They do, still
Ybor City seems to have had a lasting effect on marriages - that is, they've lasted. Maybe it was the Latin culture. Or maybe it was the peanuts.
By JOHN BARRY
Published August 11, 2006
TAMPA
George Diaz wooed Ida Coton in 1955. He was 23, just back from the Army after two years in Europe. He considered himself worldly for Ybor City.
Ida was just 16. "An innocent little child." There's a light in her eyes when she says that.
Ida's father had raised her "like we lived in Spain," meaning he kept his eye on her every minute. "I trust you," he told her. "I don't trust the gentlemen." But sometimes he had to run errands and leave her in charge of his Ybor grocery store.
One day, George showed up, found Ida alone and asked for a pack of cigarettes. "Imagine a person from Venice," he says. "I had on rust-colored pants, a white, collarless jacket, a rust, white and blue striped shirt, and a rust-colored tie."
No one else in Ybor wore rust. "Oh, yeah, I remember the brick pants," Ida says, eyes rolling. She also remembers he helped himself to a sugar cookie and didn't pay.
She married him.
George: "She was a lote de esquina a corner lot. That's Ybor slang for a high-class girl, the kind of girl who would live in a big house on a corner lot."
Ida: "Marrying me was the best thing that ever happened to him."
Here was another long Ybor marriage in the making.
* * *
The long-married couple is a characteristic of Ybor City like the deviled crab or the Tampa cigar. Their anniversaries are perennial fixtures in the Sunday newspapers.
They are couples who met in their Italian/Spanish/Cuban neighborhoods, dated under the relentless oversight of chaperones, bought rings at the Palace jewelry shop for a dollar down and a dollar a week, got married at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where they had been baptized as babies. They welcomed wedding crashers, and without exception they served unshelled peanuts at their receptions.
Most of them never left Tampa, not for better jobs, not for money, not for anything. And somehow the formula immunized them from divorce, even if it didn't immunize all their children.
George and Ida are among a trio of long-marrieds who have been friends forever. Each of their marriage stories is uniquely Ybor. There is virtue, there is suspicion. There are chaperones, there are "investigations." There are stolen kisses.
Maybe it was the Latin culture and the tyranny of its taboos that made divorce unthinkable. Maybe they simply got lucky, found soulmates who would be their lovers and friends for life. Or maybe it was the peanuts.
George and Ida
George and Ida married on St. Patrick's Day 1957. Their courtship had lasted two years, including a long absence while he studied to be an X-ray technician in Chicago. He had never been alone with her. "We had a chaperone until the day before we got married," George says.
The chaperone usually was Ida's 11-year-old niece.
Most dates were at Ida's house. George hung out until Ida's mother came into the kitchen winding her alarm clock. That was a hint. Ida walked him out to the front porch. Her father stood on the other side of the door, switching the porch light on and off. That was another hint. George tried to steal a kiss each time the light went off.
One thousand people came to their wedding reception at the Centro Asturiano. Everyone was served unshelled peanuts and dulce finos, sweet Spanish cookies stacked in a pyramid. The thousand guests helped themselves to an open bar. The grocer was generous.
George had indeed found the corner lot.
They had their first child nine months and six days later. "Thank God I didn't have a premature baby," Ida says.
She framed their bridal photo with a bright red border and hung it on the wall of their bedroom.
Per Ida's orders, George looks at the photo each morning before leaving the bedroom. He has stood and looked at it for 49 years. Each time, he repeats these words:
"I'm a married man."
Fernando and Margaret
Fernando Noriega Jr. worked at the Palace jewelry store on Seventh Avenue as a young man. The store sold rings to most of the Ybor couples. Every couple who bought rings got to borrow the store punch bowl for their reception. Fernando sold George and Ida their rings. ("He soaked us," George says.)
Fernando spotted Margaret at the Centro Espanol Tea Dance in 1952. Everybody went to the dances on Sunday afternoons to jitterbug to Don Francisco's band.
He was 18, and she was 16. He saw her first, across the room.
"I had been escorted by my cousin," Margaret says. "You had to go with somebody. The girls stood on one side of the room, and the boys on the other. Only the boys could cross over."
Fernando watched her from the boys' side. "She looked terrific." When he realized he knew her chaperone, "I saw a chance."
He crossed the room.
Margaret was living 18 miles away in Dover on her grandfather's farm. "I courted her by Greyhound," Fernando says. She got a job at a real estate office a block from the jewelry store. They managed surreptitious rendezvous at the post office during lunch hour.
They married at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. At their Ragan's Park reception, everyone got unshelled peanuts and dulce finos.
They got an apartment for $35 a month, but the landlord felt sorry for them and lowered the rent to $30 and fed them on Sundays. They literally lived on love. Margaret got pregnant and had a heart attack in her sixth month, triggered by the damage from rheumatic heart fever she had as a child. Their son, Joseph Michael, survived.
"I think sometimes when you go through bad times first, it's better," Margaret says. "It's easier to appreciate good times later."
"You work harder," Fernando says. "You give a little, take a little."
Joseph Michael has been married twice, the second time for 25 years. Fernando and Margaret's adopted daughter, Linda, is divorced and single.
Denio and Jeanette
Denio and Jeanette Sanchez met at a dance at the Cuban Club in the summer of '55. He was just out of the Navy. She was a senior at Jefferson High, his alma mater. Jeanette had three chaperones: her married cousin with husband in tow, and a second male cousin, 6-foot-5.
"I waited," Denio says. "I was ready. The big cousin goes to the bar. She's there unattended. It was my chance."
But as soon as Denio made his move, the cousin started back to the table.
"I was ahead and he tried to pass me, but I blocked him. He was so big that was not easy. But I got to the table ahead of him."
That night, Jeanette told her mother she had met someone nice. "Don't worry, my cousin knows him," she lied.
Her mother naturally checked with the cousin, found out nobody in the family knew this "sailor." So she began calling everyone in Ybor. "I got investigated," Denio says. "By the time I showed up, she knew everything about me."
He was a sailor, but he had good family. He had saved $3,000. He had enough to buy a new Ford Fairlane. He had a down payment for a house.
Little sister Jo Ann was appointed chaperone.
They married on Thanksgiving Day 1956.
It so happened that arch rivals Plant and Hillsborough high schools were playing football the same day. Jeanette looked outside the reception hall at Ragan's Park and saw hundreds of football fans coming as crashers.
"My uncle had to run out for more peanuts."
That was a half-century ago.
"We did a lot of talking," Jeanette says. "We talked problems over."
"Sometimes as soon as I opened the door," Denio says.
"Divorce was never a consideration," his wife says.
Denio furrows his forehead. He gazes at the ceiling.
"Guns, yes. Divorce, no."
John Barry can be reached at (727) 892-2258 or jbarry@sptimes.com