The day that Castro came out of the mountains to take Havana my father and his new wife were there. They'd been honeymooning in Jamaica and my father, of course, scheduled a flight that would take him to his old stomping grounds before the return flight home. He had been watching the turmoil in Cuba for years, and because of some acquaintances he'd made in Chicago during prohibition, was convinced that Batista would be overthrown. Father was certain that the FBI's gang taskforce was assisting Castro. He often said that Cuba had become a refuge for mobsters that openly and overtly defied the FBI and that J. Edgar Hoover would do anything to get Batista out of power. To shorten what could be a rather long monograph, Father gathered both his and his bride's luggage and dumped, virtually everything out. He then proceeded to buy as many of his prized Havanas as he could stuff in the bags. When he returned home, he said he was stocking up, because he feared that under Castro, the tobacco fields would be turned into fields that grew food crops. He never objected to this happening, but said that if these were the last Havanas he could get, he wanted them to last awhile. Regretfully, he didn't live very long after this. When the embargo came, I slowly sold off the Havanas to meet expenses. I wish I'd kept a few; not because they were Havanas, but because they were a token of a great story and the life of a unique man. Steve