I was driving my grandfather to work, and although he was a highly intelligent and educated man who had spent most of his adult life in the United States, having emigrated from the old country as a young man, he was still baffled by America and Americans.

We passed by a billboard advertising a popular brand of liquor whose advertising gimmick was that it was the "pussycat" of spirits (presumably because it was so smooth). The billboard showed an opened bottle and label, a sweating highball glass filled with ice and a double shot, and the slogan "I thought I saw a pussycat".

"What the hell does that mean?", he asked. (He could read, write and understand English perfectly, even though he still spoke it with an impenetrable accent). I explained to him that the phrase was from movie cartoons, the gag line Tweety the Canary always innocently asked when he realized Sylvester the Cat was sneaking up on him.

"I know that", he answered, "but what does that have to do with whisky?"

I explained to him that this particular brand advertised itself as "smooth as a pussycat".

"I know that too", he replied, "but what does one have to do with the other? And how is anyone reading that supposed to make the connection and put it all together?"

---

We got caught in traffic, and we got to his job at the Spanish language radio station very late. He did an agony column and read the news for WSOL. We ran into the studio and he ripped some copy off the teletype as we rushed into the broadcast booth. He sat down, put one headphone to his ear and leaned over the microphone just as the engineer on the other side of the glass cued him and the "On the Air" light came on. He began reading the English copy, translating into formal Castilian (not the Tampa Cuban dialect we spoke at home) on the fly. I had been completely bilingual all my life, I could never remember not being able to speak both languages, but there was no way in the world I could match that performance. I was reading over his shoulder, and his translation was accurate and perfectly phrased and cadenced broadcast Spanish.

Reading ahead, I could see that the story was about the arms control talks. The word "warhead" was in the text, and as far as I knew, there was no translation in Spanish. The only substitution I could think of was "proyectil". But when he got to the word, without missing a beat, he used the word "espuela" or "spur", the business end of an equestrian bootheel, or the bony weapon on the ankle of a fighting cock. It was the perfect choice.