order to move his head up. How mean! In spite of that, he always hung around with us and I have wondered many times what became of him. Even today I have a very vivid picture of his face in my mind.
During this time of my life my three older brothers, José Maria (Pepito), Juan Antonio (Catoño) and Ricardo were in Spain, where my father had sent them for an education. They stayed with my father’s sister, Lola, who had sons and daughters of the same age. She was, I am sure, amply reimbursed for this service. I was left with my only sister, Maria Luisa who we always called Nena. She was nine years older than I was, and so, it came as natural that I would get involved in her games, like hopscotch (peregrina), jacks (yakis) and I used to beat them. Also we jumped rope (suisa) and I was the victim of my sister play cooking (cocinaito) with the resulting indigestion (empacho). Because of the Spanish influence from my father, I wore short pants, instead of the popular knickers (bombachos) which I loved, and, will you believe it, a seamstress, “modista”, made my clothes and this was a sour experience for me because I had to defend myself from the other boys that thought of it as sissy. I had to attend children parties at the social club and dance with the girls: yuck! Sometimes they would dress me in costume. The favorite was pierrot and I have photos with that costume. Others were regional dresses of Spain.
We first lived in the house where I was born, that for some reason we always referred to as “la casa del banco” (the house of the bank). It was situated on the main street of the town (Calle Norma), across the only theater in town (Teatro Parra), owned by a patient of my father, and, of course, because of that, we didn’t pay admission. We even had a private box and after the intermission the man in the box in front of us, would deposit some candy on my lap as I always sat in the front corner. Every year a traveling amusement park came to town with merry go round (caballitos), the whip (guipi), flying chairs and a sort of hanging boat, where two or four people sat facing each other with two crossing ropes. Pulling on the ropes made the boats swing back and forth. My favorite was the merrygoround (caballitos) and trying to pull the ring with a ribbon on the outside for a free ride. The owner was a patient of my dad too, and so it was free for me. It was sure dusty and noisy. We were fairly free to roam around alone and the only crime that I remember was the ñañigos or ñanigos, who, I was told, were members of an African religion that practiced sacrificial ceremonies with children.
I had at this time a small chick that grew to be an adult chicken and he would follow me to school. Of course “Polonia”, (a servant with my mother long before she was married) had to bring it back to the house. Later, I had a goat (“chivo”) that followed me everywhere and he pulled on a wagon that my dad had someone make for me. In the twenties, or at least in Cuba, we didn’t have nursery school or kindergarten and all I remember of elementary school was the “porrón” (clay jug) that we used to drink cool water, and the surprise inspections when the teacher would look behind the ears and the fingernails. If the nails were not clean, she would proceed to give a light swat with a ruler on the back of the hand. It didn’t hurt but the pride. I remember too, that when I had a cold my mother would put me in bed with a large, cream colored, silk handkerchief around my neck. Imagine that in the hot and humid climate of Cuba. And the number of times that I had to take a saline laxative called “Agua de Carabaña”, just because my tongue didn’t appear very clean. Am I lucky to have survived through all that!
When I was nine I had malaria and in order to break the re-infection my father sent my mother, my sister, Polonia and I to Spain for one year. But I think the most important reason was for my mother to visit with her three sons that have been studying there and that she had not seen for almost eight years. My father bought the tickets from someone that had won them in a raffle sponsored by the excellent Cuban newspaper called El Diario de la Marina. We went first class on deluxe cabins (camarote de lujo). The name of the boat was Lafayette that belonged to some French Line. I have very vivid memories of the life on the ship, specially the French puppets, called “guiñol”, and for a long time certain odors would remind me of the ship. We disembarked in Santander, in the Cantabric coast, where my mother’s brother in-law, Garcia Lomas, as arranged by my father was waiting for us. He was married to my mother’s sister and made his money in the wheat flour trade. There was a big crowd at the pier and my elders were looking for the reflection of his big diamond on the sun in order to identify him. Sure enough, he had a huge diamond ring, dressed with spats and vest with a huge watch chain across it. He combed his hair from one side of the head to the other to cover his baldness. He was polite but not warm. After a short stay at a hotel we took the train for Valladolid. I remember the few stops with the vendors on the platform shouting the specialties of the town. From the railroad station in Valladolid we were taken by horse drawn carriage to the house, en la “calle Muro”, where we would live for a year. Nearby there was a very large park,(“Campo Grande”), where Polonia would take me to play in the afternoons. At the park we bought “barquillos”, like the cones for ice cream, but lighter. We could either buy so many of them for a perra (a fraction of a peseta, aproximately a nickel), or spin for them, like a roulette.
This was the first time that I met my brothers: The eldest Pepito was studying medicine, Catoño finishing high school, and Ricardo, next to me in age, in early high school. They had been sent to study to Spain by my father; one big error of his Spanish autocracy with the consequent sadness of my mother. I have thought many times of the anticipation of my mother’s mind, while on route to Spain, of seeing his sons for the first time after nearly eight years. No wonder that my mother held me on her arms so often and for so long.
I remember watching my brothers play soccer at an empty lot next door, and how, with their encouragement, I would sit in front of the pianola pedaling furiously in order for them to listen to the music. That is why today I remember the music of so many zarzuelas, waltzes and operatic arias. I remember the fever and the chills. I took quinine dissolved in water and it was so, so bitter that it had to be aleviated by sucking on a quarter of an orange. The winter was very cold so my mother would dress me with many layers of clothing, and through the window I’d watch the snow falling. Two physician brothers took care of me. They were the “hermanos Pinto”; one was thin and the other so fat that made noises when he breathed. One night, because of a heavy snow fall, I had to stay with my father’s father, Don José, who was very austere, with white hair and beard and everybody seemed to be afraid of him. He was a physician that came to Cuba when it was still a colony and, after he made some money, returned to Valladolid and became a very much respected mayor of the city. The room was huge and the bed very large too, with starched sheets. Before they got me in bed they warmed it up with a brazier (“brasero”), but in a few minutes the bed was freezing again. The “brasero” was the magnet that brought everybody together. It was placed under the table, which was covered with a very large and heavy table cloth. They all, and I guess me too, sat around together, like moths around the light. Air conditioning was unherad of and the heating was accomplished by steam radiators
My mother’s younger and only sister lived there too. She was very different from my mother: presumptuous and always impeccably dresses. She married a successful businessman and lived in a very elegant “piso” (condo) at “Constitución 12” near the “Fuente Dorada”, with her three daughters, Adelita, Carmina and Rosina, and a very sick younger boy named Manolo. He died while we were there from rheumatic heart disease. I remember the talking and buzzing of the adults, every time that he was treated with “sanguijuelas” (leeches) and see my aunt cry.
They went often to a vacation place up north, called “La Serna”. Marilyn and I visited Carmina and her sons there, on one of our many trips to Spain and weren’t very impressed with the place. On one occasion when they went up there for a few days, they let us: mother, brothers, sister and Polonia to stay at their house. I didn’t like it: the furniture in the living room had white covers, everything was too fancy and we were afraid to break something. When she returned, she almost fainted because we had polished off a bowl of strawberries and a jar of honey. She would take me to a fancy delicatessen (La Tierruca) to show me off because of my Cuban accent and, big deal, would then buy me a banana. But I liked her and my cousin’s kisses too, Carmina and Rosina, slightly older than I was.
“El Tio Emilio” was the only brother of my mother. I remember him coming to visit us, usually before dinner when Polonia was in the kitchen. He teased her with her good cooking, grabbed a fried potato from the pan and then complained that it had burned the roof of his mouth. He then proceeded to show how red it was. Sure! It was the upper dentures, that in those days it was made with a very red, rubber-like material. He had a full moustache with a twist at the ends and he was “muy simpático”. When he was very young he didn’t want to study and went with bad company (no drugs or alcohol like now days). His father, Don Ricardo placed him as an intern in a sort of school, ran by Jesuists, very strict, to the extreme of corporal punishment. There, he became a physician, and many times in later years he would say how thankful he was of his father decision. It is very hard to conceive that these days.
My three brothers had been staying with my father’s sister Lola (Dolores) while they were studying. She was married to a man by the name of Jacobo Riaza, who I remember very well. He was tall and thin with a rather large moustache. He rolled his own cigarettes and had a very long nail on his small finger, for the purpose of collecting the tobacco that fell over while making a cigarette. Except for him, I do nor remember any one else although I have heard many stories of them. They had three boys and three girls of which two became nuns and one became a Jesuit, although neither parent was extremely religious. My brother Ricardo tells the story of how the boy, Jesús, at the insistence of his mother, because he was losing the faith, went to a retreat. At his return, my brother opened the door and upon asking him how he had enjoyed the retreat, he responded: so well that I am going back to become a seminarist, with the consequent tears from his mother and the rest of the family.
My father had two other sisters and three brothers. The oldest sister, Rosa, married and moved to “Santo Domingo” (now Dominican Republic), where they bought lots of land, but sold it all, under pressure, to Trujillo. The other sister, who was very, very small, married a very large man that was a general and claimed to have been born in Cuba. The oldest one, Isaiah was a captain in a ship and drowned when the ship sank. The next to him, Juan (Juanito) was a doctor too and went with him to practice in Cuba. And finally, the youngest, Jesús, was a lawyer, born in Cuba, and naturally, like his nephew was a lady’s man (kidding about this of course). He divorced (the only one in the family in those days) and married a second time.
When Marilyn and I went to Valladolid in the late 60’s I drove around the city and recognized all the places as if I had just left. I drove unassisted to the railroad station, to the “Campo Grande” and the street where we lived, la calle Muro. Valladolid left a very big impression in my life. Marilyn and I have traveled by car the four cardinal extremes of Spain, from Santander to Merida, from Barcelona to Santiago de Compostela with inolvidable experiences and have stayed from The Ritz in Madrid to the smallest hotel in the smallest village.
I want to dedicate at least one paragraph to “Polonia” because I believe she was unique and played a big part in my life, although she may be difficult to understand today. She and a friend of hers, Rosalía, were servants in my mother’s home when she, her sister Adela, and their brother Emilio were pre-adolescents, and remained in the house after their mother died when they were still very young. Their father, Don Ricardo, was a general in the Spanish army in charge of supplies and he was very rigid on morals and ethics.They became the very strict guardians of the girls, taking practically the place of their mother. After the death of Don Ricardo Ruiz, Polonia went with my mother,twho had already married, and Rosalia went with her sister Adela. So strict were they that, according to my mother and Polonia, when my mother married, she was playing with dolls and hadn’t even touched my father’s hand. She was about seventeen and my father, who had just graduated as doctor of medicine, was twenty one. The three of them left for a small town to start a new life. I was told by my mother how the evenings were spent: the alcalde (mayor), the priest, the owner of the land around, and my father, playing cards, at a game called “tresillo”, similar to Bridge
. Polonia was raised and died a virgin. She was horrified of men, and not because of any past unpleasant experience. She was very religious, with a very graphic interpertation of heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo, and I believe that she did not know how to read or write. She was small, with a pug nose and very deep set eyes, and wore her hair straight back in a bun. She always wore a black skirt to just above her ankles, a white long sleeves blouse with black lines or dots and a white apron with a pocket where she kept a handkerchief that she called “moquero” (literally snotter), and some bread, usually for the dogs or cats wich she prefered. She wore “alpargatas” (kind of slippers, the top made of blue cloth and the soles made of a rope-like material), most all the time. She loved my mother, whom she always addressed by her first name: Pura; but always as “señora” when a stranger was present.
She loved me and spoiled me. She was terrified of my father’s temper and objected to his life style. She would tell me how Don Ricardo came home one day and said to her: “Polonia, tomorrow you don’t have to light candles any more, you just turn this switch and it is day time”. What a marvelous thing she would say, over and over, but she never touched a switch without throwing the apron over her hand first. She crossed the Atlantic twice and repeated to me many, many times how for eleven days she could see nothing but “cielo y mar”, “cielo y mar” (sky and sea). She used many old Castillian words like: “chicos, no tireis cantos que llamo a un celador y os lleva al precinto”, which in Cuban would be: “muchachos no tiren piedras, que llamo a un policia y los llevan a la cárcel”. It would tranlate in English: “boys, don’t throw stones, because I’ll call a policeman, and they will take you to jail”. She was unforgettable and that is why I recall her very often and I went into three paragraphs about her. I could have written twenty. She died in Camaguey when I was away at school in Havana. I loved her very much.
We spent over a year in Spain, and when we returned to San Luis, my dad had built a large house on Calixto Garcia Street, across the main square, next to the priest’s house and church. He financed the construction with a loan from a businessman called Candamo. In the back of the house I had a black horse and it was my duty with the help of Victorino, our servant from Spain, to take care and feed him. We had five dogs: a Collie named “Dempsey”, a German Shepard named “Togo”, two Boston Terriers (her name was Kolka and and his was York). The other was a wild dog, jet black, and we called him “Jíbaro”, that means in English wild. We had to give him away, as he never domesticated well. They were taken care too by Victorino.
I spent many hours in the pharmacy owned by my god-father Dr.Rodón, counting pills, closing capsules, folding “papelillos” (the prescribed amount of medication wrapped in paper and to be dissolved in water). All prescribed medication was mixed and prepared in the premises with a mortar, pestle and spatula, of which there were all kind of sizes. It was so impressive to watch my father pull out the prescription pad, place it on his left hand, write something long with his right hand, place his pen on his breast pocket, quickly tear off the sheet and hand it to the patient. I was in complete awe and knew then that someday I would be a doctor. And so I did, but never learned or had to prescribe like that. The pharmacist assistant was Alberto. He was very tall, handsome with fine features, dark skin and always a ready smile. He was very athletic and taught us all the art of boxing. Now, I believe that he was of Mexican or Guatemalan Indian descendance. Dr Rodón’s son, Jorge, and I were in puppy love with Caridad Melo, our age, Canarian descent and very, very pretty. Her older sister Carmela, even prettier, was engaged to my father’s brother, Juanito. He left for Spain suddenly because of jealousy of my father who liked women and was over-attentive to Carmela with clothes, jewelry and parties. She liked to show her off. In later days she help our family on times of need. The familia Melo and familia Norma were very close to ours
My father and my mother were diametrically opposed. My father was very erudite and loved to read and give speeches. He enjoyed the company of intellectuals and liked to entertain. Money meant little to him, only what you could do or buy with it. He always dressed on a white, starched cotton suit made of a material called “drill”, with a mostly white shirt and tie and the good old straw hat like the one that they use now in political convention, only that then it had a black band. With the sun it would become yellowish so he always had three of different ages for different occasions. On the other hand, my mother looked after every penny and hated waste. She liked ducks, didn’t care for dogs or cats and disliked trees because they were messy. Above all she loved to listen to people and was very inquisitive of their lives, specially servants, workers and young people. She never cared to wear the jewels that my dad had bought for her and felt that books, newspapers and magazines were a waste of time and money. But she did care very much for the education and future of her children. I heard lots of arguments because of these differences with the explosions of my dad and the tenacity of my mom. She never gave up and always had the last word.
One incident that I remember well is the day that my father gave a large dinner party that he organized from A to Z as always. A few days before the party my mother had lost a very expensive and beautiful ring. She was sitting at the table, when suddenly she spotted the ring on one of the servants as she was placing a plate in front of her. Well, she didn’t wait for later. Right there and then, she grabbed the maid’s arm and demanded her ring. My dad, I am sure must have died of embarrassment. That was the subject of an epic battle the next day.
Another incident that describes the respect and fear of Polonia towards my father occurred in Camaguey. The kitchen was on the rear and the dinning room towards the front of the house separated by a long outdoor corridor. One early evening when my parents were in the middle of an argument and she was carrying the dishes to set the dinner table, my father let out a very loud expletive: “coño !. And down went all the dishes with the consequent noise that ended the argument. Polonia cried inconsolably for days
My father and his brother Juanito, opened a small hospital in town that was called “Clinica de los Morales”. They were diametrically opposed. Juanito was extremely tight, conservative and shy whereas my dad was splendid (with holes in his pockets, my mother used to say), liberal and sociable. He was a very good public speaker, never short for words. I would go there to look around and watch the workers. Victorino, remained with us as a servant for many years after the clinic closed. There was a sort of male nurse or paramedic (we called them “practicante”) whose name I do not recall and he taught me to put intravenous needles, honest to God. People received lots of calcium gluconate injections in those days. The hospital folded shortly after my uncle left. The administrator’s name was Font (Catalunian) and his wife became a very good friend of my mother.
I will try to explain something here that may be hard to describe and besides I was too young to remember with clarity. My father organized a literary contest with participants from all over the Spanish speaking New World. He called it “Los Juegos Florales” de San Luis (Floral Games?). There was a very famous poet, Graciela Garbalosa from Mexico, with a daughter my age: Gracielita. They stayed with us as guest. He had, also, a very famous writer from Santo Domingo, Max Enrique Ureña and several critics and writers from Havana, among them, Joaquin Aristigueta. Several prelates from Havana and Mexico were on attendance too. They had formal dances, conferences and a parade with coaches decorated with flowers (similar, but not quite, to the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena).
There was another Canario, or as we call them in Cuba, Isleño, who owned another sugar mill near San Luis, the “Central Borjitas”. His name was Don Federico Almeida, a self made millionaire with a vast family that became very close friend of our family. There is the anecdote about the time when he and my father went to Spain to buy large amounts of flour. The letter “H” in Spanish is silent, and when writing the contract, Don Federico wrote “arina”, pronounced the same, and somebody whispered to him: Don Federico, harina is spelled with an h to which he responded: you write it with an h and see if they will give it to you. Two daughters married intellectuals and one very famous operatic singer by the name of Hipólito Lázaro. One of the boys, Chago, was engaged to my sister and when he came to visit her he would leave his car in front of the house. I remember that it was brown in color with wood wheel spokes and a rumble seat. While they were inside the house, I would put the car in gear and with the starter, go back and forth until the battery was exhausted. Luckily, in those days they still had a “cranck”
Another family, the Rousseau, who were the owners of another sugarmill (Central Unión) would come every Sunday to church and we were always wondering which car, the Citroen or the Renault, their uniformed chauffeur would drive the family that Sunday. The wife, Belén, was a very pretty Cuban, nice and friendly. He, on the other hand, was very distant and reserved. They had four children. Santiago, who I heard worked as a bellboy at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel after Castro took over, and later died here in Los Angeles. The next brother was called Enrique, I believe, Tribilin was next and then the only daughter, Maria. They were so and so. I never heard from this family after I left San Luis in the early thirties. And thanks to the marvels of the word processor I am able to interject here that in the Sep 4th issue of The New Yorker, I read on an article about the fashion setter Lilly Pulitzer that her second husband was a Cuban by the name of Enrique Rousseau, described as a Havana playboy descendant of a patrician Cuban family. It seems to me that it must be the second of the three Rousseau boys. (9-10-00)
Carmela Melo, Caridad’s sister married the Cuban administrator of the largest sugar mill in the area, the American owned, Central Santa Ana. His name was Orlando Rivas, quite a bit older than she was, and to keep her entertained they used to give big parties. Of course, I was too young to be a participant, but I do remember hearing about the formal attire one, that because of the torrential rain that day, all the cars were stuck in the mud and all the men had to bathe and dress in improvised clothes. We were frequently invited to spend the day. The food was so good, the house so cozy and warm, with a large veranda all around, and Carmela was so pretty, sweet and personable. Marilyn and I visited with her in Miami, shortly after Castro took power, but the years and the social changes have taken a toll on her and she didn’t like it.
I want to interject here one part of the social life, and describe briefly where our family friends lived. This is a little bragging about my memory. Almost every week, after dinner, lots of people congregated, usually at our house, for a game of “brisca”, a very Spanish card game that can be played among two people with one set of cards or two teams of many people with many sets of cards. Each team has a head-person or leader that decides what card is to be played. Of course my dad was always one of the two chiefs, the other were Gabriel Melo or Ruperto Franquis, tranquil patriarchs of their own family The funny part of this game is that many of the important cards had a designated signal made with a facial expression such as a wink, a pucker of the mouth, raised eyebrows, tongue between lips and many others. The trick was to transmit these face signals to your head person without being seen by any opponent. Or to transmit to your head-person a signal intercepted from an opponent player. It may sound funny, but it was taken most seriously, to the extreme of temporal animosities. Today I look at it as just plain hilarious. Only Spaniards can play such game.
I want to describe lightly the families that were part of the social life in this very little town and where they lived. Of course, the center was the town-square that occupied a whole block. On the south of it ran the main street, “Calle Norma”. On the northeast corner was the church and across the street live Dr. Somodevilla with his wife Pilar and two sons, Santiago (Chaguito) and René, who was my age and my friend. I never saw him again after we left San Luís and was told in later years that he became an aircraft pilot and died in an airplane accident. West of the church was the priest’s house, then, our house; the very large Marcelino family came next, owners of small “ventorillo”(very small market) on the southeast corner of the square. They had many children and of my age there were two: Prudencia y Cacha. Farther along was the Dominguez family with an old bachelor named Agustín, a girl, my sister’s age, Ñiquita, and a boy my age, Raúl. Next to them, at the corner lived a family, very blond, almost albinos, and very ugly. Their last name was Carnero (Lamb). The kids were about my age and we played together: two boys and three girls. One girl, Ofelia, was mildly retarded and had a nasal voice (fañosa), undoubtedly, she had a cleft palate. Another of the sisters lives in Santa Barbara,CA. but have lost contact.
On the westside of the park lived an old maid, Cosuelito Teja, who had a short- lived romance with my brother Pepito. Next to her house my dad had an office for a while, and farther down, almost at the corner, lived the Milla family with a boy my age, Ñiquito. On the southwest corner there was the Rodón Pharmacy, and their home next door. His name was Angel, rather heavy and of very sweet disposition. His wife, Alicia, was very pretty, always immaculately well dressed and an excellent cook. I was so happy when she did invite me for lunch! I have never eaten a “congrí” (rice, red beans and pork meat together) like hers. Her house was always impeccable, clean and orderly. They were the only family that celebrated Santa Claus instead of the Three Wise Men on the day of the epiphany, the sixth of January. That was, in my view the first refutal of the Christian-Judaic history.
Continuing one block west on “Calle Norma” we would come to the house of the Melo family, Gabriel and Maria, parents of Carmela, Caridad and three boys. They were immigrants from the Canary Islands, and were called, in Cuba, “isleños”, when in reality they should be called “Canarios”. They were hard workers, handsome and most pleasant. They were the Irish of this country in Cuba. They were in the sugar cane business as was most every body in San Luis. Across the street from them lived the Franquis family, Ruperto and Modesta, with one adopted girl. Ruperto had a very nice educated voice and would sing at the drop of a hat, and was the leading man on the amateur plays that my father often organized. Modesta was a very good seamtress and very happy all the time. Further down, after crossing a small bridge and turning south on the road, we came upon the Norma’s family estate. They had a very large sugar cane plantation and very close to the house was “la grúa” (the crane), where the cut sugar cane was transferred from the oxen driven carts to the railroad cars that would take it to the sugar mill. I loved to see the process with the driver of the oxen (two for each cart) handling the animals with loud verbal commands and a long wood stick with a big nail protruding at the end. It was called “La Puya”. The husky loud voice of the driver, directing the oxen, everyone with a name like Botafuego(flamethrower),Capitan, Marinero, etc. The heavy exhalation of the oxen, the eyes of the beasts and the cracking noise of the cart, was very impressive.
The matriarch of the family was Ñica Norma, well advanced in age but strong in body and mind. Ñico or Ñica is a very Cuban nickname for Antonio or Antonia (Anthony) and there were many of them in San Luís. Mamá Ñica, as she was always called, had a daughter, Lulú (Luisa), married to Claudio Lopez, and they in turn, had three boys: Guillermo, Antonio (another Ñico), who was a very prominent revolutionary during the Machado dictatorship, and Roberto who was my age and a very good friend of mine, and three daughters: Ñiquita, Maria Belén (my age) and Rafaela. I remember the shady, cool and ample corridor surrounded with copious climbers, facing the railroad and the sugar plantation extending to the horizon. There, sitting on rocking chairs and “taburetes” (countryside chairs made of a wood frame and covered with cowhide), the adults spent long hours of conversation on the frequent visits of my family. The children spent the time riding horses through the plantation, playing games and swimming in a huge reservoir of water used for irrigation on the property.
I never forgot a family friend of ours named Casadeval, that had five beautiful daughters that were named: Europa, Oceanía, América, Bélgica and África; four continents plus one nation.
My father never charged any money for the care of the entire Norma family and, I guess, that because of appreciation and perhaps admiration too, Mamá Ñica gave my dad a parcel of land of about ten acres, not far and on the same street that we lived. That eventually became to be known as El Jardín Morales and to be the strongest thing in my memory of San Luis. Now I am a big-city person but very often I have thought of those days with nostalgia, because they were very happy days in my life
My dad proceeded immediately to use this land for his relaxation and, with a black man named “Cuto, he put a fence and started to plant roses, gladiolus, etc. Next he built a rather large swimming pool and a pérgola with ornamental grape vine growing on the top. Next, it was a fountain and then a cabaña, and more roses, and another fountain. He built a tennis court with the material and knowledge of that time. The fence, I remember was made of wood and chicken-wire. The court was not painted of any color, although the lines were white, imbedded in the cement. We played by the rules and my father so to it. We played mostly doubles and the positions were rotated. The server would say out loud, “ready” and the receiver would respond, “play’. I was nine when I started to play and we new the names of all the great players of the time, like Bill Tilden, Susan Langlan, etc.
It became an oasis, a jewel where family and friends congregated every afternoon, around four or five for tennis and conversation (the "charla” that Spanish people and specially my mother liked so much). My brother Juan Antonio made statues for the fountains (three of them) and a large swan, twice normal size, for the swimming pool. For the cabaña he made an egyptian face that spilled water through its mouth on a half bowl below. Like all painters he dabbled in sculpture too and I loved to watch him. He started with clay (made from dirt and water spread on containers made from large metal roof tiles. After a few days the clay was skimmed from the surface. The clay sculpture was divided in half with pieces of metal and then it was covered with plaster of Paris. After curing, it was halfed, the clay taken of and the two plaster of Paris halves put together and cement poured inside. When the two halves were taken apart, voil´a, there was the finished product.
I spent every available time there with my friends.There was not only tennis and swimming but lots of fruit trees (guayaba, caimitos, narañones (cashew tree), mangos and “manzanita de rosa”.The last one was a large bush with very aromatic, small apple-like fruits with a seed that rattled in the center and it grew on the banks of the rivers. There was a small stream that flowed through it, but I never fished. My dad gave many good parties there too, with people as far as Santiago de Cuba attending. The large vacant land next and behind it, was used by the people of the town to play base-ball and fly kites. I went there for that purpose too.
My father had one of the first x-ray machines. It was used mostly as a fluoroscope and he had to adjust it and produced a huge spark from a sort of rod to a huge metal ball. It was just like a Frankenstein movie, it became obsolete and when it was dismantled we got tons of cooling oil and cable of all sizes. One cable we used to fly a kite about five or six feet tall. We flew it in “El Jardín” and of course the guys behind tried to cut our lines not knowing that the line was a wire. The laugh was on us. I remember going on house calls with my dad in a horse and buggy at night, lighting the candles on the buggy, and sitting on top with the driver. What a thrill! and watching for the kids on the street trying to jump on back of the buggy for a free ride. Later my father bought an automobile and then another, but I remember a Chandler the best, the day that he brought it home and we tried it for a few days before he finally bought it. We had a chofer, Fabián, married to Dorotea, and they had two boys, Jesús y Alejandro, and two daughters, Milagros and Carmelina. Dorotea had been the wet nurse for my brother Ricardo back in Spain. My father liked her, and sent Fabián to bring her to Cuba.The girls, being the oldest, were born out of wedlock, but they married soon after.
Fabian loved to work on the engine and bragged about his work, but always ended up with left over parts that he claimed were not necessary and my father would get furious. The family would take one day journeys to Santiago de Cuba, crossing two one-way wood bridges, the Naranjo the smaller and closer to town and the San Rafael, larger and farther, where families used to go on day trips to swim in the river under the bridge, the men in their underwear and the women with long cotton dresses. Fabián and my dad took turns driving and sometimes held me on his lap and let me drive. Just before Santiago there was a very steep road with many curves and switchbacks, called Puerto Boniato, which brought us into El Caney that was then, the fruit basket of Cuba. That was a real thrill! And Fabián the only one that could drive it! Jesús was about my age and very good looking. Alejandro a little bit younger was mischievious and had multiple scars as a result of a fall into the bottom of an outhouse (excusado). Carmen was the youngest, very, very pretty and sensual. She was the one that made me lose my innocence and later on took on with Alberto the pharmacist assistant.
We used to wait for the sugar cane train (el cañero) that came through town, and the idea among the boys, was to pull canes from the cars as it went by. It was very dangerous, because the train gained speed as it went through town to avoid the people from pulling the canes. Many boys were pulled under the cars. My mother would call me as soon as she heard the train’s whistle. I did it a few times, but I was very scared; just pure peer-pressure. We would ride the rails or jump the ties to see who could do it faster. Crossing the rail bridge near by was really scary. We placed our ears to the rails to hear if a train was approaching. I placed pop caps on the rails to be flattened by the train and then make, with thin cord, spinning toys. I made jewlery (rings, bracelets and thimbles) from cattle horns and I went to the slaughterhouse for them. The first time I almost fainted when I saw people with containers drinking the warm blood as it flowed from the animal wound. The tip of the horn was used for thimbles, a little lower for rings, and at the base for bracelets. I made many for Caridad, but I never saw one on her, or a ring on my mother’s finger. She did use the thimbles, or so she told me! I spent hours polishing them and I thought that they were beautiful.
I believed in The Three Wise Men (Reyes Magos) until I was almost ten. The depression opened my eyes. My father earned a lot of money but spent lots and lots and so when he lost the house we had to move to Guantanámo for three years, and then, on to Camaguey where I finished high-school. Parents in those days were not participants of the children games but I received a lot of love from them and played tennis with the adults. I was the youngest and a little spoiled. My dad called me “cubiche”, which is spanish slang for cuban born, or “benjamín de la casa”, that means the youngest of the house. He was offered a very good position in Guantánamo, Director of “La Colonia Española”. Cuba had many so called “Centros Regionales” that in effect were a society that offered medical care and social events for the members. In Havana there were almost half a dozen: Centro Gallego (the largest), Centro Asturiano, etc. Andalusia the largest representation of Spaniards in Cuba had none. They were mutually owned and very well administered HMO’s
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In Guantánamo we had a tremendous big house with a central patio about 20 by 40 feet square surrounded by a continuous open porch and a huge coconut tree in the center. In this central patio my dad built a huge cage for a pair of prehensile monkeys (Fermín and Lolita), one small house on a pedestal for a marmoset (Panchín) and a second cage, an aviary, with many different kinds of birds. I still can hear the sounds of the monkey, the chirping of the birds and the thump of the coconuts on the cement or, worst, on the tin roof of the cages. Here is where I learned and started to raise canaries that I continued to do here in the Palisades on an aviary that I built on the patio, behind the indoor barbecue and it contained not only canaries but also a variety of finches. One day a street vendor that we called “polacos” (polish), although they were immigrants from the Middle East, probably Lebanese, knocked at the door selling dress material. I bargained with him and finally made a deal, I gave him a canary in exchange for a piece of cloth for a dress for my mother. I have never made a deal like that again ever in my life, and a gift that my mother appreciated and never forgot.
On the second floor, reached by circular stairs, there were six contiguous rooms and four of them were made into one, where a wall to wall table was built to lay a Lionel electric train. For almost two years my dad employed a mechanic, named Bernabé to lay the track, modify all the switches that were, in those days, only manual (not electronic in those days), with a system of cables and springs operated from a central station. Bernabé was very knowledgeable and patient, and from him I learned a lot. Between my father, my brother Juan Antonio and me, we built model houses, bridges, tunnels, etc. The material and little electric bulbs for the models were difficult to get and very expensive. My mother was the conservative in the house and saw all this as a waste. Officers from the American Naval Base in Caimanera came frequently to see the set-up and my dad would let me run it and I was very proud. Some officers often invited my family for lunch and to visit the warships at the naval station. That was very exciting and I remember the time that I tasted American coffee with heavy cream. I loved it.
The large, tall open porch surrounding the patio had a mosaic square floor where my friends and I used to run on a contraction that I made with wood and four roller skates wheels. One sat on it and held to a rope attached to the front steering axle, where we put the feet and helped steering, and somebody would push from behind with a broomstick. We would take turns, and see which was the fastest to go around. It was noisy, but a lot of fun. Never heard a complaint from my mom or dad.
Two blocks down the street from our house we had the beautiful Guaso river, with swimming holes of crystal clear water (little pollution in those days). Once in a while the Naval Base in Caimanera had leave (we called it franco), and hundreds and hundreds of sailors would descend on the town. The rail station was down the street from our house and I sat on the railing on our front porch watching them go by until I was dizzy. All whites, no blacks and an occasional Filipino, the friendielest of them all. The big thing was to ask for cigarettes and get their uniform caps. They were really victims of much mischief. They bought things that knew darn well could not take back to the base: dogs, cats, owls, snakes, etc. They acted like kids. I know now that the leave was in reality a sexual relief and many stories abounded on this subject
My father was the director of the only private hospital in the community, called “La Colonia Española”. I attended a catholic school for boys only, called Los Hermanos Cristianos (The Christian Brothers). My teacher’s name was Hermano Bernardo and I was first in the class for all the three years I attended the school. I was the envy of my classmates. I made a good friend in the school. His name was Mason but we called him Masón, his father worked for an American Company, but I never met him. He and I took long distance walks to surrounding sugar mills (ingenios), open mine sites and river holes, leaving in the morning and returning in late afternoon. That sugar cane juice (guarapo) tasted so good before it was boiled into molasses, which was the smell all over the area. I do not recall here any social activity and the only girl I liked was Isabel, almost next door neighbor to us. She was the youngest, like I, of a large family of mostly girls (Magdalena, Irene, Carmelina and one brother) The social life was more active with my sister and brothers. Our dog Dempsey, Polonia, and Victorino were with us. I had a chihuahua that I love very much, but I can not recall his name. He was killed by an automobile. I never heard the Guantanamera until many years later in Camaguey. I remember the town, the movie theater and the river; but above all I remember the house very well, and my friend Mason.
Victorino was a “gallego” (from Galicia, Sp.) that arrived in Cuba as a stowaway, trying to avoid the compulsive military service, and how he ended up with my father I do not know. He was very short, very strong, extremely stubborn and loyal. He idolized my father. His three R’s were almost nil. I remember him writing to some relative in Spain, and it took him days and days. He was ashamed about it and of course it was never discussed. He was with us for over almost ten years and when we left Guantánamo, through Carmela; he got a job working in the sugar mill railroad. He came to visit us in Camaguey with a folded newspaper that he kept hitting on his thigh. He probably never read it. It is very vivid in my mind seeing him crying, and my mother too when we parted. No relationship like that exists in the world any more. I regret that I didn’t see him ever again.
I was almost twelve and ready for high-school. I had to take an entrance examination (preparatoria) that was held in Santiago de Cuba, the province capital. I went all by myself on a tail dragger, corrugated aluminum Ford tri-motor. It held maybe a dozen passengers on single seats. I was sitting by the landing gear and what really scared me was watching the small landing wheel spinning fast as we left the ground. In later year it was learned that the spinning acted as a gyroscope and made difficult the turning of the ship .Today, the landing wheels are automatically stopped as soon as the plane leaves the ground. I stayed with the Rodon family that by now had moved to Santiago.
It was between 1933 and 34 and we were moving to Camaguey. When we arrived in Guantánamo they told us that once you drank the water from the Guaso Rriver, you never left town. Well, we drank it and we were leaving. In Camaguey the holding down factor was the water from the “tinajones’, very large clay water containers that found their place in later years as ornamentals. Everybody had to have their picture taking inside one of those containers. I drank that water and ended up in Santa Monica. My brother Juan Antonio had already left for Spain to further his studies on painting, on the advise of a very good, highly intellectual friend of my father, named Juaquin Aristigueta: and to suffer through the civil war. We were still in Guantánamo when the dictator Gral. Gerardo Machado fell and saw photographs of the atrocities committed on revenge. The black corpulent mayor of San Luís, Viscay, was dragged to his death by the people of the town. Between Guantánamo and Camaguey we lived for a short time in San Luís while my father was finding a house in Camaguey. We stayed with the family of Carmela Melo, but saw little of Caridad because she was away in school, a true intern.
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In Camaguey, my life took a tremendous turn: First, I was in high school and second, girls entered in my life in a big way. I made friend easily and was extremely popular with the girls. I found time to go in day sojourns to the countryside and frequent trips to the swimming hole at the river. I was an excellent student but after graduation had to wait for almost two years because the university was closed on account of political unrest. I went to a private school, owned and run by a black and gay (maricón) teacher very popular in the community, his name was Graciliano Garay. He was always very well dressed with some kind of very aromatic seed or small tablet on his mouth. We teased him on the subject of homosexuality to no end, but to the best of my knowledge he never misbehaved. I took algebra, trigonometry and English lessons.
The first house in Camaguey was situated in “Calle San Pablo” and it was a huge Colonial times house with enormously large and heavy wooden windows and doors. The ceiling was so high that you could hardly reach it with even long sticks. The locking of the front door at night was quite an event. It had a huge water storage under the patio that it was always full but we never used it. I shared a room with my brother Ricardo. He could go to sleep faster than you could say “Buenas noches” and he snored a lot and high, so much so, that many years later when I came back to visit, as an anesthesiologist I tried to teach him how to place an airway on his mouth. I did not succeed. We had a mosquito net (mosquitero) on each bed and on Saturday and Sunday mornings or whenever there was no school, my mother would bring me a glass of “café con leche”(café latte or coffee and milk), and go back to sleep until almost noon. That’s a mother for you. Coffee in Cuba was always drank Italian style (Café Cubano as the Cubans always call it) Restaurants and bars had those huge espresso machines but at home it was made with a cloth colanders. Very small coffeehouses, bars or whatever would ring a bell to announce that coffee had just been percolated. Very often it was roasted at homes on huge iron pots and the aroma permeated all around. Every time that Marilyn and I visited Cuba, we noticed, as soon as we landed, the smell in the air, a combination of the tobacco, the coffee and the rum. Add to this the music and the rambunctiousness of the people and it made it a delightful place to visit and have a wonderful time.
In 1951 I went to Camaguey for my father final days and after the interment, my wife Marilyn flew directly to Camaguey to join me and meet my family. My brother Ricardo not being able to communicate on account of the language difference offered her a cup of coffee at the very small airport and she has never stopped. We drink it in the mornings and we make it through a cloth colander that I devised to be placed at the edge of the cover in the kitchen.
I joined the “Club Atlético de Camaguey” to play baseball on a very large field, some tennis and volleyball and a lot of basketball. All three sports were played in the same clay court. A little humor here: some girls started to play tennis in the mornings. That made us furious, especially because it was supposed to be a man’s club. We took some dog’s do, made small balls and dried them on the sun. In two days or so they were completely dry on the outside so you could handle them. We would throw them on the court from a hiding place and, of course, that was the end of the game. After a while they never came back. To this day I don’t know if they really knew what happened. It was hysterical to see their reaction! A group from the club became interested in gymnastics and we met often at a nearby park where they had rather rudimentary equipment. We hung around the local barbershop for gossip and jokes and organized a baseball team to play with other teams in the city and sometimes ventured out to the nearby towns. We raised money to buy equipment selling raffles and organizing dances. The girls were admitted free but the boys had to pay admission. All we furnished was the locale and the music.
I had my first, sort of serious “sweetheart” (novia), and we would meet around five o’clock at the central square. She would come with her sister if she had a date, or her mother would bring her. We sat on a bench for two hours, very lovey dovey, and I don’t know to this day what in hell we talked about. The real action was on Sunday’s movie matinee. I would take her to her home, on time for dinner. I would have dinner at home and then return to the square to meet other girls, my friends and talk until ten or so. Sometimes someone would come with the news of a party in some home, or a wake (velorio) in some house where we did not know the owners. They would provide us with “Café Cubano” and cigars, and one of our friends provided the jokes.
The end of June was the carnival honoring the patron saint, San Juan, starting the 24th and ending on the31st, which happened to be San Pedro. We had parades of open cars and trucks with different groups of friends throwing serpentines, confetti and flowers; or getting furtive kisses.There were parties everywhere: at clubs but mostly at homes. Here and then I learned to dance and didn’t let go of it until very recently. My friend, Armando Barahona, El Chato, (pug nose) taught me at the Athletic Club how to dance. You have to hold them tight Fernando, he said, holding me around the waist; it is the secret about the whole thing. One of the best advises I ever had! He died not long ago in Las Vegas where he was a dealer at one of the casinos, after a tragic and sad life. I wish for him to rest in peace. In Camaguey everyone had a nickname, even many of the girls. Examples of this: Jicotea (turtle) because he had a short neck. ”Tanque”, that really was a short for tank of s--- (tanque de mierda). Moropo slang word for head and he had a large one! “La Incubadora” (incubator), because she danced very close with her lower body (testicles are eggs, huevos in Spanish). “La China Con Paperas” (Chinese with mumps), because she had a very round, fat face. I was spared because my father’s second last name was Salomón and everybody called me by that name, which they associated with the wise King Solomon. Today I think of Camaguey as a large family of around ten thousand members in a town of a quarter million. The “have- not” never dared to come where the “have’s” were. I dared to go where the “have not’s” were and saw very extreme poverty. But enough of that, and back to my mostly pleasant memories.
Part of the electric train came with me, and it helped to make friends. I made a toy with old thread spools, notched on the borders, a piece of candle and rubber bands. A real distraction in the classroom! I made a blow gun (cervatana) from a piece of glass or steel tubing, (no plastic in those days) and a cone of paper with a pin protruding at the point, and secured with sealing wax (lacre). Great! but dangerous. We played many games at school: naval battle that we played on cuadriculated paper, when we could find it. The game is now available on an electronic format. We played “ceritos”: we would draw small zeros one quarter of an inch apart horizontally and vertically, twenty or more each way. We would put a line from zero to zero alternately until someone closed a square and put his initial on it. The one with most number of squares would win the game. This game too, seems to have made a comeback as I have seen it played recently here. There was a large park next to the Athletic Club, called El Casino Campestre, with walks, fountains, benches, gymnastic equipment and a music pavilion (kiosko) where music was played on Sunday mornings and where the young met and socialized. Many romances were started here.
We had dances at least once a week. We called them “asaltos” (assaults) because they were held at some random house and the completely unsuspecting family always very graciously accepted. The boys would contract the music, from a quartet to a sextet, in the morning or afternoon of the day of the party. I contracted it many times and the price was extremely low. No food and no liquor: just dancing and talking. We had no peer pressure or girl pressure. One street, one block long was the social center, with one hotel and many stores; one in particular called El Ecanto (the charm) was the branch of the main one in Havana, and it was outstanding. At the end of this street there was a square with an open air café called Café Norma and where the men congregated for political discussion, gossip and play a poker dice game called “patas” to decide who would pay for the rounds of beer. The score was kept with pieces of toothpicks.
There were, at the time, five movie-houses: Guerrero, Actualidades, Avellaneda y Apolo. The latter very low class, but cheap and I went there occasionally without my parents knowing about it. Another one was called Principal, where besides movies, had seasonal theatrical productions. The Sunday movie matinees were great. Avellaneda had a gallery with cheap bleachers type seats that was called “gallinero”. It cost a dime in the afternoon and I occasionally went without the knowledge of my parents. I would hold my arms close to my body so I wouldn’t get the underarm odor that we called “grajo”. Most of the movies were American, spoken in English, with Spanish subtitles. I learned more English at the movies than in the classroom. Humor again: the Avellaneda was being remodeled and on the screen they flashed announcements saying: New screen! New sound! New seats! Etc. when suddenly a big voice came from the gallery and said: “y chinches nuevas!” (And new bed bugs!)
Because the town was in the middle of the province, during summer vacation a bunch of close friends would go north, to Nuevitas, a very fashionable resort, or south to Santa Cruz where it was more rustic, lots cheaper and more fun with good fishing. We rented a house, unfurnished. We all slept on the floor. We always hired a cook, Chinese were the best, and we ate very well. One of them taught me how to count in Chinese up to ten. Two years ago the hostess at a restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown understood my count perfectly. One season we decided to do our own cooking and turned down to be a disaster. We behaved very well: we didn’t drink, we didn’t do any mischief and the locals liked us. Both of my parents were not intrusive in my social life. Never objected to my friends, male or female, likes or dislikes but my mother was very advising in regard to my studies and aspirations. She was my bank where the money was always on reserve when I needed it during my studies at the university My father was very encouraging and supportive.
W.W. II caused a revolution in Camaguey. I was already in medical school in Havana and only came back for short stays during Christmas vacation or, when ready for an exam. the students demanded a delay of a week or two because they were not ready. The “Americanos” in the service saw the beauty of the girls (there were many gorgeous girls in Camaguey), and the girls saw men in uniform with plenty of money and a future. The Americans wouldn’t put up with the system and the chaperon system came tumbling down. The spoiled and lazy local guys had competition now.
We moved to a second story sort of duplex in Calle Independencia. Because the water pressure was very low and often failed we had to fill the bathtub with water as an emergency to flush the toilette and wash ourselves. Later on we installed a tank on the roof with a pump, and that solved that problem. Camaguey was the city of the Spanish roof tiles and we had a great view of the city and its roofs and churches. The electricity went often off (apagón) frequently. We cooked with charcoal and later on with propane. There was no natural gas. The buses were archaic and the streetcars were discards of some American city.
I had wonderful time in Camaguey where I made many dear and close friends. After I left for the University I never saw them again except for a few that went on to the university but I remember the names and the good time we spent together and I wish I could meet them again in another life. My High School building was large and modern with excellent, dedicated and much respected teachers. Three of them stand out in my mind but whose names I can not recall. My math teacher was great. He taught algebra and trigonometry. He was short, very enthusiastic and made the normally arid subject, fun to learn. I never saw him without a piece of chalk on his right hand. The other one, professor of Psychology and Logic, was a very heavy person, sort of cherubic, very mannered, and with a wonderful sense of humor. One day, trying to emphasize a point, curiosity I believe it was, he told us the story about a man that, jilted by his girlfriend, stood at the door of the church where she was being married. As the bride went by after the ceremony, he whispered to her: ”mine is square”, The groom, hearing this and aware of the consequences of the curiosity, demanded of him to pull his pants down and show her that it was round like his. The third one was a woman. She was professor of history, the first class in the afternoon. She was married and she was” bellísima”. She was always very well dressed, smelled wonderful and her manners were exquisite. It was hard to keep my mind on what she was saying as my imagination wandered. I had a very big infatuation.
Now, I realize that Camaguey was a cow town with very provincial attitudes. The anecdotes were numerous, imaginative and very funny. One guy claimed, very seriously, that he lost his watch in the field, (at the time of the self-winding watches) and a year or two later, while on horseback he heard a tic-tic on a small tree, and would you believe it! It was his watch that had gone up with the tree. A very famous orthopedic specialist from Havana came to town for a consultation. When walking down the hall, he saw a patient in a cast and stopped suddenly and said:”don’t tell me: Monreal (a local orthopedist) put that cast;” and when they asked him how he could tell, he replied “only Monreal and I know how to put a cast like that.” And people believed it. Another one: A young doctor has just returned from his studies in France. He was revalidating his license and when the examiner, a professor at the University in Havana, asked him a question he exclaimed,” that question is not asked that way, it is asked this way and answered this way: tara, tara, tara”. That is funny!
My father had the office (consultorio) in the house and whoever happened to answer the door was the receptionist, and no one knew if my father wanted to see the caller or not. One evening, somebody rang the doorbell and asked for him. I went and told my dad that somebody wanted to see him and he said: tell him I am not here, “coño” (expletive). Absent-mindedly, I proceeded to tell the caller: He said that he is not here. His library was very extensive as he was an avid reader, and he would give me books to read. My brother and sister couldn’t care less. But what I really liked was to sneak in and open the medical books, specially the ones on obstetrics and gynecology. I remember coming home in the early hours of the morning after a party and finding my dad sitting at the dining room table, with a glass of milk, an ashtray and many cigarettes, reading novels, magazines and newspapers.
Camaguey marked the beginning of my father’s loss of enthusiasm for social affairs, although he continued to read profusely and write for the local paper. I had a lot of respect for my parents, my brothers and the elders. We had no drugs and no guns. The family always sat together for lunch and for dinner. I came home from high school at noon and didn’t return until two. I was nineteen and ready to start medicine at the only University in Cuba. The admission was open to everyone, the tuition minimal and it was autonomous, sort of like The Vatican where many students involved in political conflicts found heaven.
Just before graduation I met a girl at school that made a mark on that moment of my life. Her name was Chelo (short for Graciela) Garcia. She was the only daughter of a retired General of the armed forces and his wife. They lived well and provided splendidly for their daughter. She was attractive with very vivacious eyes and dimples on both cheeks. About a year before I met her she had driven one early evening on a taxi to her boyfriend’s house and eloped to the very near town, Florida. Within minutes they found them in a hotel, dressed as they had left. Nothing had happen! Pressured by her parents they were married, and pressured by his parents, they were divorced, all this by reciprocity because that night he was flown to de U.S.A. From there on, she was ostracized with the label “divorced”. We were classmates and one day at lunch break I offered to take her books and that did it. She was very sensuous and mature for her age and we met surreptitiously until we were in Havana where she was attending the University too, studying law. This relation stayed unchanged for almost two years. I would date her in Havana and only call her occasionally on the phone while in Camaguey, afraid of my friends and my family, except my father that stood by me. I have always been ashamed of that. She was really a magnificent person with a mentality too advanced for Camaguey. The relationship lasted over two years and after that, I never saw or heard of her anymore. I knew of girls that committed far worse sins and were accepted in the social circles.
Two things I remember of this relationship: She had frequent “desmayos” (fainting spells) due, she told me, to low blood pressure and always carried with her a syringe with a needle and ampoules of stimulants (camphor, caffeine and “estrofantina). These were not the times with disposables, so she had to sterilize and pack the syringe and needle ahead of time. She fainted on me several times and at the most inopportune places and time.
She was a fairly good catholic, went to church regularly and she confessed often. She did this at a church not far from her house in Camaguey, “La iglesia de Las Mercedes”. One day she showed me a love letter written to her by one of the priests of that church. It was beautifully hand written and no question that the author was a man of the cloth. In almost every paragraph was the word God and forgiveness. I could see, even in those days, that this man had an emotional storm within and I could sense his carnal desires, for he was young, I surmised. It did arise some jealousy in me, and I advised her not to enter that church again. Shortly after this, the priest was transferred and, unrelated to it, gradually we went our different ways. I always regretted that I did not keep that letter with me.
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In the fall of 1939 I was bound to study medicine at The University of Havana. I left Camaguey by bus in the evening, to arrive in Havana the next day in the morning after many stops. I would make the same trip many times for the next five years. Omnibus La Cubana, was the name of the Bus Company. I had fifty pesos (par with the dollar in those days) in my front pocket that my mother had sewn in so that I wouldn’t lose them. So spoiled was I, that I was very embarrassed to carry my suitcase to the bus depot. I don’t know how my parents found the boarding house but it turned out to be great, on calle 21, entre L.& M., en el Vedado, a very nice residential area near the University. The owner was a very attractive and active lady in her early forties, married, and the mother of two boys. Her name was Katie. I was the only guest, and she took an instant liking to me. She was very sorry when I left a few months later.
As part of the initiation in the university they shaved my head, but not my moustache. The first year we had only one subject, Descriptive Anatomy, and the classes were held at the old medical school downtown at Belascoain and Zanja. It was a very old building and, except for a few rooms for the administration, the rest was a number of partitions, maybe six feet tall with a high tile roof. In the center there was a courtyard. Because of the university closure for two years on account of political unrest, the first year enrollment was a little over one thousand, yes, one thousand students. By the second year it had dropped to less than four hundred, and in 1944, when I graduated, we were less than forty. Our class was called “Los Pulpos” (the octopuses), and turned out to be one of the most cohesive in spite of the size.
On account of the large enrollment and the shortage of cadavers the class was divided into two groups with two different professors and each professor taught two sub-groups; one with the upper part of the cadaver and another with the lower part, they were cut in half. They were preserved in formaldehyde and the odor was terrible, it made our eyes cry and because of the shortage of gloves our hands smelled horrible. I had male cadavers both years.
There, I met Miguel Angel Garcés, who I already new from Camaguey and we both decided to room together. That meant that we moved to the famous “Casa Rita”, on 19th and M. It was a much larger house with students and adults (one couple, an elder woman with her son, and another elder woman with her daughter). The students were divided into three casts: the ones that lived inside the house with large rooms and private baths, Julio (law) and Jorge (medicine) Horstman, Javier (medicine) and Joaquin (law) Varona, the brothers Antonio and Roberto Vidál, and the son of the boarding house owners, Mario. The second tier lived in the converted servant’s quarters (another Varona brothers: Osvaldo (dentistry) and Adolfo (medicine), Toto Almendros (medicine), by himself, and at different times: Pito Zayas Bazán, Jorge Garcés, Alberto Recio and his brother Raul and others that I can’t remember). At the bottom of the tier were Miguel A. and I, in one makeshift room with a lavatory and a window that opened on a chicken coop of the mansion next door. Next to us lived Maniplote Aguero and others. BUT WE WERE ALL GOOD FRIENDS AND ATE THE SAME FOOD AT THE SAME TABLE. We took our showers in the bathroom upstairs or the ones inside the house. We even dared to use Mario’s once in a while.
Rita, was a chubby lady that barely smiled and was all business. Her husband, Calixto, was always roaming around and fixing things. Their son Mario, who worked in a bank, was blond, very well dressed, always smiley, with a very active (in appearance) social life and full of wild sexual oriented stories, that exacerbated our drives and imaginations. There was a cook, besides Rita, and two servants, both light black, and they were very funny and friendly. One was very young, very forgetful and his name was Pastor. They cleaned (a little bit), helped in the kitchen and served at the table. We all ate at the same time, the students in a large central table and the adults in separate tables. One of the adult guests always had a large box of corn flakes that she kept in the dinning-room and once in a while in the afternoon, when there was nobody around, I would help myself to a handful of them. I was always so hungry. And to think that at home I was a very finicky eater.
One night when we were all sitting at our tables for dinner, Jorge Garcés, who was late for dinner (there was a cut off time), after taking a shower upstairs, was coming down the large stairs in a hurry to go to his room. He had on a robe and very awkward slippers (chancletas). He slipped on one of the steps and he came tumbling down, with the robe over his head, right to the bottom of the stairs, in front of all the diners. We all laughed of course, but not the old ladies, who screamed and they didn’t speak to any of us for a long time.
The food was good and plentiful, and the price right. We had a lot of studying to do, which was a salvation because we had no money for other things. After dinner we would sit on the front porch, on rocking chairs and talk and kid each other. In nice evenings we walked down to the malecón or tried to sneak into the “Hotel Nacional”, very close by, and watch the tourists, mostly Americans. Or we would take a bus (guagua) and go downtown to the Paseo del Prado and from there, if some one had money, to an open-air café across from the Capitol and consumed one soft drink for all. The big and rare expenditure was to go on a date to the movies or some night-club, which were very reasonable in those days. They brought the bottle to the table (rum or Spanish brandy) and charged us according to the consumption. There were other expenditures but I don’t believe it is appropriate to mention them here.
I tried to play baseball and basketball, but it came down to just basketball for two years. The coach’s name was Livio Morales and we played mostly against social clubs. One in particular called Cubanaleco was made of employees of the American owned electrical company. The star was a friend of mine from Camaguey named Frank Lavernia. He was trained in some college in the southern United States and he was very, very good by any standard. His brothers, Milton and Otto, and one of two sisters, Nenita Varona, live in Miami, of course. Why the English first names, I don’t know. Great family!
I may interpose here that not one of the thousands of students owned a car, and this will be useful to know when I tell my experience in L.A., shortly after I arrived here. The politics was very intense, inside and outside of the university. In the national politics the professors were involved too. My physiology teacher, Grau San Martín and a law student at the time, Prío Socarrás, became presidents of Cuba in later years, between terms of Batista at the helm. Both turned out below expectations and during Prio’s presidency the corruption was wide spread, the narco-traffic in Havana very deep and the Las Vegas based gambling syndicates in full swing in Havana.
Chronologically I can’t tell, but we lived in three boarding houses besides Rita’s. We lived for a short period of time in a house at the top of Calle Neptuno, near the entrance to the university. Here, another funny thing happened: two friends and I were on the roof, which was made of concrete, when we saw, through the window, two friends studying. We noticed some dry dog-do and proceeded to throw it to them. We missed many shots that fell on the open corridor. The owner stepped on it and started to cry for the servant and shouted: what is this Laurita, and Laurita responded: I don’t know señora, it must be dirt; and the señora responded with a big voice, no Laurita, no es tierra, no, no, es mierda. Not much I remember of this place. Have no recall of the room, the dinning room, and not even the front of the house. There lived a bragger who claimed that he could make a date with any woman over the phone. He would hand any of us the phone, let us dial it, and if a female voice answered, we hand him the phone. The conversation went from hostile in the beginning to amicable and finally some rendezvous was agreed upon. We all were impressed then, but today, I am inclined to believe that the other party hung up and he continued with the bull.
Miguel Angel, who died about five years ago in Miami from an embolic accident following coronary by-pass, was always looking for the best boarding- house deal in town. That took us all the way, almost, to the center of Havana, to calle Salud between Escobar and Lealtad. We were close to the famous Teatro Shangai, the red district, Parque Martí, the Capitol, and the open-air side walks cafes. It was an experience all right They were two houses back to back, and in order to go for meals we had to go up on the roof on Escobar side, and down on Lealtad side. The adult guests were of varied social and moral strata. Chicho Castillo, a friend from Camaguey, was the one to tell us about this place. He was studying law and let a black law student that had no money sleep in his room. No one except us knew he was sleeping there and we even brought him leftovers from lunch and dinner. We were about seven or eight student friends, and this is where the ownership of “a sailboat” started.
Chicho Castillo, Miguel A., Pito Zayas Bazán (a.k.a. El Mono, the monkey, because he was short and had long arms) and I, went to Playa Viriato, west of Havana, one beautiful morning, to buy a sailboat that we new was for sale. We told the owner that we wanted to go out for a trial and out we went, happy as clams, with the belief that the other guys knew how to sail. We went straight out, easily because the wind was blowing to sea. All of a sudden the weather and the sea changed, and we came to realize that no one in the boat knew how to sail. The tension became very high, with insults and threats. We were desperate, and on one of our glances to land we saw a boat approaching. We were so very thankful, when we heard Garcés say, we are not going to ask for help! We were ready to throw him overboard. I think I was the first one to set foot on the other boat. We kept the boat at Playa Viriato for quite a while. A sugar magnate, and corrupt politician under president Machado had developed the place, in the late twenties. It was next to the Miramar Beach Club and the Havana Yacht Club. Hence the observation of Garcés that he called the people in the water, that didn’t belong to the clubs, the “desorejados” (earless ones), because you could tell, with water up to their chin, the ones that didn’t belong to any club.
Below us, on the ground level, there was a social club, owned, run and socialized by blacks only and at least once a month they had a formal dance with a large orchestra and everyone, men and women, dressed very, very nicely. They danced almost exclusively the danzón and they all would stop dancing with certain change in the music. We would watch them all night from the veranda above and wave reciprocally. For us it was a sign of friendship and admiration. They were good and they knew it.
We couldn’t afford the payments to the keeper of the boat, so we went across the Havana front, pass the bay, to Cojimar; a small fishing village made famous by that other writer, “Ernest Hemingway”. The caretaker of the boat was an old man that lived in a small shanty on the beach. We arrived for sailing usually late Sunday mornings and saw the sharks that he had caught with line (no rod) during the very early hours of the day on a boat much smaller than ours. Some of his toes and fingers were missing. The gossip was that he was selling the livers to the German U-boats. He was Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea and I remember his boat, (Pilar) and he holding court with the locals at a bar or café high on the beach- front. We did have glorious days on that boat. I remember waters so clear and crystalline that we could look at the bottom many feet below. We would throw the anchor and see it dangle a long distance from the floor of the sea. We fell behind on payments and one morning we left on the boat and took it back to Viriato, across the bay, and never returned. This bothered me very much, especially later in life. We could and should have left the boat with him. I suspected this poor man to be The Old Man and the Sea, from the first time that I saw the movie.
From “Casa Escobar” we went back to the Vedado, to calle L between 17th and 19th. Katie had a house that had a very good reputation. She was happy to see me again. She was a little older and busier, but still very charming. We had a room in the back where the garage had been at one time. Many of these boarding houses had been beautiful mansions at one time. Next to us towards l7th St., a very famous internist and professor at the Medical School, Pedro Castillo, had his office. It was a very modern, one level, white building with a U shaped driveway and always full with very expensive automobiles. He was a personality in South America. He always had (can you believe it ¡) a big cigar on his mouth. He had a very auster and strong personality. We, the medical student, admired and envied that place so much!
I was an extern (what in reality Lewinsky was) on the service of Prof. Pedro Iglesias
Betancourt. He was the competitor of Castillo. He was my absolute idol. He was short, extremely myopic with thick grasses that made his eyes bulge out. We wore a coat, knee length, with a large pocket between the waist and the hip and because of that they called us the marsupials. We were the elite at the University Hospital Calixto Garcia, named after a hero in the war of independence. The building (pabellón), consisted of Iglesias and the nurses offices, an x-rays room, etc. There was a ward on each side, one for men and one for women, with about twenty very plain, metal beds. Not fancy but clean. We were always short in supplies like tongue depressors, adhesive tape, linen, etc. A roll of one-inch tape was my most valued possession. The patient had all kind of diseases, from fairly acute and short duration like advanced cirrhosis of the liver or terminal tuberculosis, to chronic and long duration like early A.L.S. or incipient tabes.. He had studied in La Sorborne in Paris and was first on his class. I heard that the faculty wanted for him to remain there after graduation but the law in France is that no foreign born can practice medicine. He ran the service with discipline and devotion. On rounds we were never allowed to start the diagnostic discussion with any lab.work available. That work was done only after we had arrived at a tentative diagnosis clinically. When he came to the U.S.A., long after Castro had come into power, he was old and never adapted to the different culture. A true victim like few others of the Castro expatriates. How I wished to have met with him!
When he learned that I was coming to the United States, he called me to his office and gave me a harangue that I never forgot and helped me a lot when I migrated to this country. He said to me, Morales (we were addressed always by the family name) I am aware of your capabilities and your potentials but you are lazy on developing them. You and I know and you will soon find out that the opinion of us in that country is not very high. I want you to go and prove the contrary, that we are as intelligent, as capable and worthy as much as they are. We shall see later how that came to be very helpful to me.
My sister Nena liked people and people liked her too. She was very popular with friends and kept correspondence with people that hadn’t seen for years or people that she had met only once. She knew very well the Bacardí family from Santiago de Cuba, the Almeidas from San Luis, and many others. While in Camaguey she met, I don’t know how, the Reguera family that owned a salt processing plant in the province of Matanzas on the north coast of Cuba and she spent months at their home or vacation place in San Miguel de los Baños, near Varadero. They were very rich and very down to earth. One of the four sisters, Berta, was her best friend. Two younger sisters were about my age. They were high in the Havana society. Well, when I went to Havana, right away, Nena connected me with Berta, but being older I ended up with the younger ones and their friends. I certainly enjoyed going to their beautiful house in the Miramar District for dinner once in while with delicious food and great ambiance. What a relief from the boarding house. But when we started to go to famous and very expensive nightclubs like Sans-Souci, Casino Nacional, Tropicana, etc, which I couldn’t afford, I quit the relationship. Sponging is not in my personality. Nena never understood it. One of the younger sisters, Melva, was very pretty and vivacious. She was dating and later married a boy by the name of Charlie McAvoy. I guess that he was Irish descendant, spoke Spanish with an accent and was very, very simpático. Berta married an American boy and they moved to New York, where Marilyn and I, a few years ago visited with them. She developed Alzheimer’s, long tine ago and I don’t know if she is still alive.
Havana in those days was a very exciting and beautiful city. The public transportation was excellent. The streetcars were slow and comfortable but the “guaguas” (autobuses) were very fast, crowded and didn’t quite stop, (only for old people), they just slowed down for the passenger to get off or on. They claimed that in the beginning the drivers were paid by the hour and so they drove slow and even stopped at places for a “thimble of coffee’ (espresso); then they changed the system, and paid them by the times around the circuit. So then they drove extremely fast, tooting their horn and because of the sound of the horn, guá guá, they became to be known as guaguas. They were the place for political discussion, jokes, who was the best doctor or dentist or even love encounters. I loved them and still today I remember their numbers and destinations of the main routes.“La ruta 32 and 28” were my best. They went to distant suburbs of Havana, like Almendares, Luyanó, La Vibora, Santos Suarez , Jesús del Monte, El Cerro. Etc. Some of them I never visited.
Carnival time in Havana was terrific. Everyone had a good time. The “comparsas” (large group of musicians and dancers) passing in front of the Capitol, were free to be watched. Although I have not seen the carnival in Rio, it is my believe, that the atmosphere was more sedated in Havana, with not as much cross dressing or hiding identity in public. One private club, The Centro Gallego, opened the doors to the public for the modest entry fee of one dollar, and offered several orchestras in all the building levels. I remember coming home to bed very early in the morning and snitching a bottle of milk from some poor neighbor’s front porch.
I met a girl that lived with her family next door to us. Her name was Silvia Valdez-Rodriguez, she was about sixteen years old, and we became quite serious in our relationship until I came to the U.S.A. Her father, José Manuel, was a highly respected newspaper critic and was divorced from her mother, Evelyn. Surprising to me, because divorce was very rare in Cuba in those days, her parents had a friendly relationship and he visited the family often, but would get jealous when the mother, who was still very attractive and charming, had a date, which was quite often. Her mother, la abuela, lived in the house too. She was a very sweet and sharp lady for her age. Also, in the house lived Silvia’s slightly older sister, Evy, and two sisters of Evelyn: Mary, older than Evelyn, who was married to a Canadian gentleman by the name of Bérnard with a very funny English accent and the youngest sister, Gracielita, who was single and dated some of the boys at Rita’s house. Living in the house also was a married brother of Evelyn, Virgilio, who was a veterinarian and who introduced me to a professional dogfight. I found it harsh and cruel but quite interesting and I don’t believe I wanted to see it again, neither have my dog in the ring.
I heard many times the story of how Evelyn’s oldest sister got married. It seems that she was very pretty and had a beautiful smile. She worked in the cosmetics section of a very nice store in Havana, called “El Encanto”. One day, while she was working at the store, this very tourist appearing and funny man, kept staring at her and finally came to her and asked if her teeth were real, and when she said that they were, he asked her if he could touch them. After that, and right there and then he proposed matrimony. She accepted and lived happily ever after in Rochester, N.Y.
Another of Evelyn’s sisters was married to a very prominent cardiologist in Havana, Dr. Ramón Aixalá. Although they lived in a much higher social and economic level they were frequent visitors to the family house. He was very warm and cordial to me and my secret desire was that he would help me once I graduated. I think that everyone in the family had the same hope but it was never mentioned to him. We met accidentally many years later, at a reunion of exiled Cuban physicians in Miami where we had a short and warm conversation.
Bérnard wrote the letter that I was sending to different hospitals in the U.S.A., when I was applying for a job as an intern. I’ll always remember how he wrote in the letter that I had “a working knowledge of English” and how that became to be very far from the true. It amazes me today, how almost a dozen people, with very different personalities, lived so happily under the same roof and there was not one that I didn’t like. This household has always reminded me of the famous play called “You can’t take it with you” They all had a very open progressive mind and were very warm and encouraging to me. God-bless them!
Graduation was approaching and everyone was looking forward to that day, but I felt that it was the ending of a sincere friendship and easy life of irresponsibility with each one looking for his future. I think I was the only one that felt certain sadness, sensing the end of the good times in our lives. I practiced with my dad for a while in Camaguey and it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was, too young to impart any confidence in the patients. When I would come to see them, invariably they would greet me with “where is your father?”
The misery of somebody often turns into the opportunity of someone else. At least I recognize that World War II gave me the opportunity to migrate to U.S.A. and find a future in my life. I believe that 90% of the Cuban Castro exiled should light a candle to him because if it wasn’t for him they wouldn’t have been able to come here and improve their life considerably. In 1944 the U.S.A. needed physicians to fill the hospital vacancies of the doctors called in the military service. I got addresses from the Journal of the American Medical Association and sent copies of the letter written by Bérnard, to many hospitals, several in New York, two in Buffalo, one in Alexandria, Virginia, and, one in what I thought was the end of the world, Santa Monica, California. Lady luck was on my side, while waiting responses I received a telegram from The Santa Monica Hospital that said, “Wire collect if position is accepted”. Well, I remember the saying “one bird in hand is worth more than one hundred on the bush”, besides with the name of the hospital with the name of the town, suggested to me that it was a general hospital and consequently, better for training. On account of the movies, California had a mystic-like aura and that, I must admit, weighted on my decision. I know that if I had accepted the offers from Buffalo, New York or Alexandria, because of the weather I would have returned to Cuba in a year, have gotten a job at The Colonia Española de Camaguey and be back, probably in Miami in the 60’s or 70’s. WHAT A LUCKY DECISION! ! !
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Another big change in my life was soon to occur. After a sad farewell from Silvia, I spent Christmas in Camaguey with my family and enjoyed many nice season parties. That was youth, sad one day, and very merry the next. I do not remember if I departed, from Camaguey or Havana, but for sure landed in Miami on the early morning of December 26th. I was to start my job on the first day of 1945 and because of the war it was impossible to fly, so I had to allow four days for the train ride from Miami to Santa Monica. The reservations, which consisted of flight in Pan-Am. to Miami and then train with berth in three different lines to Los Angeles, were made by an American-Jew travel agent in Camaguey, named Grossman. The flight to Miami was great; the stewardesses on a tan uniform and a cute cap were beautiful and very attentive. I arrived at the air terminal in Biscayne Blvd and Flagler about noon and the train wouldn’t depart until almost midnight. I hung on the terminal with my suitcase, except for sporadic explorations around the neighborhood. Miami was really small then. I remember that it was a beautiful, clear day with the green to blue ocean and cumulus clouds in front of me.
I was a smoker in those days and I inquired at the terminal where I could buy cigarettes and was told where to go, and at what time, as there was a rationing because of the war. The first of many language shocks came that day, when after being in line for a while, just to buy cigarettes, and very few brands to choose from on those days, the lady at the counter didn’t understand me when I said Chesterfíelds with the accent on fields. After repeating it a few times, and finally pointing at them with my finger, she replied Oh Chesterfields, with the accent on Chester.
It was getting dark and I was getting hungry, so I asked someone on the counter where I could eat. Well of all things, he or she, sent me to a Chinese restaurant where all the dishes in the menu were in American-Chinese. In Cuba, the Chinese restaurants are Cuban food with Cuban names, cooked by Chinese, and, by the way it is delicious. I, finally, asked someone for help and I guess I ended up with chop-sue, and I liked it. I hung around the air terminal a while longer and finally I headed towards the station with my rather large suitcase. I soon boarded the train for Jacksonville on the Eastern Seaboard line. The births were already made and I climbed on my upper one rightaway. It took me a while to fall sleep and I remember the noise of the warning bells as we went by the towns and the voice of the conductor announcing the incoming stations. The train personnel were all black, very attentive and helpful. The train and the stations were full of young service people. It was like all those movies that I had watched back home.
We arrived in Jacksonville, in the early morning and, quick as a flash, I boarded the next train that was to take me to New Orleans to catch the next train to L.A. I was not going to miss a train, or take the wrong one, and at the stations I wouldn’t venture very far from my car. I did get to see several times the huge steam locomotive that later on I saw at the Railroad Museum in Sacramento. Several things impressed me very much. One was the number of warnings everywhere, like watch your step, do not lean on door, watch your head, and so on. I thought to myself, how nice and considered of them to do that. I did know then of law suits. The other was the sign on the benches, drinking fountains and toilette rooms of the stations that said “colored”. The day went fast even though the landscape was unappealing and I do not recall where or what I ate. I do not remember who or how many were seating with me. We arrived in New Orleans late and I transferred quickly to the Southern Pacific train that was to take me to Los Angeles.
Here again, there were two seats facing each other that were converted at night to lower and upper berths. A lady that I guess today was on her mid to late thirties, occupied the seat across from mine. We didn’t speak one word to each other the whole first day. On the second, she ventured to ask me if I was hungry and proceeded to tell me how to get to the dinning car.
I sat down but couldn’t read the menu because it was all in French. I gave up, and as I was leaving the headwaiter, who was black, asked me if I didn’t like any thing. When I told him that I didn’t understand the menu, he took me back and ordered for me. It was a wonderful piece of meat with potatoes and vegetables. I ate it with a lot of gusto as it was not only good, but I was so, so hungry. As I was leaving he smiled at me and for the rest of the trip he ordered the meals for me. In the late afternoon the lady asked me where I was going and with great confidence I responded Santa Monica! Well, she didn’t understand me, and it took for me to repeat it about three times, before she exclaimed, oh, sanamonica, all together. That was a horrible feeling, for to say something that is Spanish and not be understood was not what I needed. I didn’t dare to ask her where she was going.
The train pulled into Union Station in the early morning. I got a taxi and the driver explained to me that Santa Monica was far and that it would be better for me to take a bus. He dropped me at the bus depot that was in those days behind the Philharmonic Auditorium on Pershing Square. The bus came on Wilshire Blvd and then Santa Monica Blvd. I asked the driver to let me off at 16th St. I sat in the front by the right window and asked a couple of times about 16th St. Don’t worry, he said to me each time, I will let you know. When he turned left and I saw the ocean, I asked him again and he responded, I am sorry, it is 16 blocks back. I got into a taxi and when I told the driver, who undoubtedly was catholic, that I wanted to go to The Santa Monica Hospital, he told me that I should go to St. Johns’ Hospital because it was better. That really didn’t make made me feel very good. Actually, St. Johns had opened only two or three years before on land donated by a local surgeon, Leo Madsen, and at that time it wasn’t nearly as good as Santa Monica Hospital.
I went to the main entrance, suitcase on hand, and proceeded to the admission desk, told them my name and that I was the new intern. I waited for a few minutes and soon a doctor in a white smock came to greet me. His name was James Hall and I would say he was the typical American doctor in a movie (L. Ayres’ Dr.Kildare). He was so personable, so compassionate, so patient, and he took me to my living headquarters, which happened to be in the basement of the hospital, next to the physiotherapy department, where the fashionable colonics of the day were administered, nothing more than a giant, professionally done enema. The room was depressing with pipes running on the ceiling and a small window from where you could see only the ankles and knees of people. When you are young and there is no other alternative, you take it and make the best of it. I took it and had a ball. Later on I was transferred across the hall, the street side, where at least I could see cars and the sky.
The 31st of December was the saddest day of my life. I had no friends and I didn’t know where to go. I had dinner at 5:30 in the cafeteria. I walked downtown, everything was very quiet, came back to my room, and I cried, literally, I cried. I was so homesick
Before I go too far I want to say more about Dr. Hall. He was very handsome and sociable. Soon after I arrived he took me to a restaurant on the pier that still exists today (The Boathouse), and sitting at the bar, overlooking the ocean, he introduced me to fried shrimp and beer. Not many people would do a thing like that today. Remember that I was a recently arrived foreigner with almost no knowledge of English. He was married and he had an affair going with the female pharmacist (Betty), a very beautiful female fatale, very popular with the single or unhappily married doctors. One night, rather late, after I had been here a short while, I ran into her at the small parking lot behind the hospital. She told me that she was going to get gasoline, which was very hard to get in those days and to hop in the car with her Before I knew it, we are heading south on Lincoln Blvd. towards Long Beach, 25 miles away and with no freeways in those days. It was a very balmy night; she rolled the windows down and proceeded to unbutton her blouse. She is driving at a very fast pace and I knew that she has been drinking. Too much too soon for a recently transplanted kid from Camaguey! I couldn’t believe my eyes, which by now, were popping out of the orbits. She did fill up and returned at a slower pace to where we started, and I went to my room for a very restless sleep.
1945 was the hospital’s first internship program with only two interns. The other was a German lady, recently widowed from a very prominent and successful radiologist in Los Angeles. Her name was Dorothea Behne and she had four very attractive daughters. She liked me because not only I was young and easy going but a foreigner too.
I sincerely believed that they would give me some time to acclimate and brush up on the language but on the first of January I was on duty, taking H. & P., starting IVs scrubbing in surgery and in house emergency calls. The worst was being aroused in the middle of the night to check on an old patient that had fallen to the floor while climbing over the side rails.Ninety per cent of the time the patient was all right. It was just legal protection for the hospital. Numbers and abbreviations were my big headache. Although I knew all the numbers, they would not stay in my mind. For instance they’d call my name over the PA system and the number of the room where I was wanted was given to me so fast that by the time I hung the phone the numbers were gone. I’d run down to the switchboard operator (her name was Didi and was located in the lobby) to have the number repeated and then back up the stairs, two or three steps at a time, to the third floor. The abbreviations were the worst. For instance, the first time they asked me to start an IV, I ran down to Didi and asked her what was IV. She looked at me with disbelief and exclaimed, you know! Intravenous! And I am sure she thought, is this a doctor? Actually the word is almost the same in Spanish, that is, intravenosa. The other one was MI that stands for myocardial infarction and to me represented mitral insufficiency. Two years later when I took the Medical Board Examinations, which I passed with flying colors, I misspelled many words and left blank words that at the time wouldn’t come to my mind, like jeopardize, used with frequency in medicine.
The City of Santa Monica at the time was small and the tempo relaxed and easy. I could cross Wilshire Blvd. in mid block with only a glance both ways. The hospital was very friendly and treated the doctors with respect, from the administration to the nurses and down to the help. The nurses always wore a cap, which fascinated me because they were all very different, according to the graduating school. I am sorry now that I didn’t start a collection of them. The carpenter, on his very late fifties, was my buddy and always eager to make something for me. I spent hours at his shop and he had a fascination with and exaggerated my sexual life.
My pronunciation for sheet was, and still is, very bad, sounding more like a four-letter word with a similar sound. The nurses loved to gather and then, showing me a piece of paper, say how do you call this Dr Morales? My stipend was 25 dollars every two weeks with room and board and I worked 36 hours with 12 hours off and it didn’t take very long to save some money and I went to Campbell’s Men’s Store and bought myself a real nice suit and a pair of shoes. On time off I would walk downtown and even ventured to Ocean Park and watch the sailors dance the jitterbug on the ballroom.
There were always two interns from The California Hospital in Los Angeles that spent time at our hospital for duty on the emergency room. The first ones were: Larry Hogan from Wisconsin, who was a very good doctor and as good a person. He had never met anybody from Cuba and was fascinated with me. I taught him to read Spanish, so I could understand him, even though he didn’t know what he was reading. I am very sorry that I didn’t keep in touch with him after he left because he was a very, very nice guy. The other was John Wigton, who remained here and practiced until very recently. The other one was Bob Wylie from Minnesota, but he requires three or more paragraphs. The resident and chief, was a West Virginian that spoke with his teeth together and he will be in the story of my life many times.
Almost half way down in my internship my quarters were changed to a very California housing style of the time that consisted of a central open corridor with units on each side. This one had eight and it was situated behind the hospital, across the alley and facing 15th St. My unit consisted of a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. I was king, man! There was a very pretty, red haired head nurse on the second floor by the name of Mrs. Rainbow. She was married and the husband was overseas and when she said that she was half Cherokee, my mouth must have fallen open. I remember the Cherokees from the American Cowboy movies that I saw in Cuba. She liked me and I invited her to my newly acquired kingdom after work the next night. Wanting to do it well I made a mistake and told Dr. Ballard and his answer was “you have to licqour her”. I went to a licqour store on Wilshire Blvd. and bought a bottle of bourbon and some seven up and waited for the hour of past eleven. While waiting I tried some and as soon as she came in I served both of us some of that fabulous libation. Well, I guess that I was not used to drinking and the next thing I knew it was early morning and I was on my bed, alone, and without shoes. For three weeks at least I tried not to set foot on 2nd center. If I was in 2nd N. and had to go to 2nd S. I would take the stairs up or down and avoid that station. Later on when the irremediable happened and I had to face her, she had a very sweet and understanding smile on her face.
The head of housekeeping was a very pleasant and funny middle age lady with the very Irish name of Sarah McLaughlin. She was on charge of the doctor’s quarters and knew all that was going on. She loved gossip and everybody liked her. I liked her very much. The head nurse in surgery was Agnes Oberg, who after being substituted by Mrs Jesket, went on to organize the first outpatient surgery on the West Side at 2200 S.M. Blvd. She was austere and over efficient and eventually came back to the hospital as a regular surgical nurse. Her assistant was a very sweet and attractive young nurse by the name of Lolly. I remember spending the waiting hours with the nurses testing and sterilizing the gloves before the disposables ones came. The head nurse in pediatrics was. Her name was Miss Larsen and she was the sweetest person that anybody can imagine, with a very distinct Danish accent. Other nurses very clear on my mind were: Helen Snyder, head of admissions; Miss Bennett, evening supervisor, very short and with a pointed cap; Miss Clark, small too, very dependable and whom I never saw smile. I remember she liked a general practice surgeon by the name of Carl Williams. And last but not least was “Cheesy”, a nickname that she got from her last name, Chessman. She was then middle age, had never been married and was a surgical nurse although she never scrubbed. I always got the impression that she regretted her wasted youth, but without bitterness and she enjoyed to know the life of the young. She most certainly enjoyed the occasional mixed parties (nurses and interns) where the alcohol liberated all from the inhibitions of our society.
When I arrived at the hospital three quarters of the doctors were Seventh Day Adventists’ just as today they are Jews. Carl Williams was one of them. But Carl liked to drink and sometimes he misbehaved; like the time that he barricaded himself on his house on Moreno St. but it were different times and although the police came, nothing happened. Today, Carl would have been a dead cat. There were then, many colorful characters like Adolph Kosky and his poor handling of booze. And Dr Carl Lewis, O.B & Gyn, the sweetest man on earth and who had terrible bad luck with two wives. One threw the furniture from his top floor office on the Bay’s Building, out the window. At the end of the surgical procedure he always thanked every one of the attending personnel by name and the expression: “much obliged”. I ha the good fortune to meet the founder of the hospital, W. S. Mortensen, who at that time was confined to a wheel chair and was brought to the O.R. on it. It reminded me of Dr Gillespie, played by Lionel Barrymore in the movies about Dr Kildare. His son Dr. Bill was away in the service and the other one, Elmer was a dedicated G.P. and quite busy, very nice and rather heavy in weight. Being an Adventist he was not allowed to eat meat but I remember seeing him in his car parked in front of the hospital devouring a couple of hamburger that he, undoubtedly, had bought at a locally famous joint on Wilshire Blvd called Wimpys’. They all seemed to me to be friendly and respectful with each other. It did impress me so much, that when I went home I said to my dad, who was a physician: “you know dad, all the doctors get along very well there” He looked at me with disbelieve and said, really? Time eventually taught me the reality of medical life,
Bill Ballard was a big cheese in the hospital, had good connections with the staff and did remunerative favors to them. I assisted in surgery when nobody was available and sometimes the surgeon would put a twenty-dollar bill in the waist of my scrub suit. Dr. Bradbury always did it and Dr B. Pearson very often. Ballard had a friend by the name of Al Beal, who was a very talented piano player with lots of connections in the entertainment world and was always hanging around the hospital, sometimes impersonating a doctor. He was Jewish with a very marked New York accent. One night Ballard took me to the Hollywood Bowl and in the way back we stopped at a piano bar at Pico Blvd and La Cienaga Blvd. We had been there a few minutes when all of a sudden somebody came and said to Al Beal that Bing Crosby was having a party and wanted him to come and play the piano. Well, that was like a bomb had fallen, every body wanted to go except I, because it was late and I had to scrub in surgery early in the morning. Besides, Crosby was never very popular in the Spanish speaking world. Al Beal had a date with a very good looking girl but didn’t want to take her because she was very drunk.
When I asked who was going to take me home, Al Beal threw me the keys and said, here are the keys to my car, take her home, and they all left like bats out of hell. Crying, the girl got in the car, and right away I knew that I had to drive, even if I have never driven before. I drove north on La Cienaga and turned left, that is, west, on Santa Monica Blvd, when all of a sudden I saw the red light of a police car behind. I asked the girl, who was slumped and out of it, if she had a driver license. When she said yes, I pushed her to the driver side and realized that it was worst. I pushed her back to the passenger side and by this time the police car is by my side and with the windows down shouting at me, hey, what about your headlights. All along this, both cars are moving, as I really didn’t know how to stop the darn car, and I am looking for the light switch. What’s the matter, he shouted again; don’t you know where the light-switch is in your own car? By this time I pulled something, the lights went on and I proceeded on my merry own way. Unbelievable, but the honest true without exaggeration and the story doesn’t end here.
The girl was very unhappy about having been dumped, but she quieted down and told me that she lived by MGM studios in Culver City. Pretty soon I began to feel different about her, for she was rather attractive and with that on mind I drove to Santa Monica beach. Her breath was so strong of alcohol that I changed my mind and decided to take her home. I was driving east on Venice Blvd and told her to watch for the street where she lived and to let me know when we were coming to it. All of a sudden she said: “this one”, I made a right turn and I guess that because I was going faster than I thought, I missed the street and went instead in a corner lot, sideswiped a pole and came to a stop. While assessing what had happened and that we were all right, I noticed a red light on the dashboard that wasn’t there before, and thought that it was a warning light, maybe the car was going to go on fire. We got out of the car, ran to a prudent distance and watched for something to happen. Two adults in such a ridicule situation! It must have been very funny. It was well past midnite when I let her off at her house.
As long as I had a car and there wasn’t a soul on the streets, I decided that I would practice my driving, and I did it until 7.00 a.m., at which time, I parked the car on the alley, scrubbed in surgery and went to bed at around noon. I was awakened by Al Beal asking me if I had stripped the gears. I had never heard that word before but knew what he meant, said no, and went back to sleep. And that is how Fernando learned to drive at age 24 in the good old U.S.A. I guess the insurance paid for the wrecked fender. When I told the story to Marilyn parents and friends, they tore the stitches laughing. It has been a classic to tell it to many friends.
While on Al Beal, let me say that he was a very mischievous person with dishonest intentions. He charmed and got pregnant an heiress to the Sunkist family and entered her in the Miss America Beauty Pageant with the intention of blackmailing them because she was pregnant. She didn’t win and went on to have the baby. The day of the birth he came to the hospital, I was on duty but insisted that I get in his car to accompany him because he is going to brake the news to Rose Davis, Marion’s sister, that was living at the time at Marion’s beach house. He takes me by the wrist and barges into the house. We come into a huge living room with a huge couch in front of a huge fireplace. All of a sudden two upper naked bodies popped up from behind the couch and without a word he keeps on going opening doors until he comes to a very large bedroom with a very large bed where Rose lays with a man on each side. They are under the covers but the torsos are naked and Rose has some kind of very sheer lingerie. By the side of the bed there is a very large silver dish with fruits and liquor. He introduces me with a big deal about me being a famous doctor from Cuba and that I was the one that attended on the delivery.
Can you imagine a very innocent, 24 years old Cuban in this situation? I couldn’t believe it, but I was not going to miss a thing. They talked and talked and all I wanted was to get back to the hospital. My English wasn’t that good but I could understand fairly well. They started talking about a man, whose name I don’t recall and Al Beal says, yes I saw him the other day and one of the men in the bed said, was he wearing a ring so and so? And when Al said yes, the man responded, that sob, that was the ring that so and so (can’t remember the name) was wearing when they found him dead. In later years I found out that Rose had a lover, who owned such ring and who was demanding large amount of money from Rose, Marion’s sister and consequently touching on Mr. Randolph S. Hearst, who presumably order the owner of the rings’ dismissal. Good enough for a movie, eh!
About three months after my arrival, Dr Robert (Bob) Wylie came to spend his time at Santa Monica Hospital. He was very handsome, with an interesting scar on his cheek, with nice manners and you could see right away lots of money. He owned a powder blue Lincoln Continental Convertible and took me for a ride, with the top down, on the Arroyo Seco Parkway with almost zero traffic and the air crisp and clear. On arrival at Pasadena you could almost touch the San Gabriels and smell the orange blossoms. He was spoiled and I couldn’t believe that even while on duty he wouldn’t answer the telephone. Medicine to him was like a prize achieved or a notch on the rifle. We became good friends and he took me for what I was. We went to good restaurants and nightclubs and he paid. That way I went often to Trocadero, where later on I went alone because I had met people. His father was from Minnesota, on the automobile transportation business and moved to Los Angeles. First they lived in what was then very fashionable the La Brea and Beverly Blvd. compound. Later they bought the house that had belonged to Jean Harlow on Beverly Glenn close to Sunset.
I couldn’t imagine Bob practicing medicine, although he was very intelligent and new medicine very well. While at The California Hospital he met a very sharp laboratory tech., who needed money to start a blood bank. They named it California Transfusion Service and did extremely well until the Red Cross took over the business in the whole state. For a while after I married we continued our friendship. We visited with his parents, Elmer and Ruth and had many mutual friends, Bill and Dotty Ballard, John and Alice Burke, (he ran the blood bank and she was the nurse). John and Alice married and we continued to be good friends. He died over a year ago in Orange County.
Bob was very strange on his relationship with girls. He met and dated for a long time a beautiful model by the name of June. One day I heard that they had got married and soon after, we ran into them at a party. I was kidding her about the honeymoon when she revealed to me the strange wedding. It seems that after a very intimate ceremony (we were not invited) downtown Los Angeles, his car started to exhaust a very black smoke, that sounded to me like oil on the gas tank. They took a taxi to his parent’s house to wait for the car to be fixed. June was a very candid and innocent person and when I asked her where and when it happened, she responded: “never”. She continued: “he went down to the shop and stayed there until the car was delivered around midnight” Well, I said, and then what. ”We drove to Palm Springs and checked in a very nice two level motel. I went upstairs, put on my nightie and waited until I fell asleep. He had fallen asleep downstairs on a couch”, she said to me very matter of factly. After that, they came back to live at his parent’s house. She would go to bed, he would go down to his shop and when she was getting up he was coming to bed. I couldn’t believe it! But neither was I surprised, although, never did I hear of any impropriety and for sure, never with me.
They divorced amicably and I never saw Bob again until shortly before he died from kidney failure due to bad reaction to some medicine abuse, I was told. He is another one high in my memory list. Not too long ago we saw June’s name in the newspaper; we found her phone number and called her. She came to our house for dinner, she looked great and we had a very nice visit. I did know that shortly after he divorced June, he had married a Chinese lady and they had a boy. This divorce apparently was not very friendly and there were doubts that the child was his.
I was befriended by several doctors in the staff, Dr Jack Rooney, who later on would become close friend and neighbor, and Dr Bernard Pearson who eventually was my best man at my wedding. The first personality I met was the daughter of Joe Brown, who had been in an auto accident and had a temporary facial paralysis. The father came to see her often. The second was Dick Powell, whose diagnosis I never knew but I had to start I.V. on his arm. He was a sissy. The son of Charlie Chan on the movies was a patient of Dr. Pearson and he invited me to a party at his house in Bel Air, I believe. There I met Sonny Tuffs and Cesar Romero, with whom I had a long conversation, as he was the son of an illegitimate son of Jose Martí, the Cuban Apostle of Liberty. He was very handsome and with a very slight accent. Later on I met Olguita San Juan, Puerto Rican and very popular on the American movies.
One evening I came in the lab looking for some test result. When the girl leaning over the microscope looked up to me, I liked her eyes instantly and to make conversation I asked he where she was from. When she said to me that she was born in Santa Monica, I couldn’t believe it. Everybody in those days came from some place else, like Iowa, Nebraska, Montana, etc. I went by the lab. Repeatedly but didn’t have the courage and the money to ask her out. I heard that they would give you $25.00 for a pint of blood and the next day I went to the blood bank to get my badly needed money. And who happened to draw my blood but the girl from the laboratory, “Marilyn Marshall” that was to be my wife for fifty-one years and still counting. We went out that night to a very popular nightspot on Hollywood Blvd, and spent all of my bleeding money. That was the end of 1945 and we had a long courtship, on and off for almost four years. I loved her but at the same time hated to give up my freedom for I was having a very good time.
Towards the end of my internship I had decided that I wanted to go into surgery and applied for a residency to various hospitals. The war was still going and I was accepted to the cream of the crop like San Francisco General and even Mayo’s but with the condition that I was to return to Cuba at the completion of the residency. The war ended and all the residencies were cancelled to give priority to the veterans returning which it was very understandable to me. With no place to go I went to the General Manager of the Lutheran Society, Mr. Ritz E. Hermann, a cigar chomping, testy kind of man. With nothing open, he suggested to me to take, maybe temporally, an anesthesia residency that was available at the time. That way, he claimed I would be close to the surgery scene. I moved to the California Hospital and started my residency in the beginning of the year. The head of the department was Dr. Braun. I applied to the American Board of Anesthesiology and was informed to let them know when I finished the residency. At the same time I applied for the revalidation of my medical diploma with the California Board of Medical Examiners. For that purpose I was studying very hard, mostly the language part, because the exams were tentatively set for the following year. I got disconnected with the SMH, but Marilyn, who had a car, drove Olympic Blvd and came to see me at least twice a week.
I was dating, and soon to be seduced by the oldest of four daughters of a female intern doctor, and who was a x-ray tech. at the hospital. My salary was still very poor ($200 a month plus room and board). One evening she invited me for dinner to a very popular chicken restaurant in Pasadena. On the way back she said that she wanted to show me her bedroom on her house, which she had recently redecorated, and I fell for it. The room had a private entrance but it could be accessed from the house. At that age things move very fast under the direction of the hormones, and soon we were in bed, but I was very concerned with the younger sisters that were in the house. She kept saying to me that they wouldn’t dare to come in her room when all of a sudden I heard some voices and the turning of a door- knob. She went into the closet and I rolled over to the side of the bed opposite the door with the same clothes I had when I was born. It was her mother showing a friend, who I knew too, the bedroom. I heard the click of the light switch and her exclaiming Oh my God! She saw the messed up bed and my feet that were protruding at the foot of the bed and, naturally, thought that something had happened to her daughter. I guessed that all feet, really, look the same. The bed was to low and all that I could do was to pull the sheets over, of all things, MY FACE! Another embarrassment of the youth! As I was putting on my clothes she said to me: are you leaving? And to that I said, I sure am. I guess that was not savoir-affaire
My hitch at The California Hospital was a tremendous change. The hospital and the staff was much larger with the consequent impersonality but it was downtown L. A. and a lot of things were accessible. I remember the downtown streetcars and specially the red car that I took to Santa Monica. Besides, the hospital had a large and excellent nursing school and I felt like a fox in chicken coop. The rules were very strict but the housemother liked me, and I could get away with little infractions. Because of my sister bragging about my unique situation in “Sunny California” I had the unexpected and undesirable visit of Dr. Luis Duthil who was working in “Cold New York City”, and wanted to live here. I knew him and his family, who were old friends from San Luís; and although he was entertaining and funny at times, he was very selfish, vane, rude and plain embarrassing at times. He would tell jokes in Spanish in the presence of people and then laugh. Marilyn and I continued to be friends with him for many years afterwards, with very sad experiences. I had obtained an extension on my visa and applied for permanent residency, for which it was required for me to leave and reentry this country. I flew to Cuba at Christmas time, visit with my parents and had a very sad farewell encounter with Silvia in Havana. The ending of our relationship had been initiated six or nine months after my arrival the U.S.
So far, it seems that women had appeared a lot in my life and the reason is simple, all my life I had liked women, and women had liked me. I always treated them with genuine love and respect. I never thought of any woman in my life as a conquest, a trophy or as a notch on the butt of a gun. I married the one I loved the most and the best, and that is the reason we have been married over fifty years. I remember that the bets on the lasting of our marriage were very dim, as low as one year. Amazing what love and respect for each other can do!
While divagating from the main subject and because of the fervent publicity about poor child Evian Gonzalez I want to interject my opinion. First of all, the child belongs with his father, no matter where he lives and no matter how poor he may be. Should the child of a man living in Watts live instead with a rich great aunt in San Francisco, or should the child of an ignorant man in the Andes go to live with a distant relative in Lima because he is a professor at the University? NOO! When the child was rescued, he should have been placed under the care of a neutral establishment or guardian and the decision should have been done quickly. This would have been easier on the child and with less political and media involvement
The Cubans were fighting for independence many years before the flamboyant Teddy Roosevelt landed in San Juan Hill, nevertheless not one Cuban sat at the treaty ending the war and giving Cuba limited sovereignty. With the exception of the first president Tomás Estrada Palma, from Menocal to Prío Socarráz, all had been dishonest and corrupt most of the time. I remember the presidency and dictatorship of Machado and the disappointment of Grau San Martín and Prío. The coming of Castro was inevitable and it is too bad that he went totalitarian and comunist. He could have been the Tito of Cuba
On the other hand, the U.S. can not let go of Cuba and the Cubans can not let go of the U.S. In the late part of the 19th century the U.S. tried to buy Cuba from Spain, which, of course was not accepted. The U.S. has intervened in Cuba by occupation twice and diplomatically many times. Other sore points on U.S. relations are: Dr. Carlos Finlay, a Cuban scientist was the first man to expose the relationship between the mosquito and the transmission of Yellow Fever. Although he was present during the experiments by Walter Reed he was never given proper credit. During the 30s, 40s, and 50s Cuba had five professional baseball teams of quality to play any U.S. team. As a matter of fact, when a World Champion team went to Havana for an exhibition game and was soundly defeated, it was prohibited for any U.S. team to go to Cuba after that. The Cubans wanted to be integrated in the American league like Canada is today. The Cubans resented the World Champion Title.
During the Cold War the U.S. exploited the exodus of Cubans as propaganda to the world against communism and treated them explendidly. More Mexicans than Cubans have fled and have died fleeing their country and we do not treat them nearly as well, even though, at least here in California, they do the work on the fields, build our houses, attend our restaurants, cut our lawns, take care of the working mothers’ children, etc. I do not believe that the way to bring down a regime is by starving and isolating the people. It is time to end the infamous embargo, open doors and see what happens. Does it make sense that the Cubans in Miami want the embargo but send lots of dollars to relatives in Cuba? If they are an exiled community as they say and act, they should be organized and have at least a leader that would be prepared and have some plan in case that Castro would fall. I am an American and love this country, but I feel very deeply for Cuba and wish that before I die I could see a truly and democratic Cuba and shout again Viva Cuba Libre! Havana, as I remember, was a very cultural city, with an excellent Philharmonic Orquestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandi. It had also an excellent school of Ballet with the eternal and world-renowned Alicia Alonso. The intellectuality was thick with at least five major newspapers: Diario de la Marina, El ABC, El País, and El Excelsior. Enough of this; and back to my memories.
In the middle of 1947, six months short of finishing my residency in Anesthesiology it presented to me the opportunity to return to Santa Monica Hospital as in house anesthesiologist. Dr. Spitz, who was holding the position, was quitting and I was to take his place with credit towards my residency training. That meant a lot more money. I would be in my own and split the anesthesia charges with the hospital. Strange it was that the contract called for fifty-fifty up to a certain amount and then the percentage decreased on my side. It looked as if they didn’t want for me to make too much. The only two other anesthesiologists were Dr. Sensiba and Dr Grimm. I lived at the hospital for a while and was on call 24 hours a day and seven days a week. The response from the surgeons was unbelievable and I got very, very busy. Dr. Sensiba was the first fully dedicated anesthesiologist. Dr Grimm, trained at the University of Minnesota was the first Board Certified, came later, around 1942. Many GP’s gave anesthesia on spare time but that gradually disappeared. Dr. Seth Sensiba was a very small man with a little moustache and very strange ideas and opinions. He was married to a very pleasant and patient lady by the name of Pat.
Dr. Sensiba’s fogetfulness was notorious. One time on a trip they stopped at a gas station. She must have gone to the ladies room and he got in the car and drove away. Many miles later he found out that she was not in the car when he got no response at his inquiring about the window being down. The road patrol was already looking for him. One time, at the hospital’s parking lot he couldn’t find his car and I drove him around and around the streets by the hospital and finally I took him home. He told Pat what happened and Pat said: Seth, your car is being serviced and I drove you this morning. He claimed that he was allergic to dust and made him so weak that he couldn’t move. He was admitted once to the Mayo Clinic and he said that the specialist came to the room, grabbed his head and threw it against the pillow and exclaimed: “you are just a malingerer”. That made me so mad that I had a rush of adrenaline and I felt a lot better right away. Because of that, he moved to Santa Monica, close to the pure air of the sea and while he was recovering, Pat would put him in the backyard with a rope around his waist and when he had tired, he rang a bell and Pat would pull him into the house. It was hard to believe that he had gone through Medical School.
The hospital collected the fees that I suggested and wrote me a check for my share every two weeks. The fees were ridiculously low, like $7.50 for T&A, to $35.00 for a gastric resection. I did lots of hysterectomies for $22.50.This type of arrangement was frowned upon by the anesthesia societies and under their pressure, the hospital terminated the system. That meant that I could keep it all and work harder, but it also meant that I had to live out of the hospital. This was 1948, I had my license in California and I was an American Citizen. Dr. Bernard Pearson found a duplex apartment above the owners, his patients, Mr. & Mrs. Walker, on 843 6th St. in Santa Monica. He also gave me a grown Keeshound and with a latest model Ford convertible that I owned I was in cloud nine, a real kingfisher. Adding to this, one evening I was summoned to the emergency room to see a patient with a very rapid pulse. They had tried every medication and asked me for advice. Not knowing what else to give neither, I remember a maneuver from medical school that pressing on the eye- balls increased the vagal tone and slowed the pulse rate. I took my middle and forefinger and press on this man eyeballs. Like a miracle his heartbeat went to normal and everyone was impressed, including the patient, who happened to be the manager of Don The Beachcomber in Hollywood. From that day on and for a long time I didn’t pay for a drink at the establishment. That solved my problem when I had dates.
On December of 1948 I drove cross-country to Miami and on to Cuba to visit my family, but not without a lot of mishaps, which are always fun to talk about after we survive them. I was very popular at the hospital, had lot of friends, some of them Cubans, and that is how Marilyn learned the Spanish language and to understand the Cubans. Destiny had it that Marilyn lived with her parents on Montana Ave. less than a block from my place and had me often for dinner. That exposed me to very different customs like the first time I had dinner and her father got up from the table and went into the kitchen to help with the dishes. Their friends’and they had many, liked to hear my crazy stories and the mistakes that I made with the language. One night when her folks were out of town, Marilyn cooked a crazy spaghetti casserole for the interns and their wives. It was a complete success; they ate as if it was their last meal on earth and in later years became the favorite with our grand-children
The apartments still exist today almost intact, except that more apartments were built in the back by the alley. It must have had no more than five hundred square feet. It had a large living room in the front with a large picture window, a small crazy closet in a corner and a phony fireplace. In the other front corner there was a small dining room with a swinging-door that led into a small kitchen with a small service-porch. The fourth corner was the bedroom with two windows and a tiny bathroom. It had lots of windows, very sunny and happy.
By now it was 1949, I was turning thirty, starting a family crept into my mind and so one day in April it happened. Marilyn and I were having lunch at a small restaurant located in Sepulveda Blvd. and Bellagio Rd., and we decided to get married. She proposed some day in early May and because I had still some doubts and not knowing how to delay it, I said that I wanted to be a “June groom” to which she responded what about the first of June; and so it was. We had a family wedding with Dr. Benard Pearson being my Best Man. We left in a cross- country honeymoon with Las Vegas in mind for the first night and it just hadn’t occurred to me to make reservations, specially being the Memorial Day weekend. The lobby was packed and when I asked the clerk for a king size he responded that all they had available was one room with twins. Because Marilyn had told me that she wanted to stay at the RanchoVegas that was made of small individual bungalows, I turned around and asked her if it was O.K. She demurely lower her eyes and nodded. We had the uniform of the newly weds: she a corsage, I a flower on my lapel and rice all over the car. The bellboy that drove us to the bungalow asked me to remain in the car. He left the door open, picked up the phone and asked for the front desk. Next I heard him say, hey you knucklehead, don’t you know this couple are newlyweds! I had never heard that word before but instantly knew what it meant. I never forgot it and used it many times He returned to the car and said, sorry, this is all they have. We accommodated very well in one twin and I think that one twin should be standard for the first and maybe second nite. The rest is waste.
The honeymoon was very sweet and besides we had a great time touring the country. For some reason it stands out in my mind, The Great Salt Lake, the Ohio river and valley, Washington D.C. and of course The Big Apple. On our return Marilyn hurried home to get some pointers from her mom and that night she fixed a great dinner. I was reading in the living room when she came and announced that dinner was ready. She had a beautiful table setting with candles and all. We sat down but she had forgotten the biscuits, very popular in those days. The swinging door was closed and when she returned, I would never forget it, she looked at me and said: “Oh! You are finished already! I felt so terribly ashamed! But I had a second helping with her. In those days eating out was not the in thing. Santa Monica had practically one family restaurant, Bess Eilers. For a good dinner we had to go to restaurant row at La Cienaga Blvd. or for a chicken dinner to the Tropical Inn on Washington Blvd.
I was very busy with a great clientele of surgeons but we both felt that it would be a great promotion for my work to have a cocktail party. We made out a list but it was so large that we decided to split it in half and have two parties. One from A to L and another for from M to Z. I do not remember if we held them on two consecutive Saturdays or on Saturday and Sunday. The parties were a real success. I bought a case of scotch, Bat 69, some bourbon and a few appetizers. I don’t remember having a bartender. It was so crowded that guests had to ask permission to other guests socializing in the tiny bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub and on the seat of the toilette. It was really funny but it was done with a warmth and sincerity that made us receptive of many social invitations afterwards. Because the lack of other amenities (TV, sport events, travel. etc.) social events and dinner parties were very common in those days
The surgery suite at that time consisted of two major and two minor operating rooms. We started at 7:30 AM, and were finished by 1:00 or 2:00 PM. There was a small regular hospital room that had been converted in a sort dressing-room with a very small bed, practically a cot, for resting. One morning I was lying on the cot between cases, when in barges this handsome, undoubtedly Latin young man, on a medical gown, acting as if he owned the whole place. It took but a few minutes to meet him and become fast and enduring friends. He was Dr. Rafael Rodriguez that was spending some time here from the California Hospital. This friendship became to be the source of the most exciting, wonderful, bizarre and unforgettable experiences in Marilyn’s and my life. That would require many more paragraphs. No! Pages!
About this time the urge to build was beginning on me. While we were living in the small upper duplex, I built two window boxes that I planted with geraniums. Next, I built a barbecue in the backyard, with the permission, of course of the Walkers. They never said no to anything that I asked them. I made a little sketch on a piece of paper, figured roughly what I needed and proceeded with it. I had a two door Mercury car, of which I was very proud of; and with it; I went to Higgins brickyard on Olympic and Cloverfield Blvd. I asked the man in charge that I wanted one hundred bricks and to put them in the trunk of the car. I went into the office for other materials and information, when the man comes into the office and said: you are all loaded. I said, now I want two sacks of sand and one sack of cement. He looked at me and said, have you looked at your car? I went outside and by golly the rear was almost on the ground and the hood up in the air. I drove to the alley behind and one by one I placed the bricks inside and went back for the sand and cement. The next day, very eagerly I commenced my construction. I mixed the sand and cement with water in an old metal washing receptacle, over two feet in diameter. All of a sudden I got a call from the hospital for an emergency procedure. I went upstairs right away, to change, and as I am leaving, Marilyn said, Fernando, what are you going to do with the cement, to which I responded, don’t worry I just put some extra water. The procedure took much longer than I had anticipated and when I returned, the mix with the shovel in it was as hard as a rock. I had a hell of a time to put it on the alley for the trash collector.
I did finish the barbecue and it turned out great. It was about thirty inches high with a cooking area approximately 24 by 18 inches that went conically down to a very much smaller area for the fire and consequently saving on brikets. I was very excited to try it and for that porpoise we invited Marilyn’s father and mother. I was not an experienced cook and much less fire starter. The barbecue was under a beautiful jacaranda tree. I guess I put too much starting fluid and when I lit it, it went into an enormous flame that burned the tree and left it without leaves for a couple of years. But it worked well; we had a good dinner and used it a great deal afterwards. The Walkers didn’t care and just laughed about the whole thing.
By now it was 1951, I was making pretty good money, Marilyn was working and we had some money in the bank without any debts. First we thought of buying a duplex, similar to the one we lived in and to that effect we put our name with a neighbor realtor, Mr.Varney, for something special that may come in the market. And hold and behold, the next day he had a bunch of them for us but we didn’t like any of them and changed our plans for a house instead. We looked at several of them in the area north of Montana and east of 14th, with the same results. And one rainy day that I will never forget, we ventured, in our search, in the Huntington Palisades, and right on Corona del Mar we saw the house of our dreams. It was a spec. house priced above our limit. We liked it so much that we kept on coming to see it and one day the builder Mr. Gailbraith (“Gil”) happened to be there working on some final touches. I approached him with a ridicule offer that of course he refused but he said to me: if you find yourself a lot. I’ll build you the same house for a lot less.
There were many available lots but we had to consider the minimum square footage that was required in those days. Today the problem is the maximum square footage! We liked the lot on C.del M. across from the park (only $10,000 then) but we had to settle for the one behind it on Altata because of the lower square foot requirement. We paid $8,000 for the land and the house came to a little over $28,000, with a 5% loan. We were so, so lucky. First of all, Gil turned out to be a very honest man and finished the house on time and right to the dollar of the original estimate. It turned out to be a lot of fun to work with him. After the final inspection, we moved in, on December of 1952, and we never saw him again or heard from him again. I have regretted that very much because he played a very big part in my life. I recognize today how wise his advises and decisions were, besides his honesty and integrity. Sometimes I would try to cut on expenses cutting corners and he would say to me: “I don’t build dingbats”.
The matter of the low interest loan is worth some explanation. I was just beginning to practice anesthesiology at The Santa Monica Hospital when they called me to take care of a gentleman with a barbiturate overdose (accidental?). He pulled through with large doses of Picrotoxin, and when I went to see him on his room the next day, he thanked me profusely and told me that if I ever needed a loan, to go and see him. He owned a Savings & Loan Bank in Westwood. The last name was Dixon and had two sons that practically ran the bank. I did not see the father, but the sons remembered me and I never had to explain my finances, I got the 5% loan. Some years later, when I cashed some investment and went to pay off the loan the boys tried to dissuade me from doing it because I could put that money in another secure investment at 8 to 10% return.
The possession of the house was all I needed to get me started with the obsession of building things. Besides hanging light fixtures, cabinet handles, towel racks, etc. I contracted for the installation of a chain-link fence around the side and back of the house. Because I didn’t like the looks of it, I faced it with redwood grape stakes and planted the Eugenia hedge on the east side of the house with the help of my gardener Victor Espinosa. He would come with his father in law, Señor Rosas, and for the fun of it, without any remuneration, help me plant the lawn and flowerbeds. He loved to work with cement and together we mixed many wheelbarrows of concrete to make the walks around the house. From the yellow pages I found a UCLA student by the name of James O’Leary to build the concrete blocks retaining wall to hold the bank that later on I planted with white ivy geraniums.
Marilyn had quit working and she was doing the anesthesia billing, rather simple in those days: we billed the patient the patient paid and if necessary he would turn the bill over to the insurer for reimbursement. So I decided to build a huge desk with drawers and shelves in the play-room. I bought the best and most versatile tool I ever had. It was called a Shop Smith that served as table saw, wood-lathe, drill press, etc. I built the whole thing in section in the garage and assembled later on place from floor to ceiling. At the same time I built a very large wood valance over the play-room window. No sooner had I finish that I built the white railing fence in the front and side of the house, almost two hundred feet in total. All this built in the garage!
Our two daughters were born and with the happiness of the event I threw myself with enthusiasm to photograph them and make enlargements, croppings and the Christmas cards with our daughters as the subjects, for many, many years. I took photography very seriously for a while and spent many long hours in the dark-room that I built in a hall closet of the house. I took classes, joined societies and participated in exhibitions in the American Medical Association. Today it is all in a closet full of junk! All I have kept is enlargements and small prints of candid shots I took at the hospital, especially in surgery, with the available light. They were made with a very old camera, a Bolsey, American made, hand-winded and with a very inaudible shutter. I kept it in my gas machine waiting for the occasion.
Next we built the maid’s room to accommodate Vicenta to take care of our daughters and whom we have met on our second trip to Spain while she worked for my brother Juan Antonio. A contractor, friend and neighbor of Burton and Kit Smith built it and I finished the interior: bathroom pullman, tiling, closet, paint and wallpaper. She lasted only about a year but the room has accommodated my nephew Ignacio, then my mother and finally many friends among them Dotty Davenport, the Burgers and many others. That construction inspired me, some years later, to build my workshop. That, I did from scratch. Drew it on cuadriculated paper, brought the lumber and supplies in the then popular station-wagon, framed it, hung the windows, installed the acoustic tile ceiling, wired it, dry-walled it and built the workbench and shelves. The slab was poured by my friend O”Leary, someone did the stucco and had the roof done because people scared me on my plans to do it my self. I have spent twice as much time in that room than in all the rest of the house. Not only did I built furniture but for a long period of time I was dedicated to the model building hobby.
I started with radio controlled boats that we ran at the lagoon on Playa del Rey on the south side of Ballona Creek. Gradually my interest shifted to power planes that we flew at the Sepulveda Flood Control Area and later on, finally, I went into Model gliding. This hobby lasted for a period of at least ten years. So intense was my interest and dedication that I spent hours in the construction and “play” with them. I am sure that I will return, unintentionally, to this subject.
As a respite on the monotony and boredom of the building subject I want to mention a funny and quite interesting trip that I organized. During the late fifties, Marilyn and I became fanatics of bull-fighting, called “corridas” in Spanish. We drove to them with friends (the Rodriguezes, the Millers, De Paulo, etc.) to Tijuana, for the weekend and sometimes even for the day. Those were unforgettable days. The people at the hospital kept asking me when I was going to take them to a bullfight. No way, I said to myself, that I am going to take somebody that has not “la afición” (dedication) and hear the criticism on defense of the bull. Finally, I decided to rent a bus and take them all to Tijuana. We left from the Medical Arts Building’s parking lot in Santa Monica and after multiple stops for emergency bladder relief (we had drinks in the bus), we arrived at Tijuana and went for lunch to “Mi Cabaña”, a very typical hatched-roof restaurant on the outskirts of Tijuana. From there we went to the”corrida” which must all enjoyed and then back in the bus for the return trip. After stopping for dinner at Corona del Mar, we arrived in Santa Monica before midnight. Such was the success of the trip that by popular demand we repeated it with half of the participants from the trip before and half new additions, mostly from UCLA where the success of the trip, mysteriously, had permeated. We all had a great time in both trips. We talked, we laughed and as they say today, we bonded. Remember that we had no freeways in those days, so we went Sepulveda Blvd all the way, through Long Beach, Laguna, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Encinitas, etc.
On my building projects I usually get on sprees, that I call it jags. The first such jag occurred when I decided to install some shutters in a window. I would buy them wholesale and then cut them to size, hinge them and install them. Every window in our house today, with the exception of one in the service porch, has shutters. A total of eleven windows! I shop for clothes not even one day a month but hardware stores, lumber yards, etc. get my visit almost every day. In the fifties, Douglas Aircraft had a surplus store on Ocean Park Blvd. and I bought there all kind of things from used hand tools and screws to large pieces of aluminum and long pieces of light weight round aluminum tubing one and a half inches in diameter. We were planning on having a large party and as always it got too large and needed to cover the patio to accommodate all the guests. I called Abey’s Rent for the price on a tent. The rental was so exorbitant that I decided to do it myself with the surplus aluminum tubing. I made the structure and ordered a canvas to lace on it. For the sides I cut heavy plastic to fit, hemmed it, put small grommets and lace it too. Everybody liked it but I thought, during the party, about what a calamity it would have been if the tubing collapsed, with everybody under it.
After a few years one of the tubes collapsed from what they call metal fatigue and I redid it, but with extrusion steel tubing and I made all the joints in the metal lathe to fit much better. This time I made it larger, covering the whole patio, about fourteen by forty feet. The large magnolia tree where Candy, our wooly monkey, had had the time of her life, was removed. In the over forty years that has been in existence we have replaced the canvas cover three times and under it we have held many very successful parties and three weddings.
Candy was a great pet that I specially enjoyed very much because she kept me company while I was working on the yard or in my shop. She was a delight to watch. She was given to my daughter Marilyn by a neighbor of us on Corona del Mar, while my wife was visiting classmates at a reunion up in Oregon where she attended college. She returned, after three days, to find not only a monkey but a Honda motorcycle besides. She was sweet but could have a bad temper, like the time that she pulled a bunch of hair from the head of a neighbor boy of us, Ricky, in Lake Arrowhead, and Marilyn had to comb his hair very carefully so that the mother wouldn’t notice the bald spot on his head. You can get someone to care for your dog or your cat, but for a monkey! Forget it! So we decided to give her up and a relative of Marilyn recommended someone that was interested on animals. It broke my heart when I handed her to this man that came in a dilapidated wagon, showed no emotion for her and was more interested in collecting whatever belonged to her. She ate twice a day a large bowl of fresh fruit with some onion and marshmallows that she loved. She had a voracious appetite, chirping continuosly while eating. I doubted that this man would feed her that way. I was alone in the house and to this date I regret very much that I handed him my lovable Candy. I think about her quite often
Vicenta, as I said, turned out to be a witch. She wasn’t very kind to the children and very disrespectful to Marilyn. She suppousedly engaged in an affair with the gardener Victor, so I had to part ways with him, which meant that I assumed the responsibility to cut the grass and tend the garden. It is truly amazing what we can do when we are young and energetic.
Teri and Marilyn were about five or six when a big event came in our lives. Dr. Vicent DePaulo, Dr Reed Austin and I bought a beach house just south of Las Flores Canyon for the ridiculous price of $17,000. It was, apparently, moved from some other placed, probably from a freeway path. It still seats there practically unchanged and probably worth low, single digits millions. Cest l’vie.
At about this time, my mother, my sister Nena and her son Ignacio came to stay with us for a visit. My brother Juan Antonio was in New York for an exhibit and to paint the portrait of some very important people. He was the guest of Dr. Ramón Castroviejo a very well known Spanish ophthalmologist in those days, practicing in New York City. Upon completion of the paintings he and his wife, Elena, and their son, Ricardito, came as guest to our house for a family reunion. Well, I do not remember how we accommodated them all but I do remember that “my shop” was made into his studio. No one spoke English so it fell upon Marilyn to keep his appointments (he was painting portraits of a vast number of our friends and others, besides, an exhibit in our house), washed and curled their hairs, cooked all the meals and drove the kids to school and the adults to appointments. I had my daily duties at the hospital was on call 24 hours a day, and darned, missed all the fun of the circus.
This went on for close to three months, and without and end in sight. We felt that we were abandoning our daughters and felt impelled to offer, to my brother’s family, the beach house or at least rent an apartment nearby. I must say that he was busy, painting portraits and with many possible ones in the future. Of course that fell like a bomb, like if I was throwing them on the street. They were angered and left for Spain a few days later. It took some time for the hard feelings to mend. My mother and sister left shortly after with mixed feeling about the whole thing and Ignacio remained here with us because the incertitude of what was going to happen with the Castro situation. He stayed with us for four years until my mother and sister came to the United States. Ignacio went to live with his mother and my mother stayed with us.
After they all left and I repossessed my shop I went back to work on the beach house. Neither of the partners ever did a minute work during all this time, but what really made me mad was when I would go to work and find the place in disarray with dirty glasses and dishes and food left over the stove. Immediately I wanted out and we sold the house to the Lennon Sisters, who were part of a very large and enterpeneuring family, born and raised in Venice, Ca. and who were friends and patients of Dr DePaulo. We sold it for $26000 and that house todays is close to two million dollars if not more. I should have bought them out as I had the money, but honestly, it didn’t occurred to me
I did continue with my obsessive building and besides the maintenance of the house and my work at the hospital I built a brick walk on the side of the house and four brick areas on the parking strip among the ivy cover to facilitate access to the cars. I surfaced the west side with a dry mixture of sand and cement that was hardened with light water sprinkled over for a few days. And then I started with a hobby of radio controlled boats, made in those days from scratch. They were propelled with marine converted glow-plug engines. I built four of them. The first one a replica of a cabin cruiser, over four feet long that I named Cuba Libre and that I still keep in the garage. The next two were racing boats and the last one a cruiser that I built for Dr Rand’s boy and later repossessed bcacause they were not interested on it. We use to run them at a small body of water next to Ballona Creek. It was called the lagoon, surrounded with low rent houses. All of a sudden people discovered it and stated a boom construction and practically kicked us out. Today,it is a very desirable area, beautiful and peaceful. Here again, I should have bought property there. I thought about it but didn't see the future.
Then the interest switched to power airplanes. Hans Weiss owner of the best model shop in Santa Monica was my very good friend, mentor and supplier of plans and parts. When I started they were made from plans and balsa wood for the skeleton and then covered with either paper for the wing and silk for the fuselage covered with many layers of dope, them a base coat and finally the finish coat. It would take me, working three to four hour a day, almost two month to finish a plane. The radio system in those days was called “pulse” system. For instance, to move the rudder, one would have to flip on the rudder stick control as many times as the amount of throw desired on the rudder. By the time I have finished my first plane (over two months), a new system had come in the market, much easier, called proportional. It meant that if you wanted to turn the rudder a little, you moved the stick a little and if you wanted to turn the rudder a lot, you moved the stick a lot. This applied for each function and all the functions.
I ordered my first proportional from the best company and it was a ten channel system, which means that I could control five different functions: motor control, rudder, elevators, ailerons; and later we incorporated brakes. The plane was finished and the radio installed with great care. Early in the morning Hans and I went to the Sepulveda flood control area for the maiden flight. Hans was an expert and he flew the plane as I was a beginner and inexperienced. I will never forget how exciting it was to see that plane speed up on the runway and climb up. My eyes were fixed on the craft and thinking to get the transmitter on my hands when all of a sudden I see the plane doing erratic maneuvers and Hans saying to me: look Fernando!, no control!, and at the same time moving all the controls while the plane is heading straight to the ground. It crashed about five hundred feet from us, in the middle of a corn field. The only thing I could retrieve, all muddy, was the motor, the landing gear and the radio that was always packed with lots of styrofoam to avoid vibration and I guess for unfortunate cases like this. Can you imagine the sadness, after almost three months of labor? We came back to his store and as I came through the door his mother, who was German and helped at the store, looked at my face and said: “Kaput”? I had never heard the word before; but I understood. I left the store with another set of plans and a kit!.
I went through more than ten planes. I would rush home between surgical cases to build on the wing and the fuselage. I had great days at the Sepulveda grounds and met many people with the same hobby from all walks of life. From a multimillionaire (Bill Winnan) to a very poor guy (Bob something) who was on social welfare. I remember Bill, with the latest radio equipment coming to this poor guy, struggling with his old, hand- me down radio equipment, and saying to him, very seriously, you should have such and such equipment, like the one he had, of course. I remember the expression on this man’s face, but Bill, really didn’t mean bad. He was born with a gold spoon in his mouth and could not comprehend that anybody could not have the best. He came over to pick me up one time on his wife beautiful black Rolls Royce. Admiring the car I pointed to the white and red pin stripping on the side, and he very simply said: I wrote to the factory to order one the same my dad and the king had when we lived in Spain. His father had made a fortune in the Northern railroad business, was named Ambassador to Spain and he grew and played with the royal family. One day talking about brakes (I designed and made the brakes for my planes) I mentioned why the American manufacturers were so slow installing disc brakes on our cars and he responded: I have talked to Henry about that many times. It took me a long time time to realize that he was talking about Henry Ford II. They were very good friends. And the same thing happened with Ronnie this and Ronnie that. My God! It was Ronald Reagan. He really didn’t mean to brag or drop names. It just came natural to him. We became good friends, loved to speak Spanish with me and had interesting stories but most all the time was a real bore. I always wondered how the man that was Governor of California and later President of the United States of America could keep close company with a man of such shallow intellect. Was it money? Or were the intellects not so far apart? I loved him and admired him; that a man of such wealth was preoccupied more with building and flying model airplanes.
Later on the planes came pre assembled, specially the wings First they came on a styrofoam mold that we covered with a plastic material that was called Monokote It was.very strong easy to repair and came in multiple vivid colors. The seams were sealed with a heat iron and then shrunk with a hot air blower to accommodate to the form that was being wrapped on. I never became a really proficient flyer but was able to make my loops and rolls and land decently well but the ratio of “kaputs” cooled my interest and dedication and most of us switched to gliders, that were easier to build, easier to master and above all no more of the smelly dirty fuel that contained a very large percentage of castor oil. We started on the bluff over the Howard Hughes runway next to Loyola but before long they kicked us out and we went to Malibu or to Thousand Oaks for bluff gliding. For thermal gliding we went to Oxnard to an abandoned airfield. We used a long rubber band with a parachute that would open after disconnection and bring the hook-end to the starting point. Or we had winches with a 12 volt motor that ran on a battery. The line was monofilament fishing line about one thousand feet long. Marilyn gave me for Christmas a beautiful German kit for a glider that I immediately proceeded to put together. Unfortunately my interest was waning and I only flew it a couple of times. My devotion had moved to motorcycle riding and it sat in the garage for many many years hoping that I would find time and devotion for it again. Just three years ago I gave it with the radio and other paraphernalia to a young boy I met flying gliders on the bluffs of the Palisades.
My interest in motorcycling displaced my interest in radio control model flying just as this displaced my interest in photography and once you stop for a period of time, no matter how hard you try you never go back into it with the same devotion. I guess that it is like love. My shop is different; no matter how long I am away from it, for whatever reason, I always come back with the same enthusiasm. I have laid off my motorcycle lately, and there is a reason: my back and above all the years, as I was born in 1919. I still hang on tennis, but I do not know for how much longer.
Soon after my brother and his family returned to Spain we bought a house in Lake Arrowhead. Our girls were eight or ten and we thought that it would be nice to spend time away with them. I didn’t like the prospect of the summer beach scene. We bought a brand new house on the high side of Palisades Drive with a double dock on the lake just below us. We spent many winter weekends there and during the summer Marilyn went there for the summer and I would join them Friday to Sunday evenings, and occasionally extended it to Thursdays or Mondays. We bought a Century ski boat that we called “Andale”, learned to ski and we all became dedicated to the sport. I spent days during the middle of the week when no one was there and we skied all day long. We and the girls had guests and spent marvelous days together with night strolls by the moonlight and watched, every Fourth of July, the fireworks from the boat, right by the barge that threw them. The boat was covered with ashes and they all screamed, but they liked it. I have spent the happiest times of my life at Arrowhead. They were unforgettable times and I wished many times that the time had stopped then.
Right away I made a workshop from a room under the stairs in the garage and proceeded to continue with the building jag. First I built some steps on the side of the house with lumber I bought in Blue Jay. Next I built a Cabaña on the deck down by the dock, with a dressing side for the girls and another one for the boys. By the side I built a bench like storage space for the water skis, ropes, life preservers, wet suits, etc. Then I built a zigzagging, rustic, dirt and wood steps leading down to the dock from the house through an empty lot in front of our house. It was very hard because of the 40% inclination and the needles from the pines. When they weren’t there we used the neighbor’s steps. We liked Mr.Painter’s steps, but he was almost always there and the Goodman’s, next door, were very unfriendly.
The summers were hot and the seats in the boat would burn your bare fanny, so, from galvanized ½ inch pipe I made the frame for a cover in the dock. I welded it in pieces at home and designed it so that it could be assembled easy on the dock. I took the sections on several trips in our Buick station wagon and later I sewed the canvas cover in my sewing machine. I put grommets on the edges and laced it to the frame. This turned out to be the worst part of the project. It was gabled and looked really good. We had lunch down at the deck and Marilyn and I played a lot of cards, especially Russian Bank. Marilyn was very sharp and on many occasions the cards ended up in the lake. If there is a play and you reach for the pile, the opponent says stop and you miss your turn, which by the end really means the end. After the third stop and after an expletive the cards went to the lake. Our neighbor, when he heard the commotion, used to say, “the Morales must be playing cards again”.
The steep embankment behind our house was a source of continuos run down of dirt and debris so I proceeded to build a concrete cement block on the back and side of the house. There was not a great deal of space for the cement mixture and the blocks but what made it worse was the sting of an insect that they called deer flies. It came to almost six feet high and about thirty feet across and it did taper on the sides. Not too long ago I went by and saw it still standing.
At home in my shop I made a lot of furniture for the Arrowhead house and remodeled the lunch counter in the kitchen. I made a huge table (about four feet in diameter) that I covered with imitation marble Formica that in the winter served as our dinning table. We were young and sitting on the floor was no problem. I made a cabinet with two large drawers and space below to keep games and cards and covered the top with small tile. It turned out really cute and functional. It all went with the house when we sold it.
For many years at the beginning of fall we took the boat off the water and trailed it home, then, we picked the girls the girls at school on Friday and left with the boat for Lake Mead until Tuesday. We stayed in a motel at the Lake Mead Marina or Overton arm. We water-skied and explored the canyons from morning to sundown. We had great picnics on the boat and a good dinner at the restaurant in the hotel. It was a great four-day weekend. It was an adventure: the trailing, the dinner in Baker, putting the boat in the water, skiing with no one around, it was heaven. At the prodding of the girls we sold the good old reliable “Andale” and bought a Tahiti jet boat, of fiberglass construction, with an Oldsmobile engine and the throttle on the floor. It was bright yellow and we named it “Hot Canary”. It had a very maneuverable lightweight trailer and a tight fitting green canvas cover. Unfortunately it never got wet in the waters of Lake Mead.
The teens and the hormones put an end to that life style that I wished never to end. Marilyn married a local boy and we saw very little of them, and Teri after graduating from nursing school went to Baltimore’ Johns Hopkins to be close to her boy friend. We had no more use or enthusiasm for Lake Arrowhead and with the oil crisis going on, we decided to sell the house. I remember the tears on Marilyn’s eyes when we signed the papers with the company of Burton and Kit Smith. Except for the potential financial gain we have never regretted the sale. We both went active with tennis, travel and other local endeavors.
I have had never an idle day. I never had a plumber, an electrician or carpenter in my house. I have changed three garbage disposers, two dishwashers, several toilets and one bidet. I installed all the music all over the house and my shop. I have welded outdoor furniture, all the tubing splices for the armature of the patio cover. I put a floor safe encased in five 70 pounds sacks of concrete. This is funny. I saw the safe at a place on Pico Blvd in Santa Monica. Distrustful or cautious, I borrowed my sister’s car to pick it up and nobody that has ventured into my house has seen it. I even had the temerity once to do a valve replacement job on a Chevrolet Vega that I once owned. I used the garage rafters and pulleys to lift the head of the engine. It worked great.
All through this years I have been inspire to build different kinds of furniture. First I went for corners and built a triangular sort of armoire for the maid’s room. I really never finished it and eventually found it way in the Salvation Army. Next I designed and built a two level provincial type table that is still between the couches in the playroom. It turned out good looking, but above all, very practical. Next I built a replica of the Early American table that stands in our living room between the couches. I gave that one to my daughter Teri and I am afraid to say that the joints are warping and separating a little.
I have two very large books: The Random House Encyclopedia and Chronicle of the Twentieth Century that covers the daily headlines of major world events, both given to me by Teri. A big good book has to be accessible and for that purpose I built a tall, narrow table that fits well, it is practical, it is not bad looking and the book is always open. I like to do thing on the sewing machine. I had a singer machine that retracted under the table. I had it for over twenty years. One day I was con into buying a Swedish machine, supposedly stronger and better. It turned out to be neither but I had already given the other away. So I had to build a table low enough as not make the machine sit too high or so low that my knees would not fit under. I put a drawer on each side, finished it on off-white and turned out into a very decent piece of furniture.
Somehow we had inherited a drop leaf French provincial table that found it way in our dining room, below the serving window to the kitchen. It didn’t belong there because of style or size. It bothered me for a long time. Finally, I designed and built a sturdy, long and narrow table with a shelf, very low and made of solid oak. I like it. It is my prize-winning piece of furniture!
Marilyn and I are Pug Nuts! We have always had a Pug dog. We love them! But we always had them sleep outdoors and provide them with comfortable quarters (like a heated bed). When our children were small and we were going on long trips with them we had neighbor’s children to come in and feed them. It did work very well. With Buddy, the best Pug that ever lived we faced a problem. Our daughters were unable to care for him and I felt that placing him on a kennel was a crime and a dog sitter was out of a question. You had to provide them with your genealogical tree, complete access to your house, an arm and maybe a leg. We had a safe yard, we had a fountain but we needed somehow to feed them. I knew that I needed an automatic devise that would deposit a set amount of dry food on a plate every day. A trough system wouldn’t do and every night before I went to sleep my mind was on that subject.
I save things for future use and there had been an empty aluminum cylinder standing in one of my shelves for a long time. From it, I made two concentric rotating cylinders of a specified width and specified openings. The inside cylinder would rotate 30 degrees with a bellcrank attached to a solenoid actuator, which in turn would be activated by a timer. I made the cylinders and it worked fine. Next was to find the solenoids. They are used profusely on washing and drying machines, so I went to places where they repaired those machines. First, I asked them for a small solenoid and invariably the next word I heard was: “for what kind of machine” and when I tried to explain what I wanted it for, that was the end of the conversation. They didn’t want to hear another word about it. What a stupid and ignorant arrogance! I was discouraged and ready to quit when I noticed a place in Culver City that catered to engineers.
Kirk Mansberger (Berger)and his wife Cathy were staying with us for a few days as they did before the kids were born. Cathy is Teri’s sister in law. From the very first day we met at Teri’s wedding we became close and dear friends. Berger and I went to the above mentioned place and asked a lady for a solenoid. She deposited a book, about six inches thick on the counter and left. I called her back and told her what I was looking for but didn’t know how to find it in the book. She laughed and opened the book where all the #&#% solenoid were with specifications that really meant little to me. They varied on price from under $20.00 to over a hundred. I knew I didn’t need a heavy duty one and because cost and quality usually go together I thought of the cheap one, but not wanting to appear chintzy I went for the $50.00 one. We came to my shop made a temporary connection and when we push the plug in. it scared the s..t out of us. It sounded like a big house shaking! We went back, took a cheaper one and came back to try again. It worked! And after a few trials and adjustments, it worked like a charm. It has a container on top for enough dry food to last up to ten days, and it is easily refillable. From the first day that I set it out, Buddy knew, and would stay by it all day long. We were able to take long vacations without worry. Marina Vasquez who had worked for us for almost thirty years refilled the water and food every Tuesday.
The years and the distance made it necessary for Marina to quit. She and her husband moved to Buena Park (Disneyland town) where she could afford much better housing, better neighborhood and close to her sisters. She came in our lives when our daughters were early teenagers and became to be like part of the family. She was very kind to my mother and my sister. She adores and idolizes my wife, Mrs. as she always called her. She is honest, kind, well educated and a very good sense of taste. Because of her I have developed a good deal of admiration and respect for the “Salvadoreños”.
While on the subject of nostalgia (añoranza): When we first met the “Burgers” they were on their early twenties. They were body builders, very candid, wholesome and enthusiastic. Burger loves people and has tons of friends. When they were here they spent a lot of time visiting buddies from Michigan. He loved to get involved on “projects” with me and I enjoyed his company and contribution very much. He has a very acute and analytical mind and does not rush into solutions. I like that. We have had great times together, betting “bones”, drinking “Gin and tonic” and eating “swordfish”. The process of life and family changes all our priorities.
I have built dog houses and sheds and for the girls a small playhouse, 4x8 that is still standing on the yard and used now for storage. I build a replica for Teri’s kids but it has not good acceptance and it is now in a poor state of repairs. I built for the girls a sandbox, 4x4 that I filled with sand, which I sieved, from the beach. I built for them too a teeter-totter, eight feet long, with handles and it rotated in a circle. Robin Rooney loved to push everyone around and around, very, very fast. She never stopped. They all had a lot of fun with it.
I built the stands for the patio clay pot planters at the time that I built the benches. The leg of each stand is composed of two spiral shaped steel rods. I couldn’t bend them in my shop so I went to the S. M. Iron Works, located on Colorado, almost seventh and owned by an old gentleman and her not very feminine daughter,. They both knew that I was married to the daughter of Roger Marshall because the businesses were located next to each other. One day she asked me: ”what are you going to do with all this iron”. I told her that I was going to weld them and make a bench. I must say that in those days I was not only young, but also good- looking, spoke with an accent and had a well- profiled moustache. She said to me “you do that sort of thing”? I was reading her mind, so I said to her “I bet that you think that I spend my time jumping from bedroom window to bedroom window”; and she very candidly said “yes”.
Just before my daughter Marilyn’s wedding I had designed and built, with the help of, of course Mexican labor, the lower patio with the railing that I bought in sections at Sears and then assembled in place. On time for the wedding I built an open porch extension at the entrance of my shop that became the site for the ceremony and later for my power saw. Teri married shortly after and for that purpose I built the four benches between the upper and lower patio, and the arbor for the ceremony. Afterwards I moved it from the rear of the lawn to the middle of it, bridging two semicircles with rosebushes and a border of marigolds or gazania.
On the last days of Lake Arrowhead, my daughter Marilyn wanted me to buy for her a Honda Trail 90 motorcycle. She insisted so much that against my judgement I bought her one. It lasted a couple of weeks and then sat in the garage and thinking of the waist I decided to try it myself. Well, I got hooked and roamed all the back roads of the area. Soon I was ready to step up and bought a Honda 350 and pretty soon afterwards I bought the first of three cruising BMW’s. I rode them all over the Santa Monica Mountains and took several two to four overnight trips that took me as far as the Oregon’s border. I serviced completely the first two, but I am limited with the present one to just change the oils as it is too sophisticated (electronic ignition, fuel injected, etc). For me it is exhilarating and at the same time relaxing. I have been in every corner of Northern California and have been exposed to wonderful times and times of panic too and would do it again without hesitation. I traveled alone and at my own pace and went repeatedly where I like it. My favorite was always the High Sierras and all the passes, from east to west or west to east, The Sonora Pass, in my opinion, was the best. Because of the motorcycle high vulnerability, it has made me a much better driver; very aware of the road and the other drivers.
Eighteen years ago I was in bed reading a monthly magazine, published by BMW when I saw a two page add for a cycle trip through Europe. Marilyn was already asleep and as soon a we both woke up the next morning I showed it to her, just as a curiosity more than anything else and to my surprise she responded: “do it”, “if you don’t do it now, you’ll never do it”. On July 5th, 1986 I flew to Munich with a suitcase full of Cycle gear (boots, blue jeans, gloves, rain wear, etc.) and, of course, my helmet on hand. Our group consisted of twelve motorcycles and fourteen riders plus the leader & guide Joseph and his helper, Andy. The extra clothes or whatever was transported by van from hotel to hotel, which were all first class. They were to be the twenty most exhilarating days of my life, from running almost on empty high on the Oberalp pass with extremely heavy fog coming down to Andermatt, Switzerland, to swiping the left front fender of an oncoming car and ending with the motorcycle on a ditch by the road; all due to the confusion of driving on the left side of the road. . I ride now occasionally and for short trips only, rarely more than fifty miles.
I am eighty-one years now and still visit my shop every day and get involved in projects from which I can walk away and come back whenever I feel like. I give thanks to God for the good health, all the good times, a wife that loves me still and I go to bed every night with a clear conscience
And if I was given a choice, gladly would start at any age in my life, even without knowing what is in the future. Probably would do it all the same.

First part finished on August 24th, 2000
Second part on November 1st, 2000
Revised on May 2nd, 2004; with this addendum: I sold my motorcycle and I don’t play tennis any more. I just finished reading “Living to Tell the Tale” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez where he says:”LIFE IS NOT WHAT ONE LIVED; BUT WHAT ONE REMEMBERS AND HOW ONE REMEMBERS IN ORDER TO TELL IT”

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© Copyright 2006    Fernando Morales, MD