March 2009

When my father got back from the Korean War in April 1952 he did two things: buy a gypsy red Chevy Bel Air and make my mom pregnant with me (not necessarily in that order). I have no memories of the Chevy (my father totaled it two years later while driving home late, no doubt inebriated, from his regular Thursday night bowling league), but it’s the only car my father ever talked about. After the ’52 Chevy came more practical vehicles—first a Pontiac sedan and then a Nova station wagon.

In my father’s mind, the ’52 Bel Air represented a turning point in his life, I suppose. When he owned that car he was still a young man, handsome and full of piss and vinegar. Afterwards, he was just a ‘50s dad, a guy who took his wife and two young kids on family camping vacations to the Colorado River in a boring old Nova station wagon.

I thought of all this yesterday when the boys and I roamed down Paseo de Marti looking for an old car for hire to take us up to the Hemingway estate, Finca La Vigia. While the boys were negotiating, I hung around taking photos of Cinema Payret, Cuba’s first movie theater, which opened in 1897, a year after the Lumière brothers invented the motion picture machine in Paris.

When I rejoined the group, they were already climbing into Señor Gregorio’s vehicle, a gypsy red ’52 Chevrolet Styline Deluxe Bel Air convertible. Pretty much the same car my father had bought right after the war (except ours wasn’t a convertible).

The boys in Senor Gregorio's '52 Chevy convertible

I want to tell you a few things about this car, not because I’m a car geek (quite the opposite, actually), but for reasons that will become obvious in a minute. First of all, because of shortages from the Korean War, only 11,975 Chevy convertibles were produced in 1952 (compared to 20,000 the year before). Secondly, though not nearly as expensive as something like a Cadillac convertible, it still cost $2,113—a fair chunk of change in the early ‘50s (a restored version was recently being offered on eBay for $34,900).

Ads for the car touted it as “The most colorful performer in the low priced field!” (a reference to the fact that you could get it in 20 different color combinations, though the cherry red seemed the most popular) and as “smarter looking…smoother riding.” 

Interestingly enough, Jay Leno, who has one of the most enviable car collections in America, not only owns a cherry red ’52 Chevy convertible but, according to his web site, it was originally his mom’s. “I totally disassembled it when I was 13 and 17 yrs later dad and I had it on the road for her again. They dated in this car and 46+ yrs later, still smile when they drive it!”

So what’s my point? My point is that when you climb into these old cars that are all over Havana, you’re not just going for a ride in a classic vehicle—you’re going back in time. Think about it: This ’52 Chevy was once as gorgeous a car as you’d find in America. And, some time after the Revolution began to roll over Havana in 1953, someone brought this stunning-looking vehicle over on a barge from Miami and, at least until 1959, had, no doubt, some memorable trips along the Malecón—perhaps dressing up in a fedora and sharkskin suit to hit the Tropicana to watch Damaso Pérez Prado, the king of mambo, or pulling into the Hotel Nacional to play roulette at the casino run by mobster Meyer Lansky. Who knows—maybe this ’52 convertible was once owned by Lansky himself (or by one of Batista’s generals or the general manager of one of the American-owned sugar plantations).

photos by David Lansing

The thing is, this car has seen it all. A silent witness to the winds of change over Havana from Batista’s excess through the Bay of Pigs to the Período Especial following the collapse of the Soviet Union. And you could feel this. Just by gently putting your hand on the clock, stopped forever at exactly 7 o’clock, on the dashboard. Riding up the Prado into the hills overlooking the city to visit Papa’s old home, I felt a shiver running up and down my spine. A reminder of the past.

“And he saw the town…first not in the drab hues of reality, but as one who bursts a window into the faery pageant of the world, as one who has lived in prison, and finds life and the earth in rosey dawn, as one who has lived in all the fabulous imagery of books, and finds in a journey only an extension and verification of it—so did he see…with the fresh washed eyes of a child, with glory, with enchantment.”

Thomas Wolfe wrote those words about Asheville, North Carolina back in the 20s but I always think of that quote when I come into Havana. Particularly the part about seeing the town not in the drab hues of reality but “as one who bursts a window into the faery pageant of the world…”

That’s Havana, a city so poignantly ruinous that her Latin bouleversement gives off an ouzo effect; sweaty romance mixed with faded dreams of patria cloud the heavy air in a city where louche American women once sat in polka dot dresses drinking mojitos while watching a black man place 12 silver dollars along the length of his enormous erect mancrank.

Those were the days.

The view from the 6th floor of the Saratoga Hotel, Havana

I never seem to get to Havana before midnight and there’s, literally, nothing to see on the drive in from the airport since there are few streetlights and Havana Vieja has already closed her heavy-lidded eyes. Which is why it was such a joy this morning to peel back the black-out curtains on my 6^th floor room in the Saratoga Hotel and take in the strange street pageant below: the rickshaws and cocotaxis elbowing their way into traffic alongside battered Fords and Chevys from the 50s, wood-paneled station wagons stuffed to the gills with hunched men and women, Soviet cars from the 70s, and sidecars from Eastern Europe. 

photos by David Lansing

The best way to take in Havana, at least on your first morning, is to walk along the Prado in front of the Capitolio and cut a deal with one of the drivers of the classic old convertibles you’ll find parked in the middle of the street. Do not ask the driver to take you to the malecon or the Revolutionary Museum. Instead, hire the car for two or three hours—even longer—and then cruise the old streets slowly, stopping first at the Partagas cigar factory behind the Capitolio where, if you’re lucky, the director, Abel Exposito Diaz, will invite you into the back room for a smoke and a glass of 12-year-old rum (even if it is only 10 in the morning), and then on to La Bodeguita del Medio where Hemingway downed more than his share of mojitos (and you should down one too) before moving on the the Catedral de San Cristobal, where they say Christopher Columbus’ bones once resided, and then, perhaps, out to Cojimar, the setting for Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, for a lunch of camarones al ajillo at La Terraza.

A good start to the day.