Saturday 9

 

I Will See You in C-U-B-A

Welcome to Saturday: 9. What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme!

Saturday 9: I Will See You in C-U-B-A (2010)

 

 Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

This song was chosen in honor of Father's Day. 

 

1) In this week's song, Lucie Arnaz encourages us to hop a ship and join her in Cuba. Is your passport up to date?

Yes.  I renewed it just before our Caribbean cruise in 2022. 

2) She sings that Cuba is a great place to enjoy wine and Panatelas. Do you like the smell of a good cigar? 



No way.  

About 25 years ago I worked for a large firm.  One of the partners, whose name was on the door, loved cigars.  One year the person tasked with planning the company Christmas party chose a cigar bar.  NYC had ordinances against smoking indoors, but certain types of facilities were exempt.  This place allowed indoor smoking, and the room was completely filled with smoke.  It was awful!  A lot of the staff (including me) left the party as soon as it was decently acceptable to do so.  As soon as I got home I had to shower to remove the smell of cigar smoke from my hair, my blouse went straight into the laundry and my suit went to the dry cleaners the very next day.  Never again.

 

3) Lucie said her Latin Roots CD represents "the rhythms of my soul" and is a tribute to her father, Desi Arnaz. Cuban-born Desi starred on Broadway and in nightclubs but was best known for co-starring in and producing the 1950s sitcom, I Love Lucy. When you think of I Love Lucy, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

 

4) While Lucie's parents – Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball – are famous for their TV work, Tony-nominated Lucie has found her greatest success on the stage. She inherited their love of performing, saying, “My parents were always happiest when they were working.” What have you inherited from one or both your parents? (It could be anything from your work ethic to your eye color.)

I’ll mention two things.

I look a lot like my father, except his eyes were blue and mine are hazel, like my mother’s.

My parents were teachers.  My father taught English and my mother taught Social Studies.  Those were my two favorite subjects in school.

 

5) Though "Ricky Riccardo" often mangled English on I Love Lucy, Desi's English was very good. Lucille Ball admired his facility with languages and encouraged him to speak Spanish to their children so that they would be bilingual. When you were growing up, did your family speak any language other than English?  

All four of my grandparents were immigrants.  Their primary language was Yiddish.  My parents grew up speaking both English and Yiddish.  But they never taught me or my sisters how to speak it.  I know a few words and phrases, but I don’t speak the language.  

In fact, my parents spoke Yiddish to each other only when they didn’t want me or my sisters to understand what they were saying,

 

6) Desi Arnaz often performed "I Will See You in C-U-B-A." Is there a song that reminds you of your father?

My father loved music.  He had a collection of vinyls that was quite impressive.  A lot of popular music from the late 1940’s and the 1950’s.  And the cast albums from dozens of Broadway shows, he loved the theater. He loved getting discount tickets from Theater Development Fund. Later in life he and my mother developed a love of opera, and would periodically head to Lincoln Center to attend a performance at the Met.

But what popped into my head when I read this question?

My father loved to dance.  You’d see him and my mother on the dance floor at every wedding and bar mitzvah. 

And one of his favorite dances was a line dance done to a Greek folk song.

In my head I see my father doing the steps …

 

7) After Lucie's parents divorced, Lucille Ball remarried and Lucie got a stepfather, Gary Morton. Lucie appreciated how positive Gary always was about Desi. Decades later, when she married a man who already had children, Lucie said she better understood what a tough role stepparent can be. Did you have a stepparent? Are you a stepparent? 

My parents were married in 1959, and were married for 56 years, when my father passed away in 2015.  So no, I don’t have a stepparent.

And I’ve only been married once, so I have never been a stepparent either.

8) As a single dad, Desi lived south of Los Angeles in Del Mar. Lucie and her brother, Desi Jr., spent school vacations there, going to the race track, bowling, and fishing with their dad. Share a happy memory from one of your school vacations (Christmas, Spring Break, or Summer).

When I was 14 (summer 1974) my parents took us on a road trip from our home on Long Island to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.  The trip almost didn’t happen — we loaded up the car and headed out, but one of  tires had a blowout on the New Jersey Turnpike.  Fortunately the only thing damaged was the tire, so after it was replaced we continued with our trip.

I remember so much from that trip.  The beautiful garden and maze at the Governor’s mansion.  The glassblowing demonstration in Jamestown (I still have the paperweight).  Riding around the Yorktown Battlefield in the rain.

Every night, on the way back to the hotel, my father would make the same wrong turn, and we’d wind up in the bus depot. 

On the way home we stopped in Washington, DC.  We saw the Lincoln Memorial, and we walked past the White House.  This was August 1974, just a few days before President Nixon resigned.

But one memory is not so pleasant.  A lesson in de facto segregation.  There was a rest stop on I-95 in Maryland that was designed to look like a southern plantation house.  That’s part of Maryland’s history. (Drew and I visited an actual Maryland plantation, Mount Harmon, in 2021.)

I knew a bit about history, of course, but naively assumed segregation was in the past, until we were at this rest stop.  Upstairs, on the second floor, next to the food court, the restrooms were clean and bright and modern.  

Downstairs, near the building entrance, was a second set of rest rooms.  These were not well maintained. And the long line of women and girls waiting to use these substandard facilities were all Black. It wasn’t until I saw the downstairs restroom that I realized everyone in the upstairs restroom was white.

This was 1974, post civil rights movement, and my teenage self had naively assumed segregation was in the past. 

The building has long since been torn down, replaced by modern (and fully integrated) facilities.

 

9) Father's Day began in Washington state. In the early 1900s, Spokane resident Sonora Smart Dodd listened to her minister deliver a sermon celebrating Mother's Day and devoted herself to similarly honoring fathers. A century later, more money is still spent annually on Mother's Day. Why do you suppose that nationally we still make more of a fuss over Mother's Day than Father's Day?

I’m not going to speculate.

Thanks so much for joining us again at Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us on next Saturday for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend!