Cigar City

by George Glasser


Sometimes, it's best not to revisit the past. That's what Mickey discovered when he went back, on back to his roots. Things change, but not necessarily for the better.

Tampa wasn't the same place he left, but then it all began to change during the Cuban Revolution – sometime around 1957. It was the beginning of the end for the cigar factories in Ybor City and West Tampa, and the way of life he remembered.

When he left in 1965, most all the cigar factories were vacant hulks that stood out against the skyline like giant, boarded-up mausoleums sadly awaiting demolition.

Now, even the echoes of the readers dissipated and are only mentioned as footnotes in obscure history books written by local historians.

As a young child, Mickey remembered going into one of the old three story brick cigar factories with his schoolmate Henry. It seemed magnificent –almost like a cathedral - and - a man sat in a chair almost like a throne reading stories like War and Peace aloud in Spanish to a room full of people diligently rolling cigars. The smell of Cuban tobacco was rich and saturated the air, but now all those smells, sounds and sights were memories – fading – as the city seemed to have lost its soul.

At one time, the aroma of cigar tobacco permeated the air in Ybor City and West Tampa, but now all Mickey smelled were car exhausts, diesel and an elusive whiff of black beans and roast pork drifting out of one of the cafes down off Armenia Street in West Tampa.

As a matter of fact, as Mickey remembered from childhood, there weren't many places in Tampa that didn't have the telltale aroma of fresh cigar tobacco, or at least someone having recently smoked a cigar made with fine Cuban tobacco.

For Mickey, it was the aromatic ambiance – the smell of fresh Cuban tobacco that made everything better.

He went into a cafe on Broadway in Ybor City for a taste of Spanish bean soup, buttered Cuban bread and café Cubano remembering when his mother would take him there for the treat as a young child.

The cafe was pretty much the same: Diffused light poured in the windows, high ceilings and the same old cast iron ceiling fans gently squeaking while circulating and cooling the sultry summer air by convection. There were even some old Cuban men playing dominos, sipping coffee from demitasses, and smoking cigars, but the aroma of fresh tobacco carried in on the clothes of the cigar factory workers wasn't there, and it just wasn't the same. Even the food Mickey once devoured with mucho gusto seemed to have lost its flavour – it was like the essential spice was missing.

Feeling somewhat melancholy, Mickey reflected on the hustle and bustle of the old days – cafes bristling with business at lunchtime, the markets with stalks of plantanos and guineos hung outside in varying degrees of ripeness, the street vendors dousing Crystal Hot Sauce on deviled crabs, and the little corner stores that sold Cuban sandwiches stacked high behind the counter at lunchtime. But it was ambient smell of fresh cigar tobacco permeating most everything that seemed to give a soulful feel to West Tampa and Ybor City, and even seemed to enhanced the flavor of the food, but now that was no more.

When Mickey hit the street making his way through the crowds of office workers on their way to happy hour and the new wave of upscale bistros, he knew that he'd never be back that way again.

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George Glasser began writing seriously as an investigative environmental journalist in the early 1990's. His investigative work gained international attention, and respected ECO magazines and organizations such as the Green Party, Earth Island Journal, The Ecologist (UK), and the Florida-based Sun Coast ECO Report published his articles. After almost twenty years as an environmental journalist, Glasser became disillusioned and turned his writing skills to producing miscellaneous articles, fiction, and poetry. Recently, Glasser self-published his first novel based on his experiences during the 1960s entitled The Other Side to This Life. A native of Florida, Glasser presently resides in South Yorkshire, UK.
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