November 6, 2004

Cuban Coffee and Gas

MIAMI – Northeast 7th Street and 27th Avenue on the way to the Orange Bowl saw a stop for that safety tank of gas. It’s a defensive maneuver knowing the neighborhood I’ll walk out into after midnight, even if it’s with friends all around.

The wonderful reminders that I’m in Miami come in the swaying palms on the street, the business signs written only in Spanish and the colada in my hand as I walk back out to the car. Paying for my liter of water and a copy of The Miami Herald I spotted the espresso machine behind the gas station counter and I had to have one.

Only here can you get a Cuban coffee with gas. Only here.

I don’t know quite how to describe the feeling of working in my hometown for the first time.

When I left Miami in 1989 I hated the place. I didn’t appreciate the diversity, hated that I needed to know a foreign language in my own country, resented those who sought refuge here from Cuban oppression who refused to at least learn some English just to get by; to at least show respect for our hospitality.

But now, working here, getting paid to be here, doing what I love in the town that I’d learned to love because of its diversity, was wonderful.

Yeah, this does sound like emotional gush. Sure, I’m guilty of that just a little. But try working in a place you feel no real connection to…for five years. You learn the names, learn the history, learn the way people do things, but you’re never considered one of “them” no matter how much you care about the place. You’ll never be “in.”

I’m numb to the social snub now. With as much of a picked-up accent as possible, and use of some local vernacular, I try to blend and get folks to believe that I understand how they do things in South Carolina, how they go about forming relationships and interact with each other. They seem to get it, get me, but they still watch me warily.

- Rich