?Which fads did you embrace while growing up?

The first thing that comes to mind is that, quite involuntarily, I never had my hair cut until I was over two years old, as a result, there is an infamous photograph of me at age two with long curly spiral buckles. I brought it with me from Cuba because it is in an old photo album that my artistic cousin Pepe Villamil made when I was born and during the first few years. He wrote annotations on white ink on the black pages and adorned it; it was so good and such a labor of love that I could not leave it when I came. He also wrote a narrative of my first few years of life, later on transformed it into a hard cover book. I still have the typed pages, but the hard cover book I gave to his daughter Ada Ela, now deceased.

There were other photos in the album, such as with a baseball uniform of my favorite team Habana, another with a doctor?s white shirt and medical bag that belonged to my cousin Emilito Villamil.

As a grew up, I followed the fads of the time, first short pants, later on, below the knee length pants with elastic just below the knees, before graduating to long pants.

I did play some baseball, but always for recreation, never in competition. I did become an equestrian at age 13, sport that I practiced mostly consistently from Monday to Friday for five years, although I had to go to Rancho Boyeros to do it. Luckily the team provided transportation which I could catch at Calle 26, to where I could go either walking or with an easy bus ride. They also provided transportation and room and board for meets outside of Havana.

Since childhood I had a 78-RPM record player and recorder. The 78 RPM records were acetate, if they fell broke into a thousand pieces, had one song on each side. The player had to arms, one to play with a blunt needle, as they were mono, one grove - one sound, and the second arm was for recording sounds from a microphone on the arm itself into blank records they sold for the purpose. The 78-RPM record I had that I played was the original recording of Jinetes en el Cielo (Riders in the Sky) by Pedro Vargas of 1951.

Later on, vinyl records made their appearance, first small 45-RPM that needed an adapter, and also had one song on each side, later on the 33-RPM long-playing records with six or eight songs on each side. We had one of those in the house.

We also had a round-screen black-and-white television set soon after commercial television became popular in Cuba, circa 1950. There were many children programs, most American with Spanish sub-titles, such as Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey, Highway Patrol, Flash Gordon, etc. and some excellent Cuban shows as well, such as the Show of Olga y Tony with Olga Chorens, Tony Alvarez and their little daughter Lissette, now married to Willy Chirino.

There were no laws against serving alcoholic beverages to minors on the books, so it was normal for our generation to grow up tasting beer, sangria, wine or even rum at an early age. Most Sunday afternoons my cousins Pepe, Elena and sometimes Cira, came to our house for a beer or a little rum, while tasting cheeses, chorizos, berberechos (cockles), sardines and other delicacies.

Since age 13, --remember that all my classmates were at least two years older than me. I remember going to Café Habana on 12 &23 (about three-and-a-half blocks from my house) and playing cubilete for a glass of beer that cost ten cents. It was common for beer to be served by the glass (two glasses per bottle), to keep it cold as people were playing dice. We normally played for a couple of glasses, never to excess. To my knowledge, none of my classmates became alcoholics, something to be said for the system. That is not to say that there were no alcoholics, for there surely were, but I believe it has more to do with addictive personalities than with having alcoholic beverages available at an early age.

Drugs were not part of our scene back then; we associated the use of marijuana with low classes and heroin or cocaine with the very rich spoiled brats. None of us even saw drugs while growing up, a vastly different society that what prevails at this time.

Between 13 and 18, we went to parties, most in private homes, many at social clubs, of which there were many and each of us belong to one of the other, some more exclusive, some less so; the most exclusive social club in Habana was the Habana Yacht Club, which even rejected Batista while President.

Girls tended to have extravagant parties at age 15 to introduce them to society, families would contract choreographers to rehearse a production with the birthday girl, her escort and 15 couples of her friends, with all dressed up in tuxedos and long dresses, a full orchestra, held at the social club?s formal hall.

Many clubs were on the beach, contiguous one to the other, for instance the Habana Yacht Club was next to the Military Circle, which in turn was next to the Casino Español, which was next to El Club Naútico. El Naútico had an orchestra playing each Sunday, good parties, so some of us from the adjacent Casino Español, Military Circle and Havana Yacht Club attended the parties swimming from club to club, where nobody challenged us.

I did let my hair grow long for a while in high school, which did not suit me at all, given the amount and thickness of my curly hair. Other than that short phase, my grooming and dress was conservative.

As far as music, my lack of rhythm and talent did not keep me from dancing and enjoyment of music. During my adolescence, Cha-cha-cha and Rock and Roll became popular, although I did not care much for the latter at the time, I preferred more melodic romantic music and Mexican corridos or ballads.

Watching professional AAA baseball live at the Station of El Cerro was a very favorite endeavor where I went often, mostly with my godmother and cousin Elena Villamil. She told me how to keep score manually and we both did. As a child, until 1950, my father?s furniture factory was half a block away from the stadium, after that, they moved away to a new building built by my maternal grandfather Manuel Porto, his last job as a contractor.

Since I could go free to the movie theater Atlantic, in a building of the same name three blocks from my house because it was owned by Mauricio Almagro and managed by his brother Enrique, uncle and father respectively of my schoolmate and Beto?s godfather, I went at least once a week, as they premiered new American films at the same time as in the US, albeit with Spanish subtitles.

As I related previously, when I returned to Havana on 4 September 1957 after spending the entire summer in Miami, the luxury condominium building FOCSA was occupied, my schoolmate Roberto Pérez and his family had moved there, my friends were excited because there were lots of young people, I began going there to swim at their pool, changing into swimming trunks at Roberto?s apartment even when he wasn?t there, thanks to his mother Otilia who treated me always very well, also attending private parties that were held often in the luxurious apartments throughout the building. That is when I met Miriam who lived at apartment 20-D.


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