A Scent of Cigar, a Sense of Home
The elderly man on the telephone chooses his words carefully but speaks in the rapid-fire, choppy Spanish of my hometown, Miami. When he notices my accent echoing his over the phone, he excitedly invites me over: “Ven p’aca.” I arrive at Leon’s Cigars expecting a cultural connection. What I find is somewhat arresting.
Scraps of paper with long written sums lie on one counter next to a small calculator; a portable radio is tuned to a Spanish talk show; a Cuban pennant hangs on one wall across from a crucifix and family photographs.
The rich and sweet aroma of tobacco in the front room competes with the scent of carne con papas (meat and potatoes) cooking on a portable stove in the back. Dozens of tobacco leaves are piled on wooden desks, waiting to be cut and filled. Before the day is over in this tiny cigar shop in Los Angeles, Gilberto Leon and his two employees will roll 600 to 700 cigars by hand, the way Leon was taught in his native Cuba. It’s been this way at this small shop on 6th Street for 22 years.
Growing up, I heard plenty of nostalgic stories of dapper Cuban men artistically cutting tobacco leaves with steel blades, though I’d never actually seen it done. When I arrive, Leon and his sidekick, Alfonso Machin, are rolling away, a cigar burning on an ashtray near Leon. For four hours each day he has the rolled tobacco in his mouth, he says. Ten hours a day, it’s in his sturdy hands, embedded in his fingernails, as he takes a wrapper of tobacco leaf, precisely cuts it into a triangle, then takes shredded tobacco and flips it into the wrapper and rolls. Over and over.
I look beyond Leon’s kind face to the back of his crammed store, wedged between a florist shop and a Salvadoran restaurant, and I am transported. For 17 years, my grandfather Jose Fernandez owned a neighborhood bodega in Miami, 90 miles from the island where Leon rolled his first cigar at 14. Small and homey like Leon’s store, my grandfather’s bodega--our bodega--supported my grandparents and anyone else in our large family who needed it. It is where my sister and I were sometimes dropped off after school, and where we hung out on weekends, eating candies. It is also where my family learned to be at home in its new country.
Nobody rolled cigars in our little market, but people sure smoked them. The neighborhood men all gathered there after work, cigars in one hand, cafecitos in the other, reminiscing about old times and dissecting the latest travesty of the Fidel Castro regime. Boisterous and well-informed, these men gathered around a wooden counter, just like Leon’s. The radio was always dialed to Spanish talk, especially of the political variety, and mementos of Cuba hung on the wall. Like the owner of this cigar shop, my grandfather was the quiet one who did most of the listening. At Leon Cigars, Machin, 73, is the noisy one with the naughty sense of humor.
When Leon proudly shows me the paper with his handwritten calculations of the day’s sales (nearly $2,000), I see something else: the same type of discarded cigarette cartons my grandfather used for his tabulations because he didn’t want to be wasteful. The long row of figures, the lines and curves of the digits themselves, make me homesick. “Are you hungry?” Leon asks sweetly. “I am cooking today. I wanted to eat home-cooked food, and the old lady at home cannot cook at all.”
We go into the back, where the carne con papas is almost ready and another Cuban staple sits on the other burner: the silver coffeepot for Cuban espresso. I am reminded of so many afternoons when my sister and I walked in on my grandfather cooking caldo gallego (a Spanish stew) or arroz con pollo (chicken with rice). He died in 1998, two months shy of his 95th birthday. But on this summer afternoon in the City of Angels, it is as if he is right here with me.
‘The Best Cigar in L.A.’
Gilberto Leon has always lived simply, devoted to his work and family. A widower whose grown son now lives in Miami with his family, Leon shares the small house he owns in Silver Lake with a “lady friend.” He works Monday through Saturday, arriving before 6 a.m. and staying until 4:30 or later if his customers need him. On Sundays he works a few hours in the early morning, preparing the cigar wrappers for the coming week. His assistants are two of his closest friends: Machin, a Cuban exile who almost died in the Florida Strait during the 1980 Mariel boat lift; and Elda Lopez, a Nicaraguan woman who rolls cigars at a desk in the back, away from Machin’s banter.
“My vices are eating, smoking tobacco, drinking a little beer here and there,” Leon says. He also loves to play dominoes with his sister, who carries them in her car wherever she goes. “She likes the dominoes like I like cigars.”
Leon learned to roll “the best cigar in Los Angeles,” as his customers are apt to say, by default. The family was poor. He needed to learn a trade. His mother had a connection, and off he went at 14. By the time he grew up, Leon had worked at all of the largest cigar factories in La Habana, striving to learn from the best and perfect his craft.
“I liked it,” he said. “We were poor, and you had to learn how to do something, and that’s what I learned. But you know how the Cuban spirit is. We always want to do better.”
When the Castro revolution began in 1959, Leon sold his cigar shop before the government could seize it, as it did the personal and business properties of nearly everyone on the island, including my grandfather, who owned a bar and restaurant in La Habana called Las Carolinas. Leon returned to rolling cigars in the factories as the revolution unfolded and the life he had built slowly crumbled.
“I was a business owner until Fidel arrived and knocked me off my horse,” he said. “I went to an agricultural camp to cut sugar cane for free for five years. That’s how I earned the right to leave. I had to give up five years of my life for my exit visa. It was like being in prison.”
In 1971, Leon landed in Miami without his wife, who did not want to leave her family, and their 9-year-old son. He stayed in South Florida for only five days, then came to Los Angeles, where two of his sisters were waiting for him. He immediately hit the cigar factories to make a living. “I missed Cuba and my people, but I adjusted. I got used to things here. I have enjoyed living in Los Angeles very much.”
Nine years later, Leon found his storefront just west of Western Avenue, where Angelenos from all walks of life intersect and coexist. Leon keeps a machete next to his desk, but he’s never had to use it. In 22 years there have been no break-ins or robberies. No problems. Leon says it’s because “if you don’t start trouble, you don’t get into trouble.” I heard my grandfather say the same thing a time or two.
A Distinguished Clientele
Today Leon’s cigars cost between $3 and $5.50, and he sells about 400 or 500 a day. During the cigar fad of the mid-’90s, customers lined up around the block seeking Leon’s special blends of tobacco. Cigar smoking may not be as trendy these days, but Leon still has a loyal roster of clients: former boxing champion George Foreman, whom Leon did not even recognize, movie studio executives, lawyers, businessmen and police officers.
This is why.
It’s Friday afternoon, and the after-work rush is at its peak. Machin and Lopez have left for the day, and Leon is sweeping tobacco trimmings off the floor. Two polished men in suits walk in, and one says loudly, “Leon! My man!” They stand in front of the counter, and nobody says another word. Leon looks at them, puts the broom away, walks into his humidor and grabs four bundles.
Chuck Smith, president and chief executive of Pacific Bell, has been coming to Leon Cigars for 12 years, even though he lives in San Francisco. Smith, who was introduced to the shop by friends in the neighborhood, makes sure to stop by every time he’s in L.A. Today he is spending $400; one of the bundles will be a gift.
“These cigars have seen my daughter graduate from high school and my son get his PhD,” says Smith. “Did you notice I didn’t tell him what to get? He just knows. Even though I can’t speak Spanish, we communicate. He’s a special man. I’ve recommended this place to about 100 people.”
Because the U.S. trade embargo prevents Leon from buying tobacco from Cuba--”the best”--he purchases tobacco grown from Cuban seed in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Honduras. After it is harvested, it is imported to Miami and shipped to Los Angeles. Each type of tobacco has its own flavor and aroma. Five different blends create the 10 types of cigars he sells. The ones in dark wrappers are bitter; the others are smooth.
“He’s a good cigar maker,” says Norman Asher, of Scottsdale, Ariz., who walks into the shop with his son, Alan, of Los Angeles. “If he stays at it long enough, he’s going to be really good,” he jokes.
The elder Asher has been smoking cigars for 50 years. When he is in Arizona, his son mails him shipments from Leon’s because nowhere, not even in his native Chicago, has Asher found better-tasting tobacco. “The flavor is outstanding. Even when it was tough to buy them, when I had to stand in line, I was here. I didn’t have to say anything. He just knows.”
Leon doesn’t stress over the fact that he still speaks very little English and most of his clientele speaks no Spanish. He is good at reading people, and his customers have let him off the hook. “They tell me, ‘No worry. Forget English. Cigars very good,’ ” he says in a broken English.
Easygoing and mild-mannered, Leon says he’s just a survivor. He lived through troubled times in Cuba, lost his business and marriage to Castro’s revolution, then lost his second love in 1987 when she died. But he is serene.
“I’ve got no qualms about dying,” he says. “After Fidel dies, I’m going back to Cuba because I want to die there. But tell Uncle Sam to send me my checks because I’m an American citizen and I’ve got money coming to me.”
He laughs and adds, “California has been good to me, but I never forget my homeland. Never.”
My grandfather shared Leon’s dream of being buried in Cuba. But destiny had a different plan, and Miami became his final resting place. And now, 3,000 miles away from the cemetery where my grandparents are buried together, a small cigar shop in the heart of Los Angeles gives me a sense of home.