Florida – The Pull Of The Land

Miami Visit

February 12, 2023February 12, 2023 Richard Barnes

I came to Miami for Cousin Louis’s memorial service to be held Saturday, February 11, at Shake-a-Leg in Coconut Grove. Louis volunteered at Shake-a-Leg, a charitable organization which uses the marine and waters sports environment to encourage and help folks with disabilities.

It had been a while since my last visit to the area so it is good to have a bit of time in which to touch base with friends I’d not seen in close to two decades and also with family.

My grandfather, Max A. Barnes, left Cuba in the late 40s after retiring from Bethlehem Steel. Once, way too late in life, I asked Aunt Sarah what made Grandfather Max leave Cuba when Castro was still over a decade away and come to Miami. She replied, “He saw what was coming. And Miami was tropical, like Cuba.”

Readers of this blog can fully understand my aunt’s reply addressing my grandfather’s concerns, but I did not, until much later when I began looking into Latin America’s revolutionary history, including Fidel Castro’s activities in the very 40s and thereafter. Obviously, Grandfather Max was paying attention.

And that began a connection with Miami and South Florida that has endured through several generations.

Wednesday, the 8th, my old classmate, Dr. Niberto Moreno, treated me to lunch at the Riviera Country Club in Coral Gables. He called a classmate, Ken Barr, I’d not spoken with in over 50 years. It is very special to renew old acquaintances. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo. Niberto and I still remember the first time we met as young boys in Miami Christian School, “¿Eres de Venezuela?” he asked me, stopping on the walkway and turning to me as I walked behind him to another class. I caught up with him and we talked and became friends ever since. Talking over lunch was as if we’d never parted.

Ken Barr had a great sense of humor. When I told him that over the phone, he inadvertently proved the point when he remarked, “That’s probably all I was good at: not studying but making people laugh!” No. He was a good student with great wit, which not too many possess. I have been blessed with good friends.

Thursday another friend, César López, from the Upjohn Puerto Rico days picked me up to have breakfast at CocoWalk, an open mall with good eateries. César has had tough battles with The Big C (cancer) but his optimism and sense of humor and faith have held him in good stead. It is a marvel to see him so well, although we both know one is never out of the woods in this situation; so he does his best to care for himself.

I don’t think he’ll mind my sharing one story I had forgotten about. He had brought his then six-month-old daughter, Penelope, to visit his mother in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico. It was a joyous reunion. The following morning he sat at the kitchen table talking with his mother as she cooked breakfast. Suddenly, she fell back into César’s arms and died of a brain hemorrhage. There are some things that remain indelibly stamped onto one’s psyche. It was good to have reconnected with César. And I remembered to take a photo.

Later, I met my cousins Janis, Pete, and Vivian, at Shake-a-Leg in Coconut Grove. We drove around in circles looking for a diner that likely no longer exists. We must have seemed highly suspicious characters to a news crew that saw us drive by at least four times. Finally opted for a Cuban restaurant nearby where Vivian kindly treated us all. What a quiet, wonderful time of fellowship and gratitude! We all recognized that what we had growing up was unique.

Being relatively close to Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery (now Caballero Rivero Woodlawn North Park Cemetery and Mausoleum), I visited my paternal grandparents’s gravesite. Woodlawn is one of the oldest cemeteries in Miami. Much history lies there. For example, the park holds the tomb of Desiderio Arnaz II, Desi Arnaz’s father, who was the youngest mayor of Santiago, Cuba, was exiled in 1933, and died in Miami in 1973. Also, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias, a hemophiliac, died in Miami in 1938 as a result of internal bleeding after a car accident and was buried in Woodlawn but was re-entombed in Spain in 1985. And many more such.

Peafowl (peacocks and peahen) appeared in Coconut Grove in the early 20th Century. They are native to India. Residents have a love-hate relationship with them: beautiful, loud, leave lots of scratches and guano on cars. Ironically, the Peacock family were among the earliest settlers in the area in the 1870s. They opened a hotel in what is now the site of Peacock Park. This was many years before peafowl began to appear.

Finally, Coconut Grove has many old trees, including the Kapok Tree (Ceiba Pentandra) in a quiet corner dwarfing everything around it.

This area is very much a part of my childhood and I am grateful.

César López and I have breakfast

Cousins Janis and Pete Colón, Vivian Edwards, and I enjoy good conversation over lunch

Desi Arnaz’s parents: Desiderio Arnaz II (1894-1973) and Dolores Acha Socias (1896-1988)

Alfonso, Prince of Asturias (1907-1938)

From left: Max A. Barnes (1874-1950), Eustaquia R. Barnes (1893-1951), Alfred L. Barnes (1927-1968), and Sarah L. Rodriguez (1924-2015)

With a peacock friend

Kapok tree in a Coconut Grove neighborhood

Leaving Venezuela — 1966

May 18, 2022May 18, 2022 Richard Barnes

Researching and writing about the Bogotazo — whose repercussions are with us still — elicited a few childhood memories which, for what it’s worth, I’ll document here.

I left Venezuela in 1966, fully intending to return to live there one day. See Playa Hicacos, 1966 for my personal recollections of that year in my childhood, which was yet another tumultuous year in Latin America.

My intentions never materialized because, as the Spanish aphorism puts it, “El hombre propone y Dios dispone” (“Man proposes and God disposes”), loosely based on Proverbs 16:9, but quoted in classic Spanish literature such as Don Quijote. So, although I was able to visit a number of times, especially summers during student years, I never returned to live there again.

Nevertheless, as Whittaker Chambers put it in his magisterial Witness, “No land has a pull on a man as the land of his childhood.” And that pull is still with me.

In that era, “globalism” was an unheard-of term. Large companies, such as Bethlehem Steel and United States Steel, were known as “American” companies, whereas today such seek to be known as “global” companies, with minimum, if any, loyalties to the United States, regardless of their founding or corporate headquarters.

American families were stationed in myriad and distant spots across the continents and the early schooling of their children was addressed by establishing schools modeled after those of the origin state of the company. So, for instance, the Bethlehem Steel school in El Pao was generally modeled after the norms of state schools in Pennsylvania. So, as an example, when those schools required standard tests for the elementary schools across the state, those very tests were also administered to us.

As far as I know those who attended the school in El Pao did well once they transferred to the United States.

And they usually transferred at an early age. I was 12 years old when it was my turn to transfer, and I was not an exception.

We travelled to Miami for annual leave, but my stomach churned a bit that year because I knew that at the end of that vacation, I would not be returning with my family to Venezuela. We nevertheless enjoyed our visit with family in Florida and the Northeast. I was happy to see the Langlois Motel in Miami again. Our family had been staying there for years and it was a favorite of the cousins and us.

What I most remember, though, was the farewell at the Miami International Airport. Back then we had no obstacles to staying with travelers in the Pan American Airways waiting lounge and then at the gate.

My father and mother said their farewells to my aunt and cousins, as did my sisters. Then they each embraced me and expressed their hope to see me again at Christmastime. I bravely succeeded in holding my tears and keeping my voice from cracking as I hugged back.

Then we waved good-bye as they left the terminal and disappeared into the plane.

My aunt and cousins and I walked back to the parking lot, exchanging few words, but I could tell they were a bit anxious about me. I just wanted to get back home and find a spot where I could be alone.

But my aunt had other plans. She drove us to Miami Beach. I asked why are we going there, especially at this hour? “Oh, just for a ride.” Then I understood she was doing her best to distract me. I was not a happy camper for that, but I kept it to myself. The radio played that week’s top song, “Cherish”, performed by The Association. It seemed a bit too treacly, even for a 12-year-old, but what did I know. It became one of the very top songs of that year.

Then “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles came across the airwaves. That song, about loneliness, was more in tune with my sense at the moment. As the only surviving relative of Eleanor Rigby put it in an interview in 2008, “A lot of time has gone by, and Eleanor’s side of the family has run out. They were ordinary, hardworking folk, the Rigbys — joiners, bricklayers, farmers, and the like — not the kind of people you expect to go down in history. And now there’s nobody left.”

That about encapsulates my anomie back then.

Days later one of my cousins told me they were very surprised I had not broken down. I assured her that I had indeed broken down — inside.

Months later I learned that on the plane, a gentleman who sat across the aisle from my father had leaned over and told him about having been left in the United States years before in circumstances very similar to ours. Only in his case, the parents were headed back to Germany. He had noticed our farewells and wanted to assure my parents that all would be well. But he did not sugar coat it: he said that, even after so many years, he still gently grieved whenever he thought of that day.

The reader should keep in mind that in 1966 communication with El Pao was via short-wave radio. Or mails. It was like going to the other side of the earth.

Psychedelic drugs and English fashion — Carnaby Street, Twiggy, Alfie — were “in” and for young folks it was difficult to tell the difference between genuineness and just plain marketing and promotion. Regardless, it seemed the world was going upside down and that the self-centeredness of Alfie generally reflected western mores at the time.

As the American and British scenes seemed to careen off course, South America was wracked by coups and a violent Cordobazo in Argentina, further Communist infiltration into the highest echelons of the military in Venezuela, and, by 1966, La Violencia had caused the abandonment of over 40% of the arable land in Colombia.

So, as we asked, “What’s it all about?” the seeds of upheaval continued to be sown in abundance in Latin America. And the harvest in Venezuela became most apparent in the 90s and to the present day.

Pan American ticket counter, Miami International Airport, circa 1960

Michael Caine in *Alfie*, 1966. The song was composed separately as a promotion song and became a surprise hit.

“Eleanor Rigby died in the same house where she had been born, was interred in the graveyard of St Peter’s Church, and had her name added prominently on an increasingly crowded headstone.” — *The Daily Mail.* She had married 9 years earlier and then discovered she could not bear children. She died of a massive brain hemorrhage a month after the outbreak of World War II. She was much loved by her family.

Voices From the Past

April 18, 2022April 18, 2022 Richard Barnes

A dear cousin’s re-discovery of some old letters (from the 50s) stirred recollections of the years I lived in Miami under the tutelage of Aunt Sarah and Uncle Luis, whom we called Uncle Wichy.

Five decades ago, our paternal grandfather’s side of the family met in Miami for the wedding of one of his granddaughters. Twenty of us met for that event, and, although several had met separately on different occasions over the years, all twenty of us did not meet again for over three decades afterwards, when we had a family reunion in December, 2006.

By then, five had died, eight marriages had been celebrated, and numerous children had been born. And so, we decided to celebrate a family reunion where the remaining fifteen could meet once again. Adding spouses and children who were able to come, the group that day numbered forty-six, mas o menos.

Since December, 2006, five more have passed away, including Aunt Sarah, the last surviving child of our paternal grandfather. The last member to have passed away was my cousin Max (Papaito), who died December 19, 2021.

This post borrows from a recollection I wrote about fifteen years ago about that family reunion in 2006, which I hope gives a little sense of our gratitude towards one another and to God.

We gathered in a one-bedroom condominium near the beach, overlooking the inter-coastal waterway. This type of arrangement we were used to as children when sometimes as many as 20 cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents plus assorted visitors gathered annually in Miami in a small, one-bathroom house whose address and telephone number we still know by heart.

For many years, that house was home as we’d leave Venezuela to go to school in the States. In this way, family history repeated itself, in that, a generation earlier, our own parents had to leave Cuba to go to school in Massachusetts and while there they all stayed in an uncle’s house and learned to live with one another and to appreciate one another and to love one another. Thus, for two generations, these extended families were quite close, and our challenge is to instill that sense of communion to the third and fourth generations who are already amongst us. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be done as it was when our parents lived in Cuba and we in Venezuela. But it can be done.

Funny how all seems laughter and joy looking back. Well, in a real sense, it was laughter and joy, because, although there may have been fights and misunderstandings and even bitterness for a time, it all turned out to a strengthening of and appreciation for our generational bonds. And that is certainly cause for laughter and joy.

So, at the time, while Tom may not have appreciated Jack’s sticking a straw in his eye; and Jack may not have understood Tom’s declaring his brain to be upside down; and while Julie detested wearing everyone’s hand-me-downs, even the boys’; and while Dan could show his displeasure by throwing a shoe through the wall (names have all been changed to protect the guilty); etc., those of us who remain, appreciate and love one another today. We wouldn’t change events, even if we could.

Our beloved Aunt Sarah would ensure we all went with her to church every Sunday morning. We all remember how, at the conclusion of each service, the choir would sing the beautiful benediction, The Lord Bless You and Keep You (from Numbers 6). Easter Sundays were very special as she would get us up well before dawn and drive us — in more ways than one — to the coast to attend sunrise services. As we grew older and more resistant to such early reveille, she resorted to threats, such as, “Wait till I tell your parents!” That would work for some, but not all. But we were always very glad we went.

She would also insist on outings, usually on Sundays after church. How she put up with our bickering, our foot dragging, our resistance to going anywhere, we’ll never know. Maybe she anticipated how, at the end of every single one of those outings, we would be enjoying ourselves so much, we would not want to leave. Maybe she knew they were for our benefit and that one day we would appreciate them. Maybe she was simply a very determined lady, whom we all loved.

And, for the most part, we can thank her for telling us about Jesus. That’s some heritage to leave to sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews.

As for Uncle Wichy, I can say, with all honesty, he scared the living daylights out of me. Once, upon arrival from the airport, I, about 7 years old, was greeted by him, whom I had not seen for a year, with, “Now remember, if you misbehave, you’ll get Pow-Pow”! I stared in stunned silence as he roared with laughter.

He took us deep sea fishing and “lobstering”. Once, while pulling up a lobster trap, the lines and eventually the trap caught in the ship’s propeller, destroying trap and catch. We continued talking and fishing as if nothing had happened. He rebuked us quietly, “This is a great loss for José (his friend who had agreed to take us along) and I feel very bad about this.” Even though José told him it was nothing and “Don’t worry about this; this is a typical loss” still Uncle Wichy fretted the rest of the day and into the night.

He mellowed with the years, and we grew to understand his love and genuine interest and concern for us. He died in 1995.

Besides Aunt Sarah, our paternal grandparents had three sons: Uncle Max, Uncle Charles (“Charlie”), and Uncle Alfred. Both my father, Charles, and Uncle Alfred were murdered. Uncle Max died in 2007, less than a year after the family reunion. Uncle Alfred never married, but the first two did and their wives, Tía Carmencita and Tía Adita, regaled us with their stories for years afterwards….

As we shared pictures and music in 2006, we recalled these things and much more. And we were grateful our own children were able to attend.

My mother, Tía Adita (91) is the last surviving family member of that generation who was in that 1972 photo.

Cousins either after church on a Sunday or after Easter Sunrise Service, circa 1963

The years flew by. The affection remained.

Mrs. Miller, Bat Guano, and Beforehand Rebukes

December 4, 2021December 4, 2021 Richard Barnes

I do not remember her first name, if I ever knew it, that is. Back then, for us youngsters, it was strictly “Mr.” and “Mrs.” and “Miss”.

But I do remember her.

She was from New Mexico. And boy did she resent Florida’s having “stolen” their state motto, “The Sunshine State”, from New Mexico! She said she could prove the theft too! Although I never asked her for evidence.

Once, after I handed in a picture project on hygiene, she called me to her desk and, remaining seated, gently began explaining why she thought I had missed the point. I had drawn a picture of a refrigerator. Through the open door, one could see the shelves labeled with the names of the items that belonged on each: eggs, milk, soft drinks, butter, and so forth.

“The fact that some of these items may be misplaced, does not affect cleanliness,” she said.

“Oh, I know. What I was showing was that if you leave the refrigerator door open, food can spoil,” I replied, silently wondering what items I had drawn so poorly that she thought they were misplaced!

She looked up at me as I stood with a genuine look of surprise that she would not have understood the intention of having drawn an open refrigerator door. Then she leaned back on her chair and laughed.

“Ah! I see. OK. Yours is a valid observation. Leaving the refrigerator door open is not good. You can go back to your desk.”

That same year, we took a field trip to the Orinoco to explore the Bethlehem Steel port facilities. That was one of my most memorable school trips, though, if you ask me why, I wouldn’t be able to tell you even if my life depended on it. I remember boarding the van, riding there, searching around the port, and riding back. Maybe I so enjoyed the camaraderie with my fellow classmates that the trip just floods my memory banks with good thoughts.

And then there was that night that some hooligans (my friends) did some mischief at the club. I don’t recall the mischief, but boy do I recall the tongue-lashing Mrs. Miller gave the class the following morning! I recall that because I had no idea what she was talking about.

It must have shown on my face because she snapped at me, “Ricky, don’t act like you don’t know! You were part of the gang!”

I was crestfallen. One of my friends noticed it and demurely raised her hand to say, “Mrs. Miller, it is true that Ricky was not a part of the ruckus. He was there at the beginning but left soon after the trouble started.”

My dejection was replaced by white hot anger! My “friend” was lying, and she knew it. I was not there at all. But she obviously was! She even smirked at me — when Mrs. Miller wasn’t looking, that is.

I am chuckling and laughing as I write this. What was so important to me at the moment, is now a childish memory. Actually, it became a good memory, for which I thank both Mrs. Miller and my friend.

A year later, I myself became a hooligan one afternoon when several of us, hunting for bats, managed to fall through the club ceiling causing quite a mess on the tables, chairs, and floor below. I’d never before (or since) seen so much guano rain down. And the company executives who just happened to be inspecting the premises that very day were also impressed with the bat droppings and the shocked kids hanging from or watching down from the now very visible attic. Our daze in trying to figure out how to clean up the mess was extremely short-lived, as we were peremptorily instructed to go. Immediately! We quickly obeyed.

So, Mrs. Miller’s rebuke was well deserved, even if it was a year too early! As the film noir puts it: “The postman always rings twice”.

My work took me to New Mexico often in recent years. It is one of those places that pull at you, like Venezuela. The West does that to many of us. I thought of her often during those trips.

I think Mrs. Miller was in El Pao only one school year. At least that’s what I remember.

But for some reason I do remember her. And I appreciate her.