Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Mr. De la Rosa’s Agua de Jamaica

2024; University of California Press; Volume: 24; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1525/gfc.2024.24.1.75

1533-8622

Sandra Trujillo,

Caribbean history, culture, and politics

As kids, we were hooked on Hawaiian Punch. For Dad’s funeral party, we planned to make a lot of Hawaiian Punch from the big cans because it was a sweet beverage that was easy to make and everyone liked. Mom was the only one who could pierce the top of the steel cans because she was the strongest. She told us: “You can dilute the punch with water and make a gallon from one can.…You need two holes in the can—one to pour and one to vent.” My sister Cathy and I didn’t understand what this meant but believed it as fact. We helped by washing out old milk jugs with dish soap and water so we could store the punch in the refrigerator. This took some work because the more water you added to the container, the more soap suds appeared. At that time, in the late 1970s, California was in drought and we couldn’t waste a drop of water. So, as we rinsed out the jugs, we had to go back and forth from the kitchen to the garden to pour the soapy water on the tomato plants instead of down the drain. By the time we finished, all of the plants were watered.Everyone came to Dad’s funeral party, including Mr. De la Rosa, the barber from de la Rosa’s Clip Joint, who brought agua de Jamaica that he’d made from dried flowers.De la Rosa’s Clip Joint was around the corner from St. Vincent Ferrer Church on Florida Street and a block from our old house on Sacramento Street in Vallejo, California. My dad and all of my brothers got their hair cut there on Saturdays. Mr. De la Rosa’s barber shop was small and you could either wait inside and sit in one of the kitchen chairs and listen to Frankie Beverly and Willie Nelson or sit outside on the front benches. We waited outside on the street. That part of Florida Street had to be the hottest place in the entire city because there were no shade trees anywhere. So, when barefoot, we had to walk on the yellow and white street paint to not burn our heels on the black asphalt.Mr. De la Rosa charged everyone the same amount for a cut, and he cut in only one style: the pompadour. It didn’t matter who you were or how old you were. You could be a girl, or you could be eight, eighteen, or a fifty-year-old man, and you’d get the same cut as everybody else—the pomp. The common cut was the military Elvis—not as relaxed as his Hawaiian scenes but short and tidy. My dad was bald on top, so he just got shorn. My dad had been getting his hair cut by Mr. De la Rosa since our family moved to Vallejo in the early 1960s and before he lost his hair. My sisters and I got our hair cut only by our mom, but my brothers knew no other barber than Mr. De la Rosa. My brothers were always brushing their hair and kept plastic palm combs in their back pockets. They practiced a training technique that started from the front hairline and around the ear to the nape of the neck. Training was important: you had to work at it—comb, comb, comb to get the sides and the top to go back with ease, or else wear one of Mom’s hair nets at night.All around the neighborhood, and even in church, you’d see all the fresh cuts cut by Mr. De la Rosa, and how their trained hair let them walk up the aisle easy to take communion. At Dad’s funeral, it seemed like we recognized every man from the Florida Street barber shop from their pompadours. But many didn’t know that Mr. De la Rosa wasn’t just a barber—he was also the man who made agua de Jamaica. After drinking his agua at Dad’s funeral, we learned all about it—how it was made from handfuls of dried pink hibiscus flowers, spices, and homemade syrup. For the party, he brought enough agua for everyone, and mom served it from two giant glass bowls. More than that, she dangled tiny glass cups from hooks all around the bowl’s rim—we had never seen anything like it.Foods for funerals include buñuelos, Spanish rice, beans, cakes, Jell-O, fried potato tacos, cookies, fruit salad, enchiladas, tamales, sandwiches, lumpia, chicken, ham, kimchi, macaroni, sausages, wine, beer, water, coffee, and punch. We could grab as much of Mr. Jaramillo’s thickly cut ham as we wanted, and eat as many of Aunt Alice’s sugary buñuelos, but we were not allowed to serve ourselves from the giant, cut-glass punch bowls because the ladles were also glass. The ladles were so long that they reached deep into the bottom of the bowls. If you stood directly in front of them at our height, you could see the scoops resting at the bottom of the bowl right through the agua de Jamaica. The color of the agua was red. It was sweet, it was tart—and it was delicious. My sister and I spent all afternoon between punch bowls, waiting to fill our empty cups. When our cups were full, we could look at them and see our reflection, even our dark, slicked-back hairdos. It was Mr. De la Rosa’s Jamaica punch that helped us to understand what the nuns in catechism tried to teach us about paradise.Tea: In a medium pot, bring a quart of water to boil. Add two cups of dried hibiscus leaves and simmer for five minutes. Remove from the heat and let the flowers soften for 30 minutes or more. Strain the liquid into a large pitcher.Syrup: Dissolve one whole piloncillo cone in one cup of boiling water for a few minutes. You can add a stick of cinnamon, or a single star of anise, or both.Mix the cooled syrup and spices together with the tea and add 4 cups of water. Adjust with more water to your taste. Refrigerate. Drink with delight.