Living with Latins and Liking It

North Miami Beach, Florida 12-30-1999 Aaron H. Schectman

THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome.

First of all let me say that I had no intention of living with any other
people in our one bedroom apartment in North Miami Beach, Florida. It came
about this way:

Since we live in a one bedroom and 1 & ½ bath third floor apartment we were
in need of expansion for which there are limited opportunities. We sort of
have a "two bedroom" unit if you think of the Murphy Bed that is installed
on one wall of the "living room". This is a good-looking piece of furniture
with a couch in front of it and two shelving units on either side. It doesn
't intrude on the room at all and it provides a very comfortable queen-size
bed when taken down. Now, I'm not trying to sell you on the features. I
merely want you to picture what we are trying to do.

Since we have an almost two bedroom apartment, the ½ bath near the front
door became a liability because it didn't have a "bath" or a shower. If we
were to have people stay over there would be complications with them
traipsing through "our" bedroom to get to the shower in "our" bathroom.

This fall was the right time to get started. We had the money and if we
could get our workers (the ones who did our kitchen) into the apartment
early we would be over the mess quickly. We thought our trip to California
would be the perfect time for the mess to be created and we were half-right.
Our workers had a key and they began the job.

Our workers are Hispanics or Latins or Cubanos. The boss is Italian from
Brazil with an accent but able to converse with us and make himself
understood by the others. These guys are perfectionists and they have been
here a month for this little shower/bathroom to be created. They do a
little work each day because there is not much room for more than one person
at a time. However, that work is a delight to see. The imported tile has
been placed on the walls and floor with great exactitude. They seem to be
unable to accomplish it without a lot of talk which I cannot follow since
their Spanish was learned at home and mine was learned at South Side High
School in Newark more than 50 years ago.

There were five camped out on the catwalk in front of the apartment when we
got back from the studio where I will take violin lessons next month.
Suddenly they got to work and we now have three toilets in the apartment and
none of them hooked up. Wait, I was just told that the man who is
installing the new toilet in "our" bathroom has to go for a part to complete
the work. Will we have to knock on our neighbor's door in the wee small
hours of the night? Of, course, we will soon find out. But first we are
going out to dinner.
Carol's Evaluation: 10 out of 10.