JAGODA
As a young boy, Jagoda was raised in Poland by a successful Hasidic Jewish doctor who specialized in lung disorders. Jagoda, which means berry in Polish, was thus named because he was born seven months premature and was therefore no bigger than a berry. His beautiful natural mother was completely depleted after the early birth and she fell dangerously bedridden. Jagoda’s infant body was so small that Maria Blanca, the attractive Cuban housekeeper volunteered to carry the baby to full term by a naer-before performed medical procedure masterminded by Jagoda’s father.
It was decided that since Jagoda had actually spent more time inside the housekeeper’s body than his “original mother”, that upon his second birth, that he should take the last name of the housekeeper. Jagoda was thereafter know publicly as Jagoda Blanca, the truly Born Again.
While his father was off tending to patients by day, young Jagoda was essentially being raised by Maria except on weekends. Maria spent Friday and Saturday nights dancing in the lounges of Warsaw, longing for the rhythms of her native land. Her obsession with the pounding Latin beats inspired her to purchase a full set of Mambo drums on which young Jagoda could learn to play. Things soon evolved such that Maria would dance whilst cleaning to Jagoda’s mambo beats.
At one point Maria took leave to visit her sister, a Cuban refugee living in HIlliard, Florida. Nine months later she returned to Warsaw invigorated by the sound of North Florida swamp rhythms. Maria’s DJ friends in Warsaw began spinning some of the recordings she’d brought back, setting the Eastern Bloc dance floors ablaze.
When the Polish family immigrated to the US, medical work was easy for Jagoda’s father to find. Dozens of workers remodeling Yankee Stadium were experiencing bronchitis due to lime inhalation. Since the days of Babe Ruth, layer upon layer of dangerous lime had been used in the old stadium to mark the lines between home plate and the outfield walls. An expert was needed to contain what could fast become a bronchial plague. Jagoda’s dad again performed medical magic so famously that he began to be known by all of New York as “Dr. Bronchs”. Over time the whole borough was named after him and they tried to give it a Polish spelling in his honor - Bronx.
As he reached early manhood, Jagoda had mastered Maria’s swamp drumming and Jagoda’s father applied pressure on the young man to make something of himself. For years Jagoda’s household drumming drills were incessant. One night in the basement lab, Jagoda’s father discovered that on a cellular level, swamp music induced reproductive urges.
He presented this information to his new friend, the owner of the New York Yankees and obtained for his son his first job in the new world.
The owner had never hesitated to purchase a remedy for his team’s problems if he thought the result would be a win. So when the World Champion Florida Marlins visited Yankee Stadium Jagoda was hired to play Florida-style swamp drums in hopes of distracting the champs. Because of his baldness and because of the well known miracle of his tag team mothers, he was billed in the program as “The Born Again Polish Polished Head”. Stunning Maria Blanca was hired to whisk broom the bases after ever inning whilst wearing her Mexican Sexo blouse, Spanish heels and Cuban pearls. The ball game was a complete shutout with the Yankees prevailing. Jagoda drummed the whole game without stopping. After he got his check he collapsed from low blood sugar.
In the ambulance, Maria revived him Cubano style upon repeated beatings with her wet Mexican blouse.
By virtue of the Lord’s seemingly random blessing, in the emergency room, Jagoda sat next to Matt Lindsey who too had just been pummeled by a pretty woman.