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Ghosts of gossip past are rescued from fire and water

By SUE CARLTON
Published June 7, 2006

In a dusty back room of La Gaceta newspaper lie 84 years of the ghosts of Tampa's former Latin Quarter.

Damas in ball gowns and lipstick pose prettily at Centro Espanol. Headlines in Spanish bring news from Cuba. Big bands swing at the Rivoli Teatros.

Musty yellowed pages crumbling at the edges are thick with mayors, mobsters, politicians and other big shots who once swaggered through Tampa.

Here you find the ghost of Roland Manteiga, the late owner and publisher, a man of white suits and a fat gold ring with the letter "M'' encrusted in diamonds. He took the paper over from his father Victoriano, a Cuban immigrant who once worked as a lector reading the news to workers as they rolled cigars at a West Tampa factory. Roland counted prostitutes, bolita bankers and powerful politicians as his sources. He called Mayor Dick Greco "Dickie.''

Gov. Lawton Chiles' voice broke as he spoke at Roland's funeral eight years ago. To this day, Roland's table at La Tropicana restaurant in Ybor City remains forever reserved for him. Only his son Patrick, who runs the paper now, may sit there, along with whatever companions he meets for gossip that day.

Gossip, the political kind, is why some people grab a 50-cent Gaceta on Fridays. The front-page As We Heard It column mixes political bits with news, opinion and unrepentant speculation. Items begin, "We hear,'' or "sources tell us.'' Before the press release, La Gaceta says who will run in which race, who will switch parties, who will back out. In his day, Roland liked to infuriate the powerful businessmen of Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, lords of the annual celebration, by correctly naming the man to be elected king. Always, someone whispered it in Roland's ear.

Inside what's billed as the "Nation's Only Trilingual Newspaper'' is La Pagina Italiana, news in Italian added in the 1950s.

Vice squads used to pore over the photos for wanted faces Roland liked to lampoon them for spending an entire weekend in a strip club before making an arrest. FBI agents read it, too, with special interest when he wrote of the doings of reputed mob boss Santo Trafficante Jr. (Patrick's father told him stories of going out with Trafficante, who would slow the car so agents tailing them could catch up. Trafficante would reserve them a table at the restaurant, too.)

A Gaceta photographer still shoots pictures of random customers dining at restaurants that advertise (So-and-so and so-and-so love the delicious food at Bernini, located on Seventh Avenue). Now and again, Patrick gets a call from somebody caught out to lunch with someone he or she would prefer to not be seen with in the paper. Might Patrick be discreet and keep that photo from seeing print? Always, Patrick is discreet.

Until the infamous Tanga Lounge closed a few years ago, La Gaceta ran a weekly shot of a barely-clad dancer (Nubile Naomi is one of the enticing women you'll meet at the Tanga). Those particular photos, enough of them to fill a filing cabinet, go back to the days of women in flip hairdos and pasties. At La Gaceta, they joke that this is what some people worried most about losing the night of the fire.

Maybe it was a short in an adding machine or phone charger on a desk. One night in April, someone from the neighborhood called Patrick. When he flung open the door, smoke poured out. Water from the sprinkler system lapped over his shoes.

Somehow, the old papers survived. Photos dried. Some wet newspapers were hustled off to a preservationist. Then USF came calling. Might the oldest papers be preserved as part of its special collections?

"This is killer,'' said David Pullen, special collections senior archivist, reading a 1920s front page. "This could be the only place this information exists.''

As they carefully gathered the brittle pages of 1922-1943 this week, I puzzled out a cartoon called, in Spanish, Things That Never Happen, from 1924. In it, one woman is trying to hire another as a cook. Andy Celeiro, half-owner of the building, tries to explain it to me, but I still don't get it.

Don't worry, he says kindly. From Spanish to English, some things just don't translate.

Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 7, 2006, 05:36:48]