I Love Lucy was one of the first shows I ever saw on television. Lucy's TV husband and real-life husband, Desi Arnez, was a Cuban. In the movies, Havana night life hinted that this was the place to see and to be seen. My father talked about being in Havana while in the navy. My Bostonian grandmother called it "Cuber." I guess the concept of Cuba kind of burned into my brain. I had no idea or care about its government, or even its geography. Then, on the last day of 1958, I heard on KNEW that Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country. That was New Years Eve -- December 31 -- 1958. We were juniors at Rogers.
Afterward, Cuba was constantly in the news. That focused my interest in someday seeing that country. Fidel Castro became prime minister, declaring "I am not a Communist," and then expropriated private property with little or no compensation. By the time we graduated from Rogers in 1960, all opposition newspapers closed. Every radio station and television station was state-controlled.
Thus ensued The Bay of Pigs, The Cuban Missile Crisis, repeated nut cases that hijacked airliners to Havana, and an economic embargo that continues to this day. Cuba was and is a quite foreign place, but it drove me nuts that I could not see it, yet it was only 65 miles from the United States.
In the early 2000's I flew to Guatemala five times. I always tried to get a glimpse of Cuba. I never saw anything but clouds. I experienced some of the culture many times while working in Miami, but I wanted to see Cuba.
In 2005 Carey, our daughter Caralee, Carey's sister, and we husbands, all took a cruise from Charleston, SC, to Grand Cayman and Cozemel. A map check showed that Cuba loomed big-time in the path of the voyage to Grand Cayman. We would have to sail around Cuba.
One morning I arose to see mountains off the port side. I began to see buildings well enough to make out windows. The captain said we were 12 miles off Cuba and would remain so all day in order to save fuel going to Grand Cayman on the opposite side of Cuba. I tried my cellphone. I got a ptich in Spanish to subscribe to a Cuban cellphone provider. I thought that was pretty neat.
In early afternoon the captain announced that we were passing Cabo de San Antonio, the western-most point of Cuba. It was a lighthouse, another of my passions! At last I was seeing Cuba ... kind of. It was beautiful. So mountainous! But the experience only fed my desire to see more. I want to visit some of Cuba's lighthouses and go into those mountains. I'm 67. Work out a way to get ‘er done, Mauget! I hope the US lifts its travel ban to Cuba, otherwise I'll have to get on the waiting list for a Methodist mission trip to Cuba.