Thus the Havanese “reporter de baseball” rattles on, but his reports are not snatched from the hands of newsboys with quite the same eagerness as in the North. For the Cuban fanático is not particularly interested in the outcome of the game itself. A bet on that would be too slowly decided for his quick southern temperament. He prefers to set a wager on each swing of the pitcher’s arm, and with the last “out” of the ninth inning his interest ceases as abruptly as does the unbroken boiler-factory uproar that rises to the blue tropical heavens from the first to the last swing of the batter’s club.
The visitor whose picture of Havana is still that of the drowsy tropical city of our school-books is due for a shock. He will be most surprised, perhaps, to find the place as swarming with automobiles as an open honey-pot with flies. A local paragrapher asserts that “a Havanese would rather die than walk four blocks.” There are several perfectly good reasons for this preference. The heat of Cuba is far less oppressive than that of our most northern states in mid-summer. Indeed, it is seldom unpleasant; but the slightest physical exertion quickly bathes the body in perspiration, and nowhere is a wilted collar in worse form than in Havana. Moreover, one must be exceedingly nimble-footed to trust to the prehistoric means of transportation. The custom of always riding has left no rights to the pedestrian in the Cuban capital. The chances of being run down are excellent, and the result is apt to be not merely broken ribs, but a bill for damages to the machine. Hence the expression “cojemos un For’” is synonymous with going a journey, however short, anywhere within the city. Your Havanese friend never says, “Let’s stroll around and see Perez,” but always, “Let’s catch a Ford,” and by the time you have succeeded in slamming the door really shut, there you are at Perez’s zaguan.
Fords scurry by thousands through the streets of Havana day and night, ever ready to pick up a passenger or two and set them down again in any part of the business section for a mere twenty-cent piece—a peseta in Cuban parlance. More expensive cars are now and then seen for hire; by dint of sleuth-like observation I did discover one Ford that was confined to the labor of carrying its owner. But those are the exceptions that prove the rule, and the rule is that the instant you catch sight of the familiar plebeian features of a “flivver” you know, even without waiting to see the hospitable “Se Alquila” (“Rents Itself”) on the wind-shield, that you need walk no farther, whatever your sex, complexion, or previous condition of pedestrianism. They are particularly suited to the narrow streets that the Spaniard, in his Arabic avoidance of the sun, bequeathed the Cuban capital. There is many a corner in the business section which larger cars can turn only by backing or by mounting one of the scanty sidewalks. The closed taxi of the North, too, would be as much out of place in Havana as overcoats at a Fourth of July celebration. A few of the horse carriages of olden days still offer their services; but as neither driver, carriage, nor steed seems to have been groomed or fed since the war of independence, even those in no haste are apt to think twice or thrice, and finally put their trust in gasolene. Hence the Ford has taken charge of Havana, like an army of occupation.
Unfortunately, a Ford and a Cuban chauffeur make a bad combination. The native temperament is quick-witted, but it is scantily gifted with patience. In the hands of a seeker after pesetas a “flivver” becomes a prancing, dancing steed, a snorting charger that knows no fear and yields to no rival. Apparently some Cuban Burbank has succeeded in crossing the laggard of our northern highways with the kangaroo. The whisper of your destination in the driver’s ear is followed by a leap that leaves the adjoining façades a mere blur upon the retina. A traffic jam ahead lends the snorting beast wings; it has a playful way of alighting on all fours in the very heart of any turmoil. If a pedestrian or a rival peseta-gatherer is crossing the street twenty feet beyond, your time for the next nineteen feet and eleven inches is a small fraction of a second over nothing. Brake linings seem to acquire a strangle hold from the Cuban climate. If the opening ahead is but the breadth of a hand, the Havana Ford has some secret of making itself still more slender. I have never yet seen one of them climb a palm-tree, but there is no reason to suppose that they would hesitate to undertake that simple feat, if a passenger’s destination were among the fronds.
The newspapers run a daily column for those who have been “Ford-ed” to hospitals or cemeteries. What are a few casualties a day in a city of nearly half a million, with prolific tendencies? There are voluminous traffic and speed rules, but he would be a friendless fellow who could not find a compadre with sufficient political power to “fix it up.” Death corners—billboards or street-hugging house-walls from behind which he may dart without warning—are the joy of the Cuban chauffeur. Courtesy in personal intercourse stands on a high plane in Havana, but automobile politeness has not yet reached the stage of consideration for others. Traffic policemen, soldierly fellows widely varied in complexion, looking like bandsmen in their blue denim uniforms, are efficient, and accustomed to be obeyed; but they cannot be everywhere at once, and the automobile is. They confine their efforts, therefore, to a few seething corners, and humanity trusts to its own lucky star in the no-man’s-lands between.
The private machines alone would give Havana a busy appearance. All day long and far into the night the big central plaza is completely fenced in by splendid cars parked compactly ends to curb. Toward sunset, especially on the days when a military band plays the retreta in the kiosk facing Morro Castle and the harbor entrance, an endless procession of seven-passenger motors files up and down the wide Prado and along the sea-washed Malecón, two, or at most three, haughty beings, not infrequently with kinky hair, lolling in every capacious tonneau. Liveried chauffeurs are the almost universal rule. The caballero who drives his own car would arouse the wonder, possibly the scorn, of his fellow-citizens; once and once only did we see a woman at the wheel. There is good reason for this. The man who would learn to pilot his own machine through the automobile maelstrom of Havana would have little time or energy left for the pursuit of his profession. Moreover, the Latin-American is seldom mechanic-minded. The cheaper grades of cars are not in favor for private use. Wire wheels are almost universal; luxurious fittings are seldom lacking. Even the unexclusive Ford is certain to be decked out in expensive vestiduras,—slip-covers of embossed leather that remind one of a Mexican peon in silver-mounted sombrero.
The cost of a car in Havana is from twenty to thirty per cent. higher than in the States, which supplies virtually all of them. A dollar barely pays for two gallons of gasolene. Licenses are a serious item, particularly to private owners in Havana, for the fee depends on the use to which the car is put. Fords for hire carry a white tag with black figures and pay $12.50 a year. Private cars bear a pink chapa at a cost of $62.50. Tags with blue figures announce the occupant a government official or a physician. Then, every driver must be supplied with a personal license, at a cost of $25. In theory that is all, except a day or two of waiting in line at the municipal license bureau. In practice there are many little political wheels to be oiled if one would see the car free to go its way the same year it is purchased.
Once the visitor has learned to distinguish the tag that announces government ownership, he will be astounded to note its extraordinary prevalence in Havana. Even Washington was never like this. Government property means public ownership indeed in Cuba. If one may believe the newspapers of the Liberal party,—the “outs” under the present administration,—the explanation is simple. “Every government employee,” they shriek, “down to the last post-office clerk who is in personal favor, has his own private car, free of cost; not only that, but he may use it to give his babies an airing, to carry his cook to market, or to take the future novio of his daughter on a joy ride.”