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Letter to the editor

Early cigar worker knows old factory like his own name

But the 90-year-old has no opinion as to what the wooden building should become: an artists' lair, a hotel or a museum.

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
Published June 8, 2007

These days, the Oliva Cigar Factory conjures a lot of visions for the future:

A developer is exploring the possibility of turning it into a hotel. A museum board wants to preserve it as a cigar factory exhibit. And a group of artists envisions endless gallery space.

As they all fight for their hand in the future of Tampa's only remaining wooden cigar factory, Marcelino "Marcie" Perez III quietly looks into his past, into a time and place he left long ago.

From his small lakeside home in Citrus County, the 90-year-old remembers the days when his name was written across the cigar factory in big letters: Marcelino Perez Cigar Company.

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Perez first visited the cigar factory after the great hurricane of 1921, to this day the last to directly hit Tampa. His same-named great-uncle had moved the family cigar business to Ybor City from Brooklyn in 1918.

His same-named dad also worked there and wanted to check on the factory that day in 1921. Five-year-old Marcie Perez went with him.

"The storm was so bad, it knocked down telephone poles, " Perez said. But "the factory stood pretty good. No water or anything in it."

When Perez turned 14, he got his first job there. His dad would drive to Hillsborough High School after dismissal in his open-aired Maxwell to pick him up for work. Perez spent his afternoons in the first-floor shipping department. He made $5 a week.

On the second floor, about 100 cigarmakers toiled all day in the main galleria, as a lector read them the news of the day in Spanish, a language Perez half-understood. His father was Spanish, but his mother, an American, allowed only English in their home.

Perez can still hear the metal slicing through cigar tips and hitting the tables on the floor above his. He can still smell the cigar musk that lingered in his clothes and in his hair when he came home.

And he distinctly remembers the wine cellar. "It had wine, beer, any kind of drink you wanted, rum - anything."

Once a month, Father Clarkson, a priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, visited the cigar factory for donations. He always left with a box of cigars, a check and a bottle - sometimes wine, sometimes vermouth.

Perez graduated from Hillsborough High in 1934 and went to work at the factory full time, making $14 per week in hopes of marrying his girlfriend since middle school, Esther.

Father Clarkson married them two years later, and Perez's salary was bumped up to $18 per week. It was a small increase, but still not enough, Perez remembers, especially because his wife had quit her job at the Kress building after they married.

To supplement his income, he and the other cigar factory workers walked to the bodega two doors down to buy into illegal bolita games - a Cuban lottery that came to Tampa during the cigar era and was intertwined with the Mafia. Perez's lucky numbers were 34 and 14.

The first week Perez and his wife were on their honeymoon in Pass-a-Grille Beach, he learned that No. 34 won bolita. He was ecstatic the following week when he learned that No. 14 won. He had played both of them, winning a jackpot of $160.

His first day back at work, he says he walked to the bodega two doors down to reclaim his money.

"Where's Jose?" he asked a clerk.

"Jose is dead, " he was told. The guy who handled his money had been pocketing earnings, and when he heard the mob was coming after him, he hanged himself.

Perez never got his jackpot, he said. "I quit playing after that."

Every week, he and Esther divided their $18 into six cigar boxes in their Seminole Heights home, allocating funds for food, rent and bills. Bread was 5 cents per loaf.

To make a few extra dollars, he picked up side jobs umpiring baseball and softball games, and refereeing basketball games.

One day, a couple of months into his marriage, a railway express driver came into the factory to buy cigars and struck up a conversation with Perez.

"How'd you like to come work for us?" the man asked him. The pay was $120.50 per month, and Perez could start tomorrow.

With that, his cigar factory career was over. Two years later, his family's business lost a contract with cigar buyers Benson & Hedges and had to close. The factory was later bought by the Oliva family.

Perez worked for the now-defunct railway company until he retired at age 59, between stints with the Navy and umpiring gigs.

He doesn't yearn for the good ol' days.

"It was a very dull life back then, " he says. "I had more fun umpiring."

- - -

Others would have given anything to see, smell and feel Ybor in its full bolita-playing, cigarmaking glory, as it's captured in Scott M. Deitche's nostalgic Cigar City Mafia.

Especially members of the board at the Ybor City Museum. They started planning four years ago to buy the Oliva Cigar Factory after owner Angel "Trey" Oliva moved business operations to West Tampa six years ago.

In 2005, the museum put a $10, 000 grant into plans to re-create a working cigar factory exhibit for museum visitors.

As the museum progressed toward purchasing it, a colony of artists moved in, renting space, throwing live-music shows and hoping the museum's acquisition would fall through so that they could claim the 30, 000-square-foot gem as an artists' playhouse.

Then, in May, both parties learned of a third competitor, an out-of-town developer that swooped in and signed a contract with the Oliva family. The contract gives the undisclosed developer six months to see if plans to build a hotel are feasible in the historic cigar factory.

The artists and museum board are watching and waiting as the months pass. No new developments - but plenty of opinions - have emerged since the Times reported about the hotel developer's contract on May 15.

Some say it should be a hotel. Others want to see a home for artists. Still others want to see it preserved as a museum.

Of all people, the last surviving Marcelino Perez has no opinion. He rarely drives the hour and 16 minutes it takes to get here from Floral City. He hates being backed up at stoplights and thinks Tampa has grown too much.

But it gives him peace of mind to know there's still a great interest in the building that gave him his first paychecks, Perez said.

"I'm just glad to see somebody wants it."

Alexandra Zayas can be reached at 226-3354 or azayas@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 7, 2007, 07:25:03]