LA SEPTIMA 1940

7th Avenue in Ybor City – 1937

What does a ten-year-old do on a Saturday morning in early November? Well, that depends on the kid. My family had just moved into a small apartment over a barbershop on 7th Avenue while we waited for our new house to become available. I had never lived on a street that was too busy to play ball on, and there were no vacant lots nearby, but I felt far from trapped. 

We had moved into a bustling urban center with all the excitement of a circus. My preoccupation was comic books; my holy grail: Action Comics, No. 1, containing the first installment of Superman. It sounds strange now, but we called them "funny books" then. There was a store somewhere on 7th Avenue that bought and sold second-hand funny books. Somebody in school had told me they bought them two for a nickel and sold them for a nickel. That doesn't sound like such a good deal now, but it was the opportunity of a lifetime at the current price of a dime. In those days, people called that street "La Setima {sic}." When I took Spanish in high school, I learned that seventh in Spanish was Septima.

Hopping down the narrow wooden stairs of our apartment, I greeted the frowning barber, who probably wondered when I would let him cut my hair, and walked out onto 7th Avenue. Our building was half a block from the House of A Million Auto Parts on Nebraska Avenue, where 7th Avenue breaks to the right. The war in Europe was rumbling but had not yet intruded into our world. My thoughts bounced like a rubber ball on the pavement, always landing on the stack of comics I carried and on finding that store. 

I walked along the north side of 7th Avenue past Finman's delicatessen and a movie theater I had never attended because it was for Black People. I later met Mr. Finman's son, Ivan, in high school. He was a brilliant student who would die prematurely shortly after graduation.

Anita Fernandez, Johnny Gonzalez and Jack Fernandez

That morning has become one of the gold-framed memories of my childhood. It was the first time I was allowed out alone to face the noise, traffic, and alluring smells of 7th Avenue. With my mother's warnings about the traffic, I initially felt apprehensive, like a knight leaving his castle to face a dragon. Instead of lance and sword, I carried twenty funny books into that sunny, cool November day. Automobiles scrambled along 7th Avenue blowing their horns at the slightest provocation as they dodged trolley cars and pedestrians. It didn't even occur to me to take a trolley; that nickel would buy one second-hand funny book. 

By the time I reached 14th Street, I was worming my way through the crowd. I stopped to look down toward 8th Avenue, where I remembered a gambling casino my father had taken me to a few years earlier. In reality, it was only a small store with a counter with numbers painted on the top surface and a roulette wheel on the wall at one end. I had heard of "throwing bolita" and wondered why anyone would throw a little ball until I saw it done. One man threw a cloth bag containing a hundred little numbered balls to another man, who threw it back. The bag flew back and forth until one of them caught the bag by one of the balls and held onto it as the other cut it out of the bag and yelled out the winning number. It was pure excitement, with everyone bunched around the counter, talking and shouting. The gambling joints had closed a few years before, but gambling would not be eradicated that easily. Every Saturday afternoon Havana Radio CMQ broadcasted the Cuban National Lottery. The sounds of that broadcast spilled out of the houses and blanketed Ybor City with the repetitive ritual sing-song by one young boy yelling out a number and another yelling out the prize. People placed their bets with the neighborhood "bolero." It was all boring to me. I preferred the Lone Ranger or Tom Mix.

Walking past 14th street, past every kind of store, I hopped out patterns on the hexagonal concrete blocks. Across the street stood the grocery store where my parents bought our weekly groceries. My mother would wait her turn for a clerk to get down what she requested from the wall behind him and place it in a box on the counter while jotting down the charges on a paper bag. All along 7th Avenue, people lived in apartments above the stores on the ground level. Residents sat on their balconies presiding over the changing scene below: one woman watering her potted plants, another shaking out a small rug over her balcony as she talked with a neighbor. I stopped before the large window of Las Novedades Restaurant to watch a large man with thick black hair cut thin slices off a ham leg to make Cuban sandwiches. He sliced the ham with the grace of an artist using a long, narrow knife that he stroked back and forth on his steel as he smiled at me through the window. I went in and looked at the "dulces finos." (Candied egg yolks were my favorites.)

The Ritz Theater

I reached the Fernandez and Garcia Department Store at 15th Street, crossed 7th Avenue, and headed toward the Ritz Theater to see what cowboy movies were showing that day. If Buck Jones or Ken Maynard were playing, I would return. I liked the Ritz because of the long, semi-dark entry hall that led from the ticket taker to the auditorium. Only a very important place would have such a grand entry. I re-crossed 7th Avenue to check out the Casino Theater in the Centro Español. In those days, the electric CASINO THEATER sign on the corner of the building had a smaller sign underneath that read, "All Talking Pictures." I have often thought of that sign and how fast the world was changing around me. Under the sign, four men were arguing. Anyone who did not understand Spanish would easily assume that a fight was about to erupt. The men shouted, aimed fingers at each other, with all the hand waving and gesturing so essential to the Spanish language. The topic, as I recall, was last week's baseball game. In such discussions, all topics were serious. I walked down the block to the theater entrance. I had seen the movies showing that day.

My great-uncle Pablo sold "bollitos" from a kiosk off 8th Avenue on 16th Street. I looked for him, hoping to get some of the wonderful deep-fried fritters made from garlic-flavored, shelled black-eyed peas, but he wasn't there, so I retraced my path and continued to meander east along 7th Avenue. I wove a pattern that crisscrossed 7th Avenue several times to check out the toy counters in Silver's Department Store, Woolworth, and Kress. On one of those crossings, I was sorely tempted to pull the rear trolley off the overhead wire to see the conductor and passengers go crazy. It was fun to think about, even if I never had the nerve to do it. As I came out of Kress, Miranda was parking his bicycle at the curb to sell his famous devil crabs out of the white box on his bicycle. On my way back, I thought of holding back a dime from my funny book sale for a devil crab but soon forgot about it. Instead, I watched as Miranda took one out with his tongs, placed it into a piece of waxed paper in his other hand, cut a gash along the length with the tongs, and squirted some hot sauce into it from a small bottle. He handed it to a woman who took a smiling bite. The odor was enough to drive me crazy. As I drooled, watching the woman devour the delectable devil crab, I spotted the "Pirelli" man standing at the corner of 17th Street. His pole must have held a hundred hard, colorful, cone-shaped candies. I reached for the penny in my pocket and crossed the street again to trade it for a pirulí. 

There were many clothing stores on 7th Avenue–Fernandez and Garcia, Raul Vega, Max Argintar.  Another, whose name I have forgotten, boasted a layaway plan that only Ybor City could spawn: You paid a dollar a week for twenty-five weeks and picked a bolita number on the Cuban Lottery. If your number won, you got twenty-five dollars worth of goods no matter how little you had paid in. You could always spend whatever you had accumulated if you didn't win. My mother played it once or twice and won the opportunity to spend her money in that store.

As I crossed 17th Street, I quickened my pace. The comics were getting heavy, and it was harder to change hands with the pirulí in my other hand. Besides, I was anxious to get to my business. Would I find the prize of prizes: Action Comics, No. 1? Or possibly one of the early Batman's or Captain Marvel's?

I stopped at the Broadway Theater to check out the movies. The three-legged Sicilian emblem never failed to fascinate me with its winged head with two snakes above it and three legs radiating symmetrically out of it. The stately L'Unione Italiana, with its beautiful columns and windows, always attracted my attention, though I knew it mainly because it housed the Broadway Theater. Two men stood in the doorway conversing in Sicilian, a beautiful language that modernism and television have driven to near extinction in Sicily. I could make out only an occasional word that sounded like Spanish. The unintelligible conversation captivated me. I must have been staring because the men eventually stopped, looked me over, and I moved along.

Broadway Theatre (Italian Club)

I passed by the Spicola Hardware on the next block and nearly stopped to look around the dark, fascinating collection of tools and hardware, but the funny book lure could not be denied. I finally found my heaven on the south side of 7th Avenue in a small, poorly lit, second-hand store between 20th and 21st Streets. Its window display featured other items for sale, but my memory has enshrined the place as a funny book collector's paradise. I was ready to plead for a job, leave home, and spend the rest of my life stretched out on stacks of those literary classics, consuming them all. The way they traded them, I knew their supply would last forever. 

"I hear you buy used funny books," I told the owner. If they didn't, my mission would have been wasted. He lifted them from my hands, counted them, and said, "Fifty cents. Want cash, or are you going to buy something?" 

"I'd like to look around."  

An hour later, he must have figured I had read enough for free and walked up to me. "Have you found any that you want to buy?" Of course, I wanted to buy them all. But I had the money for only ten. I picked out gems that I had yet to read and left.

The return trip took twice as long as getting there. I was in no rush to get home, and the load was lighter. I found Uncle Pablo setting up shop. As usual, he wore a flat straw hat, suit, and tie, all a little threadbare and wrinkled, but apparently, what he felt was appropriate for a serious businessman. Yearning to taste the wonderful bollitos, I offered to help, but there needed to be more room for the two of us and the bollitos in the kiosk.

Bollitos and Pirulí

"If you want to help, go to my house and bring some more bollitos," he said. I walked the two blocks to 10th Avenue and found Celia hard at work. She was a one-woman assembly line–a pot of shelled peas waiting to grind, grinding and beating the batter of another batch, frying a third batch.

"Would you like some?"

"Sure." 

"Eat all you want."  

I helped her beat the batter as I ate my fill of the hot bollitos. By the time I left, I had eaten four and was munching on a fifth. 
 
After about a half-hour, I arrived at the kiosk with a large bag of bollitos. For my trouble, Pablo neatly wrapped three tasty treats in a piece of wrapping paper, rolled them into a cone, and handed them to me. I didn't tell him about the ones I had already eaten. 

I got home, ran up the stairs, and showed my mother my new funny books. "A nickel each… Isn't that great?" 

"You're just in time for lunch."  

"I'm not hungry. I ate a pirulí and some bollitos at Uncle Pablo's."  

She shook her head. "You've spoiled your appetite."

"But I spoiled it eating. What's wrong with that?"

​CIGAR CITY MAGAZINE- SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

---

JACK FERNANEZ

Jack was a true Renaissance Man. After retiring from the University in 1995, Jack began a second career writing three Tampa-based novels, many short stories, and poems. His most significant novelistic contribution to the Tampa scene was locally acclaimed Café Con Leche, which documented Ybor City’s multi-racial, multi-cultural melting pot as it existed in the cigar factories early the last century. Besides his novels and other writings, Jack became a genealogy researcher, wrote for La Gaceta, Cigar City Magazine, was a Tampa Tribune Community Columnist, and was a frequent lecturer at local book clubs. His historical scholarship won him the 2012 Ybor City Tony Pizzo Award. Jack E. Fernandez was the consummate Tampa boy. He was born and raised in Tampa and passed away on July 31, 2022. He will be missed by all who enjoyed his stories!
FOR MORE YBOR STORIES–CHECK OUT JACK'S BOOKS

---

FOLLOW CIGAR CITY MAGAZINE