Audio By Carbonatix
Osvaldo Herrera, Clifton Lirette, and Frank Bramwell turn together to study the figure approaching from the south: a lone pedestrian, still hundreds of yards away. The figure moves steadily along the shoulder of a four-lane highway, threading a line between an arrow-straight canal that stretches almost 25 miles north from Weston to South Bay, on Lake Okeechobee, and a steady stream of speeding motor vehicles. Even the walker’s lurch, barely discernible at this distance, is steady.
A big truck barreling past on U.S. Highway 27 unleashes a sharp, sudden wind, pitching Herrera’s white cap off his head. Many truck drivers wave or rip the air with horns to acknowledge Herrera, the only “roach coach” restaurateur on the eastern border of the Everglades in Broward County.
The walker draws closer to Herrera’s place of business, a GMC 3500 pickup truck. Each day Herrera stations the truck in a pull-off two miles south of the Palm Beach County line. The truck is a mobile canteen equipped with an insulated aluminum shell. The shell, a camper-size cold-storage box, has doors on the side and rear that prop up like a tent’s fly. Herrera will hover in the tight shade of those doors for eight or nine hours, selling drinks he pulls from a bed of ice, packaged snack items, and a variety of hot foods.
For the walker, apparently penniless and homeless, such roadside plenty is neither here nor there. Now only about 50 yards from the three men, he never glances at the trucks blasting past his shoulder, nor does he seek a ride. The nearest human development, with store, is about 12 miles behind him.
Herrera, a muscled 35-year-old in a sleeveless black tank top and neat jeans, carefully studies the walker.
Clif Lirette, his shrub of white beard and mustache yellowed by tobacco and age, doesn’t move at all. The leathery lines of his toothless face surround eyes as clear and blue as the Everglades sky. The eyes remain steadily aimed at the man approaching.
Bramwell doesn’t move either. Tattooed, broken-nosed, and friendly, he lives with Lirette and helps the older man when he isn’t fishing off the Keys.
It’s another morning at Herrera’s roadside canteen, where every manner of Florida character turns up sometimes.
The walker arrives. “Boy it’s hot, ain’t it?” he mumbles, the words popping suddenly from a mouth that disappears into thick beard. His hair lies matted and flat against his skull. His shirt and jeans are tattered. The man is gaunt and nervous. He adds an inevitable request: “Can you give me anything?”
Herrera steps quickly forward. Used to strange sights on the highway, this one is rare even for him, since pedestrians don’t usually appear in the eastern ‘Glades, miles from anywhere. He asks, “Where you coming from?”
“Oh, Miami. I been walking.” That much is obvious to everyone. But the man seems unsure.
“Well, where you going?”
The man looks up the road and repeatedly shifts back and forth on his feet, like a trapped zoo animal. “Oh, next town, see if I could get some work. But I ain’t eaten nothing today or drank nothing.”
Herrera doesn’t even hesitate. “No problem, buddy, no problem,” he replies, pulling sandwiches and icy pop out of his truck and thrusting them at the man. “There you go, buddy.” Bramwell steps forward and hands the man a cigarette, then lights it.
The walker is startled. It’s possible he mutters something like a “gee thanks.” He backs away until he reaches a safe distance, then turns and begins lurching steadily northward.
“Boy, it’s hard to be on the road like that with nothin’,” mutters Bramwell.
Herrera doesn’t have time to think about it. Four semi trucks have pulled in and parked, a small convoy of sod carriers bringing a sudden flurry of business. Sometimes the pull-off is packed with as many as 12 big trucks, forcing others unable to park to pass by.
Drivers approach Herrera’s mobile canteen with shouts of hello in English and Spanish. Many know him. They crowd around the back of the truck to share glad chatter, wolfing down quick meals. Some tell jokes, or talk about their bosses, or describe their loads and destinations. Most are men.
Anna Odum, one of the few over-the-road female drivers, says she stops here every time she passes because the food is inexpensive and plentiful and “he’s just a nice guy.” Odum, from Georgia, doesn’t know any other Cubans to speak of, she explains, but that doesn’t mean she’s going ask about Elián or talk politics with Herrera. “I don’t push my luck,” she admits, grinning. “I’m not from around here, don’t nobody know me, they might not find me for a long time.”
Herrera has become friendly with a couple of crows, too. The birds sit on a nearby branch above the canal, looking for handouts.
Man and beast alike are attracted by Herrera’s food: fried beef with fried egg on a bed of rice with fried plantains is one very fried choice. Or buyers can get fried chicken on a bed of rice, chicken fajitas with cheese, meat pies, sausage sandwiches, fish hoagies, Cuban lasagna, chili con carne, tamales, or pepper-steak sandwiches, each for a couple of bucks. There are long, fat hot dogs rolled into buns and lathered with mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, sauerkraut, or chili. The healthier-minded can find containers of melon or fruit salad.
Herrera buys the food each dawn at Hialeah Distributors near Miami, a block-long warehouse where hundreds of “roach-coach” drivers pick up the day’s supplies and head out to their urban territories, informally defined but fiercely defended.
To avoid the sometimes fractious competition between fellow Cubans in Miami-Dade, Herrera “let my God bring me here, where there is no one.” No one except working travelers who seem to appreciate the pioneering whimsy of the Cuban’s move to a solitary post on 27, many miles north of his nearest competitor.
Herrera arrived in the United States five years ago. He was soon able to put money down on the used, $18,000 truck, which he will own outright later this year. To operate on the side of the highway in northwestern Broward, he pays about $125 in annual permitting fees. Although uncomfortable citing a figure, Herrera finally admits he cleared about $15,000 last year. Not bad, he figures, for a Cuban who was twice jailed after trying to escape the island and who once studied computers in Russia before falling into disfavor back home.
He does everything, he explains, for his wife Lordes, an industrial designer who works in Miami, and his nine-year-old daughter, Carmen.
But that isn’t quite true. Herrera also acts on behalf of the less fortunate who happen by, such as the walker and Clif Lirette, a 68-year-old Louisiana native who shares two significant experiences with the Cuban — Lirette once sold hamburgers from a panel truck right up the road, and the old man is now under pressure from a government that aims to force him from his home.
About two miles north of Herrera’s canteen sits Lirette’s old 60-foot trailer, a worse-for-wear dinosaur sinking into a three-quarter- acre plot roughly 100 yards inside the Palm Beach County line. County officials told Lirette early this year to get off his land. Although he bought it in 1988 and operated Clif’s Superburgers for years, the business vanished when the state widened the highway to four lanes in 1995, destroying the parking area Lirette used for his truck. That was the same year Herrera finally reached the United States in a 32-foot boat with his wife and daughter.
Now Lirette’s land is zoned for agricultural use, and county code officers say they don’t want anyone living in the rundown trailer. Lirette fumes that they’re fining him $100 each day he remains.
The problem, compounded by Lirette’s poor health after several strokes, has become a staple of conversation when he and Bramwell visit Herrera each morning. Although the Cuban’s command of English is shaky and Lirette’s Louisiana accent over naked gums is probably unique, Herrera understands one thing: His friend is in a lone fight with the government, and he needs all the help he can get.
So each morning the Cuban refuses to charge Lirette for two bags of ice. The two also argue over whether Lirette — a proud man who lives on a $700 social security check each month — will get to pay for juice or a sandwich. Usually Herrera prevails and Lirette doesn’t pay.
Herrera says the old man “reminds me of my uncle back in Cuba.” With an affectionate sigh, he calls Lirette “the last cowboy in the Everglades,” praising his fierce independence.
“He needs a lawyer,” notes Herrera. “This is the greatest country, the greatest, so why they want to do this, eh? Why not, you know, leave him alone?”
No answer is forthcoming. Herrera gets back to work, selling a couple more sandwiches. As other truckers come and go, he glances northward up the road. Lirette and Bramwell follow his gaze. The three men spot the lone figure returning on foot from the distance.
“You know,” surmises Lirette, nodding his head slightly in Herrera’s direction, “it’s lucky we got folks like him.”
