It was even rumored that Barbara Walters had fallen in love with Fidel during one of her newsworthy jaunts to the hills of Cuba to interview this lone lawyer/farmer/leader fighting for his nation's freedom. Of course, that was before he became the bad guy.

And how did Castro become the bad guy? Well, after winning and throwing out Batista, he and a small contingent of cigar smoking, camouflage khaki clad, booted and bearded revolutionaries came to New York City to seek recognition from the United Nations. They kept chickens in their Manhattan hotel rooms because they couldn't afford New York restaurants and they caused a gossip sensation because the press didn't know how to treat these heroes that lived like the guerrillas they were. Eventually, they moved out of their expensive digs and went to Harlem where they were accepted and appreciated.

But the real story was happening at the United Nations. Having a major vote in the proceedings to recognize Castro's new nation, the U.S. was insisting that he let Americans continue business in Cuba, or immediately repay American companies for their investments in Cuba, or at least sign onto a long term commitment to reimburse them. Without this repatriation, the new Cuba would not be admitted to the UN, and it wasn't. That was the turning point, and it is still the bone of contention.

Castro argued that the whole revolution had been to return Cuban property to Cubans and that the American companies and "latafundistas" (absentee owners) had taken their chances when they invested on foreign soil under a dictator. Castro had no intention of honoring the contracts of the dictator he had just overthrown.

Besides, he didn't have time to wrangle in high-minded economics when he had a nation full of people that needed toilets, running water, health care and to learn to read and write. The average Cuban had been enslaved in sugar production and a sugar quota that went all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt's time. Castro promised to hold democratic elections and not to run for El Presidente himself. But, of course, that never happened. They did, however, immediately adopt an existing "Bill of Rights" similar to our own prohibitions against government.

Returning to Cuba without recognition, the Cuban's did what any child or small nation would do when threatened with a spanking. They turned to the other parent or superpower for protection. And, of course, it didn't hurt that Che Guevara, who was one of Casto's central band of merry-men, favored communism anyway. We were then on our way to the "Cuban Missile Crisis" where Russia had the audacity to place missiles as close to our nation as we had placed them close to theirs.

Meanwhile, the Cubans had been cleansing Havana of what they sometimes called the "pimps and prostitutes" of Conrad Hilton, Meir Lansky, and other venture capitalists. Cubans who had worked for Bell Telephone, Commonwealth Edison, the casinos, hotels, bars and yacht clubs of Havana were given the option of going to work to rebuild their country or going somewhere else. A large migration to Miami took place, with most of these former Cubans waiting for Havana to be returned to them by hook or crook. Most didn't really want the whole country, just Havana, which had grown to be a more popular playground than Las Vegas.

Most of these hapless migrants feel that if they could take over Havana and run it like the old days, without a dictator in the form of either Fidel or Fulgencia or American ownership, then the entire island would prosper. Tourism would flourish and all would be much better than it is.

Then we had the Bay of Pigs fiasco. A poorly planned invasion inherited by John F. Kennedy at the beginning of his tenure in which these same Miami Cubans would supposedly recapture their homeland. It was like sending beach boys and the local tennis club down to fight farmers.

For years, politicians have played to these disgruntled ex-Cubans who have taken over Miami and a good part of South Florida. Two of the most notorious, the Fanjul brothers, latafundistas who built America's largest thousand-acre sugar plantation in the headwaters of the Everglades, contribute heavily to both political cults as well as polluting South Florida's main source of fresh water. Pepe was Al Gore's Florida fund-raiser while his brother Raoul fed millions to Jeb and George.

Meir Lansky and other crafty capitalists had taught them well. But it's now somewhat doubtful that their children, having grown up in the States, share the older generation's enthusiasm for the old island way of life.

In the days of Jimmy Carter, some effort was made to normalize relations with Cuba, but the old bugaboo of "repatriation" was still present as item four or five in a list of conditions Cuba would have to comply with before sanctions would be lifted.

The same thing happened during the Clinton years with some lifting of restrictions on Americans, from the land of the free, traveling to Cuba if permission was filed for and granted.

At the same time, Senators Jesse Helms, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Dan Burton of Indiana made a lot of hay with the Helms-Burton Act. Signed into law in 1997, and largely symbolic, it was a ruling that a former owner of property in Cuba could sue in American courts, with no real stipulation as to how winning would get them their property back.

Today, there's more talk about getting rid of the embargo against Cuba, but no specifics on repatriation—not yet.

Personally, I think Castro would be nuts to allow Americans to do business in Cuba again. That's how the trouble started in the first place, and this little island nation of ten million seems to be doing quite well with the rest of the world.

Most Americans have a really warped idea of what it's like to live on an island, looking at little more than their expanse of white sand beaches, cabanas, restaurants, cigar factories, Ernest Hemingway style night clubs and the amazing number of old cars still running around.

If Americans ever found out how much it costs to get their cars to an island or import most things, then they might possibly reverse their amazement of how many old machines are kept running in Cuba and start to realize how good a mechanic any island car owner must become. Something that's completely out of whack with Americans who just go to the garage and say: There's something wrong with it.

One of my own kicks was to hang around the local island mechanic's shop on a Monday morning just to see what islanders brought in after a weekend of working on their cars. For instance, it was inevitable that some fisherman or grocer would show up with part of his transmission in hand, pointing out how a gear had rounded and asking if it could be "metalized" or, at worst, a new one ordered. Always with the stipulation of "what's that going to cost me?"

Just going without air conditioning or eating snails picked off the ground is considered "roughing it" or "survival" by most Americans.

By the way, everybody can still vacation in Cuba except you. And it's your own country that punishes you if you try to go there, not the Cubans. Let freedom ring.