My bisabuelo (great-grandfather) Leonardo known as Don Leo, lived a long life... about 100 years give or take. I was 15 years old when he died. I remember going to his house in Ceiba next to the Texaco station (as seen in the picture above) with the sweet smell of mangoes that had fallen in his back yard. Everyone would gather on the balcon outside and spend hot summer days. He was missing a finger and would play that game with me that my dad also played: he would bend his finger and use his thumb to pretend his finger detached except Don Leo didn't actually have the other half. It was fascinating and weird at the same time. I don't remember how he lost it but I imagine it was with that machete he used every day, even into his old age, to go up to the campo in Rio Abajo, to cut sugar cane.
He was a tiny little guy but handsome as all get out. Golden tanned skin, most often with a hat covering his hairless head. I wish I had known him as a young man to tell me the stories of life in the montañas of Puerto Rico. Raising a family, living off the land beginning at a time when horses were the only mode of transportation until the time that his offspring flew back and forth to the United States. He was born a Spanish citizen and died and American having never left his island in the Caribbean. He watched the world so drastically change around him first from his hut on the side of a mountain road and then from his concrete house next to the American gas station.
He really was a caballero in every sense of the word; a gentle man who rode a horse, took care of his family, and always wore a shirt and slacks even in the hot island sun. He had so little but left so much: 9 children, 15 grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, 9 great-great grandchildren and counting... This is the family in the picture below that I speak to every day and are such an important part of my life. Four generations removed from him and ever so grateful are we all.
He was a tiny little guy but handsome as all get out. Golden tanned skin, most often with a hat covering his hairless head. I wish I had known him as a young man to tell me the stories of life in the montañas of Puerto Rico. Raising a family, living off the land beginning at a time when horses were the only mode of transportation until the time that his offspring flew back and forth to the United States. He was born a Spanish citizen and died and American having never left his island in the Caribbean. He watched the world so drastically change around him first from his hut on the side of a mountain road and then from his concrete house next to the American gas station.
He really was a caballero in every sense of the word; a gentle man who rode a horse, took care of his family, and always wore a shirt and slacks even in the hot island sun. He had so little but left so much: 9 children, 15 grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, 9 great-great grandchildren and counting... This is the family in the picture below that I speak to every day and are such an important part of my life. Four generations removed from him and ever so grateful are we all.