When the time comes to leave the small apartment of our friends Carlos and Mayelin and their family, located in an out-of-the-way neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana, Herman offers to hail a cab for us. He is gone a long while. Ginny and I join him at the intermittent passing parade, where vehicles are few and far between.

There are sporadic ancient automobiles, dump trucks, flatbed trucks, tractors, backhoes, ambulances, horse carts, bicycles, motorcycles upon which are balanced families of three and four, but nary a taxi in sight. Carlos is across the street, flagging down any conveyance which appears to have room for two more passengers. He finally beckons us over.

"They will take you to Hotel Ambos Mundos for ten dollars," he said. After farewell embraces, we gratefully climb into the private car, me in front with the husband and wife, Ginny in back with the two children.

As we drive along slowly, I study the hood ornament and form a question for the driver: "Que tipo de coche es?" "What kind of car is this?"

"Chev-row-late," he says. "Cinquenta."

"Wow!" I say to Ginny. "We're riding in a 1950 Chevy!"

My father was a Chevy man. I'm suddenly awash in memories of riding in the family car: the dusty, musty smell of the cloth upholstery; the creamy gleam of the thick Bakelite steering wheel, big as a ship's wheel; the convex curve of the metal dashboard; the geometry of the split windshield; the side window vent which can be turned to direct a cooling stream of air inside on balmy nights, such as this.

"Boy," says Ginny. "I remember my brother and me standing up in the back seat on family outings. Just like these two little girls are doing now. Our dad made us lower the armrest to keep us separated if we started to fight. The back seat seemed absolutely huge to us back then. It was like a little clubhouse."

The rolling museum piece wends its way back to Old Havana. The driver slows almost to a stop at each bump, pothole, and railroad crossing, then gingerly shifts up again through the gears with the lever mounted on the steering column. "Three on the tree," we used to call it before the days of "four on the floor." With this kind of loving treatment, along with replacement parts scrounged or fashioned miraculously from God knows where, this old chariot may endure another half century.

We drive along the harbor next to the hulking hulls of docked ships silhouetted by the full moon. Havana moon. The lyrics of the Chuck Berry song start running through my head: "Me all alone/With jug of rum/Me stand and wait/For boat to come/Me watch the tide/Come easin' in/Is low the moon/But high the wind/Havana moon."

Riding slowly in the moonlight in this 50-plus-year-old auto with this sympathetic and sharing family, my arm draped casually out the open window, I feel so connected with Cuba and its people that, for the moment, I am one of them. I am a boy dodging the waves crashing against the seawall of the Malecon. I am a young man riding a horse through the tobacco fields of Vinales. I am an old man slapping dominoes on a table in a shady plaza surrounded by my friends and a cloud of cigar smoke. I feel capable of leaping from the car at the next stop and hawking cigars to the tourists.

We turn into the narrow, single lane streets of Old Havana. At an intersection, our headlights stab into the canvas-topped bed of a large truck filled with uniformed police, who glare out at the intrusion. Our driver snaps off the headlights and allows a respectful distance to develop between us and the truck, which stops at every intersection to deploy another cop. Romantic thoughts vanish, and I return to reality. This is, after all, a Communist dictatorship, and Fidel's henchmen stand watch on every corner, every night.

In these narrow streets, there is no choice but to follow the truck. Our driver and his family say nothing, but I sense their rising anxiety. They are not authorized to mingle with tourists in pursuit of the despised -- yet prized -- Yankee dollar. What they are doing-selling black market transportation-is illegal. What would be their punishment if caught?

The nervous driver pulls to a stop, gets out of the car, and points up a dimly lit street.

"Ambos Mundos," he says. Both worlds, indeed.

I discreetly slip him a ten-dollar bill, and the relieved family drives into the night. Turns out we're five or six blocks from the hotel. But our walk through the shadowy colonial streets, past the cop on every corner, gives me time to reflect on the kindness and warmth of the people we've been with this night.

It occurs to me: another great thing about Cuba is that, because of the Revolution, and also unlike its neighbor to the north, race is of absolutely no concern.

Wayne Jeronimus is a freelance travel writer who takes the first steps of every journey from his Calistoga home.

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