The Return

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Nov 22, 2002

When my mother died suddenly in 2001, I found among her things a "treasure trove" of memorabilia from her childhood. My mother, Jeanne Crossman, had the extraordinary experience of growing up in Havana, Cuba. She was the only child of Norden and Gwendolyn Jones of Glen Rock, New Jersey. My grandfather Norden was the supervising manager of the American-owned utility company in Havana during the 1930's and 1940's.

My mother loved to tell about her childhood, and apparently she planned to publish her memoirs, for I found many pages of handwritten and typewritten chapters.

Here is one of them:

The Return

We always spent summers in Syracuse visiting my grandmother and my aunt and uncle who all lived together in a little white house on a beautifully tree-garlanded street. My father would accompany us North but would have to return to Cuba after two weeks. At the end of the summer, we left by train for New York City where we would stay over only a day until we could leave on the Silver Meteor for the thirty-six hour trip to Miami.

The Silver Meteor was brand-new then - built in the 1930's - very streamlined, all steel on the outside and considered the most modern train on wheels. Inside, instead of leather seats like the New York Central, the seats were upholstered in maroon velour. Grey carpeting covered the aisles and hostesses in uniforms of grey piped in maroon, passed out pillows, blankets and light refreshments. The seats reclined and were designed to be an alternative to a sleeper or sitting up all night in the coach. Sleep could be elusive because there were jolting stops during the night at Philadelphia, Washington, someplace in Georgia and north Florida with the noise and confusion of people boarding or getting off.

We would rest a day in Miami and then came the best part, taking the twelve-hour boat trip from Miami to Havana. All the families of the foreign residents of Havana went North for the summer. North was always spoken of with capital letters. "North" might be Canada, New York City, or the mountains of North Carolina, but wherever, it was north of Cuba and like flocks of birds the wives and children made the journey north in June and in late August returned to the Island for the start of school.

The steamship Florida lay at anchor patiently waiting for its passengers to board. Even at 5 p.m. the sunlight was so intense it made the ship sparkling white. As my mother and I walked up the gangplank, the oily smell of diesel fuel mingled with the stench of dead fish belly up in the stagnant water by the dock. Once on board, large paddle fans wafted toward us the odors of past meals. By the time we sailed at 7 p.m., the smells had done the job. I was overwhelmingly seasick.

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