My full name is Orlando Vázquez Cordero Reyes...
guess you could call me a Jíbaro... a self-educated Jibaro. That's what Don Jibaro, the nickname by which I’m known, is. I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on November 25 of 1948. As a child, I lived in Cataño (across the San Juan Bay) in a few barrios: Sabana, Amelia and Juana Matos. I don’t remember much of those first three years but there’s a memory of a small house at the end of a dirt road. The one bedroom house was made of wood and painted dull green with a linoleum thatched roof with the “fregadero” (kitchen sink) sticking out of the kitchen window. Thus when you close the window the sink, faucet and all, stays outside hanging from the house. Onf my first two years I don't remember much, probably because I was to busy developing a file system that will serve me as memory storage for years to come.

On my third Día de Reyes (Three Kings Day) I got a little red fire truck. Not the big one that you ride in, but a small one that you push with your hand, while emulating the sound of the engine with your mouth. I went outside to play and my neighbor buddy, whose name escapes me now, had also a little car, but his had doors that opened. Mine didn’t. I told him that mine was better because there was no danger of people falling out of the truck and asked him if he wanted to trade. He accepted and I went home with my new door-opening convertible. A few hours later his mom, with him by the hand and crying, knocked at our door. She wanted her son’s car back.

My fourth birthday was a vivid memory. We had moved to Andrades St. and into a better house… with a porch! My cousins were older girls and made it a pointo for me to have a birthday celebration. They brought in a cake from the bakery with all sorts of figurines on the frosting. It was wrapped in a beautiful blue cellophane tissue that I kept for a while, but my mom made me throw it away because “babies choked on it”.

I went to school for 1st grade at the Logia Loarina (a Lodge that doubled as a school) where I didn't learn anything that I can remember, except maybe reading. I used to walk to school from home and back (in those days it was safe.)

One day, it began to rain after school and I didn't want to get wet, so I waited in front of the school for the rain to end. After a very long while, the rain wasn't stopping, so I decided to start walking, because it was about to turn dark. It rained and I walked, and it rained some more... then I stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk and began to cry. I cried and cried some more and called for my "Papi", but not many heard me, because not many were out walking in the rain!

Suddenly a car stopped and the man inside said... "CUQUITO!!" (that was my childhood nickname) and summoned me to get in. I recognized him... the man was Artemio, a friend of my father. He took me home and my Dad thanked him. I don't have any more memories of Artemio except he drove a 1956 Ford Victoria (hard top) in mint condition!

Forty years later I went back to Cataño to visit the homeland and I saw a man that looked just like the memory I had of Artemio, except he had a wrinkled smiley face. I stopped the minivan that I was in, and called him. I asked him if he remembered picking up a little boy in the rain forty-five years earlier, not too far from where we were. He scratched his head, smiled while looking down at the ground and said... “Mmm, most likely, because I used to come that way from work." He had no idea who I was... but he remembered my father.

• MORE LATER •