Sep 15, 2008 | 5:33 PM
Category:
News
I remember back in the 1990’s, one of my mother’s uncle’s came over to visit from Cuba. Tio Juan just called my parents up from Havana one day and said that he would be coming over for a visit, and to pick him up at the airport on a certain day. This guy was a little strange to say the least. My parents picked him up at the airport and took him out to eat; they also went to stores and the botanical gardens.
While he was here, I found out that the spoke English, Chinese, and Russian, 8 languages all-together. My mother told me that he was very smart, when he was a young man in Havana; he was studying to become a medical doctor. But, for some reason he did not finish his studies. Before Watergate occurred, some of the Cuban’s that eventually broke into the Watergate hotel went to Cuba and tried recruit him. He turned them down and they went back to the United States. He joked about that and said, “it was a good thing that I said no, or I would have done a 20 year stretch with them.” After my mother told me that, she said, “don’t ever tell anybody that.” That was the second time that I have ever had one of my parents use the phrase.
The first time was in the 70’s when my father told me his real name before he had it legally changed, it was Simone Domingo. While he was here he said some very strange things like “communism was the best thing since sliced bread.” My older brother who is a Cook County Corrections Officer, told me that he had said to him, “why don’t you come back to Cuba with me and I’ll get you a nice job with the Cuban secret police”. One time my family was having dinner with Tio Juan, my mother’s half brother Ray was there. He is a convicted sex offender that raped an alleged prostitute in the back seat of his car at knifepoint. He did five years in prison for that in the earlier 80’s. Tio Juan said to him during dinner, “you’re very nervous and jittery, you need to be more claim, like him.” He of course meant me, he turns to me and said, “I’ve been watching you, even at the store and on the street, you’re claim…that’s good.” He had told me that he had lived all over the world when he had been a young man; he said that he had even lived here in New York during the 1950’s and 60’s.
After several days he left and visited with other relatives in Florida, New Jersey, and California. Then he went back to Cuba. After he went back to Cuba, I saw photographs of him and my parents that my father had taken. One of the photos was at the airport, he and my mother were in it, and there was a big guy standing right behind him. I asked my mother who that was, and what she told me was very strange. She told me that it was a passenger that had been on the same flight as her Uncle, the man was from Canada. She also told me that just about everywhere they went, even the Botanical gardens the same thing happened. Passengers that had been on the same flight as him, kept going up to him, said hello in English, shook his hand, and walked away. They were from Spain, Canada, France, Mexico, Italy, Australia, and Venezuela. Just about every, except the United States.
