Cuban Sandwiches

They're everywhere now.

People are arguing about who makes the best one and who made the first one.


The bread is a fat crusty loaf and must have originally been invented in Cuba a long time ago.


To slice it and stuff it with delectable things is one thing, but to press it down and make it flat, not fat, and crusty and melty and tasty, is another.


The first one I had years ago at a friends' house had been reheated in their microwave and it didn't do a thing for me, leaving me to wonder why they were nuts about a Cuban sandwich.


So off we went to Tampa in their little car, to the tiny restaurant in a tiny, out-of-the-way plaza.


I watched the loaf being sliced, the meat and cheese and everything else being slapped on.


But the press was amazing to see.


And then I ate.


People should keep on arguing about who makes the best one and who made the first one, for as long as they like.


But just keep on making them, because they have to be one of the coolest sandwiches ever invented.

Good and Bad Teachers

We all know who they are, don't we? It doesn't matter if it happened sixty years ago or yesterday - we know the difference in our hearts.

Good - They not only like kids and teens, they love them.
Bad - They can't stand you.

Good - Born for the job.
Bad - Should be wardens at the worst penitentiaries you can find.

Good - Receive loving gifts at Christmas from you.
Bad - Receive begrudged stuff because your parents made you give them something.

Good - Have patience and easy smiles.
Bad - Patience isn't even in their meager vocabulary. Smiles would crack their sour faces wide open and their noses would fall off.

Good - Say "good morning" and "goodbye" each school day, as if you're their very own children.
Bad - Tell you not to waste time vacating the premises if you know what's good for you.

Good - Teach, show, and explain until you get it.
Bad - Slap it on the board, ignore your questions, sneak out for a smoke when you all need help. You can hear them cackling through the closed door.

Yes - those bad teachers are cauldron witches, male and female and the questionable, alike.

They have lives after hours doing their best to make everyone around them as miserable as they are. And if they live alone, they pollute the very air they breathe with their ugliness.

Bad teachers yell at the kids.

They scare the kids.

The kids never learn much in their classrooms, unless it's how to treat their enemies on a bad day.

Good teachers you think of years later with a smile on your face and a pleasant sigh.

Bad teachers make you kick the coffee table years later. They make you say you hope they met a miserable death, like hanging upside-down by one shoe caught on an over-hanging tree limb three miles above a canyon in the middle of nowhere, where even the buzzards and vultures turn their noses up at their carcasses.

Now you can think of them with a smile on your face and a sigh.

Oh, yeah.

The United States of America, Chapter Seven: Palm Springs, California, Part Two

The motel where I stayed was owned by two men who loved fashion. The rooms were softly decorated in wonderful colors and I had a yellow and white one.


It left such an impression on me, the effect of yellow and white and sun, that I bought deck furniture in those colors when I went home that spring, and it never failed to remind me of Palm Springs.


The temperature reached 115° in the shade during the days. I couldn't even breathe in that, so I ran for the air conditioning wherever I could find it.


The motel owners were friendlier than anyone else in town, and when it was time to head to San Diego, they pulled out a map and traced a route for me to take. It cut across country, through lush green hills, past miles and miles of black wooden fences, thousands of Aberdeen Angus cattle and bulls grazing in the sun, and ranch buildings so sprawling they looked like well-kept mansions parked at the end of long, paved tree-lined driveways.


Wealth was everywhere along those back country roads.


The motel owners had said I'd enjoy the drive as much as they did, whenever they headed down to San Diego with their cute little dogs to visit family and friends.


If it wasn't so unbearably hot in Palm Springs, I would have wanted to make my home there. It had a peacefulness about it, an aura that everything was special and to be savored at leisure.


But a friend years later sent me a postcard while he was on business there, and he said that on the sidewalks, the glue melted on the soles of his shoes, and the soles came undone. His shoes fell apart.


Now that's hot. I can't breathe just thinking about it.

The United States of America, Chapter Seven: Palm Springs, California, Part One

Back in 1975, Palm Springs wasn't all that large an oasis in the desert.

Mostly it was golf courses for celebrities, the rich, and the PGA tours.

Mostly, it was walled-in estates on curving roads in the foothills, so secretive that you could see nothing but stucco and red bougainvillea vines and massive, expensive palm trees.

There were small motels and small streets, a small mall, and spas for Hollywood over-weights to come for a week or a month to lose the fat and feel like a pampered queen while doing it.

Sambos Restaurant made the best eggs and coffee in town, so I went there a lot.

The first time I laid eyes on grits was at Sambos in the early morning just after dawn. A pile of white, with a dollop of melting sweet butter on the top of it, sat beside two eggs fried so gently that they melted in my mouth.

I didn't know what to do with the grits. They were bland-looking and definitely unappealing.

But the other patrons, I noticed, were eating theirs easily, as if they knew grits were a normal food in Palm Springs, maybe even good for you.

By the time my stay in Palm Springs was over, I ate the Sambos grits with great enthusiasm, even letting the gooey yolk of the eggs run all over the pile of white before I scooped it up on my fork.

I saw an interview later with a sitcom actress who went to a spa in Palm Springs to lose a few pounds, and she said she snuck out at night to head to Sambos to gorge herself on their tender fried eggs and grits. And I thought, yeah, I know what that's all about.

Long Ago Teachers: Field Trip

I had a really sweet teacher for grades one, two, and three.

She had to put up with a few bad boys who probably ended up in juvenile detention by the time they were eight, and the federal penitentiary the second they turned eighteen.

Who could take a class of kids anywhere when you had even one nasty little boy to ruin everything, let alone two or three?

But she really liked the idea of field trips. After all, the small city teachers had field trips for their students, and so did the small towns.

So, my teacher took us to the woods.

Wonderful! My favorite place in the world!

Just down the road a bit, then follow the hot train tracks to a farm, down a lane hill and across a green field, and on and on until she decided that, "here we are, children."

We sat in the woods and ate our sandwiches and drank our warm sodas from the general store. The store owner was given our orders a few days before, so he could be sure and have enough of what we wanted without draining his supply.

I always sat  near my teacher when we ate. She always had a huge, thick sandwich with canned salmon on it, so big she could hardly hold it.

I could never take my eyes off that sandwich.

I figured that a rich person could have a whole can of salmon on one sandwich and not go broke.

I figured that the ultimate, best thing in the world would be to grow up and be rich enough to put the whole can of salmon between two slices of bread, any old day you wanted to.

That was luxury.

To this day, no matter how much money I have had, I have never done that.

And I can't figure out why.

Because in my "little kid eyes", it's still got to be the best thing in the world.

Cuba In 1981, Log Eight - The Beach Village

I ventured away from the resort one morning after breakfast and out into the tiny village.

Quiet houses lay nestled closely together along sandy streets, beneath which lay pavement that was old.

The houses were cottage-like, small and simple.

In front of them, in sandy yards, women gathered on chairs, to talk and laugh and be okay.

There was a rough sidewalk along the edge of one little street, and what I saw there really took me by surprise.

Little girls, dressed in little cotton dresses and wearing nothing on their brown feet, were playing Hopscotch. I couldn't believe it.

The board was roughly scratched out on the sidewalk with the edge of a stone. It had all the numbers in the squares, scratched there by a childish hand.

They used flat, smooth pebbles to toss onto the squares, in the game.

As I watched, they did exactly what I did, back in the village where I grew up, on the school's front sidewalk, when I played with the other girls at recess.

These girls laughed, and cheered each other the same way we had, back in the 50's.

They took shy peeks at me, and because I adore children and love their games, I asked in English if I could try.

Because they didn't understand, I gestured. That they got.

A girl handed me her game piece stone, and grinned up at me. The others gathered around giggling and whispering and making me laugh.

Across the street, a group of mothers watched, poking each other and smiling.

I tossed the stone way up the board, and saw it land right where I wanted. Then I started to hop along the board the way I remembered.

They clapped and laughed, and when I reached the end, they cheered.

I had more fun in that moment than I did during my entire stay in Cuba.

The mothers were applauding across the street, and I swear I blushed with joy.

I knew "gracias" and so I said it.

And that got more applause.

I didn't want to leave, but I'd wandered for an hour or so already, and no one knew where I was, so I said goodbye and left.

It makes me smile just to write this story, to remember those little girls and their cotton dresses and their mothers, but mostly I remember their happy spirits and the simple things they did to get them.

Cuba In 1981, Log Seven - The Beach

The bus, with the Canadian tourists and a Cuban loaf of bread, left Havana and took us on an hour ride through some of the most luscious countryside I have ever seen.

So green, so rolling, so perfect.

Miles and miles of tropical trees, flowers, vines, and grasses, farmland, and horses.

We were headed to a beach, an isolated area with a resort on white sand and a tiny village nestled behind it.

The resort had a three-story building, an old building with old wooden architecture, where quaint tiny rooms were centered around a courtyard. It reminded me of an old Clark Gable movie in black-and-white I saw years ago, and wish I could see again.

I was not fortunate enough to have a room in this building.

Across an expanse of sand and a stone path, beyond many trees, another newer building stood on four floors. As if to make up for being shunted here, I was given an entire apartment on the third floor, the entire third floor.

There was a living-room, a kitchen, and many bedrooms. But just one bathroom. Now that wouldn't have mattered, except for the fact that some men had the other bedrooms, men who spoke an unrecognizable language. Men who used the bathroom.

For some reason, they remained mysterious to me, because they came and went only during the night. I rarely saw or heard them for the entire week I was there.

Facing the beach, a large balcony with a scant railing was bliss in the heat of the day and the late cool evenings.

Meals were in a dining-room on the main floor of the old building. It had a massive patio facing the beach, with walls surrounding it and stone steps leading off it.

The beach was beautiful. The water was warm and clean. The weather was constantly perfect.

There was no entertainment. None was needed. We just lived. We visited, made friends, walked, slept on the afternoon sand, looked for treasures, and read books during drowsy evenings.

It was peaceful and friendly, just the way you'd want a country, that welcomes you as a tourist, to be.