The following is an excerpted interview with Jack Espinosa. The full text of the interview is available as part of the permanent collection of Oral History interviews in the History and Genealogy Department of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library.

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This is an interview with Jack Espinosa (JE) of Tampa. Uh, the interview is being conducted on August the 12, er, August the 13, 2001 at Mr. Espinosa's office in Tampa. My name is Steve Szekely (SS), representing the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library Systems' Oral History Collection Project.

Steve Szekely: We're gonna talk about public schools, the pre-school in Ybor City.

Jack Espinosa: Yeah, well, I, my first year was in, uh, Catholic School. Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which was right down the street from where I was born. Uh, however, uh, it cost twenty-five cents a week to go there. and my father, who was not very Catholic, even though he was Spanish, from Spain, was almost an anarchist, uh, he didn’t think I was learnin’ anything in the Catholic Church, so he wanted me to go to free school, what they called a free school. Free school because it was, uh, allegedly, it didn't cost any money, well, you could go there and my father, I'll never forget when he said, "Now, now he's gonna learn about "la democracia," which, he meant, "Now you're gonna learn about democracy."

Well, what happened there in public school was a great salad, 'cause everybody thinks things over there in Ybor City was one, one people. It finally grew that way almost, but there were four different groups in Ybor City that were not, didn't have a great deal affinity towards each other - at the beginning. But you know, school changed that because we all went to the public school, and we got to know one another and Spanish, Spanish kids and Cuban kids spoke the same language. Sicilian kids who spoke Sicilian but they, they were the ones who could speak English, I think, earlier, for some reason, but they, again, learned Spanish because their parents were working the in the cigar factories, they learned to speak a few words in Spanish. And of course, Sicilian and Spanish, you know, not, not that far removed, but it is a different language.

The blacks went to the separate, because of segregation at the time. The Afro-Cubans, they went to the black schools. They had a terrible time, because they couldn’t speak English, they were alienated, you know. They were very different, okay, from the American black. So that, what happened at R. E. L. that you had those three groups of whites: Sicilians, Spaniards and Cubans, and there was a war, earlier, you know, between Spain and Cuba. Cubans rebelled against the Spanish, right around the turn of the century, the Spanish-American War. So Spaniards were not very popular with Americans here at the time, even though Spaniards were the ones who controlled the cigar factories from way back, from uh, from Martinez Ybor, who started the factories here with the backing of the big banks, okay, the WASP banks, who at that time, very close Spanish.

Now, of course, what happened later on, of course, you know, the Americans got involved in the war with Spain. And the Cubans, okay, uh, in this country, were, became more the favorites, but the Spaniards who lived here, the immigrants who were here and the Cubans who lived here, they were not too happy with each other. And if you had, you were a Cuban, you wanted a girl from a Spanish family, that wasn't very popular and a Sicilian, wow. You can forget about that. Ah, Sicilians wouldn’t have any, have their daughters have anything to do with anybody, except another Sicilian.

So what did it for us, and there’s a great misconception about, you know, the Latins from Ybor City. Latin was one of those American catch-alls. That’s like saying Anglo-Saxon, calling everybody an Anglo-Saxon who speaks English, y’know. And that's not the way it is. So everybody that speaks Spanish, okay, is not an Hispanic. Everybody who speaks Spanish is not Spanish. As the Cubans were Colonials, and so on. There were a lot of mixtures in Cuba, of Irish, Cuban-Irish, my great-grandmother was Cuban-Irish. Now, who in the hell ever heard of that. There were a lot of Jewish people in Cuba, a lot of Polacks. Uh, the Polish people. Actually they were called Polakos, that’s why I misuse the word. Jewish people were called Polakos, which is a mispro…they’re not Polish.

But apparently, what happened in Cuba was that there was probably, and I'm guessing, that the Jews that were there, were of Polish descent and they call ‘em Polish. So, here you go, in Ybor City, now you've got this mixture, uh, let's say Latins as a catch-all, but the Latin was the Sicilian, the Spaniard and the Cuban. These were the white Latins. The other so-called Latins, the ones who spoke Spanish were Afro-Cuban. They were called Latins, too. But they went to the American black schools, at the time, that were segregated. So, you know, that group of, uh, Afro-Cubans, we never mixed with. The other three went to school together. That's where the blend came in.

JE I remember way back, I'm talkin’ about first grade and I know I, some of my best friends were, were Sicilians and the parents didn't mind, if it wasn't a girl. I'm talking about way at the beginning. This has, I know this has changed a great deal. My God, I mean, I got friends of mine, I mean the Italian girls, the Sicilian girls were, y’know, beautiful and the, the Spanish and the Cubans ( ) and they married and they had children, they had families that here and all that’s kind of over with. There's still a little bit now, among the old folks, because y’know, old people like me. I’ve gotten old now, I’m getting’ ornery, and I'm getting’ difficult to change, but we all came together. And just one name that pops in my head, a guy named Joe Patrinostro. Now Patrinostro is about as Sicilian, as Italian as you can get. It means “Our Father” – Patrinostro. And Joe and I became very close, very close friends, I’m talkin’ about elementary school and that was very, very, you know, typical of what began to happen and it began to happen early. So what happened is that, you know, even though the Spaniards didn't like the Cubans and the Cubans didn't like the Spaniards, the Cubans were more liberal. They were, you know, they were the rebellious ones, y’know. And the Cubans were the ones that were always the party people, they were all…my mother was born in Cuba, but of Spanish parents, but she was a colonial. And she was the ( ), She was always doin’ the jokes. My father was a little more, even though he had, he had a dry sense of humor.

I guess the best analogy that you can make between a Spaniard and a Cuban, which is my father and mother, is that the analogy you make between an Englishman and a Brooklynite. Okay, or an Englishman and an American, really, because the Americans were a lot more “ya-ha”, you know, all the movies, the British were all very strict and this and that here. But they really aren't. They got their sense of humor, too. It was a lot more formal. That's the way it was with the Spaniards. Uh, the Spaniards had their own ah, sense of humor and if you want to talk about diversity, there's no such thing as a "Spaniard." My God, I mean, you had a Centro Asturiano, that's the Asturians, that's a province in Spain.

Then when you talk to an Asturian, you know, you talk to him as he’s Asturiano first. I mean, his country is Asturia. Uh, if you talk to somebody from Madrileno, from Madrid, he is, he is a Castiliano, he’s Castilian. I mean, and someone is Catalans, and my God, the people in Barcelona! You saw the Olympics there, their own language. And it’s all supposedly one country. If you read the, the history of Spain, its like diversity and, and imagine, so, when they say “Ah, yeah, he’s an Ybor City, uh, y’know, ‘Latin’”, what the h( ) does that mean?

It means that nobody understands [laugh] what we're talking about. But, like I said, the great thing that happened here was that, that brought us together was the early years of public school. I mean then, Ybor's school, which was quite a free school, Robert E. Lee, because of the people living, you know, on the other section, on the other side of 15th Street, where, I used to call it Ybor City Heights. [laugh] Okay, they were a little better off than us peasants. Those people went to Robert E. Lee Elementary School. But eventually we all got together in junior high school, which was George Washington Junior High School. The other elementary school, which was Orange Grove Elementary School where we, that was way up north, but you know, when we moved up in the world and moved to public housing. That was a big step up. You had hot and cold running water. That alone, and a heater. That was when it was hot as h( ) in the summer, but it was hot as h( ) anywhere. But if you lived in, in the Ponce de Leon housing projects, you were living high on the hog. You moved up. Okay, at least, my people, then.

Now, there were a lot of people who were in Ybor City, as I said, among the Spaniards there were business people. They were not all laborers. Most of them were country folks and many of them had business, um, acumen; laundries, I know some of my best friends, y’know that had Encanto Cleaners, the Martinez’s are still running it. Um, uh, restaurants, shops, okay, and of course, there was a measure of Jewish people in Ybor City too, that they didn't live in Ybor City but they had shops there and we became very, very good friends, I mean, you know. Dollar Bob, and a dollar when you catch me, was a [laugh] an expression for the rainbow and all those wonderful Jewish people that were so good to us, because they were very, uh, very understanding. My father paid because, y’know, word of honor, y’know, I tell you, you pay a quarter a week, you pay a quarter a week. My mother was the same way.

So we developed a very good relationship between the Jewish people and the people of Ybor City, which eventually, you know, um, came together and established what we call now the Ybor City uh, uh, uh, person, okay, like me. Uh, we are really, um, we understand the Sicilian, the Sicilians understand Spanish people and Spanish, you know, we all became Americans and of course, the next step up, after junior high school, when we went to high school, now, that's when it really, really, really, really, really began to happen.

JE (continues): In junior high school, there was already a smattering of what we called so-called "crackers", which were anybody that was not a Sicilian or Spaniard or a Cuban. Uh, was a cracker. Now what the hell does that mean? Y’know, that's the same thing as saying Latins. Well, I remember a name: Bobby Belcher. Now, Bobby Belcher’s father had a grocery store. Belcher’s Grocery Store on Florida Avenue. Well, he went to George Washington Junior High School, ‘cause he lived in the area. Bobby Belcher was the first real Anglo that I got to know personally and we became pals, just like Joe Patrinostro. Okay, and of course, I had a million Cuban friends because they lived all over the block. The Echeverrias and all those people.

I mean, we lived on Eleventh Avenue, my whole world, my whole world was maybe ten blocks of Ybor City for a long time. I mean, I didn't get to go anywhere. My, our world was as far as the street car line and the street car lines went to the cigar factories. Or to the hospital. One of ‘em went all the way down to Bayshore to the Centro Español hospital. Now I was happy as ( ) when my grandfather got sick because he would go to the Centro over there, to the hospital, which, by the way, you know they had the socialized medicine almost so to speak. If you belonged to the society, you had, you paid so much a week and you had medical care. And if you belong to the Centro Español, the Centro Asturiano, the Cuban Club, Cinco Cubano or Marti Maceo, which was the Afro-American and the whites, you had medical care, okay, you had, uh, social events, dances.

Every Sunday at the Spanish Club, Centro Español, there was, uh, uh, a dance. The place, beautiful! I mean, I got my start in show business in those theaters. And you had Centro, I mean, those theaters were fabulous. Ah, now they call it Centro whatever they want to call it in Ybor City, but that was wonderful theater. And there was a tea dance every Sunday from five to nine, okay, where we got an opportunity to get close to the women. Close, okay? That’s it. We got close. So you lived all week long, when you were a teenager, saving your few pennies to go to the, the um, tea dance, so that you can get near it, near it. Heck, I learned a long time ago that you get a girl, you rub up against her, she'll slap. But if you put music to it, she lets you do it. So how in the world we gonna learn to dance? [laughter]

The Cuban Club and of course, they had social events and panderias you know, Queen of the Centro Español, Queen of the Cuban Club, Queen of the Centro Asturiano and Centro Asturiano had big picnics and shows between the picnics and the dances, and we had a ball. Y’know, they played this Spanish-Cuban, I mean Afro-Cuban, Spanish-Cuban music in the fishbowl downstairs, where they had, where the restaurant is now, at the Centro Asturiano. Uh, the theatre was in the mid-section, so we have a show while they changed the whole thing for the dance. And then you had American music, contemporary American music, upstairs, Glen Miller music and all that kind of stuff. Well, what the h( ), y’know so, you had one day, a Sunday, I mean, you started at twelve and you got home at ten thirty, eleven o'clock, happy as hell!

And the tea dances, you know, a shot of whiskey was twenty-five cents, you know. We were supposed to be minors, but nobody cared. So, you, with a quarter, you had a couple of shots of, uh, Corby’s, which was the closest thing to shellac, alright? [laughter] Two shots of Corby’s and ah, then of course, at the half-time, the girl you were dancing with, you kinda disappeared from her, because the half-time comes and you have to go out, you might have to buy her a sandwich at the Express, uh, Espresso across the street. El Espresso, was the name of the place. Cuban sandwich, fifteen cents. Now, just before the half, you see all the boys hauled ass, get away from, and disappeared, so you wouldn’t have to buy a sandwich, And a Coca-Cola was a nickel. So…uh, eventually, when I'm saying that the public schools was the key to bringing us together and it was eventually the key to bring us together to with the uh, with American society, with the other society.

JE (continues): We got to know each other. Jefferson High School was a beautiful place. Hillsborough High School, you know, athletics made the difference. If you were good, the Anglos didn't give a damn what your name was. If you were a runner, a good runner, if you were a good football player, you got the publicity, all of a sudden, things begin to open. And, and the Great American Story, uh, you know, begins to unfold and it's just a matter of, you know, slowly, people getting to know one other. Take my best friends and me, I've got so many, you know, if you were born and raised in Tampa and people say, "Why is Tampa so friendly?" It is, you know, with all our problems. This is a very friendly town and the reason for it is, I mean, here I'm committing another analogy, another analysis.

The way I look at it is that we have a very large native population that grew together and nobody moves from here. We won't leave. I mean, I was born, uh, ten minutes from where I'm sitting now. I have been living in this house ( ), since I got married fifty years ago! I added to the house, I added this. But I never went. I don't move. I don’t, maybe it's because I had move so many times when I lived in Ybor City. Whenever the rent was due, we moved. [laughter]. Uh, and I, those, um, those kind of things, uh, really, this growing up together and exchange, the great exchange of cultures and languages and opinions. What happened was that we developed another person. ‘Kay, uh, and Ybor City, whether we call it Ybor City Ro…, I call it the Ybor City Roaches or the Ybor City Bananas or whatever you want to call it, it is this other person that came out of it, after we learned from one another, and now, y’know, we still get together. I mean, y’know, Ybor, y’know, Ybor City, Ybor City you can go on with all the tourist business. You gotta go early to go to the Tropicana.

Yeah, you go over here to West Tampa, to the West Tampa Sandwich Shop for the ( ). You walked to the door, everybody there knows you. I mean, everybody - the cook, the guy in the back, the guy making the sandwich, everybody. And we say atrocities to one another. I mean, I reverse my insults, okay at five and six in the morning, when I go to the West Tampa Sandwich Shop and who goes in there? Table that I sit every morning, a Sicilian, from the old days. He's just as Sicilian now as he was back then. A Spaniard, Cubans, I'm talking about, these are all people born in, these are all Americans, uh, Cuban, Spanish, ta-da-ta-da-ta-da. And we have horrific arguments and we love each other. It's a marvelous thing. So, what happens is that if you’re from, you're not from here, right?

SS: No, no.

JE: You weren’t born in Tampa. Whatever you’re thinking. I guarantee you, if you come to Tampa, you stay around here for a little while, people will take you in. You become part of it and before you know it, they're making fun of your nose, they’re doin’ this. I mean, you become one of us. If you have a complex here, you die!. Okay, because, believe me, all we do, okay, is make fun of one another and it's a loving thing.

JE (continues): And the, the names, the nicknames in Ybor City. It is a phenomenon. Everybody had a nickname and you know, the amazing thing that, that’s so fitting. I mean, my god, there was, I mean, bombillo, I got in bombillo and he look like, bombillo is a light bulb. And he looked like a light bulb. He had a, was baldheaded. Had a little neck, okay, and big head. And he looked like a light bulb. It was unbelievable. And bombillo, you know, he had hair. They called him bombillito, which means little bulb. [laughter] Little bombillito.

How about this one? They used to call me this. "Mosquito de ( )." Okay? That is a McKay Bay mosquito. Now you know where McKay Bay is? McKay Bay is where the banana docks are. Smelly, stinky, you know. Uh, blackish, nasty water. Now, if you're a mosquito born in that atmosphere, that water, you’re a, you're a very nasty mosquito. They used to call me Mosquito ( ), uh, ( ) Beach mosquito.

Uh, jeez, you can go on and on and on, a million, a million… Some people are not… Uh, Lou Piniella, the famous baseball player, who is now the manager of the Seattle Sea Hawks. He, uh, his father, okay, played baseball here. By the way, that's another thing, this uh, those, uh, social clubs, Centro Asturiano. they also had athletics; theatre, social, medical and athletics, everything. And the Cuban Club used to play the, uh, Centro Asturiano…

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JE: That, uh, that inter-social league, that got very hot, okay? They played at the ( ), down at what they call Benjamin Field. They, those, let me tell you, those baseball games were hot. Fights broke out, it was bad news. So if you were a outsider and so forth, what we called the Anglo outsiders, uh, they thought we were all together? Baloney! We hated each other, too! They’d leave us alone, we’d throw rocks at each other. That was the way it was for a very long, long time, but, uh, what was I saying about, uh…

SS: We were on nicknames.

JE: Oh, my nickname. Well, you know, let's see, uh, Lou Piniella’s father. Escaparete. Escaparete is a chest or bureau, where you have clothing, that you put clothing in. You say, well how does that fit? Why you call somebody chest or bureau? Well, because he was so damn big! Y’know, he was a big, big guy and they called him the Escaparete. Now, if you know how long I've known these people, my whole life. Do you know that I don't know the Escaparete's name? His real name? I know it’s Piniella, but I don't know, I think it's Reese. Is that rich? [laugh]! We called the Escaparete for so many years that it stuck, I mean, that is his name, okay? And they, and people call each other the nicknames and some of them are terrible! But you know? They, they, it uh, it's what, that's what they respond to and, and…

SS: Are you still a McKay Bay mosquito?

JE: No, no, I lost it along the way somewhere, but they, they call me "Cookie" for so long that my son now, my son is a judge. They still call him Judge Cookie. That doesn't sound very good [laugh]. But kookie or cookie is, you know, which is a nickname for Joaquin, which is my real name. And "little coo-coo" is Cookie. See, my uncle, I was named after my uncle, Joaquin So, uh, because I was "Little Coo-coo", they call me "Cookie" and in English it sounds like "cookie", like "cookie", that you eat. And my son, who is my first-born, everybody called him Cookie. So I still call him Cookie and his name is Jack [laugh] Espinosa, Junior, but Cookie is what everybody that knows him calls him, so I always joke about it, say “You know, I gotta fix my lip and say Judge Cookie. Kinda looses a little dignity there [laugh].

SS: How ‘bout reaching back and talkin’ about, uh, teachers that you had in elementary school.

JE: Well, there were, there were some good ones, okay? But many of them kinda’ looked down their noses at us.

SS: Culturally, they were…?

JE: Well, yeah, most of the blacks... First of all, culturally, they were educated. Which we, by the way, we were not uneducated. My people were kinda self, self-taught. Everyone was literate in my family and that's the way it was in, I would say, I don't think there was any, very little illiteracy among the poorest people that came from Cuba and Spain. Somehow, everybody, my uncle was very well-read, my father was always, his nose was… he loved, uh, Jules Vern, because I think my father had some, must have had some gypsy in him because he was always thinkin’ about travelin’. Jules Vern, of course, was always traveling to the moon and all over the world, all over everything, around the world in eighty days. That was the kind of stuff my father, and my father read Quixote, Don Quixote de la Mancha, like some people read the Bible, over and over and over. Because, he said, he never read it that he didn't learn something new. Uh, and he would open to chapters and verses and stuff.

So, we were not illiterate, but we were not literate in English. So what happened is that we were not into, okay, the American culture, even though my father… I was teaching my grandfather the Constitution of the United States when I was eight, because he had to get the citizenship papers. And, like I said, the newspaper had, uh, questions and answers on the Constitution of the United States. And I would read it, read for my Grandfather, who by the way, never did catch on, but we, you know, he was too old and he was my step-Grandfather. And he would have his hat on, and I would tell him, you know, “who makes the laws?” You say, “the legislature”, and you know, “who enforces the law?” “The President.” You know, the Executive Jefe.

So I was reading to him, you know, early, because, you know, little kids pick up the language quickly. But the teachers that were college graduates, Anglo. Or again, I'm using Anglo-Saxon as one of those, I'm committing the same sin as when people say “the Latins”, or whatever, you know. There’s no country named Latinia and Latin is the language that nobody uses, but we say, you know the Anglo-Saxon, WASP, educated, you know, power structure. Now usually, they were daughters or wives of attorneys, you know, people who were in the power structure here, the Anglo, what we call the Anglo Saxon power structure. And they were, they were not all Anglo, there were Scots-Irish and whatever. And Polish and many other, Germans. But they kinda looked down on, and a lot of them meant well, because they say, "Well, let's go teach these poor slobs", you know how, you know.

SS: Did they speak any Spanish at all?

JE: No. No, they wouldn't allow you to speak Spanish in school. Um, when I was there, early and we would do it, you know, because there were words we couldn't understand. But in a way it was good, because you had to learn the language. But they kind of, uh, even the ones who were very good. Some of 'em didn't like us at all. In fact, in some of the little articles that I've written, you know, I've talked about those first years. In elementary school where, there used to beat us, uh, with paddles and, you know, whippings with paddles.

There’s two ways to whip somebody, okay. One is to correct the individual. Corporal punishment in a way that improve them and the other, you can feel by the hit, that they don’t like you. Because they hit harder and they do it, you can see the venom, okay? And the strokes. I know, because you see a lot of ‘em. And the teachers that were trying to help us, uh, when they administered the corporal punishment, they didn't do it with the vigor that the other, some of the others did, because you could tell. And kids, well, lemme tell you, children…..I remember.

You can tell when somebody doesn't like you and basically, you can tell then by the way they didn’t want you to touch them, you know? They kept away, they were all polished, and you know, with the long fingernails and smelling perfumey and all that. And they kept you away from them. And in fact, I heard one of ‘em talking to another teacher and saying, referred to us as “those little roaches.” Which by the way, I put in my article, that first chapter that I wrote kinda proudly, as an Ybor City roach, y’know. And they survive and, like we did [laugh]. I put my money on the Ybor City Roaches, okay. They’re still like termites and everything else, they're still there.

And, uh, they, uh, there was discrimination and you could sense it. Uh, yet, there were always, I think there were more, really, I guess you could remember the bad ones, but there were more good ones and, uh, they were, the ones who were good were very, very good. In fact, they were so good that I, I, I quit show business to grow up to become a teacher. The only time I’m sorry about that is when I drink. [laugh]. You know, I was making a lot of money in show business. Now I have to work for peanuts to bring my kids up. And teaching was really my…and the reason that I enjoyed teaching so much, and I didn't do it very long, seven or eight years, uh, was because of the inspiration that I got from teachers in elementary school, okay. Miss Alice (?) and a few others who were very, very, very dedicated people. They had to be. We had had professional boxers in elementary school. Because if you were Spanish-speaking or so-called, whatever, Latin uh, you had to learn to speak Spanish, they put you in elementary school, no matter who you were, how old you are, So here you had, you gonna behave around little children in school with boogies and boxers and all kind of, who were older than you. A guy knocked out a Physical Ed teacher. Imagine, a kid knocked out the Phys Ed teacher, who was a tough guy, too. This kid was a professional boxer.

SS: How old was he?

JE: About eighteen.

SS: Eighteen?

JE: Seventeen. I mean, knocked him out. "Yay!" We were all cheering, knocked out, because we hated the guy, okay? He was a, he was the bully. So that's why you see the articles in the paper about bullying in school and there you go. And, in fact, that's when it started. You write about that, the first year in elementary school, at the free school. Daily, I went home from school every day with a gang chasin' me, because I was a little bit different, you know. I went from a Catholic school there. I wore short pants, I was poor but I wasn't as poor as some of the other guys, and I didn’t belong to anything. And I was sent off to public school like Pinocchio. You know, whistling, on the way to school, and there were all the cats and the foxes and all the rules and all the bastards waiting for me.

SS: Did the schools all have, did the schools have gangs?

JE: Yeah, but…

SS: I mean were they, were they…?

JE: No. They were not gangs like these. There was always a bully, somebody who was bigger, stronger than everybody. And all the kids, the weaker kids, you know, would just gather around this guy and he'd be the protector. And then some other bully, who had a group of little kids that gathered around them, so the two bullies never fought each other, they just kinda had their own fiefdom. They were pals and they would use us, to uh, you know, just to say that they controlled us. And part of…,and whenever they ran, they would run like, you know, like the movies, where the movies were big deals. Go to one movie on a, go Saturday to the Ritz Theatre or the Casino Theatre in Ybor City on a Saturday, cost you a nickel to get in.

We never, we would never get out. That, that place was closed, the doorman had threw us out. Because all we had was the movies and we’d set for, what is it, cowboy movies? We were all cowboys and couldn't speak English! [laugh] So we, we were cowboys from the beginning. And what do we do? Ah, we belonged to a man, a guy named Chino, okay? Ah, Chino – Chinese. He wasn’t Chinese. We called him Chino ‘cause his eyes were a little bit slant. He was probably part Chinese. He was probably, you know, Sino-Cuban. A lot of … and Chino was tough as shit. And he could kick the hell out of everybody.

So, Chino was one of the, one of the guys that everybody gathered around. So you were the follower of Chino and Chino, what did Chino do? Nothing. What did he do for you? Nothing, he just didn't beat you up and, or the other guys wouldn't beat you up because you wouldn't go surround yourself with them. So what would Chino do? Chino say, “Hey, yeah”, he start running. Well, I run faster than Chino, but I wouldn't run ahead of Chino because Chino was leader of the posse and we, we just follow behind. I wouldn’t dare run ( ) and outrun him. But I wouldn't…. Okay, okay boys, just like the movies, all boys! we all run someplace and then we run back. Always run in front of the girls, ooh, like a big stampede. Uh, posturing for position. I mean, it’s the animal, I guess, the instinct, right?

JE (continues): The other guy was named Chapo. Chapo means pug, I mean uh, flat nose. Chapo. Okay? Chapo was very ugly, okay? Chapo had four or five lumps on the back of his neck and then, you know, he, he, that separated him from the other primates. [laughter] He had a dumb, y’know, had a dumb look on his…. But, know what? Both of them were scared ( ) of the teacher with a paddle. Uh, I tell ya, the teacher was, uh, whatever her name was, uh, what was her name? Uh, Mrs. Chevaria, okay? Mrs. Chevaria had a paddle that looked like a flap on a B-17, with holes in it. So that, so that the air wouldn't resist the beating that you got, okay? And we were real skinny, you know, and when they beat us, you’d get the sound “pow, pow,” like that. It sounded like “dink, dank, dink” hittin’ bone! I mean, that, it was bad news. And they would, they would beat you very, very hard. The back of the, I mean, the butt and the back of the legs, the back of the thighs, okay? ‘Til, until it drew blood. And, you know, you wouldn’t tell your mother, because you tell your mother, Your mother goes, ”Yeah?” Beats the ( ) out of the teacher and then you'll be embarrassed, especially in front of the girls. Made an ( ) of in front of the girls, so they were not--

SS: Did the girls get punished at all?

JE: Very few.

SS: Was that because they were better or just better at…?

JE: Girls were, girls were better. Girls kept their mouths shut and they didn't do anything that they weren't supposed to do. And when they did, the teachers kinda looked the other way. Girls always had it better. Although I knew one, okay, who was a little bit, uh, the teacher just didn't like her, okay, and beat the hell out of her, too. But that was rare, rare. I mean, I had a, uh, a friend of mine this, uh this Alfred, who, uh, who got two bites from his sandwich but he had a, ( ), uh, Burrito, look like a knife, real skinny, very dark, with straight black hair. He was probably mixed, ( ) Cuban Indian, which is rare, rare. ‘Cause the Spanish almost killed all of them. But there’s some left, even today and now, now I better. Though then, it didn’t matter. Burrito was more afraid of anything than I was. And I was scared of everything. So they couldn’t catch me 'cause I was so fast.

And I could outrun everybody, and my brother found out there was a gang after me, and he, my brother was much older. He said, "I'm gonna put a two-by-four in the side of the alley around the garage," National Garage out there on the corner of Eleventh Avenue and Sixteenth Street. “They’re not gonna catch you, are they?” I said, "Hey, nobody catches me." Every day, I figure out a different way to get out of the building. Once I got out of the building, I took off. Forget it! All you saw was my rear end and my elbows.

So when I went, he said, “You go ‘round this garage, you get the two-by-four. The first s-o-b that comes around the corner, you hit 'em. Now, lemme tell you what you're gonna do. You hit him in the head and don't you hit him on the leg. Hit ‘em on top of the head with that two-by-four. And I’ll be standing there, watching. You get in trouble, I'll jump in.” Now, my brother was much older. He could beat the whole gang up. Exactly what I did. First guy who comes around the corner was an innocent bystander, okay, who was one of the guys running from the gang because he was afraid not to. He got it, boom, right in the head. Then I went into the gang, swinging and everybody left me alone. Took off. And they said, "He’s crazy". So they didn't mess with me anymore. So it worked. Burrito he was a, part of everything, because he was afraid not to.

JE (continues): Alfredito was starving, okay? We didn’t have breakfast every day. These people were very poor. Some people, now, we were poor. Some were poorer than me and some was little better off than me. But Alfredito was the poorest of the poor. He didn’t even tell us where he lived, because he was ashamed, that we would see his house. Probably lived in a hole somewhere. And he stayed home a couple of times from school, unexcused and I found out later, that he didn’t have any shoes, okay? That’s how bad it was. And Alfredito, he would, he had a sandwich that his mother made for him,. He had it in his back…we all put sandwiches in the back pocket. The sandwich, it was composed of crushed garlic and lard. I mean, this is not olive oil. Lard, okay? And then it was wrapped in that brown, Cuban bread wrapper, that, I don’t know…. Uh, they don’t have it now, they have white. It was brown, cheap paper.

And the grease would come through, you know, and it smelled terrible. He had it in his back pocket. And we're having a class in Biology, not Biology, Social Studies. And the teacher's explaining, you know, this and that, and he's looking at his sandwich. He was almost passing out. Kept lookin’ at that sandwich. It was before lunch time, sittin' right next to me. So, he keep lookin' at the teacher and slowly, I mean, it was, he put his right hand like this, right down like this, as a decoy. This hand, his left hand slowly creeped to his back pocket. He unwrapped, okay, the grease sandwich with his left hand. Okay? And when the teacher turned around, and this happened in one second, he pulled it out, took two gigantic bites out of it and put it back in his pocket and when she turned around it was like this, with his mouth. And he swallowed it [laugh], like a pelican swallowing a catfish, okay? Now, after he got away with it, he beat the system, okay.

He beat the system. Miss Dowell, her name was Miss Dowell. She was baaaad. She hated everybody. I mean, the only time, she had a good time was she was beatin’ the shit out of somebody with a paddle. And she turns around and she was suspicious, you know, something was wrong and Alfredito was looking. Alfredito was ignored constantly. He was almost not there. He was almost non-existent. Scared to death. And of course, what happened there was that, he got away with it. You know, success is a bad thing sometimes. So now he figures, aw shit, man. I can do this, you know. He was starving, I guess. And the appetite, of course you know, increase with the first shock back that he had of that grease, lard [laugh] and garlic. He'll reach back and just when he went to take the next bite, she … And I said, Alfredito, I yelled at him, and she turned around and caught him. Caught him taken the shot and me, tryin’ to warn him. So, the death penalty, okay. She beat the hell out of both of us.

Yeah, and he was cryin’, we were trying not to cry, okay, because it was in front of… Not so much the beating, but we took it in front of the class, in front of the girls. And I was looking at the picture of George Washington when I was getting my beating. And I was looking and concentrating on George and poor Alfredito, you know, and she, she called the paddle, she had a paddle that looked like a flap on a B-17 with holes in it, and she said, and she called it ice cream, with the words ice cream on it and she looks at little Alfredito and begins, “You want chocolate?”, waving the stick in front of him. Chocolate, vanilla and strawberry and Alfredito sayin’ “I no likey, I no likey ice creams.” Whatever. She beat him, she beat him harder than me. And the poor kid, he was crying. He was tryin’ to hold it back and, so then we went back ( ), and the bell rang and everybody took off for lunch. And we were sitting there and of course, he had no lunch left, you know. She took that grease sandwich and she threw it away.

JE (continues): So, I had a sardine and onion sandwich. [laughter] Hey! Gourmet! To me, it was gourmet. So anyway, we went out, outside we went into an alley around the corner from the school and I cut it in half. I didn't have a knife, so I just had to cut the sardines and I got my hands all full of grease and bleh. And we ate the sardine sandwiches there, half of us each and then I looked at him. And you know, Alfredito had a tooth that kinda hung out, you know, a snaggle tooth. And I would eat pretty good ( ) trying to stick my ( ). And I said, “I’m gonna beat the ( ) out of you with this.” And he laughed, we laughed. We laughed at that.

And the next day, this is the punch, Alfredito is sitting in the class and the principal comes now, Mr. MacIntosh. Now, we could, we knew that something was gonna happen, okay, because Miss Dowell was flying like a butterfly all over the place, [makes a noise to indicate flying] you know, being very, very old. Yes, and she had a big picture of a grasshopper, uh with all the ,y’know, the, the head and this all marked and everything, except the rectum. The grasshoppers didn’t have rectums in those days. We didn’t talk about that at all. We go ‘round and say, “Yeah? How come the grasshopper ain’t got no ass?" But anyway.

We were all sitting in class and then Mr. Macintosh comes in. So, for the first time, now she’s gonna show off, okay, what a wonderful teacher she is. And she just goes on and on about the grasshopper and then she says, "Are there any questions?" Now, she had never said that in her life, I mean to us before. Now who in the hell’s gonna to ask a question? Okay, here's the principal of the school. Everybody thinks, here's the lord emperor of the manor. I mean, this guy’s, I mean, everybody's scared of him, even though he's a nice guy. But he's the principal, ( ), he’s the dictator. You know, he's the guy in charge of everything.

And here's, you know, the daughter of the Marquis de Sade, okay, who is saying, "Now, are there any questions?" Okay, so, nobody wanted to say anything. And, she repeats it again, "Are there any questions?" And all of a sudden, everybody, in shock, sees Alfredito come and give a finger, a little brown finger coming up like this, okay. And everybody sayin, "Oh no.” I said, “They're gonna kill him now. What’s he gonna say?”, because I would speak English.

And, the teacher, I mean, she lights up, y’know. She says, "Ooh, one of the roaches. Maybe I'm reaching these numbskulls, right? Maybe I’m getting through. Alfredito’s gonna look to me in front of the principal for somebody. For this miserable Ybor City crawling roach, okay, to have a question, maybe I'm getting to the little bastards." And she says, "Hmm? No questions?" And the principal in the back says, "There's a young man in the back there." "Oh!" She's shocked to see Alfredito’s little hand. And she says, now, for the first time she pronounces his name, very Castilian, "Alfredo?" and Alfredo gets up, with a very stiff back, looks at her and says, "Mi’ Dowell. Why you no let me eat my sandwich?" [laughter]

SS: And so what did she do?

JE: That’s my first chapter. [laugh] I just gave you the first chapter of my book--

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

(END OF INTERVIEW)