Cigar Factory Lessons: Stories

I can’t wait to go back to the Factory. It’s been almost a week. They’ve been waiting on a new tobacco shipment before I go back to practice. But I miss it. And rolling fake cigars onstage is such a tease.

I miss my new Tio. He reminds me of my father. They’re nothing alike. At all. Nor is he like my father’s father who is like my father. I think he reminds me of my father because he is always telling stories.  I was just recounting today to a reporter for La Opinión, who interviewed me about our play, how my life purpose is to be a storyteller.  How I get it from my father who used to sit next to me as lay in bed, and tell me stories.  Stories that always began with “Hace mucho mucho tiempooooo, en un lugar llamado, San Pedro Garza Garcia Monterrey Nuevo Leon Mexicoooo…..” even if the story took place in the middle east, ie David and Goliath.  I love that my culture is one of storytelling, verbal storytelling, oral history.  I loved listening to my Grandma Mague before she passed three years ago, tell the story of how she came to the US. Of how she saw an airplane for the first time flying over her head. About how she was once a teacher. And now I love listening to Oscar, and his stories about the old cigar factories, about living in Cuba, about how he came to have his business in the US.

The story in particular that reminded me of my father was the one which ended in two pieces of advice: Don’t spend more than you make and save your money……AND….do what you love and you will find joy.
It’s as if my dad and he were reading the same book…or speaking from experiences that brought them to the same truths, now being imparted on me.

Our play is about storytelling too: how the cigar workers would pay for a lector to read to them while they worked. And so, as poor as I may currently be, somehow my life is rich with stories, with fulfilled people, with passion, with pleasure. And I get to smoke a little tobacco in the end, to top it off.

My First Capa

I returned to the small cigar factory days later, and the old man, the original owner, sat us down to learn how to apply “capas,” the final leaf, and the hardest step.  Only me and two other cast members went this time.

The factory is owned by Oscar, the son of another Oscar who was came from Cuba decades ago. Oscar, Jr. doesn’t roll cigars; his father gave him the business. And big Oscar, and old man in his 80s, who wears sunglasses to keep his eyes from tearing up due to a condition, still hangs about, rolling, smoking, laughing, telling stories, and drinking coffee. Anytime you compliment big Oscar on his skill he exclaims,”Well of course! I’ve been rolling cigars for 60 years!”

Only our second visit, and again, they made us all Cuban coffee(espresso with sugar).

I sat down at his table with my legs crossed to the side, and he did not hesitate to sternly straighten me out to face the table squarely. The first time I attempted rolling the cigar in the Capa, I don’t think I even did it. Oscar stuck his hands in to take over the moment he saw me make a mistake, which meant his hands were always in there because I had no idea what I was doing. The second time around his let me cut the leaf on my own, as I showed him I caught on quickly how to use the Chaveta with style, and get the right shape.  Then I began to roll and pull, roll and pull, the leaf around the long dry tube of tobacco, and as I finished it off, pasting and twisting the end, he stuck his hands in a bit to help me get the shape. He took it out of my hands, looked at the cap on the enp, and said to me, as he held it between our eyes,”Tu si puedes ser tabaquera…”

I took that to heart. I could be a tabaquera, a cigar roller. I’d always wanted an earthy profession, like having a vineyard. Or being a gardner. And he I was being told I had the potential to roll the treat that so many (men mostly) enjoy for pleasure. To use my hands to mold a beautiful plant into something rugged, rough, smoky, and dangerous.  To take my time to sit, create, and enjoy.

Minutes later, I sat on the couch in the lobby area to finish off my coffee when Oscar came to sit by mean and tell me stories. Eventually he got to the point: We do shows, maybe 5 times a week. We show up and roll cigars, just the Capa.  We make lots of money, and they usually put us up in the best hotels, we eat well, and people love what you do. You’re an attractive young woman, and if you really do have an interest I will teach you, and you will come make shows with us to attract customers.

I’m interested. How much are classes?

Oscar responded almost offended: Classes?! No nothing. I will teach you because you want to learn. Come back Thursday.

And so I did.

Cigar Smoke

I think I may have found my vice.

I’ve never been a smoker. No one in my family smoked. It always seemed disgusting. When I asked my doctor how to prevent cervical cancer all she said was don’t smoke. Boyfriends that smoked gave dirty kisses. I pretended to smoke a few time while living in Spain, but I didn’t like it.

It was a few years ago, when I first performed in the play “Anna in the Tropics” at the park Square Theater in St. Paul that I had my first taste of cigars. Naturally, the cast became interested in cigars, being that the play is set in a Cuban cigar factory in Ybor City, Florida in 1929. We’d smoke them after rehearsal, and the shows. I came to like them, but I never bought them to smoke on my own.

That same year I became interested in Hookah. And two years ago, when I visited the land of the pyramids, I bought one and brought one back. Still, I smoke it on occasion because lighting the coal is a pain in the butt.

This summer, I began another production of “Anna,” here in Los Angeles. Only this time, instead of faking the cigar rolling onstage during the play, the cast was taken to a small cigar factory in Temple City to learn what it was all about.  Little did I know that the Gods of the Cigars would be speaking back to me as I learned how spread the leaves on a bench between my legs, and then again when I lit a hand rolled cigar and smoked it. And then as I ripped the vein from the large silky brown leaf.

I’ve always loved the shape of smoke in middair. Not in an arsenist kind of way. But it’s beautiful, the way it sits there. Particularly the smoke of cigars.  It was no wonder to me discovering that the Taino Indians believed the Cigar Smoke to be the language of the gods, a way of communicating with them.
So when I left that day with a desire to smoke another, and even more so, with an excitement to return days later to learn how to actually roll cigars for the purpose of the play, I figured those gods were telling me something.

My life has come to be quite full and replete with joy and peace. I love everything I do, but in all I do, I have felt one aspect missing. In my work and passion, I use both my mind and my heart. But, even though I desire it with all my hear and mind, I have not found a purpose in working with my hands, in laboring and creating.  I have toyed with hobbies:knitting….I guess that’s it. But my desire to creating with my hands, be skilled at a craft had remained unfulfilled, until this spark of interest grew to be increasingly growing curiosity for this ancient vice and ritual.