Recently, someone asked me about life in El Pao and in the course of the conversation, she asked a question that made me think about Rosa. I am glad she asked me. It had been too long since I thought about that lady who deserves to be remembered. She is one of billions who lie in their graves, forgotten but to God. And to those who remember.
José was her brother. I remember him too. He showed up once a week or so to work on our garden. He’d amble up on this burro, laden with what looked to me like large canvas bags on either side, towards the rear, swinging heavily, slowly, comically. Seen from behind, José looked like an unstable, ponderous metronome atop a slow yet choppy sea, while the canvas or hemp bags swayed behind him like loose pendulums, slapping the donkey’s upper thighs as she plodded the quiet streets of El Pao where Jose’s gardens graced several homes.
“Sra., las rosas se ven bellas hoy,” he would invariably utter those or similar words, sotto voce, as he unloaded his baggage and pulled his spade and shovel from their respective canvas casings draped on either side of the burro’s neck. To me, it seemed José was born wearing a permanent, drooping straw hat. It was part of José. I never saw him without it.
“That’s thanks to you, José. This whole garden is thanks to you!” My mother would give directions as to what she wanted to see done and often she worked the garden with her own hands, but always gave credit to José.
His sister, Rosa, would accompany him many a time and while he worked the gardens and landscapes, she’d assist with laundry, general cleaning, and even rearranging the furniture at times. She also became a sort of informal nanny to us for a time. By and by Rosa became as well known to folks in El Pao as José. In my child’s recollection, I had thought they lived in the labor camp in a home provided by the company. But my mother corrected me on that memory. They were well known and loved in the labor camp too, but did not live there.
Cancer struck Rosa. A nasty, encroaching, overwhelming, suffocating cancer. Her beauty and bustling energy rapidly became things of the past as her Spanish skin became sallow and her cheeks sank and her eyes lost their happy luster.
Soon she no longer could play with the boy, and he didn’t want to play with her because she just looked very sick.
And soon, she no longer came to the camp.
“I’ll be back shortly,” my mother had paused by me as I memorized my assigned arithmetic tables one afternoon.
I saw her taking a small pot.
“I am taking her a beef stew. She asked that I bring her a little of that stew that we make here once in a while. She’s always liked it because she says it combines an American dish with Venezuelan seasoning and it’s a favorite of hers. I asked the doctor and he said it’d be OK for me to bring her some.”
“Rosa died this morning,” I heard my mother speaking into the telephone mere days later. “We will attend the wake tonight in the labor camp; as you know, she’ll be buried tomorrow.”
Although she did not live in the labor camp, someone had offered his home as the site for the wake.
Rosa had expressed, as best she could, her gratitude for the beef stew. But she never tasted even a teaspoonful. She just could not. Impossible.
“I want to go.”
“That’ll be fine, son. But just remember, Rosa will not be there; only her body. She will rise again one day, and on that day you will not see her stumbling stiffly because of the pain. You won’t see her cheeks hollowed out or her skin with that deathly color. You won’t see her wasted, unable to eat or drink….”
But that night I would see that I did not really understand what my mother was trying to tell me. As we entered the house I became uneasy seeing all the candles uncertainly piercing the darkness. Why didn’t they turn on some more lights? What seemed to me a multitude crowded the small living room. I saw José standing next to the simple coffin, at the head as folks milled by, expressing their pésame and hearing his expression of simple thanks in reply. I barely recognized José, probably because I had never seen him looking so sad and forlorn; but most likely because this was the first time that I saw him without that drooping straw hat resting easily on his head. On this grievous occasion, it revolved, slowly, loosely, by the rim, by means of José’s sun-darkened, scarred, knobby hands.
I was just tall enough to see Rosa lying there, covered up to her neck in what looked like white lace, under which she seemed clothed in a white, shiny dress. At least that’s what I’d always remember. Then I looked at her face. I hardly recognized her. It was hardened and wasted; it seemed battered. I saw pain, much pain in poor Rosa’s face. I noticed cotton in each nostril and wondered at that and did not like it. I wanted to cry, but did not.
I could not pull my eyes away from her face.
“Son, we need to go home now,” my mother had leaned over me and gently whispered in my ear.
And so, I opened my hands, which had been lightly gripping the edge of the casket, and backed up a bit, and, after a long look, I turned away.
But for days, and months, and years I’d have dreams, frightfully real dreams, of Rosa peering at me. Sometimes I’d fear going into a room alone at night because I could see her face right outside the screened window, looking at me.
I would learn, much later, that these visions and dreams were vivid examples of paradox: I loved and missed Rosa very much. I wished she had not gone. I loved her. But I hated seeing that face of death.
May you rest in peace, Rosa.
Rosa was not glamorous. But to get an idea of what she looked like, you could see Gale Sondergaard and imagine her without the makeup and dressed plainly. For an “idea” of José, shave off about 40 pounds from Al Lettieri, dress him in rough khakis, and soften his features a tad.
In my earlier post “Fernando, Sears, The Yankees, and The Beatles” (here) I told of Fernando’s being a Yankees’ fan as a kid and how he and his childhood friends would run to Sears in Coral Gables to see the prior night’s baseball scores and stats. He was also a Beatles fan and would run to Sears to see where the group’s songs were on the Hit Parade.
Thinking about Fernando, led me to my childhood friend, Anne. In my prior post (here), I told of her enthusiasm for The Beatles in 1964. At the club one day that summer, she had rushed me to the shortwave radio to listen to them.
In stream of consciousness fashion, thinking about Fernando and Anne, reminded me about the shortwave radio which reminded me of my father, who would tell us about his own childhood in Cuba where he and his friends would spend hours in the mining camp club during the baseball season to see the scoreboard of the Yankees’ games. The bartender would receive information by telegraph at the end of each inning and would walk to the board and chalk in the runs for the inning. The kids would whoop and holler whenever he’d chalk in a Yankees’ run, and groan with loud disappointment and exasperation when he’d chalk in a run for the opposing team.
With no radio, and certainly no TV, that is how they “watched” baseball in his childhood in Cuba.
By the time of my childhood, mining clubs had shortwave radios which broadcast the ball games. And, in 1964, the Big One was that year’s World Series.
The radio and also the television play by play was shared between Joe Garagiola and Phil Rizzuto in New York and Curt Gowdy and Harry Caray in St. Louis. However, in El Pao, we heard the play by play in Spanish and, unfortunately, I do not know who did so nor have I been able find it out. If a reader knows, I would very much appreciate hearing from you.
I do remember it was very colorful. One of the most memorable lines was in Game 7, when Tom Tresh came up to bat and for some reason decided to swing at a very high pitch. The Spanish broadcaster yelled out, “Estaba tumbando piñata!” [He was striking a piñata!]. The image that expression evoked is still fresh in my mind today, over 50 years later.
There were many great names of the baseball pantheon in that series: Yogi Berra, Curt Floyd, Roger Maris, Lou Brock, Mickey Mantle and more. Lesser names, but nonetheless memorable, included MVP brothers on opposing teams: Ken and Clete Boyer, for the Cardinals and Yankees, respectively.
In the case of Mickey Mantle, this turned out to be his last World Series. By the end of it, he had played in 12, of which the Yankees had won 7.
In that year, Mantle capped his World Series career with a performance for the record books, including a Game Three, bottom of the ninth, game-winning walk-off home run. The fifth in World Series history at the time and the only one in Mantle’s storied career. It was a Mickey Mantle home run: a low pitch, met by the “Mantle turn”, driven deep, towering and majestic, into right field, well into the third deck of Yankee Stadium. The game was won with one swing of his bat. He ended the series with a .333 average, three home runs, and eight RBIs.
Mantle is still in the record books with the second most at bats — 230 (second only to his teammate, Yogi Berra, with 259), the most base on balls — 43 (Babe Ruth is second, with 33), most extra base hits — 26 (no one comes close), second most hits — 59 (second to his teammate, Yogi Berra with 71), second most World Series games — 65 (second to his teammate, Yogi Berra, with 75), and most home runs in World Series history — 18 (followed by Babe Ruth, with 15). He is highest or second highest in runs scored, RBI’s, and total bases. The only switch hitter to have won the Triple Crown, Mantle’s is a truly great record.
But by the 1964 series, Mickey Mantle was injury-plagued. The St. Louis Cardinals knew it and they strategically decided to run against him, stretching singles into doubles and doubles into triples or home runs.
Another performance for the ages was Lou Brock’s. In what turned out to have been the best trade in Cardinals history, and the worst in Cubs history, Brock was traded by the Cubs to the Cardinals in 1964. That awakened the then fading Cardinals and spurred them on to overtake the Phillies and win the National League pennant. He was one of the best hitters and base stealers in baseball history. And, much to my chagrin, he displayed his hitting prowess with painful effectiveness in the 1964 World Series. Painful to me, that is!
Lou Brock played in three World Series and his adjusted OPS (“On Base Slugging” score) for the World Series was fourth best of all time, just behind Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Reggie Jackson (“Mr. October”). In other words, although Brock was a Hall of Famer for his overall performance, he really turned on the juice in the World Series. For comparison, Mickey Mantle is not in the OPS stats for World Series play, but is in 7th place in all-time adjusted OPS career leaders, whereas Brock is not in the top twenty.
But what a World Series performer! A World Series batting average of .391, with multi hits in 12 of his 21 World Series games, including two hits in Game 7 of the 1964 Series. He is tied, with Mickey Mantle and Eddie Collins, for 11th most all-time series multi hits games. Incredibly, Brock is tied with Eddie Collins for most stolen bases in World Series history: 14. But he did not attempt to steal a base in the 1964 Series! He stole 7 bases in 1967 and 7 more in 1968. No one else has stolen 7 bases in a World Series. As for 1964, Brock let Tim McCarver and Mike Shannon do the stealing. That was enough to defeat my team.
Nevertheless, to me, the most memorable players (besides Mickey Mantle, Lou Brock, and Tresh’s Piñata swing, that is) were Whitey Ford and Bob Gibson.
In the case of Whitey Ford, I couldn’t figure out or understand why he only played in Game One, and lost. It was many years later that I realized that he had been playing that whole season in great pain. But I did not know that nor did I think of asking my father about it. Whitey Ford was considered the archetypical Yankee: clean cut, decent, fair. Deceptively fair, that is. Meaning that just because he was fair, that did not mean he’d let you hit his pitches.
His baseball career spanned 16 years, all with the New York Yankees. He is tied for first place for starting pitchers with the most World Series titles (6), is the all-time leader in World Series starts (22), innings pitched (146), strikeouts (94) and wins (10). In 1960 he threw 283 innings without allowing a single stolen base. Still a record.
In 1961, he won both the Cy Young and the MVP awards. The Cy Young award was introduced in 1956; many baseball connoisseurs believe he would have won easily in earlier seasons, making him a multiple Cy Young winner. But to us kids, he just seemed like an all-around, likable, nice guy. A nice guy who did not finish last. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1974 with a career ERA of 2.745, in the top 100 of all time. He is the 4th winningest pitcher of all time, with a winning percentage of .6901. Ford demonstrates that a pitcher can be very successful even without a powerful fastball. The 1964 World Series was to have been his last.
And he remained unseen after Game One. As a kid, that bothered and saddened me to no end. I rooted for him until injuries finally had their way, forcing his retirement three years later, in 1967.
And then there was Bob Gibson. He pitched three games in that series: 8 innings in Game 2, which he lost against Mel Stottlemyer, 10 innings in Game 5 where he remained on the mound till the very end, picking up the win, and all 9 innings of Game 7, when I kept wishing he’d be too tired to pitch that day.
This man was a machine and even over the radio, he provoked fear. Which helps explain his being in thirteenth place with the most shutouts in baseball history. He had a 17-year career, all with the St. Louis Cardinals. A two-time World Series champion and two-time Cy Young Award winner, Bob Gibson was a fierce competitor on that mound, yet a kind, approachable individual when off the field. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1981, his first year of eligibility.
I remember watching him pitch against the Boston Red Sox in 1967. I wanted the Sox to win because they were in the American League, which was the closest I could get to the then perpetually slumping Yankees. But I could not help but admire that powerful pitcher with the opposite side “kick” to his pitch. And there he was again, on the mound, in the last inning of the last game, picking up yet another seventh game win. He was something to behold.
Between them, they won 17 World Series games. Ford won a record-setting 10 games, but lost 8; Gibson won 7, and lost 2. Ford’s World Series ERA was 2.71 to Gibson’s 1.89. Ford’s ERA was 1.98 before his injury-plagued 1964 performance. His 10 games won record still stands. Gibson’s is in second place, tied with two other pitchers.
That year, 1964, marked the end of the Yankee dynasty. They would not play in another series till 1976, and that team was a shadow of their days of glory, in my opinion. They’ve not been the same since.
The Cardinals went on to play in the 1967 and the 1968 World Series, with Gibson pitching and Brock stealing in both. They won in 1967 on the 7th game against the Boston Red Sox and lost in 1968 on the 7th game against the Detroit Tigers. Both were exciting series, which I was able to see on television in Miami, Florida. But, to me, neither came close to the exhilarating thrill of the 1964 event.
Mickey Mantle passed away on August 13, 1995. He had returned to his childhood faith, expressing genuine repentance for his years of hard drinking and hard living. He considered himself to be a “reverse role-model”: “Don’t be like me,” he said. Whitey Ford was one of his pallbearers.
Lou Brock passed away on September 6, 2020. Roughly a month later, both Bob Gibson and Whitey Ford died on October 2 and October 8, respectively.
At the time of his death, Whitey Ford (91) was the second oldest living member of Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
I guess I’ll always remember the World Series of 1964.
My father did not have pictures of the scoreboard from his Cuba mining camp club. But the above is a photo from a pool hall scoreboard from my father’s era (early 20th century). The kids would sit around, waiting and anticipating someone to come up and chalk in the results of each inning. With no radio and certainly no TV, that is how they watched baseball in his area of Cuba. View of staff cottages in mining camp in Cuba, circa 1916, a year before my father’s birth.
Mickey Mantle’s is at about the 2-minute mark Intimidating and effective. I used to not want him to show up because I just “knew” he’d win. But then I’d be mesmerized, along with millions of other baseball fans. Deceptively smooth. But his pitches were so easy to miss. Ford in his rookie year, being congratulated by Joe DiMaggio (left) and Gene Woodling for a six-hit shut out, vaulting the Yankees into first place. Lou Brock, known as “Stolen Base Specialist”. He had an infectious smile and his exuberance was contagious. Known as “The Perfect Baseball Player”, Mickey Mantle was a powerful switch hitter. His hard drinking and other shenanigans shortened his career for which he expressed genuine, heartfelt regret later in life. Although this post does not quote nor use this book as a source, I mention it because it is well regarded. I do have my quibbles with it, however. To me, it seemed Halberstam had an axe to grind, wanting to use this series as a sort of paradigm for racial issues in America. I found that unconvincing and distracting and, by the last page, I wished he had told us more about the series itself. Nevertheless, a good, easy read for baseball fans.
She had come home for the summer. Her mother had told my mother that she was all aflutter about a band that only sang, “Yeah, Yeah, and Yeah”. I remember hearing my mother’s laughter.
I had promptly forgotten about it until, a few days later, at the club.
I was in the club’s main hall doing I-don’t-know-what, when Anne came running from the pool tables area where the short wave radio sat and called out, “Ricky! Come! You’ve got to hear The Beatles!”
Now, to give some context, no one in El Pao had a television set in that era; we saw our TV when we either visited Caracas or the USA. To give an idea of our sliver of acquaintance with American pop music back then, consider the club jukebox. It was built into the south wall, poolside, and enclosed by a sheer, transparent glass door through which its many records could be plainly seen as the gentle mechanism pulled one disc to replace it with another. As I learned to appreciate later in life, our jukebox fare was most unusual in my early childhood. You could hear Debussy’s Clair de Lune and other such classical or easy listening pieces, not to mention Christmas hymns and songs during the joyous season. By the mid-1960’s or shortly thereafter, the jukebox contents had been replaced by more of a Venezuelan, interspersed with American, pop fare.
My point is that I heard American pop music only when I visited Miami or New York or when my cousins would come down to Venezuela to visit us and happened to bring “The Bristol Stomp” or “The Twist”. For example, when I was about 6 or 7, I was in a New York City restaurant with my parents. The violinist who was playing from table to table, came to ours and asked me what I would like to hear. I said, “Three Coins in A Fountain.” He was floored. Nevertheless, after he made the other patrons laugh by saying he expected me to have asked for “Pop Goes the Weasel” or some contemporary pop, he played my request beautifully. He was a very jovial character.
It wasn’t that I had any hankering for that Sammy Cahn song. It’s that I was not expecting to be asked for a song and so just thought of one of the records we would hear in El Pao.
So, at that time, to me, The Beatles was nothing more than a bunch of bugs. Misspelled.
I must not have been very much engrossed in whatever I was doing because, like a sheep led to the slaughter, I nodded and let Anne swoosh me to the radio.
The sound of whatever the song was (“I Want To Hold Your Hand”? “Can’t Buy Me Love”? “She Loves You”? I just don’t remember or don’t know) rooted me in front of that radio. Not wanting to let on that some silly rock group could grab me in any way, I said, nonchalantly, “What’s the big deal?” But she saw right through me, “You like them! Everybody does!”
If you are interested in the 20th century and have not read The Gospel According to the Beatles, by Steve Turner, look it up. In my opinion, Mr. Turner brilliantly captures the “why” of that band. Their incarnation, or personification, of the reigning existentialism of the mid-20th century West — putting Jean Paul Sartre into music and antics, if you would — goes a long way to explaining the explosive impact they had on pre-teens, teens, and young adults of that era and up to today.
The book gives context to John Lennon’s “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus” (in the same series of interviews, Paul McCartney’s comments were even more explosive but he was shielded by the press). The church, especially in the Philippines, was outraged and gave the statement more publicity than it would otherwise have garnered. However, the real question that should have been asked was this: Why? Why, in the West, is a rock group more popular than Jesus?
Because they were, at the time. And that said very much, not only about the then state of the church, but also about the grip existentialism had on our generation. And still has on many.
In the late 70s, a few years before his murder, John Lennon wrote Oral Roberts, asking him about life. He told Roberts that he had fame, girls, drugs — but was trying to make sense of it all. Towards the end of the book, the author tells of his own personal encounter with Mr. Lennon. Mr. Turner felt he was not a good witness to him about Christ. I disagree; he, a young man at the time, was willing to engage Mr. Lennon about eternal truths and about the One Who said, “I am the Truth.” He did well.
Years later, long after The Beatles had broken up, I was seated on the window seat on a flight to Chicago, reading, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Anne. She became my seat mate for the flight and we immediately caught up and went on to talk about culture, economics, and Beethoven. It was Anne who piqued my interest into buying and then listening to the 9 Beethoven symphonies back to back. She was right: it’s quite an experience.
Ludwig Von Beethoven (1770-1827) is one of Western Civilization’s most famous and prolific composers. His symphonies go from the First and Second, which most consider to be hat tips to Mozart, on to the explosive Third (“Eroica”), the somewhat melancholy Fourth, and the most popular Fifth with perhaps the most memorable 8 notes in music history. But what a treat to go beyond the 8 notes, all the way to the end of the fourth movement! Going therefrom to the Sixth (“Pastoral”) is like going from rapids to a wider but still exciting river. Then the dance-like Seventh and the deceptively powerful Eighth await you.
It all culminates with the phenomenally glorious Ninth whose fourth movement, almost in exasperation, declares that musical instruments are not enough for the sentiment. The human voice must now be heard.
So voices are lifted up to sing Friedrich Schiller’s (1759-1805) “Ode to Joy”, whose last stanza reads:
Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving father.
Do you fall in worship, you millions?
Seek Him in the heavens;
Above the stars must He dwell.
In 1907, Henry van Dyke composed “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee,” set to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” melody and this hymn is found in many church hymnals to this day.
Beethoven’s nine symphonies, which he composed with progressive loss of hearing (he was totally deaf by the time he composed the ninth), do reflect much that a life can relate to and are worth careful consideration by all.
However, to consider his first two symphonies to be acknowledgments to Mozart, sounds a bit condescending, at least to me. Mozart composed 41 symphonies and the last three — the 39th, 40th, and 41st — are as much a “transition” to the Romantic era as anything Beethoven composed. At least they are to me.
We talked non stop till we landed at O’Hare and said goodbye. That was the last time we met.
Anne passed away some years ago, but if she were here today, I would tell her that she was right on both counts: that Beatles sound had indeed stunned me, as it had captivated her. And, as we matured and returned to our mutual heritage, I too agree with her in that Beethoven’s nine symphonies are a wonder to experience.
In October, 1964, a few months after my childhood encounter with Anne, I was back in front of that radio, along with a crowd of other boys and men, listening, cheering, groaning, hollering. But it wasn’t over The Beatles. Oh, no! It was something far more important.
It was the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees. As it turns out, this was to be the last hurrah of the famed Yankees.
This team had played in 14 of 16 World Series since 1949. Their appearance in 1964 was to be their last until 1976. By the end of the 1964 season, the Yankees would have won 29 American League championships in the 44-year span since 1921.
They’ve never been the same since.
This series highlighted the grace and power of many baseball stars, including two who have died very recently: Bob Gibson and Whitey Ford.
We’ll conclude this in the next post.
The Beatles arrive in New York, February, 1964 The “existentialist moment”. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Very influential 20th Century French existentialist. The Gospel According to The Beatles, by Steve Turner, helps explain the juxtaposition between The Beatles and existentialist philosophy. I give credit to Anne for piquing my interest. Shortly after our conversation, I bought this set and have it still. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). To me, his last three symphonies sound like as much a transition as Beethoven’s works. In my childhood memory the club’s shortwave radio was this type, but larger. My childhood friend, Anne (far left), circa 1959 Anne in the early 2000s (her brother sent me this photo a few years after her passing) The fearsome Bob Gibson (top) and the calm, but commanding Whitey Ford both pitched in the 1964 World Series. We’ll say more about them and the series in the next post.
Fernando Rodriguez was an Arthur Andersen audit manager in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He had a delightful sense of humor which, upon remembrance, still makes me chuckle, if not laugh outright.
Once, around noon, having gotten his haircut in the barber shop in the lobby of the Royal Bank of Canada, he walked out and ran into one of the firm’s partners who gruffly rebuked him, “Hmmm. Getting a haircut during office hours!” to which Fernando, without missing a beat, replied, “My hair grows during office hours!”
Of course, the partner laughed.
During one of our trips to the mainland, we had a stop in Miami during which he called relatives there, introducing himself as “Fernandito”. After he hung up the phone, I asked him a bit about his childhood in Miami. A couple of his stories remain with me presumably because they are not too dissimilar from my own childhood experiences.
As a child, he had escaped Cuba where, like his friends and family, he was a die hard New York Yankees fan, as I had been in my childhood. They lived in the Coral Gables area of Miami and every day, he and other young Cuban refugees would run to Sears where they could see the previous night’s baseball scores. He told me of their loud delight whenever the Yankees had won and, looking back, how strange that must have seemed to the Sears employees. Who are these Spanish-speaking kids yelping as they would in the baseball stands when this is not a stadium and there is no game going on?
As he told of that era, I instantly related. Every year our family took our annual leave in Miami where we also had relatives. And every year, my mother would include a long, tedious day or two of shopping in Sears of Coral Gables. In retrospect, I have to admire my parents’ planning. They guesstimated their children’s growth for the following year and bought them clothing on that basis. I can remember only once or twice having to buy clothes in Venezuela, for funerals. It was very expensive and that is why we, and other families in El Pao, bought in the USA once a year.
And I also recall rooting for the Yankees over the big short wave radio at the El Pao Club.
Fernando went on to tell of how he and his childhood friends were so taken by The Beatles phenomenon. They would run to Sears every week, baseball season or no, to check the standings of any Beatles songs on the hit parade. He chuckled as he pondered how crazy they must have seemed to those Sears people.
This too rang true. In another post I’ll tell about the “arrival” of that band in El Pao in 1964 and how that coincided closely with a heartbreaking Yankees loss that year. But for now, I’ll say that when their hit song of the moment came on that short wave radio, my childhood friend, Anne, came running to me, insisting that I come and hear them. Just like Fernando and his friends ran to see how they were doing against the competition.
Fernando went on to live and to thrive in Puerto Rico, first as an Arthur Andersen audit manager, and then as partner and president of a regional CPA firm based in the San Juan area. I last saw him when he and I along with a mutual friend and colleague, Vicente Gregorio, met to reminisce and, mostly, to laugh, in Christmastime, 2012, during one of my visits to Puerto Rico. He passed away on June 4, 2014.
Coral Gables, Florida, was founded in the 1920s and was designed to be a pedestrian city. That, it certainly was as my childhood memories can attest: walking up and down Miracle Mile and Alhambra; visiting the Miracle Mile movie theater; walking to and diving into the gigantic Venetian Pool are all vivid memories decades later.
Many Cubans settled in Venezuela and I was privileged to know them, to love them, to miss them. As I miss my friend, Fernando.
Sears in Coral Gables is one of the very few remaining Sears stores in Florida.
Douglas Entrance to Coral Gables, Florida as I and my friend, Fernando, remembered it. Sears in Coral Gables, Florida. Miracle Mile is seen in background. Thanks to Dreamstime for photo. Venetian Pool, Coral Gables, Florida Miracle Mile Theater, Coral Gables, Florida Fernando Rodriguez, my friend and colleague. May he rest in peace.
A few years ago I visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on a personal matter, after an absence of close to four decades.
To drive and walk around was to invite affecting memories, not only of Bethlehem, but of family, of childhood friends, of the steel company, of Venezuela, of what could have been. I was offered the opportunity to visit my Uncle’s old former apartment site on Market Street, from which the Bethlehem Steel stacks are clearly, and augustly, visible decades after her bankruptcy in 2001 and dissolution in 2003.
While in town, I came across the transcript of an interview of the late Earl J. Bauman, a teacher in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania high schools for 30 years, who also worked for several years at Bethlehem Steel during World War II, and who otherwise led an eventful life.
Our teachers in El Pao were recruited in Bethlehem, although not all were from there. For instance, one of my teachers, Mrs. Miller, was from New Mexico and boy did she resent Florida being named “The Sunshine State”! She firmly believed, and could “prove”, that New Mexico was the true Sunshine State.
Mr. Bauman’s comments seem to be coming from my own Bethlehem Steel teachers in El Pao, Venezuela.
I believe the reader will appreciate the commentary by Mr. Bauman (1910-January 12, 2000), born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was the son of George and Matilda Bauman née Shearer. He was married to Grace E. Bauman, née Shoenberger.
Mr. Bauman taught history, government, and economics. A full transcript is linked below for those readers who would appreciate reading more of what he had to say.
Excerpts:
Well, I was born here in Fountain Hill [now a suburb of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] in 1910. We’ve been residing here ever since that time.
I attended the Fountain Hill School, and then went to Liberty High and then I quit. I was making more money than my dad was playing with a dance orchestra. We used to make as much one night as he made in a week just playing with the big bands. And then one thing led to another and the Depression hit. And finally, there was no music market. I went to South America in one summer playing with a band, and come back, and then it was difficult to find any kind of work, because the Depression hit. It hit pretty hard. And then I had an opportunity to go back to school, then I went to Moravian Prep. And I finished up my high school work there.
Then I went to Moravian College and earned my Bachelor’s. And then, of course, it was still difficult to get work. I worked at the steel company as a clerk in the beam yard offices, and on their police force during the early period of the World War II. And then finally a teaching job.
….
And then I taught until I guess it was about the late Forties [1948] when I decided to go back to Lehigh for my Master’s degree in history, and I finished that, I believe it was 1954, somewhere around in there. Men like Dr. Harmon was the head of the history department, Dr. Gipson, Dr. Brown, and I don’t think any of them are there anymore. Some may have died, passed on, retired. And then I kept on teaching.
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Teaching wasn’t quite the pleasure it used to be. Yeah, that changed quite considerably.
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That’s the flu epidemic you’re talking about, yes. I remember because, and I can even take you where the hospitals were and they died like flies [emphasis mine, RMB]. It would have been right across the street from where I did my undergraduate practice teaching where this junior high school is now, right across the street in that area there, they had built these temporary wards. The hospital up here couldn’t handle it. It was too small. I remember that, yes. I remember a lot of— You’ll see in the pictures, see at that time I would have been nine years old, and I did get around and my parents talked, but that wasn’t the only thing, we had a lot of things like there was scarlet fever, and diphtheria, and polio. So many of my classmates were afflicted….
…. You had to put on your porch, your house would be quarantined, that’s the word, diphtheria here and scarlet fever there, and measles here, measles there, and today it’s wonderful how all these youngsters have been protected against these physical ailments, which make them more competitive in their life today.
[Note: the sick were quarantined. The rest went on with their work and lives. For discussions on quarantine and the current approach in most states and countries, see here, here, here, here, and here. Mr. Bauman’s allusion to the “flu epidemic” where “they died like flies” is a reference to the Spanish Flu, or The Great Influenza. See here for more.]
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[Was crime a big problem?] No. No. You had nothing like—I can remember, we used to— I don’t think any of the neighbors really did much in the way of locking doors, no such thing. (chuckles) As a matter of fact, maybe this is something we should have kept in Fountain Hill here. In those days when I was a youngster we had a curfew. When that whistle blew, you got off the street, you better not be out on the street unless you were with a parent.
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So they said to me, ‘Well, would you do it?’ I said, ‘You’re asking me?’ I said, ‘I know that you squeeze a trigger somewhere and the projectile comes out the front, that’s all I know.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I can do much for them.’ Somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you try it?’ One person suggested that I call the Marine barracks and get help. So I did, and you’d be surprised how much fun I had over the years teaching safety and all this and that and I can’t hit the broadside part of a barn, and I coached for 15 years and one of my teams went to the state finals, so we won (inaudible) of the division title after I got to Liberty where we got a large student body. Two southern divisions and we had a District 11 and a Northeastern regional championship and we went to the state finals. Now my youngster has, he picked it up, but we wouldn’t let him have any rifles here at home until he became, I thought qualified. I hate to put material like that in the hands of kids. Now of course, he’s a specialist. He loads his own ammunition. He has guns and pistols. He’s in a pistol league and he can shoot. He stands 75 feet away and he’ll knock your ears off. He has terrific scores, close to 300, shooting at 75 feet with high-caliber pistol. He (inaudible) shoots better than a lot of the policemen. He says, one of the faults of the policeman, he said the policeman doesn’t know his tool that well. He said they misuse it.
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Well, I remember, you wouldn’t remember this, but I remember when the Lord’s Prayer was banned from school and that was like—I don’t know, I can’t see it because of that, but I think the morale tone of the school began to decline. The mode of dress became careless. The mode of conduct became care— Not by all the students. Some students still come from a home that’s still a home and that insists on certain moral standards.
And I guess a lot of it came from the aftermath of the wars and there would be a lot of things that influenced it, but I think the dropping of that in school was one thing that wasn’t good, because I remember we always had—I used to have my youngsters, and I never had one refuse, and I had Catholics, Protestants, Jewish students in my class, and I always used to read our schedule. And I think once a week we got a guidance period and I used to plan, I felt the kids should take part in opening exercises. It exposes them a little bit into leadership. I used to have them all read passages, and I didn’t insist that anybody read any specific passage, but they were allowed to read from the Old Testament, the New Testament, whatever they would like to read, and then they would lead the Lord’s Prayer, and then we’d have the salute to the flag. It was sort of starting the day off in a sort of moral tone in a way.
Then from then on, things would go from one thing to the other. But I missed that, and I thought it was something that was lost through it. I can’t prove it. I’m not sure. Maybe it were the other factors that made this moral tone of dress and carelessness go down, because as soon as kids start coming in my classes with jeans on and patched—And it wasn’t that they came from poor parents because they had money, because the kid had more money in his pocket as spending money than his new pair of pants and shirt would cost, and they had weeds galore in them. If they weren’t smoking Chesterfields20, it was something else. They were loaded with money. And that may have had something to do with it, the income of the families.
So I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of factors and the fact that we dropped the reading of the Bible and the Lord’s Prayer and all that sort of thing sort of took something out of the classroom. I don’t know. I felt something was lost.
After it was gone, well, then what could you do? I mean, the law said you didn’t dare do it, so you didn’t do it. You still had the salute to the flag, and then oh, in the beginning I didn’t stop altogether, but I didn’t break the law. I asked them to have a moment of silence, soft prayer to themselves. I don’t recall ever anybody objecting to that, and then we turn around then and had the salute to the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance and that sort of thing.
But I feel there was something lost, truly I do.
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For those interested in reading further, the full transcript is linked below.
Bethlehem Steel main plant, Bethlehem Pennsylvania. The stacks as seen from Fountain Hill borough. Mrs. Miller never forgave Florida for “stealing” New Mexico’s logo. Above is a 1932 license tag proving her case. The logo was first used by New Mexico in the 1880’s. Florida was known as “The Citrus State”. But they cleverly adopted their current logo by formal resolution, something New Mexico had failed to do. And the rest is history.
