Life’s Embarrassing Moments: Locked out on a Rooftop

Many years ago my young son and I lived in Puerto Rico with a Cuban lady and her three children on the second floor of a spacey, new, modern house. The house faced a busy highway that connected San Juan to Caguas, a city in the interior. A frontage street ran between the house and highway. We entered our living quarters via a narrow staircase, which was located next to the garage on the right side of the house. Above the garage was a large concrete porch with a nice view where we did our laundry. One of the kitchen doors opened onto this porch. On the opposite side of the house was a corresponding porch, which led to the living room. Neither porch had a roof. A waist-high concrete railing lined each porch and a ledge below the railings encircled the top floor of the house.

Monday was my day off from the Sears Retail Distribution Center where I worked as training coordinator, one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve ever had. On Mondays I did my laundry early and then I would catch a bus for the beaches in the Condado area of San Juan. My son was in a pre-kindergarten, the Cuban lady room-mate was at work in a business across the highway and her children were at school. It was my day of complete freedom.

On one bright sunny Monday morning, I straggled out onto the laundry porch after everyone had left. I had on nothing but a faded little housedress. I was also barefoot. I put the clothes in the washer and went back into the kitchen for breakfast. Thirty minutes later I went out to hang up my clothes on the clotheslines. It was now a quite windy day and I knew my clothes would dry in no time and I could leave early for the beach. But the wind blew the kitchen door shut and in horror I remembered that it could only be opened from the inside.! I was stranded for the morning, at least, on that porch!

I had no idea if the Cuban lady would come home for lunch or not but, at any rate, that was hours away. I began to panic. I desperately wanted to get back into the house. I was having “lock-out claustrophobia” or some such panic attack! Then I had the brilliant idea of climbing over the railing to the ledge and crawling around to the other porch.

No sooner had I climbed over and found myself standing on the ledge clutching the top of the railing did I remember that the living room door was locked also. Then looking down, a fear of heights swept over me. Although paralyzed with fear I finally managed to sit on the ledge, dangling bare legs and bare feet, wondering how I was going to get out of this predicament. Traffic was roaring past. It was a normal day, everyone was busy and minding one’s own business, no one paying any attention to me. Or so I thought.

Then I saw the milk truck slowly approaching up the frontage street and I knew I had found my savior. When the truck finally pulled into our driveway and stopped a few feet away, I rather timidly asked the driver as he got out, “¿Me ayuda bajar, por favor?”

He got back into the truck and pulled it up until the car was directly under me. Then he got out, raised his hand to mine as I leaned over and helped glide me onto the roof of the cab and then to the ground. At that a loud ovation broke out. The entire neighborhood had suddenly gathered and I had not even noticed them!

Extremely embarrassed I turned to open the gate to the stairs and to my dismay discovered it was locked also! Luckily one of the neighbors ran across the highway for the Cuban lady who came quickly to let me in! Sadly, it was too late for my sojourn to the beach.

Now one would think I had learned my lesson about being locked out on rooftops but many years later, it happened again! This time I was living in an apartment building with a friend in Marbella, Spain. We washed our clothes in the apartment but took them to the roof to hang them to dry. One had to be very careful to make sure the door to the roof remained unlocked because it could only be unlocked from the inside. As I was hanging my clothes, another tenant appeared, gathered his clothes, left and, for some reason, locked the door.

And there I was once again, stranded on a rooftop. Granted I had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean, Gibraltar to the southwest and the Atlas Mountains of Africa across the sea but at the moment that view was the last thing I cared about. I walked around the roof and discovered that I could see the porch below in front of our apartment. I started screaming for my roommate but she didn’t appear. I don’t know how long I was there growing panicky by the moment when finally she ambled out onto the porch and I started yelling. She looked up, disappeared into the apartment and finally reappeared, walked up the stairs and unlocked the rooftop door.

And that was the last time I hung my clothes out to dry on that rooftop or any other.

A Good Cup of Coffee in Spain and Portugal?

Continuing my journey through the Iberian Peninsula:

My companion and I decided that although our pensao was very charming and comfortable it was more expensive than what we wanted and not close enough to Old Lisbon, a section of the city that we soon fell in love with where there were sidewalk cafés, travelers galore, mimes, and a band of Inca musicians from Bolivia! We soon found an old hotel right in the center of things that had been converted into a bed and breakfast pensao. It was several stories high and we were given a small bedroom with two beds and a bidet [and please don’t ask me to explain that!]on the second floor. We had to share the bathroom with the other rooms in our section but luckily we were the only ones there that week.

One of the most charming things about that pensao was the old-fashioned elevator—the kind you see in old black and white movies that look like a cage. There was a trick to operating it but luckily we never got stuck. The dining room was located next to a large sitting room and both were on our floor.

We looked forward to our breakfast the next morning after checking in and a hot cup of coffee. Before that we had not been able to find anything to our liking. The pastry shops where many Lisbon citizens seemed to stop for coffee in the mornings only served little demitasses of espresso or cappuccino and I must admit here and now that I am one of those people who must have hot, black coffee without milk or sugar every morning or I cannot survive.

When we sat down for breakfast in the elegant dining room we were served hard rolls, butter, and various kinds of jams and jellies—a breakfast we were to encounter for the rest of our stay in Portugal and one we would eventually tire of. But that morning we were delighted with our fare, especially when the waitress brought out two pitchers—one with very black, thick strong coffee and the other with hot milk. My friend, trying to do as the Romans do or rather the Portuguese, poured half coffee and half milk into her cup but not me. I poured only the coffee into mine. Now, you’re probably thinking that it was so strong that I relented and had to dilute it with the milk but you’d be wrong. I drank it that way and soon became addicted to it.

After five days we left Lisbon and traveled west by train to Estoril and Cascais, two of the loveliest and friendliest places on earth. We found the Pensao Mariluz in Estoril and stayed there five weeks. Mariluz served the same breakfast as the ones we had in Lisbon and the same coffee—a pitcher of hot milk and a pitcher of thick strong black coffee.

We had many adventures in Estoril and Cascais, not to mention our surprise at discovering that the beaches at Estoril were topless ones, but this is a tale about coffee and those other tales will be incorporated into one of my future novels.

We settled into the Pensao Mariluz where we had a small bedroom with two full beds, a wardrobe, lavatory, the inevitable bidet, and a balcony [the only one in that establishment] with a table and two chairs and sun umbrella on the second floor overlooking a courtyard surrounded by lovely old trees. Once acclimated we soon set out to explore the surrounding area. Since we ate breakfast there everyday all coffee worries evaporated. We ate lunch at a charming cafeteria by the beach and brought bread, wine [also diet cola, which was more expensive than the wine], fruit, and cheese at a local supermarket for our evening meals. But when we traveled by bus or train to other villages and cities we once again encountered the coffee dilemma—those dreadful demitasses of espresso.

Once my companion went to the trouble of explaining with sign language exactly the kind of coffee we wanted in a restaurant in the lovely city of Coimbra. She even got up and followed the waiter to the back of the establishment and directed him as he made the coffee. Then she came back and proudly announced that we would soon have the coffee of our dreams. A few minutes later the waiter appeared with—demitasses of espresso! So much for sign language.

After five weeks of living in Portugal you would think that I would have picked up a modicum of Portuguese but somehow I never caught onto to the rhythm or tone of the language. Sometimes I could get the gist of what was said and we did carry around a tiny dictionary but I pronounced everything Portuguese with a Spanish pronunciation and no one seemed to understand me.

When we finally arrived once again on Spanish soil I evolved a technique for ordering coffee.
In each coffee or pastry shop I would simply say, “¿Me da una taza de café negro sin leche y un vaso de agua caliente, por favor?”

The waiter or clerk would look at me strangely but nonetheless bring me a tiny cup of black coffee and a glass of hot water. Then I would pour that very strong thick coffee into the glass of water and there it was—coffee that almost resembled the coffee that I brewed at home! If only I had learned to order that way in Portuguese.

But not all our food and drink adventures were disasters. We made some very pleasant and tasty discoveries . . .

To be continued . . .