With his gift for storytelling, Ferdie Pacheco stirs a gust of cigar smoke into the hot steam of cafe con leche and creates the magic of this lighthearted memoir. His stage is Ybor City, the colorful immigrant community on the edge of Tampa, and the time is 1935-45, the decade when Pacheco grew up and the community he loves outgrew its ethnic splendor. Ybor City Chronicles includes vintage photographs and Pacheco's own cartoons, sketches, and paintings, many never before published, and an epilogue by Ybor City historian Tony Pizzo, who describes the features that today make Ybor City a National Historic Monument.