Fidel Castro & Cuba

Gerry and I were married in 1957 and moved to Washington, DC after we were hired by the FBI.  We wound up there because of my being too young to become an Illinois State Trooper.  I had applied for the ISP job and when they told me I had to wait until I was 21 to be accepted, I put them out of my mind.  A short while after this a FBI Special Agent came knocking on my door.  Oh Oh, what did I do wrong and how was I caught?  He assured my mother that I hadn't violated any Federal laws and was recruiting me to work for the FBI.  It sounded interesting.  Gerry and I both applied for a job with them.  Note, jobs were scarce in Central Illinois in 1957 and we had the wandering bug way back then. 

We both passed our security checks after three months or so and were offered positions in Washington, DC.  We packed all our belongings into a very small U-haul-it trailer, hooked it up to our 1950 Plymouth and headed for DC via Cleveland, Ohio.  Hey, it didn't look like it was that far out of the way at the time.  We visited with Gerry's Aunt & Uncle a few days and then continued on to DC.

We arrived in DC after dark and were totally lost except we knew the room they had reserved for us in a row house was on East Capital St NE.  We finally saw the Capital Bldg. and I turned down what I thought was a small road and found out it wasn't a road, but a sidewalk leading to a statue in front of Union Station.  I thought I saw an opening and continued driving and saw people looking at us wide eyed and moving out of the way quickly.  Then we went down 6-7 steps, across a sidewalk and back onto a street.  No problem, right?  We finally found the row house and then had to park the car and trailer for the night.  Yes, it was still there in the morning.

Move forward a few years and we were still living in DC and Fidel Castro came to visit the UN and wound up visiting in DC also.  A friend of ours down the street invited us to a party at his house and didn't tell us who was going to be there.  Imagine our surprise when we looked out the window and saw Fidel sitting on the hood of a car enjoying some chicken and throwing the bones on the sidewalk.  What?  This was the honored guest and the area around our apartment was crowded with people, press and a few FBI agents thrown in for good measure.  By then I had resigned from the FBI so I could have joined the party, but I had a good inkling what Fidel represented and didn't agree with his political views.  Later he came out and voiced his Marxist-Lenin views.

Now 54 years later Cuba is in the news with the President starting to renew relations with Cuba.  From what little I know about the situation the POTUS bailed Cuba out of a difficult jam.  Russia & Venezuela have provided support to Cuba all these years and neither can afford to prop up the present regime in Cuba any longer.  Was it a good move?  I don't really know, but time will tell and it will be interesting to see if they change their ways.  What do you think?

BTW:  I never was in a position of importance working for the FBI and never became a Special Agent.  J. Edgar Hoover was the director then and ran a tight ship and I knew I couldn't work under the conditions existing at that time.  I saw him on numerous occasions, but we weren't on speaking terms.  

Enough of my rambling about this but the recent events triggered these memories.