Subject: Family Legend

Informant: Talitha Barkow

The following dialogue is a story told to me by Talitha about her family and their fishing adventures on an Indiana lake. Talitha said she wasn’t sure if the whole thing was made up, exaggerated, or completely true, but all her family members know the story and bring it up every now and then.

“My dad’s parents lived on a lake in Indiana and took their grandkids fishing all the time. There was one time where they all were out fishing, and they were fishing for pike, which can get pretty big, and bass, which weren’t that big, and my grandfather cast out his line and caught something, but they thought it was the bottom of the lake.

The line started zigzagging back and forth. The fish started pulling the boat across the water. My dad had the net ready when they finally were able to pull it up. They started to struggle, and the fish ripped through the net.

My great grandpa still had it in his hands, so they get it in the boat, and it’s five feet long. They’re scared it’ll get out of the boat, so my grandpa laid down on top of it, but it was pretty difficult to keep it under control because fish are all muscle,

and it bit him.

So, they got this giant fish. They had to go into the city to do something, and when they pulled up to the lake shore, this woman’s standing there, and is like, ‘that’s a big fish,’ and they didn’t have anywhere to put it so they asked her to put it in her freezer and she said yes. It’s really weird, but everyone in Indiana has, like, a giant freezer for some reason. And they came back, but she wasn’t in the house, but the door was unlocked, and they went in the house and got it and walked out. Now the fish is in my grandfather’s basement, and it used to terrify me when I was younger.”

The story is used now for entertainment, but it does mean something to Talitha’s family, as her grandfather kept the fish and mounted it on a wall in his home to remember the fishing trip with his children. The story has also become somewhat of a legend, as on the one hand, it definitely happened because there is physical proof of the massive fish they caught. But on the other hand, Talitha had no idea whether the details of the story were actually factual or just made up to enhance the drama of it all, like her grandfather laying on top of the fish and then the fish turning around and biting him.

Coming from a family of Cuban immigrants, I’ve grown up hearing countless stories from my family members escaping Cuba during Fidel Castro’s dictatorship—usually from my dad, but from others as well. I reached out to my aunt—my dad’s younger sister named Lourdes Oti—who was a baby when she left the country with my dad, José, and her other older brother, Carlos. Before asking her about it, I had never actually heard her version of the story. Because she was too young to remember leaving Cuba and coming to the United States, the following is her version of the story, which she has interpreted and accumulated from other older family members telling the story from their perspectives.

“When we left Cuba, we did it in stages. The communist system was already settling into the general public, and it had built in informants in the neighborhoods and even within families. You had to be very careful who you shared your plans with. You never knew who was a communist.

Part of not letting people know was staging your exit from the island, so it would seem that entire families were not leaving. As the revolution advanced, the government was clamping down on professionals leaving the country. They did not want any doctors, lawyers, dentists leaving the island—professionals would be needed under the new regime. Especially because Dad was one of the top surgeons on the island, we would have to be careful that everything appeared normal, as if we were staying.

Many families sent their children out of the country with a Catholic organization program called Pedro Pan (Peter Pan). It was an option for people to ensure that their children could at least live in the United States, in a free country. Parents would have to put their children on a plane, where they would be met at the airport by priests who would take them to a church, where they would be claimed by family members already living in Miami. Jose and Carlos [my dad and uncle, her two brothers] had their visas for travel, and were enrolled in this program. Abuela, Abuelo [her parents] and I were left behind in Cuba. The next step was to apply for visas for Abuela and myself. I was a newborn, so there would be no Peter Pan program for me. Abuelo knew someone in the government, and they processed the visas for only Abuela and I. My brothers left, and as you can imagine, it was traumatic for everyone to be separated. A week before Abuela and I were scheduled to leave, Abuelo applied for a Visa, stating that he needed to travel to Jamaica because of family emergency. He left, leaving Abuela and I behind. Now the family was good and scattered.

It’s important to mention that when you left, you left only with the clothes on your back and a box of Cuban cigars you could sell at the airport. They didn’t want you leaving with American money or jewelry you could sell. They really wanted to make sure you couldn’t afford to stay in another country, that you would return with no money. Abuela, who was a master seamstress, made a dress hiding all sorts of valuables in it. In the large covered buttons, which were fashionable at the time, she hid folded $100 bills. In the hem of her dress, there was more money, across the yoke of the dress, a string of pearls that were a family heirloom. She removed the soles from her platform heels, scooping out the thick sole, and hiding her wedding ring and some other jewelry. The day of our exit, I was running a fever, but there was no changing flights or days. An uncle drove us to the airport. Mom went inside to sort out all of the paperwork, leaving me with my uncle. While she was there, the military started pushing people back from the airport, saying only those with visas had a right to be in the airport. My mother would lose track of me and my uncle. When she came out to collect me, my uncle was not where she had left him. Mom broke down and started crying, one thing led to another, she said her baby was missing and some militants looked for me. When they found me, they wanted to arrest my uncle for kidnapping. Once that was sorted, we got on the flight and arrived in Miami to reunite the family and start a new adventure, in a new country, with a new language.”

Subject: Family Legend

Informant: Talitha Barkow

The following narrative is a story told to me by Talitha Barkow about someone in her family. The story dates way back to the time when an ancestor far down the line moved to the United States. The story has been passed down in her family for generations, and by now, as Talitha told me, she isn’t quite sure how accurate the whole story is, and it is missing significant details that have been lost as the story has been passed down again and again. However, the narrative is an important one to her and her family, as it tells them where they came from, and how their family got to the United States, where they reside now.

“I’m part Irish, but it’s a very small part compared to my German ancestry. But I do have one Irish ancestor who came to America when she was eighteen years old. She came on a boat alone.

She went to Canada on the boat, and then went down to Minnesota—I’m pretty sure it was Minnesota, but we don’t really know anymore.

Her name was Sarah Kingamen.

And then from there, in Minnesota, she met—this is such a German name, you’re going to need me to spell it for you—Reinard Barkow—and Sarah and Reinard got married.

She wasn’t even five feet tall, and I’m five foot ten! She also had really, really red hair—she was very Irish.”