My Dos Abuelitos

My maternal grandfather, Zoltan Raab, on his wedding day in 1912.

In the midst of my pre-move organization, I took a picture break today. I inherited great shots of my Raab grandparents, Zoltan and Ileana (Ilonka), taken on their wedding day in 1912. The kind--slightly distracted, but kind--owner of Miami Photo did the absolute best he could restoring Zoltan's picture (see above)--half of his face was all but missing. In tails and all: what a shot! What a poet! What a kind--good--very bright--and funny man. Panni adored him.

Several years ago I wrote the following about My Dos Abuelitos. I wish I had a picture to share with you of Federico, who named all his sons after himself...and who was, as I like to say, "mas viejo que los siglos." Islenos--Canary Islanders--are creatures onto themselves. No wonder Ninina refers to them as the "E.T.'s" (and, yes, they're considered to have come from Atlantis)!

MY DOS ABUELITOS

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

Zoltan y Federico:

My dos abuelitos.

One, from Hungary – el otro, de Cuba.

One, a postal worker – el otro, un campesino.

The two have contribuido a quien soy.

Zoltan loved his family very much:

He sacrificed for his ten brothers and sisters.

His brilliance shone.

A postal worker?

Did anybody really care?

Neither his fellow Jews, nor even the Jesuits.

On the contrary, they loved him so much

They hid him, during the War.

After all, where else would they find a layperson

Who spoke Latin as well as they?

Zoltan loved Panni very much.

He sold his gold Omega pocket watch, one year,

So she could return to school.

He taught her well:

Be careful how you present yourself to the world,

I can imagine him saying to her on more than one occasion.

If not via words, then via deeds.

Teach by example:

Have I learned his lesson well, I wonder?

He was also funny. He was good… and funny.

Are these the gifts I have inherited from him?

I certainly hope so!

Federico era un hombre humilde.

Era cojo, con una pata más larga que la otra.

El gran Albarran le dijo a mi bisabuela,

“Tiene que vivir en el campo –

necesita vivir al aire fresco.”

Así que paso mas tiempo en la finca.

MY DOS ABUELITOS – PAGE TWO

No fue un hombre educado, pero crió a siete hijos.

Uno de ellos – claro – fue mi Papi.

A todos los muchachos les dio el nombre de “Federico”:

Que confusión existiera en esa casa, de vez en cuando!

Este Viejo isleño, mas viejo que los siglos,

Creía en el espiritismo.

Nadie le prestaba atención…

Hasta que llego Panni a Cuba.

“Le daba cuerda,” ella me decía.

“Nadie mas lo escuchaba.”

Posiblemente fue así que Mami se preparo –

Inconscientemente – para su futura

Carrera?

Ni modo. Yo soy creyente, a mi manera.

When I think about Zoltan – y, a veces, en Federico,

I get goosebumps.

Me dan escalofríos.

I’m not scared, any more,

Of los regalos de

My dos abuelitos.

Saturday, October 25, 2003

Revised Tuesday, December 16, 2003

August 25, 2004:

Changed font.

Why?

Things – life – is

Crisper – clearer… all the time.

Gracias, Zoltan y Federico.

Panni's and Pepi's Paris

The young docteur en medicine in the making: Mademoiselle Anna "Panni" Raab with her fellow classmates and le professeur (the important-looking fellow sitting in the middle of the front row). Panni's in the second row from the top; she's sixth from right. The ladies with the white caps are nurses--note that there are only five women medical students in the class. By my calculations, this picture was taken sometime between 1934 and 1936.

It's been a magical end of March/beginning of April (and may the trend continue, please God)! What follows came out of me two years ago, when the Coral Gables PEN Women asked its members for their "memories of Paris." I could have posted it before, but I guess I was saving it for a very special occasion (plus I didn't have the picture scanned until last December).

PANNI’S AND PEPI’S PARIS

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

For me, Paris is synonymous with the two most important persons in my life: my parents. Anna “Panni” Raab met Federico Efrain “Pepi” Marrero in a medical school class at the University of Paris’ Faculty of Medicine sometime in the mid-1930’s. At the time, people “group” dated, or so my mother told me, so I’m not quite sure when they began to formally date. By 1940, though, they knew each other well enough that my father either sent for or went to pick my mother up in the South of France, they traveled via Orleans to Lyon, and married in the mayor’s office there on December 31, 1940.

My parents’ stories about their years in Paris shaped me. Their stories about forty francs being the equivalent of one American dollar; about a paper cone’s full of French fries costing four to five francs (and that was dinner). About students gathering in the Luxembourg Gardens: I have pictures of them doing just so. About Henri Bergson giving lectures that were so packed that the best my mother could hope for was to strain to hear through the open door. About how he presented himself as a Jew before the Nazis when they occupied Paris.

Those were very difficult times. My mother defended her thesis eight days before the Occupation. And then she fled to Vichy France. As for my father: well, with a middle name like Efrain, his professor, Clovis Vincent, wanted to keep a close eye on him. It just so happened Vincent was a great French patriot, decorated during the First World War. So he ingeniously gathered all his residents together to serve at the Pitie Hospital under the auspices of his “Neurosurgical Wartime Service.”

One of the residents, a man named Rabinowitz, escaped at least several times from detention camps, and eventually made his way to Canada.

For the record, when Princess Diana was rushed to the Pitie and Salpetriere Hospitals after her fatal car crash, my mother’s comment was: “That’s the best place to treat head injuries.” No two ways about it: my mother would have known.

My mother’s strength may have ebbed and flowed, but her stories never wavered. After her death, I had the good fortune to speak with one of her best friends, a fashion designer named Kati Cohn, who filled in many gaps. According to Kati, the Hungarians went to France to study, she said, because they were “freer” there. They were not held back… just because they were Jewish.

Young, carefree, (perhaps?) in love – and she never studied, according to Kati. Panni joined Kati and her crowd at the cafes every afternoon. When did she study, we both mused out loud. She graduated, though, producing a thesis on Nietzsche and Psychiatry. And, oh, yes: she once cooked a veal steak on the back of an iron!

As for Pepi, he studied very hard, yet found time to play ball with his fellow Cuban classmates. He also cooked chicken and rice: hard for me to believe, later on. He had to wash his own clothes, and, at one point, had to do with very little money, for someone had stolen his stipend. I guess that’s when those French fries came in handy.

My father’s passion was neuropathology, so he hit pay dirt when a very eminent Spaniard fled to Paris during the Spanish Civil War. This man, Don Pio del Rio Hortega, guided my father’s thesis. My father dedicated it to him.

Did they have fun? They all had fun, according to Kati.

In the midst of all the storm clouds brewing, yes, they did.

They were young, carefree, and – perhaps – falling in love.

If the following is not an example of young love, then I don’t know what is: According to my mother, she once stumbled into Vincent’s operating room, tripping over wires, and whatnot. The Great Man – a big, hulking French peasant – turned, glowered, and asked Panni: “Mademoiselle, what are you doing here?”

“I’m searching for Monsieur Marrero,” my mother responded. She proudly continued, “He’s supposed to be operating.”

Monsieur Vincent tersely replied, “Go to the sub-basement. You’ll find Monsieur Marrero there.” Sure enough, my father was operating… on bedsores.

As a teenager, I went to Paris, where I spent time with my mother’s cousin and his wife, who’d been made to wear the Star of David during the Occupation. Their daughter’s married to a devout Roman Catholic.

A little later on that summer, my mother came to join me. I’d wanted to go running off to Scotland to do who knows what after finishing my language course in Tours. In a panic, my father had sent her over.

Still highly energetic, my mother marched me up and down the streets of Paris, pointing out this, that, everything. She took me to the oldest restaurant (Le Procope), and the cheapest (Le Bouillon Chartier), where a waiter taught me how to eat an artichoke.

A rebellious child of the times, all I did was fuss, fret, protest, and complain… all the way to the Folies Bergere. Even then, however, I sensed the enormous bond my mother had with her lifelong best friend and her Cuban husband, a bon vivant who’d married the peppy little Frenchwoman, never again giving a second thought to the medical career that had brought him to Paris in the first place, as it had my father.

After she passed away, I braved a cold, damp Paris holiday season to visit with our relatives. I also spent many wonderful hours with her best friend’s now widowed husband. He’d known Efrain for even more years than he’d known Anita. I returned once more, four months before 9/11, when I got to see him for the last time.

I’m bound to return to Paris, and to enjoy The City of Lights more and more in my own right. However, for me, this beautiful, carefree, romantic city will always be… Panni’s and Pepi’s Paris.

Copyright, 2005 by Georgina Marrero 992 words All Rights Reserved

Panni and Pepi are very strong with me these days: that's all I'm going to say...for now. Amen.

We Are The Punakawan

Today would have been Panni's 94th birthday.

When I began to think of how to honor her today, my little poem, "We Are The Punakawan," came to mind. It popped out of me on April Fool's Day, 1997--Omigod, so long ago?--while I was sitting outside the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York, awaiting a table. I sensed a fellow "pretender's" pretensions, and--POOF!--out it came. I'd been doing a lot of reading about the Indonesian wayang, but to have focused on the punakawan--the clowns--turned out to be one of the major signs of what was to come.

Panni liked it very much. So much so, that I placed a copy of it in her casket, along with the small crocodile wood happy-sad mask I had brought back from Bali. She really liked that, too.

Doesn't it make sense that, if I'm a Punakawan, that Panni was, too? Which one, though, I wonder?

Happy Birthday, Panni!
Love, Ninina

WE ARE THE PUNAKAWAN

WE SIT ON THE FENCE AND LOOK AT BOTH SIDES—
WE KNOW THE HEIGHTS AND THE DEPTHS:
WE ARE THE PUNAKAWAN.

WE’RE THE FOILS, THE COURT JESTERS,
THE PROVERBIAL FOOL—
WE LAUGH WITH YOU, WE CRY WITH YOU.
WE CAN FEEL BOTH YOUR ELATION AND YOUR PAIN:
WE ARE THE PUNAKAWAN.

WE CAN MAKE YOU HAPPY, WE CAN MAKE YOU SAD:
WE REFLECT YOUR EMOTIONS,
THE EMOTIONS OF THE WORLD.

HOW AND WHY CAN WE DO THIS?
BECAUSE WE FEEL,
BECAUSE WE KNOW.
BECAUSE…

WE ARE THE PUNAKAWAN.

GEORGINA MARRERO
APRIL 1, 1997

Estamos casi al fin...

...asi que tengo que anadir a esta vineta de La Loquita (anteriormente publicada en La Voz de la Calle, 4 de junio de 2004):

LA LOQUITA DEL ZIG-ZAG: VIVA EL FIDEO!

POR NININA MAMEYEZ

Nuestra casa es MUY grande. Tiene una pared de piedra. Es por eso que me encanta la canción, “La Cama De Piedra?” No sé. Pero si sé que mami no la puede limpiar sola. Así que hay una señora, Flaca, que limpia la casa. Ella tiene un cuarto en el primer piso, al lado del cuarto de La Odiosa.
Paseando mi bicicleta al lado del cuarto de Flaca el otro día, ella salió. Ninina, ven acá. Te quiero decir algo. QUE, Flaca? Vistes al Colonel en esa televisioncita tan graciosa que tus papis te regalaron? QUE? Mira, mira, aquí esta otra vez! Vamos a verlo juntas.
Ni mami, ni Tía Leya, ni La Linda, ni La Golondrina, ni hasta La Odiosa me rodeaban. Que raro. Lo pensé un momento. Decidí, ok, y entre en el cuarto de Flaca. Pero me quede sentada encima de mi bicicleta. La televisión estaba tocando a todo meter – hasta mas alto que cuando yo toco a La Cama en mi tocadiscos. El Barbabudo estaba hablando, y hablando, y hablando. Pensé, habla hasta mas que yo. Cuando termino, todos empezaron a gritar, aguantando a banderitas de nuestro país en sus manos: “Viva El Colonel! Viva El Colonel!” Flaca empezó a gritar, también, con una banderita en su mano.
Te gusto, Ninina? No sé. Creo que sí. Mira, coge a esta banderita. OK. Me tengo que ir. Vire a mi bicicleta, y volví al jardín. NINA, donde has estado? La Linda y La Odiosa vinieron, corriendo. Te hemos estado buscando en todo lugar! Estaba con Flaca. Con FLACA? Ven con nosotras, ok? Me subieron la bicicleta al segundo piso, y merendé.
El próximo día, La Señora Fiel vino a visitarnos. Ella nos quiere mucho. Mami y ella estaban tomando un café en la terraza. Pensé, las voy a sorprender. Salí de la casa como un relámpago en mi bicicleta, aguantando a la banderita de Flaca en mi mano. Empecé a gritar, VIVA EL COLONEL! VIVA EL COLONEL!
Mami se horrorizo. NININA, QUE ESTAS DICIENDO? Viva El Colonel, mami. NO, nene. Tu quieres decir, VIVA EL FIDEO. OK, mami.
Hola, Señora Fiel. Le di un besito. Hola, Ninina. Ven a merendar con nosotras. Me quede con mami y nuestra amiga. Merendé sanwichitos y jugo. Pero nada con fideos.
No sé por que, pero mami boto a Flaca. Eso mismo día.
Es propiedad de Georgina Marrero, 2004 390 palabras

Para Rosario Camacho de Golderos--venga lo que venga; pase lo que pase. Con carino de Georginita.

A Beginning?

That's Panni, demure-looking in her white hat and sailor-shirted uniform, top row left. I believe this picture was taken when she still attended a Hungarian school.Panni and Ninina, locked in a hug in our old apartamento in El Vedado.

I had a weird dream about purses and writing on walls last night--about getting to the last chapter. I'm struggling with finishing a play, as it is...and just so happen to be working on the last act, and--I think, I hope--the last two scenes. The last chapter? Is it really an ending...or a beginning?

On the seventh anniversary of Panni's passing--everything else that I've written about it so far is already on the blog--let me just add a beginning: a beginning to what may someday turn into a ???

LOVE AT A DISTANCE I

AN OUTLINE

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

It is eleven thirty a.m. on a clear, sunny Miami Monday morning in 1997. The bespectacled, slightly stooped older woman pulls up in her randomly dented blue 1988 Thunderbird in front of her favorite Cuban restaurant, the Latin American.

She does this every Monday, weather permitting. She always asks for the same plateful of ajiaco, a Cuban vegetable stew. On this particular morning, she absently stirs her soup, nibbles away on the bread, and carefully stores the saltine crackers she requested in her purse.

She’s not in Hialeah on this particular morning, however. She’s somewhere far, far away, skimming a layer of fat off of a pot that her mother has left cooling on the stove for her. It contains one of her mother’s at least thirty different varieties of soups.

It is 1927. Panni Raab is fourteen years old. She’s on lunch break from school. Tossing her books on the hall table, she rushes to the kitchen to ingest that congealed glob. It’s very good, but it’s just that: a glob.

Her mother, Ilonka, is either in another part of the house, working on embroidery, cleaning, or reading. Or she’s out visiting a friend. Her father, Zoltan, is at work at the post office in the medium-sized Transylvanian city of Arad that they call home.

And Agi, her nine-year-old sister, is in primary school. In the Lyceum, however, Panni has not only much more freedom, but also, many more responsibilities.

A wavy to curly haired brunette, tall, slim, with wire-rimmed glasses, Panni already knows she shoulders the responsibilities that would have belonged to her little brother who was born between Agi and herself. Alas, he ate a rotten apricot in the garden and died when he was a toddler.

So Zoltan is expecting great things of her. He grooms both Panni and Agi daily, reading to them from the Classics and from the great German, French, and English writers. Heinrich Heine, Anatole France, and Charles Dickens are no strangers in this house.

He also reads to the girls from Ady Endre and Petofi.

For, in the Raab household, Zoltan and Ilonka stress one thing above all else: they may now live in Romania, and have to speak Romanian at work and in school.

But they’re Hungarians first. Hungarian Jews, which pretty much means: Hungarians first; and Jews second.

There's another side to this story, too. Claro:

The Matilde farm, Las Villas province, Cuba, 1927: in the pre-dawn glimmer, the roosters are beginning to crow. Seventeen-year-old Federico Efrain Marrero y Lopez rubs the sleep out of his eyes, throws back the thin coverlet on his bed, splashes some water on his face from the washbasin in his room, and stumbles outside to the outhouse.

When he returns to the house, his brothers, Miguel and Rafael, are waiting for him. Little Guillermo, or, Sunguito, as the whole family fondly calls him, is still in bed. He’s the baby; Rosa, their mother, spoils him to no end.

The boys’ two sisters, Maria and Gloria, are already helping their mother with breakfast. Just some toast and coffee, for now: the boys will have a heartier meal later on.

Now, however, everyone has to pitch in and help with the chores. They hear the thunder of a horse’s hooves: their father, Federico, is returning from his pre-pre-dawn rounds of the farm. He calls the boys together, and assigns them their tasks for the day.

As all the boys have Federico as their first name, each boy uses his middle name. It’s Efrain’s day to feed the pigs. Not his favorite activity, he dutifully carries the slop bucket to the pen and carries out his job.

However, this is better than rolling tobacco, as he did when he was ten.

When he returns to the house, his sisters have filled the metal bath basin full of water so he can take a bath.

As the first-born son, he gets first dibs. The water is cold, but it feels good in the already stifling heat.

All the boys follow suit, dress properly, and sit down to a meal consisting of bacon, eggs, rice, fried plantains, more toast, and more coffee. It is 7 a.m.

Sunguito enters the room. Rosa immediately begins to cluck at him, just like she clucked at the chickens earlier in the morning. The two girls just stare at each other.

The other boys laugh. Rosa glowers at them. And Federico, who has just entered the house, stares impassively from one to the other. Including at Sunguito.

He doesn’t merely enter; he limps. For the patriarch of the Marrero clan was born with one leg shorter than the other. A great physician and compadre of the Marreros, Joaquin Albarran, recommended that Federico be raised in the countryside. That’s why the family spends more time on the farm than in their house in Santa Clara.

Of hardy Isleno stock, Federico and Rosa make quite the pair. Strong, brave, determined, and peculiar in their thinking, both, Federico is also quite stubborn.

Efrain is a combination of both of them. He is also quite handsome, with his dark wavy hair, and smoldering dark eyes. He’s not thrilled he has to wear glasses, but the doctor told him he needs them because he studies so much.

He wants to become a doctor.

Looking at his pocket watch, he realizes he has to run like the wind to get to school. Or, rather, ride like the wind, as he spurs his horse to ride faster and faster.

He can’t be late, for he has a very important test at 8 a.m.

He studied very hard. He wants to get the best grade in the class. His rival, Rafaelito Pedraza, may give him competition, but he’s going to give it his best.

He has to. He’s a Marrero, and he has to get the scholarship to go to medical school so he can become a doctor. Just like Joaquin Albarran.

For both of my parents, whose endings have inadvertently turned into my beginning.

Hats

My grandmother, Ilonka (Ileana) Mezey Raab; and my grandfather, Zoltan Raab.

What did the High Holidays mean in Arad, Hungary (after WWI, Romania) for members of the Raab family? It meant hats: my grandmother always bought a new hat, Panni used to tell me. And perhaps my grandfather did, too? (Or at least he wore one to services: not a yarmulke; not one of those furry ones that the Hasidim do. But, definitely, a hat.) I don't know if Panni and Agi (my Aunt Agnes) did...but I think I remember Panni telling me that they got new clothes--perhaps, a new coat?

I didn't grow up observing the High Holidays; it was fifteen years ago that I attended my first services. And I've tried to, since then, though it has not always been easy (and with synagogues being so packed in South Florida, there's no guarantee I'll get to go this year). But at least I'm aware of them; of what roughly goes on at services; the special meals (and lack therof); the sounding of the Shofar at the beginning of Rosh Hashanah...and, again, at the end of Yom Kippur; the Yizkor part of the service Yom Kippur afternoon, which was especially difficult to get through in 2000; and, in general, how this time of the year marks both beginnings and endings.

Traditions. Whether in South Florida or in Arad: food; clothes; hats.

Happy New Year!

El Original "Oldie but Goodie"

My favorite bakery in Miami burnt down last Wednesday night.

I discovered Roma Bakery soon after I moved to North Gables. At first I wasn't sure if its environment was always "hospitable," but, eventually, I became a regular, of sorts.

Early in the morning, you could see the first round, gathered either on the sidewalk outside la ventana; or queued up inside. The inside crowd, especially, in starched white shirts and appropriate ties tucked into respectable suits...and this included the City Manager and one of the Commissioners of The City Beautiful, one exceptionally bright morning. I gave them an earful. They were standing alongside--and speaking--with a rather corpulent builder whom I have continued to run into over the last few years. The fare: Miami's best cafe con leche...or a cortadito...or a colada. Pasteles de guayaba; de guayaba con queso; a "healthy" version of a tostada, with more bread than butter. As well as croissants; palmiers; pastelitos de carne--pretty much anything your little heart could desire.

Los viejitos wandered in a little later on. Many of them made lunch at Roma their main meal of the day: manicotti; chicken parmesan; salad; bread; a biscotti or two.
At any time of the day, people wandered in to buy long loaves of pan cubano.

The serving ladies at la ventana and in the main cafeteria: frazzled in the worst of times, yet always willing to offer you a friendly smile (and to make sure the espuma was just right, 99.9% of the time). We weathered Katrina and Wilma together: Roma managed to open for business a little before other places in the area after the storms, so we were assured of ese cafe and some pasteles before they eventually ran out.

I met some very interesting characters there, and even ran into some unexpected acquaintances and business associates. You could never tell, could you, about a place "where everybody knows your name." For, yes: Roma was like a Cheers, as another customer commented in the 9/15/06 Herald article.

Little did I know when I showed up last Tuesday to grab my proverbial "quick bite": una croqueta de espinaca (I'd learned to swear by them); un pastel de guayaba con queso (in a lightning-fast mental debate, it had won out over a pastel de guayaba); and--por supuesto--ese cafe con leche, that it would be my last time.

For now. The Bianchis se van a recomponer, and they will open Roma again. My thoughts and prayers are with them. When the time comes, I want to be there with them; to celebrate, for I owe them.

This is what I owe them: a large part of my original "Those Oldies But Goodies." Another very well-known establishment may have stolen their thunder when my story finally appeared in print--much to Mirtha Bianchi's combination of wonderment and dismay--but it was ordering that croqueta and that cangrejo at Roma Bakery that briefly turned me into a food critic.

Bueno. Aqui esta el original "Those Oldies But Goodies." Buen provecho!

THOSE OLDIES BUT GOODIES (written late February, 2004)

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

The other day, I was grabbing a quick bite: a “Cuban quick draw lunch,” as I’m now calling croquetas con galletas. A number of weeks earlier, Debesa had introduced me to this merienda-level wonder at Versailles. One late afternoon, we had split a platter of four croquetas, which had arrived at our table, piping-hot. Buffalo chicken wings they may not be, but finger food is finger food… right? However, not wishing to appear indelicate, I had begun to delicately pick away at one with my fork. Wrong.
I don’t remember if Debesa was dismayed, merely shook his head, or whatever, but he did proceed to show me how you’re supposed to eat the croquetas. You’re supposed to squoosh them in between the galletas and then consume the “sandwich.” With your hands, of course. After carefully observing this Cuban rite of passage, I began to squoosh and munch away, along with the best of that late-afternoon crowd.
Several weeks later, I performed the ritual on my own. Once again at Versailles, I was grabbing a quick lunch. This time, I was downing un café con leche. It’s these milk-softened, yet heavy-hitting, pick-me-ups that often get me through late mornings and/or early afternoons. Through siesta time. It feels really good to take my bandejita with my croquetas, galletas, and café to one of the little round tables at Versailles Bakery, sit down, gulp and munch away… and, most importantly, watch the world go by.
Different places produce different-tasting croquetas. They come in three varieties: jamon, pollo, and queso. The important thing, however, is that every bakery, every cafeteria, every timbiriche, every restaurante de categoria, is well stocked with croquetas. And galletas.

My “Cuban quick draw lunch” the other day was at Roma Bakery, in Granada Plaza at the corner of Southwest 49th Avenue and Calle Ocho. I’m especially fond of their café con leche: it’s always served piping hot. Sometimes I scald my tongue with it, but I don’t generally care. It’s hot. And that’s the way I like it. As I was really in a bit of a rush, I decided to try them out, croqueta-wise. Do you have any, I asked (I didn’t see any in the vitrina). Yes. What type? Jamon. OK. But, wait, then I saw the cangrejitos.
And that’s when I thought of the old song, “Those Oldies But Goodies.” I asked the counter lady for one croqueta and one cangrejito. On a little plate, on top of a waxy, absorbent paper, she placed my tentempie. She also handed me the requisite packet of galletas.
Before I went to sit down at one of their little round tables to squoosh and munch away, I struck up a brief conversation with a woman who had been standing next to me. I commented on the “sweet” pastry at either end of the cangrejito’s “claws.” She agreed. I also told her how the cangrejitos – and the croquetas -- reminded me of fiestas de cumpleanos in Cuba. She agreed. “Those Oldies But Goodies,” indeed.

Copyright, 2004 by Georgina Marrero 500 words All Rights Reserved