- The Good Ole' Days

A couple of weeks ago, a visit from out-of-town relatives prompted the obligatory driving tour of Miami. We toured the Gables, Brickell Avenue, Downtown Miami, and South Beach. I saved the best for last, though. Coming back across the causeway from the beach, I exited on NW 27th Avenue and headed south to Calle Ocho and Little Havana. It had been quite a while since I had driven down 8th street and the ride brought back a flood of memories.

Growing up on 10th street and 27th avenue, the area was home to my old stomping grounds. Calle Ocho provided me and the other kids from the neighborhood everything we needed. On our bikes or skateboards, we would ride up and down Calle Ocho looking for adventure and tempting fate by traveling beyond the boundaries stipulated by our parents. Since this was the Little Havana of the seventies, practically every Cuban living in the area knew each other and every time we traveled further east than 22nd avenue, we risked being spied and immediately reported for the infraction. Nevertheless, not a summer vacation day went by that we did not risk it all and cross the forbidden avenue.

Before embarking on our illegal trek east, we would stop at the Cuban bakery between 24th and 25th avenues, across the street from the Kwik Chek (“kwi che,” as my mother would pronounce it and later on, when they changed the name to Winn-Dixie, “weeng deeksi”). For less than a dollar, we all snacked on what I swear to be the best Cuban bread and pastelitos de guayaba that to this day, I have tasted.

Once we made our clandestine crossing of 22nd avenue, which usually meant running or biking as fast as we could across the avenue to minimize our exposure out in the open, we headed straight to La Casa de los Trucos. This store had (and still has) every trick gadget, rubber mask, and costume you could imagine. More importantly, though, it had items we could set fire to. From firecrackers to smoke bombs, we would all pool our money together and buy as many as we could and return home to torture the younger kids on the block and learn first-hand that lighting a smoke bomb in a closed room is not a very good idea.

A couple of blocks from La Casa de los Trucos stood the Tower Theater. It was there that I saw my first Bruce Lee movie, Fists of Fury, and fell in love with the whole Kung-Fu movie genre. Many Saturday afternoons were spent at the Tower Theater watching the double and sometimes triple features of what I realize now to be low-budget, hokey martial arts films. Neither my friends nor I really cared though. We would exit the theater throwing kicks and punches and arguing whether a human could really defy gravity and fly across the air kicking two dozen assailants across the face before landing on the ground.

At the risk of sounding like my parents and grandparents, I must say that those were the good ole’ days; innocence prevailed and the worst fear any of us had was that one of the firecrackers we purchased would turn out to be a dud. The ride down Calle Ocho on that day brought back memories that I will forever cherish.