#afilador

El afilador

Blasphemous II

A strange thing about growing up in Miami was the Afilador truck. I'd be sleeping in and all of a sudden I'd hear this loud echoing and distorted Spanish being yelled over an old megaphone strapped to a rusted ice cream truck. Except it was full of knives, rusted knives, new knives, sharpened knives, dull knives. The truck would roll to a stop at each intersection because the brakes were old and worn out, one could just hear all the cutlery jingling inside. An older Cuban man owned the truck and lured out little abuelitas from their homes with charm and cheesy flirtations as he sharpened their cutlery to make meals for their families. My gringo of a step-father would complain as he worked out on his rowing machine on the patio and my Latina mother would snore through the sound still dealing with night-shift nurse exhaustion, and I'd lay in my bed with the window open and listen to the distorted pan flute sound grow more distant as that old Cuban man rolled around providing resurrection services for peoples knives.