My Life Outside the Fish Bowl

Frantically running through the night’s humid jungle air, my M16 held tightly across my chest. Perspiration pouring off my brow, knee-high grass slapping my legs with each running step. My heart pounding and a shortness of breath, I felt the Viet Cong getting closer. I needed to run faster to escape.

Suddenly, I heard a soft voice in the distance. It stopped; then it sounded again, calling me.

Sarge, Sarge, we gotta get up and going.

Shaken by the voice, the frightening dream disappeared. I hesitated, waiting for a clue of reality to orient me before realizing I was in my bunk, and awake from another one of those nightmares.

Okay, I’m up, I said, as I attempted to open my eyes.

Laying on my side in the bunk, saturated in sweat, I grabbed the rolled-up towel between my legs. Thank God, I mumbled, it’s dry.

Sitting up, attempting to recover from the night’s torment, the same nightly dream was intensifying with each slumbering moment in country.

Are you okay, Sarge? a fellow soldier asked as he walked by my bed.

I’m alright, I unconvincingly responded.

My vision remained blurred, my mouth dry. Feeling sicker, I was sure today was my last day alive, as in that night’s dream, I could feel the Viet Cong almost capturing me. Surly it was an omen of the end near.

Rubbing my eyes, I tried adjusting to the bright lights in the barracks, but was only able to see figures moving about. My underwear stuck to my body, saturated from perspiration, my t-shirt having turned to a dark jungle black from its, dry Army-green hue. Everyone in the barracks was getting dressed. I was awake now, but where fear previously motivated me, now I felt withdrawn. I heard others talk about the feeling of not caring any longer if you lived or died, and when that happened, you probably were not going to make it. I was at that breaking point of not caring any longer; I was sure the end was near.

Still sick, the burning in my stomach kicked in again. I had to pee badly. Grasping my crotch, I rushed to the latrine, drops of urine adding to my already damp underwear with each step.

Feeling sicker than the day before, the headaches, and stomach cramps persisted. Back at my bunk, I took a gulp of water, swallowing the required Malaria pills, followed by drinking the prescribed Maalox to settle my stomach. Receiving another diagnosis from the base doctors – this time a peptic ulcer the reason I was so sick and weak. I was convinced that each one of their medical reasons was wrong. Something else was happening within my body, and I was convinced death was near.

Hurriedly getting dressed and putting my gear on, there was no time to make an entry in my journal. Peering through my blurred vision, the last entry looked like Monday, but I was unable to make the exact day in July, or was it the beginning of August 1968? Days and months were blending into one long day. I would get back to the journal when– no, if–I returned. I shoved the journal inside my pillowcase.

Already behind the others in the platoon, I forced myself to rush and catch up. Not hungry, breakfast chow went down quickly. My mouth still dry, I drank juice and water, following the doctor’s order to drink plenty of fluids. Had the urge again, and rushed to the bathroom.

Feeling feverish and nauseous and dripping in sweat, an effect of having the worse flu ever, I stood with my platoon in formation, my jungle fatigues hanging on me as an oversized wet shirt draped in the middle of a clothesline. Other platoons also assembled. We were going into the field again.

I wanted to go to sick call, but remembered the warning a fellow soldier gave about going to sick call too much. Fatigued, tired, and sick, I closed my eyes for a moment and suddenly felt myself falling backwards, shuffling my feet quickly to regain my balance. A soldier in formation behind me grasped me at my shoulders, preventing me from falling. Righting myself, I resumed the position of attention. In a mental daze, I was unable to concentrate on what the commander said. Everything was happening so quickly – jumping from reality into a dream and then back to reality. I was confused, unable to distinguish between certainty and fantasy.

Our platoon sergeant did an about-face towards us and barked in a baritone and commanding voice. It sounded urgent. I followed the geared-up soldier in front of me as we broke ranks and moved out quickly.

Newly in country, I seemingly floated to different rifle squads and platoons in the dark about what was happening. Not knowing where in South Vietnam I was, where we were going or why. I was lost and distressed. I was surely a green pea, even with almost a year of training in the States. Self-confidence was low. I had to rely on fellow grunts I hadn’t had enough time to bond with, nor remember their names or nicknames. Trained as a rifleman to become a squad leader and possibly a platoon sergeant, I needed to be ready to step into that role immediately. How could I do it with my rapidly deteriorating health? What was wrong with me? How could I lead others in the field when it was my time to take charge?

The calm dawn air already flooded in a mixture of humidity and staleness, and a choking, gym locker aroma of unbathed bodies and unwashed clothes added to the morning’s stench. Hot and humid, and it was going to get worse. This day felt like a Sunrise Mass was about to begin. I suddenly thought of my bride of eight months. Would I ever see JoAnn again?

Our platoon briskly stepped out in two columns to the landing zone where helicopters waited for our boarding. I raised my knees higher on each quick-moving step, my backpack, and gear weighing me down, my loosely strapped helmet bouncing on my head with each rushing step. Feeling weak, I followed the soldier in front of me and heard the distinct sound of the helicopters ahead. The deafening, pulsating sound of their rotor blades quickly struck loudly when we approached. The grass laid flat from the choppers’ down thrusting turning blades. I broke formation to vomit. Breakfast shot out of my mouth.

I heard someone yell, Sarge, are you going to make it?

Yep, I yelled back as he grabbed my arm to help me get back in line to board the chopper.

With heads bowed to avoid clipping by the revolving blades seemingly only inches from our helmets, we rushed into the chopper from the rear. The squad leader standing at the doorway yelling Hup, Hup, Hup, slapped our backpacks as each one of us went by him.

We sat in two rows facing each other in the chopper, its belly rumbling and vibrating, the rattles sounding as if sheathed screws were unthreading. It was unsettling. Holes in the chopper’s skin let in streams of light; surely, they were bullet-holes. The air was suffocating. I stared at the floor, my stomach gurgled. I took a swig of Maalox, the bottle kept in an extra M16 ammunition pouch strapped to my belt buckle. Everyone was quiet, or was it that I could not hear anything, or was it just too loud to talk, or was there nothing to say? The stillness hovering over the helicopter’s vibration and spinning blades signaled a storm ahead. It just did not feel right.

It was sad that I did not yet know all those men in the platoon. We went on one operation two days prior, and then I went to sick call right upon returning to base camp. The day before, a couple of grunts welcomed me to the platoon by taking me out for a few beers to party in a nearby village. I had gone along to be part of the team, but what I really wanted was to stay in the barracks and try to sleep off whatever was making me sick.

Get ready, I heard someone shout as the helicopter started to move downwards. We were in the air for only ten or 15 minutes, but it was a painful period. If any longer, I would have pissed in my pants or vomited again.

Hitting the dirt hard with a recoiling bounce, the rear hatch door opened and we rushed out into the blinding first morning sunlight. Instantly, I knew we were in the Delta, leaving the smell of oil and fuel fumes in the chopper, abruptly exposed to the pungent aroma of decaying human and animal feces, along with vegetation decomposing in the rice paddy mud. I followed a platoon member off to one side of the landing zone encompassed by low brush. I immediately urinated and bent over to vomit at the same time.

I was far from combat hard, even with my training stateside. This was the real thing and definitely different. Keep quiet and follow the others in your platoon, I remembered my sergeant’s words at the Non-Commissioned Officers Academy in Fort Polk, Louisiana, months earlier. Stay low in the weeds and keep your head down if you want to stay alive.

We lined up in a single column, following a path through the brush and short grass from the landing zone. I was in the middle. Stumbling, I fell to my knees, and one of the others in the platoon helped me get up and said, I’ll carry your backpack. We’ll take care of you, Sarge. I continued in formation, dizzy and feverish. Keeping my eyes on the path, I stayed in-step behind the jungle boots in front of me. Soon the dirt became darker and we were walking on the dyke of the rice patty, water on both sides. Nauseous again, I choked. It was the dry heaves, and I stutter-stepped for a few paces, but kept up with the others.

A strange, mind-from-body sensation overtook me, as each step seemed lighter, with a tingly feeling throughout my body. Suddenly, I felt mentally lifted as if floating over the ground, watching my platoon from above as if I were the audience in a movie – a dream-like, painless illusion with bright colors everywhere. A leg cramp jarred me to reality, and I stopped walking to rub the cramp in my left calf muscle.

We got to keep moving, said another platoon member, passing by me in the tight quarters.

I got you now, a voice from behind said. We continued at a steady pace, my legs aching.

Soon we were in the open, in the distance a tree line to our right. It did not seem as if we were in the safest of positions. However, what we learned in the States did not necessarily hold true in a combat zone. There were no rules here, just experience, common sense, and what felt right. The pace picked up as if our platoon leader sensed an urgency.

Suddenly, I heard a loud shout ahead, stopped and looked up, right into the blinding sunlight. Everything began spinning. The lightness and fainting sensation of floating returned. Mentally in a field of flashing lights, I sensed sounds in the distance appearing as muffled gunfire, the whistle of a mortar going overhead, and yelling. Did I return to the dream, was it all an illusion, did my imagination take over again? The beyond reality appearance was all in slow motion, with a sensation of soaring and whirling in the air. Suddenly, the feeling of a forceful wave of water hit me in the face. A knockout blow, I was unconscious, as if in a deep sleep. I don’t remember anything from that point in time.

From the depths of unconsciousness, I slowly awoke, without feelings of my body – a paralyzing stupor of The Twilight Zone. There was no sound and no light, a scary yet calm peacefulness. I waited motionless for a sound or something to clue me in on where I was and what happened. From believing I might be dead to possibly already captured, I laid still, trying to hear any possible noise indicating if my presence was the end of my tormenting dreams. A sound of a wheel squeaking, then the sound of a metal object falling on the floor stimulated me to take a deep breath and call out, each time with a stronger breath yelling out:

Hello! Hello! Is anyone there?

It’s about time you woke up, Sergeant Miyares, a gentle-sounding female voice responded.

My eyelids sealed, forcing one eye and then the next eye to open, then, squinting, I saw a face looking down at me surrounded in a halo of bright light. A gorgeous, smiling, blue-eyed, young, blonde female dressed all in white was looking right into my squinting eyes.

Is this heaven? I asked.

No, Sergeant Miyares, she said with a chuckle. You are safe and in the Saigon field hospital. I’ll let the doctors know you’re awake now.

Before I could ask any questions, she was gone. I fell back to sleep.

Awakening later, I laid in bed frozen. Everything was a paintbrush of bright white. I was in a corner bed, a wall to the right and behind, a curtain – surely concealing another bed – to my left. Looking forward, I saw sunlight coming through windows in the distance. A larger, open room, with occupied beds scattered around the center, beds lined up along the perimeter walls. Medical personnel were moving with a purpose, going back and forth in front of my bed, with some giving a thankful nod and short smile as they passed by. No black pajamas here, I murmured, and then suddenly said in a louder voice, Oh shit, quickly lifting the bedsheet lying across my chest, to look underneath at my body. Thank God, I still have my legs, I sounded in relief.

I felt better with the burning in my stomach gone and the craving to drink diminished, but I was still weak, tired, and had blurry vision. Whatever they did seemed to be working. I was confident I would shortly be back with my outfit.

Good day sergeant, a voice behind me said. I’m changing your solution bag.

I looked up and saw three bags with clear solution hanging above and behind my head.

She came to my side, put her palm on top of my hand, smiling. She was probably my senior by ten years, her short, black hair stood out in her white nurse’s uniform. She definitely was not the same nurse, that angel from heaven, I saw previously.

She asked how I was feeling. I responded, Not sure. What happened? What’s wrong with me?

The doctors will be by shortly to talk to you, she said. Are you comfortable?

I need to go to the bathroom.

Smiling, she said, Don’t worry about that. We’ve taken care of it.

It was then that I realized I had an IV in my left arm and a catheter with a tube coming from between my legs to a urine bag hanging on my bed’s railing – the urine bag already half-filled with brownish urine. With my left hand I grasped my right wrist, was able to touch the tips of my left middle finger and thumb and, like a loosely fitting bracelet, easily slide up my forearm to my elbow without separating my fingers. I did not realize how thin I had gotten.

How long have I been here? I asked, as the nurse went behind me to finish her chores.

I think you came in a few hours ago, but I am not sure. I just came on duty.

What day is it?

It’s Thursday, she said.

Thursday, I repeated to myself. I was sure of going on patrol on Tuesday, two days previously, recalling Monday was the last day of entry in my journal. Did I have a memory lapse? Was I hallucinating again or still in a dream? What happened in those two days?

Sergeant Miyares, you’ve got a visitor, another nurse said, standing at the foot of my bed.

Behind her was a soldier dressed in jungle fatigues.

Boy, I had a tough time finding you, Sarge, the Specialist Fourth-Class said in a hyperactive and high-pitched voice.

He was a black soldier, maybe 150 pounds, and I was not sure if he said his name was Leonard, Lenny or something similar.

I was sent over to find out how you were doing. You are one fucking lucky grunt, he quickly said. Then, in a slower and lower tone, apologetically he said to the nurse behind me, Sorry, Ma’am.

Guess I know, I responded. And I’ll be back to the platoon soon.

No, you don’t understand. Someone found you alive in a KIA bag, and you’re not coming back to the unit. You got the silver bullet – the ticket back stateside. You are at the end of your short stick.

What? I said in a stuttering, delayed response and, before I could ask another question, another nurse came alongside the Spec 4 and told him, You’re going to have to leave now. You can return later. The doctors are making their rounds.

The Spec 4 left saying, I’ll be back later to check on you.

Did you hear what he said? I asked the nurse behind me to see if I had heard the soldier right.

She responded, That’s quite a story.

I never saw the Spec 4 again.

Two doctors came to my bedside, introducing themselves. The taller one, a Captain, put his hand on my wrist, checked my pulse, and then said, Hope you’re feeling better.

My response was an uncertain, I’m not sure.

He continued, in a most concerning tone, saying I had sugar diabetes and was in a diabetic coma . . . but I would be okay now.

I quickly asked, Sugar diabetes . . . what the hell is that, Sir?" I never heard the word diabetes before. I instantly questioned if it was from something I had eaten or possibly a disease like malaria.

The doctor assured me I would be getting more information on my medical condition later.

How soon before I can get out of here and back to my outfit? I asked.

You’re shipping out, going home, once we can get you stable, the doctor said, and then both doctors left for the next bedside.

Now I have a disease I have never heard about, it is unstable and it is serious enough to send me back home. What the hell?

After the doctors and nurses left my bedside, I laid in a confused shock, rationalizing this being another realistic dream; and, when I wake up, everything will be normal again. I stared forward, motionless, watching the panorama of activity, patients pushed in wheelchairs, a gurney passing by with an unconscious soldier, a bloodstained bandage wrapped around his head. Nurses and doctors were everywhere and all having a definite purpose and mission. I fell back to sleep.

I woke up, apparently, every few hours throughout the remaining day and into the night as someone came by my bedside to check the drip in my arms from the hanging solution bags behind and over my head, empty the urine bag, or draw blood. The blood testing never seemed to stop. What seemed like a minute could easily be an hour or more. I still was not cognitive of what was really happening.

A nurse, with a doctor alongside, woke me up the next morning. A changing of the guard, new faces on the ward. Taking my vital signs, the doctor said another doctor would be by later to see me. I felt better, fit for duty, but I knew that was not going to happen. It was then I felt the bruises on my upper left shoulder, left hip, and thigh. I mentioned the bruises to the nurse, as she was writing in the chart hanging at the foot of my bed. She responded that they were aware of that. She turned, and went on with her duties, no time to chat.

Closing my eyes, I thought of the transformation of pungent odors out in the field to the now-sterilized fragrance of alcohol, bleach, and cleaning products, with an occasional whiff of food for someone else, surely not me. In a light-sleep mode, my mind drifting from one subject to another, I could sense medical staff around to check my IV, take blood, or check my vital signs. I seldom fully woke up. I was tired and weak.

It was surely another day and another set of characters as a nurse woke me up and ask how I was doing. Guess I must have been doing okay as I saw the doctors less and took short naps throughout the day, with only an occasional nurse or doctor stopping by. The activity in front of me continued, and I didn’t believe I yet fully understood what was happening to me.

Late that day (or was it the next day?) someone from the American Red Cross came to my bedside and told me that they were trying to find me. Why was it so hard to find me? First it was the Spec 4, and now the woman from the Red Cross claiming it being difficult to locate where I was. All baffling, but I still wasn’t able to sort things out about the last few weeks and the recent two days that were missing and what had happened.

We’re going to try and connect you with your wife on the phone, she said. But it probably won’t be for a while. We need to make arrangements and connections first.

They gave me instructions the next morning on how to use the phone, and not to say anything about my medical condition or my unit. The communications was much like a field radio; at the end of each ending statement, we had to say Over, so the next person could speak. It was difficult communicating in this fashion, but I told JoAnn I was fine and that I would be home soon. She asked a couple of times about what had happened, and I responded saying that she will get the whole story when I got back home. We were only on the phone for a few minutes, but it was good to hear her voice.

It was then I noticed my speech had more pauses than in the past. I seemingly hesitated, trying to find the first word, before starting a sentence, and sometimes I forgot where I was in a sentence. Must be a symptom of my new illness, diabetes, or the medication they were shooting into my veins, I surmised.

Later that day I had an episode of sweating and mental confusion, and doctors rushed to my side, inserting a needle with a large syringe full of a solution into my IV. The nurse instructed to slow my IV dripping into my arm – my first episode with low blood sugar. Doctors and nurses stood by, and the sweating stopped. Soon afterwards, I went back to sleep.

After a few days in the Saigon military hospital, they advanced me to another military hospital in Tokyo, Japan, for stabilization before returning stateside.

In the Japanese military hospital, I met other wounded, injured, and sick soldiers. It felt like a factory, with beds everywhere, and a change in patients continuously. I was starting to feel better, somewhat. Real food, if you want to call it – the food mainly consisted of juices and Jell-O, with a slice of toast or slice of meat occasionally given. It was a most strange and sparse diet, with no explanation as to why.

Having greater freedom to walk around the ward, pushing my IV stand in front of me, I talked to soldiers in beds and in the TV room. The conversation was constant, from what happened to them in country to what they were going to do when they got back home. Some were severely injured, and when a bed suddenly was empty, I quickly learned not to ask what happened. There was general gossip and rumors everywhere, including conversations about a special ward at the hospital where soldiers were dying from venereal diseases to first-hand accounts of combat in Nam. Discussion of the escalating anti-war protests in the United States everywhere, supported by chanting heard of Yankee Go Home outside the hospital by protesters. The atmosphere was as if we were going from one war zone to another felt.

In my rounds around the hospital at one bedside, I met Bill, a grunt who lost his leg. Understandably, he was angry and constantly and loudly complaining about the medical care and his pain. It was easy to see that he was not happy with himself or his condition, and Bill wanted everyone to know. For some reason I liked Bill and tried to get him out of his mental rut, but he kept on saying he was only half a man now and that no one would want him being a gimp.

They told me I’m getting a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. They think they are cheering me up, but they can take those medals and shove them up their ass, Bill said. I messed up and got blown up. It should have never happened. I don’t deserve those medals; I’m no hero but only a fucking screw-up.

Not sure if his constant rambling was due to pain medications or his personality, but I continued stopping by his bedside whenever I had a chance to try to cheer him up. When he finally got the pronunciation of my name correctly, he said that he heard about a sergeant with a strange name like mine who they found alive in a body bag and the only one in his platoon alive. He asked if I was that sergeant.

I responded with, I don’t know. My thoughts jumbled between my horror dreams and reality. What others were telling me didn’t make sense at all.

Over the next couple of days, Bill began talking about suicide and not wanting to go back home alive. I mentioned this to the nurse and she said, We hear that all the time.

One morning I went to Bill’s bedside and they said he had gone home. I never got his last name or asked where he lived in the states. I would have liked to keep in touch with Bill, as well as with many others I met while in the service.

After getting to know a few of the nurses, and a number of the patients, many suffering from combat wounds, I found it surprising to see so many in the hospital for non-combat related injury and diseases, such as was my condition. However, never did I find one other patient in the ward with diabetes.

Although feeling somewhat better and able to walk around the hospital ward, I surely was quite ill – the doctors kept saying I was an extremely brittle diabetic. It was when a couple of nurses were going into Tokyo with a few patients when reality of my health struck. A nurse told me, because of my severe medical condition, I could not go with them. Frustrated that no one would explain what diabetes was or what my life would be with the disease. Paranoia set in as everyone sidestepped my questions. Patch them up and send them home seemed to be the policy.

The bruising on my left shoulder, hip, and thigh disappeared, but the taking of blood and the injections of insulin were constant. Soon my arms became bruised from all the injections and blood drawing (those thick hypodermic needles hurt), and drawing shifted to my ankles, giving the veins in my arms relief.

When not walking around the ward or sitting in the TV room, I laid in bed trying to put all the loose pieces of my Vietnam experience into proper order to help trigger times and places I had difficulty in remembering what actually happened, and the assumed imaginary incidents seeming as reality. They seemed to intertwine. Now, Bill’s shocking story about the platoon added to my haunting thoughts and nightmares about the body bag. The quiet and peacefulness of the hospital ward at night often broken by a yell, someone crying, or the moans of pain. My horror dreams of combat and Charlie chasing me persisted, and one soldier told me that I needed to keep quiet about getting dreams; otherwise, they would ship me to that psych ward, a place you do not want to go.

For some reason, I was not excited about going home and reuniting with my wife JoAnn. The sense of shame and guilt, not fulfilling the job trained for in the Army, and letting others down unsettling. In addition, could I even go back to delivering restaurant supplies in New York City again? I now felt Bill’s anger, especially in not knowing what was wrong with me and what my life would be like. Worthless, it was then I first felt like death was a solution. Depression set in and the feeling of having no value weighed on me. With all the months of training in the transition from a civilian teenager to that of a sergeant, it looked like it was over. My life instantly changed and questions about the future and health became an internal battle.

Carried onto a plane, a C121 transport, where I laid on a bunk, alongside dozens of other returning disabled troops, and headed home. I fell asleep before take-off and woke up intermittently throughout the flight. The plane refueled in Honolulu, and I slept through the entire Hawaii experience. We landed in New Jersey, Fort Dix.

The Vietnam tour of duty was now over, and Nam felt like one long, very long day.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Chapter 2:

My Beginnings in Yorkville, New York City

If given a choice, I could not have picked a better time or place to be born. World War II ended two years prior to my birth, and the city alive with immigrants, first and second generation Americans all working hard to fulfill dreams of opportunities for themselves and loved ones.

My parents, married before World War II, lived in a rent control apartment prior to my birth and before my Dad went into the Army, where he served for 6 years, mostly in Italy during the war.

Our apartment was next door to Grandma Sarah Pekrul, my mother’s mom. The rent was under twenty-dollars per month, Grandma Sarah paying a dollar less, having lived there longer. We lived on the Upper East Side, Yorkville section of Manhattan, New York City.

The Yorkville neighborhood was a cultural smorgasbord – situated between 59th Street to the South and 96th Street to the North, bordered by Lexington Avenue to the West and the East River on the East. Travel to different clusters of blocks and the cultural change – between Italian, Czech, Irish, German, Dutch, Slovak, Greek, Jewish, Russian – was easy to identify. Go north of Yorkville, and you were in Spanish Harlem, and then further north was Harlem. Apartment buildings, such as where we lied, had a mixture of tenants of different ethnicities and cultures sharing the same roof.

From storefront shop owners selling food and goods of their culture to vendors with horse or hand-drawn carts on the streets selling fresh produce, other food items and goods, Yorkville was its own bustling metropolitan within the City, an economy of cash and barter. The fervor imported to the alleyways as vendors and musicians solicited, and among neighbors loudly communicating with one another from their windowsills, often in a language of their native country.

Line Up, Line Up, you often heard echoing off neighboring buildings in the alley. A vendor would wait for your response and the money thrown down to him before climbing up the spiked telephone pole across from your window or fire escape to rethread your clothesline.

I especially enjoyed listening to the musicians playing and singers singing songs of their heritage, and one would throw loose change out the window in appreciation. One musician, playing an accordion and singing Italian songs, had a monkey climb up the fire escape to your window. Attempt to remove any money from the cup the monkey held, and he would screech loudly and quickly climb away.

The streets and alleys of New York City were a magical carnival for a young boy. Always a special treat to go out shopping with mom or grandmother. Grandma Sarah spoke many of the languages of vendors, and it was enjoyable to hear her arguing in another language with a merchant, resulting in an extra piece of fruit, vegetable, or pastry thrown into our shopping bag. Grandma’s favorite merchants were Jewish, kibitzing with them in Hebrew or Yiddish. Mom spoke only in English, but I did hear her occasionally say a word in, I believe, Greek.

My father, Urban Pastoriza Miyares, was born in Tampa, Florida, on December 1, 1920. His parents, my grandparents, were from Cuba and immigrated to the United States in 1918, along with other families from the same village. It was a clan, although not by blood, and they treated each other as relatives. This clan all supported one another, both emotionally and financially.

Dad insisted he was Spanish and not Cuban, and angrily defended his position. Aristocrats, he would say, stating the Miyares family owned plantation land in Cuba, a Spanish land grant, but no one believed him, especially his bragging about his heritage. Constantly teased about his claims that he was not Cuban, and I heard stories about him getting into fights when younger over his insistence of being a Spaniard from a wealthy and influential family heritage in Toledo, Spain.

My father’s mother, my grandmother Juana had one son, Benjamin (Uncle Benny Fernandez), from a previous marriage. My father named after his father, my grandfather Urbano Miyares. Upon immigrating to the United Sates, my grandfather Urbano worked alongside fellow family immigrants in Juba City, a section of Tampa, Florida, making Cuban cigars.

After losing his job, Grandfather Miyares then opened a Cuban Coffee shop called Florida Coffee Mills, Miyares & Sons from the house. The Miro family next door also now unemployed opened a Cuban bread bakery. By selling the coffee and bread and by bartering, the entire clan was able to survive during those depressed times when jobs were scarce. The blended family bond strong, and their children, including my Dad, all grew up as an extended family, cousins.

Grandfather Miyares passed away from prostate cancer at age 52 when dad was in Tampa Bay Hillsborough High School. Devastated over his father’s passing, he quit school and, along with three of the older family cousins, left Tampa. They called my father Nino, as he was not yet seventeen years of age and the youngest.

Heading to New York City to find a new lifestyle, one better than the one they left in Florida, they settled into an apartment on 93rd Street and Third Avenue, Yorkville section of Manhattan. It was not long before the others became homesick and returned to Tampa. Dad, the baby (Nino) of the clan, remained, alone, determined to seek his fortune and future in New York City.

He worked at various jobs, from washing dishes in restaurants to working in the Fulton Street Fish Market for pennies an hour, he repeatedly said. Of the many stories I heard, one was how he earned extra money by taking the black wooden shoebox he built when a kid, and set up his shoeshine business among the street vendors on the sidewalks of New York City. He taught me the right way to shine shoes; making sure to shine the welt (he called it the gutter) and tongue, too.

You can tell a lot about a man by his shoes and how they’re shined, dad said.

His lectures on how, in tough times, I needed to learn how to earn money, even if it meant shining shoes on street corners, still rings in my ears. Shining his shoes became a required chore for me when a young boy. When older, I learned the art of washing dishes, pots, and pans, and working in kitchens and waiting tables. He said as a good waiter I could earn as much as a doctor, and always have a job.

My father met my mom, Katherine Kamelius, but never history of their meeting or early years together mentioned other than meeting in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan’s lower West Side. When they married, my father was seventeen and my mother sixteen years of age. After working different jobs, anything to make money, dad went into the U.S. Army at the outbreak of WW II, reaching the rank of sergeant. He never talked about his military service.

I was born on September 21, 1947, after my father returned home from the war and given the name Urban, Jr. (the third Urban with the family name). Born at Horace Mann Hospital, on Welfare Island on New York City’s East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, I was the second child of my parents. Only years later did I find out my mother had a miscarriage or stillbirths prior to my birth – a subject never mentioned.

I too had medical problems at birth, a medical condition called pyloric stenosis, a condition in infants preventing food from passing from the stomach into the intestine, resulting in frequent projectile vomiting and other medical issues. I had three operations before 18 months of age, and the surgeries left me with a nasty, vertical scar just above my belly button on the right side. At birth, a minister on duty at the hospital performed a crib baptism, everyone fearful that my outcome would be like my previous sibling.

My father, Urban P. Miyares, Sr., acquired a bar in Brooklyn when discharged from the Army. My earliest memory goes from before three years of age, recalling the bar. It was a corner bar with sawdust on the floor, a shuffleboard game at the far corner opposite the end of the stand-up bar, a few tables, and a row of stools lined up alongside the bar. Alcohol bottles were everywhere and the dimly lit room saturated with smoke from cigarettes and cigars. Dad, as owner and bartender, spoke loudly, always joking and kidding with the customers. Everyone knew each other as the bar was open in the early morning and stayed open until late in the evenings. Stories abounded about how they moved me around when sleeping, from the end of the bar top to the shuffleboard table, or put me in the corner booth on a blanket.

Of particular note was Butch, a large, older, overweight German shepherd that dad kept at the bar, day and night. Butch’s head was the same height as mine when I stood up and he had thick and long knotted hair. Grabbing his coat, he pulled me around the bar area. Butch and I were friends and when he died from eating chicken bones out of the garbage can behind the bar outside, I was mortified. Butch is probably the reason why German Shepherds are my favorite breed of dog.

I can picture sitting on the bar-top and two men coming into the bar to talk to dad. They were wearing hats and suits, with one smoking a cigar. Dad, a six-foot, slender man, wearing a white dress shirt and black pants with a white apron tied around his waist, went to the rear of the bar with the two men. They were in a heated discussion, the larger man yelling at my father and pointing a finger in his face, the other man standing a step behind. Suddenly, dad grabbed the larger man by the lapel of his suit and forcibly lifted him out the front door, screaming. The other man ran quickly. Scared, I cried. Soon afterwards, dad told mom the bar forced to close; thugs set him up for not paying protection money. The police found drugs in the bathroom.

Mom, Katherine (dad often calling her Kitty when at home), worked as a waitress at a coffee shop on the Southwest corner of 73rd Street and Third Avenue under the 3rd Avenue El (elevated subway) just a short half-block from our apartment at 211 East 73rd Street. When working, she brought me to a Catholic Convent on 78th Street and Second Avenue offering baby-sitting services. The nuns constantly scolded us, sometimes pulling our pants down and slapping or hitting us on our backside with a wooden paddle or ruler. One day, in retaliation, I peed on one of the nuns. A nun called mom and she came from work to take me home from the convent. They did not want to watch me any longer. He’s just terrible, they said.

Afterwards, a neighbor’s daughter, Virginia, living in the front apartment babysat me. My mother also brought me to Jones Memorial, a neighborhood center on 73rd Street, between First and York Avenues, just a couple of blocks from where we lived. I went to Jones Memorial almost every day, through kindergarten, also after school in the early school years. It was a great place with a playground and always something to do. I enjoyed the field trips, going to the Central Park Zoo, museums, and places where we could learn to swim and play different sports. I even began Cub Scouts at Jones Memorial. One summer field trip of note was a trip to a yacht club in Larchmont, New York. There I had the chance to sail in a small sailboat for the first time, and sailing fascinated me. I was the only one requesting the sailing trip again.

After losing the bar, dad worked as a waiter and bartender in different restaurants around the city; mom continued waitressing. One place dad frequently worked was a pizzeria on Amsterdam Avenue, across from Columbia University, uptown Manhattan. A small restaurant with six deep, red, curved booths around its walls and a few tables in the center. Owned by two brothers of Italian descent, the pizzeria was always busy with college students during the day and adult clientele in the evenings. This the first time I heard someone call my father Joe, and my dad quickly responded in Italian, learning the language while serving in the Army, in Italy, during the war. He also spoke Spanish and easily passed for being Italian, Greek, Jewish, or other ethnicities, but seldom would anyone have guessed he was Cuban-Spanish.

Most memorable was getting dressed up to go to a wedding. Both mom and dad loved to get dressed up, with dad having a closet full of suits, black, brown, and grey hats on a shelf. Dad told mom what to wear, and I wore a white shirt and tie, dark pants and jacket, with shined black shoes. We walked into a large wedding hall with a band playing and people dancing. Mom held my hand as we followed dad. From the crowd, the two brothers owning the pizzeria approached, shook my dad’s hand, and led us to a table in a far corner where a large man sat, his back to the wall. Dad approached holding an envelope, a wedding gift, as mom and I stood back. Dad then waved for us to come over. The man said something in Italian and my father pushed me closer. The man pinched and gently slapped my rosy red cheek and then brushed his fingers on my curly brown hair saying something. I just smiled; I didn’t understand a word he said. We then left and went home, not staying for the wedding.

Dad drove a big, green Packard, and when I was walking in the neighborhood, if I saw the car parked on the street, I knew he was home. It was common for dad to be gone for two or more days, mom said he was working, and later learning one of his nighttime jobs was as a dealer in a card room, in the basement of the pizzeria. Soon I got use to him not being home every day or night.

Our tenement building was a five-story brownstone, four families per floor. Without a stoop, one-step and you were in a narrow entryway containing tenants’ mailboxes. Go up three steps and walk through a pane-glass door, never locked, and you entered a narrow hallway leading to the steep staircase on the left and a passageway on the other side of the staircase to the two apartments on the ground floor. The left apartment occupied by the husband-wife owners of the dry cleaning business located on the street side of our building. A grouchy elderly woman, Ms. Shriner, in the other apartment, often yelled at me whenever going into the basement entrance behind the staircase. The rat-infested basement had a dirt floor cave with pipes attached to the low-headed ceiling. We had a wooden locker in the basement, as did other tenants. It was always musty and damp.

Our apartment was one of two in the rear, on the second floor. In the narrow hallway between the front and rear apartments were two bathrooms, one for each of the two families on either side of that floor to share. Called a railroad flat, with lath and plaster walls, the ceiling a sheet metal imprint. When opening our front door, you were instantly in the kitchen, the door brushing the side of the porcelain white kitchen sink. Next to the sink sat (on its four legs) a white metal bathtub, its removable metal cover serving as a counter. The gas stove and oven, and hanging cabinets, on the kitchen’s far side, and a table and four chairs in the room’s center. On the left side of the front door stood a wooden icebox – yes, we had a wooden icebox, a couple years later replaced by a plug-in refrigerator. The icebox served as a partial patrician to a small rear bedroom. Between the kitchen and the front room was a floor-mounted gas heater. The entire three-room, railroad-flat apartment was less than 400 square feet.

I remember a train set as my Christmas gift when three years old, but don’t recall playing with the train, only learning of a fire in the living room caused by it. To this day, fire is one of my phobias, with many of my nightmares including fire.

It’s-a-ice-man, ice-man, we could hear Mr. Armato yelling in the hallway, as he walked up the steep stairs with his left hand grasping the handles of the ice hook tongs as it held a large block of ice resting on a leather towel on his left shoulder, his right hand gripping the handrail and pulling him up with each step. He was a short and chubby man; my mom and grandma were taller. For years, after we stopped buying ice from Mr. Armato, with a modern electric refrigerator replacing our wooden icebox, whenever I saw him on the street, he would always yell to me from his truck, Hey, kid! wave and smile.

I received a scolding for drinking the icebox’s defrosted water in the tray on the floor – crazy how as a kid you remember such minor incidents.

Another strong memory is sitting on a rocking chair with metal toys in each hand, my arms tied down with towels to the chair’s arms, and I slammed the metal toys on the arm of the chair. I must have had a terrible temper. I still have that same wooden rocking chair today, with all its marks.

While listening to the radio one afternoon, the front door suddenly opened with a loud bang. My mother gasped and I saw my father stumbling in and sitting at the kitchen table grasping the side of his head. Blood was on his hand and arm. Mom quickly gave him a towel and brought me next door to my grandmother’s apartment saying, Be quiet, and play here, Junior. Junior was what most called me by, with my dad often called Big Urban or Joe. I never found out what happened to my dad that day, but he stayed in bed for the next couple of days, occasionally getting up to drink coffee, have a beer or glass of whisky and slice of bread. Then, one morning he dressed up in a suit and tie, and when leaving the house said, We are getting a new car.

What color car do you want Junior, he asked?

I responded with blue, as he went down the stairs with a hop of excitement.

We got a two-tone brown Ford.

Both my parents smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol. Quite often, dad came home drunk or, when home, drank heavily. One time dad, dressed in his underwear and watching TV in grandma’s apartment, had a glass filled with whiskey on the floor by his side. I drank the liquor and passed out. This became the family joke for my father whenever around others; my mother was embarrassed when he told the story.

Years later, Grandma Sarah talked about mom drinking heavily after my birth, believing I would not live like the previous pregnancy. She also said, when mom was drunk, she talked about me not being her child. I do not remember anything related as I remember my mother at home and going out together, but I do remember being with grandma just as much, if not more, when she was home from working in the mountains or a catering hall in the city.

Grandma Sarah was a chef that specialized in kosher food, although we were not Jewish. Immigrating to New York City after World War I, she began cooking at small restaurants and coffee shops in lower Manhattan. She married George Kamelius, and I once heard whispers about them having two daughters. The oldest, Johanna, died, and my mother Katherine Kamelius, was born on June 30, 1921. Along with so many family secrets, never a mention made of my grandfather George Kamelius or Aunt Johanna. Grandma Sarah was careful, for some reason, never to go into any long dialog or give any specific details about the past. She was illiterate and unable to sign her name, using an X as her mark on documents. Later, my mother showed her how to write her name.

I had a special bond with Grandma Sarah, from falling asleep on her chest, to listening to the radio in her living room. We were together often. I helped her make soap in the kitchen (I hated that smell), and cooking soups from the chicken feet or marrow bones she bought for pennies, to going to the grocery store on delivery days when they received produce and threw away the cover leaves of lettuce and cabbage, as well as spoiled fruit and vegetables. Those throwaways were meals for the next week, and having a lettuce sandwich with homemade mayonnaise on rye bread was one of my favorites. It was comfortable shopping with Grandma around the neighborhood; everyone knew Sarah, and she just loved kibitzing with everyone and proudly told everyone that I was her grandson.

She was gone for months at a time, cooking in Upstate New York, also known as the Jewish Alps or the Borsch Belt. People often mentioned where Grandma worked. She was one of the early cooks for Jennie Grossinger (Grossinger’s Hotel), the Brown Hotel (that comedian Jerry Lewis’s grandparents owned and where he was a busboy when my grandmother was cooking there), and many other resorts in the area. Her baking and cooking accomplishments well known in The Mountains upstate New York, from creating a Jewish Rye Bread for Grossinger’s to her vegetarian recipes, which she later prepared for the Colonial Hotel.

Even with our front doors unlocked, I enjoyed going into grandma’s apartment on the adjoining fire escape through her rear window. When she was in the mountains, playing in grandma’s apartment was the norm, and, of course, we all watched TV in her apartment. I believe Grandma was the first person to get a television set in our tenement building. Grandma’s apartment was a bit different, as she had a window in her back room, leading to a six-foot-by-six-foot airshaft, shared by the rear window of the tenant in the front apartment. Later in years, that backroom would become my bedroom, my cave, my entertainment center.

Summers in the City were hot and humid, and with apartments built one next to another, there was seldom any air circulation. Fans were a slight relief and it was common to have bed sheets sticking to you during the night. The coolest areas were on the fire escape, going on the flat roof – we