Guillermo Fesser - One Hundred Miles from Manhattan

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Original Title: A cien millas de Manhattan

Copyright 2013 by Guillermo Fesser

Translation: One Hundred Miles from Manhattan

Copyright 2014 by Kristin Keenan

Cover design by Victor Monigote

ISBN: 978-1-4804-8993-6

Published in 2014 by Barcelona Digital Editions, S.L.
Av. Marqus de lArgentera, 17 pral.
08003 Barcelona
www.barcelonaebooks.com

Distributed by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street, Suite 6C
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com

To the Hill-Howe clan,
my American family

With special love to my children,
Max, Nico and Julia, and my
wonderful wife, Sarah, with
whom I have the fortune of
sharing two worlds.

Contents

Foreword

In the early 1980s, the great Spanish radio journalist Guillermo Fesser startled listeners in post-Franco Spain by reporting the news in a new way: He made it entertaining. He wasnt condescending. He was funny, intellectually curious, and fearless. And he conveyed compassion and respect for his subjects, even those with whom he disagreed. Guillermo became a national treasure, beloved by his countrymen, from the inhabitants of Gypsy settlements to the bureaucrats scurrying through halls of the Spanish Congress. They devoured his radio shows, books, TV specials, films, works of theater, and newspaper articles as quickly as the irrepressible 53-year-old could produce them.

When Guillermo and his partner, Juan Luis, announced plans in 2002 to end their radio show after more than two decades of broadcasting daily, King Juan Carlos I paid homage: Im really sorry theyll be stopping their show, but theyve done a fantastic job and Ill always remember them with fondness and friendship.

Luckily for the King and Guillermos other fans, Guillermos plan to take a break from storytelling didnt last long. Within the first hour of relocating from Madrid to a small town 100 miles north of New York City with his wife and their three kids, Guillermos intended time-out became time he used to capture stories as a journalist. As he struggled to reconcile what he learned from the people he met with his preconceptions about the U.S., their tales became fodder for a bestseller in Spain: A Cien Millas de Manhattan. In essence, it his personal meditation on the unexpected Americas he discovers.

Now the book has just been translated into English, giving Guillermo a crack at surprising you about a place you know. You should let him. Who better than a kind-hearted foreigner to help you marvel at our own land and learn something about your fellow Americans?

Guillermo will introduce you to a compelling cast, including Sunny Fitzsimmons, a professor-turned-Texas rancher who is reintroducing buffalo to the West. Sunny, whom Guillermo visits at his 17,000-acre Shape Ranch, has managed to convince the states governor to grant wild animal status to the magnificent creatures, improving his odds. Youll learn why Sunnys way of raising bison differs from fellow rancher and CNN founder Ted Turners method, as well as this gem about the social needs of bison: They die of a broken heart if they are left alone.

Guillermo also takes you beneath the streets of Manhattan with Steve Mosto, an expert on the massive steam pipe systems that power thousands of the citys buildings. And youll install, on the ninth floor of the Wall Street Journals offices, the elegant memorial that sculptor John Corcoran created to honor reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered after being kidnapped in Pakistan while reporting for the paper. Youll make maple syrup with John, too.

Heres where I should mention that Im a big fan of Guillermos, too: I worked for his radio show for a few years in Madrid and became friends with him and his wife, Sarah. They took me under their wing and treated me like family as I got my bearings in their wonderful city. Like Sarah, I also grew up in Rhinebeck, N.Y., the quaint former dairy farming community that became both a subject and a base camp for Guillermos adventures across the country that appear in this books pages. Apart from a handful of people Ive known for years, such as my parents, who run Upstate Films, Rhinebecks movie theater, Guillermo taught me plenty about people and places I never knew existed. Nick Leiber

Prologue

It was a sunny morning back in May of 2002 in downtown Madrid and tourists were piling back into Gran Vias outdoor cafes, unaware of all the frenzied activity taking place in the offices of the fancy buildings lining the avenue. People who had arrived in Spain from all over the world were dunking their orders of churros into coffee with curiosity. I was observing them from a window on the ninth floor and, from their unhurried movements, I detected that sweet happiness sparked by not having a tight schedule, that inner smile that motivates you to consider spending the entire day doing nothing more than enjoying time with a loved one. Guillermo? Yes? Mr. Delkader is waiting for you in his office. Ah, thanks. The secretarys voice brought me back to reality and to 32 Gran Via, headquarters of the biggest media conglomerate in the Spanish-speaking world: the PRISA group. Television channels, radio broadcasting stations, magazines, newspapers, book publishers The radio station occupied two floors. The studios were on the eighth. On the ninth, the executives of Union Radio granted or denied talk show hosts the sacred privilege of sitting in front of a couple microphones that, through multiple broadcasters, reached millions of listeners in Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and the United States.

Back then, Augusto Delkader, a friendly, shrewd journalist, steered the radio companys course. I had been to the ninth floor many times. To negotiate contracts. To pitch projects. To fight for stories. His office was decorated in shades of gray, which supposedly had been chosen to invoke a sense of calm in his visitors, but whose coldness triggered an uneasy feeling in me that May morning. Unlike previous visits to the office, this time my nervousness couldnt be attributed to anxiety about whether or not the boss would accept my conditions. Instead, I was experiencing quite the oppositethe uncertainty of whether that man would let me leave without a fuss. Or better said, let us leave, because there were two of us.

I was accompanied by Juan Luis, my colleague and business partner since our journalism school days. After graduating we landed a contract for $100 a month at a new radio station, Antena 3, and began to broadcast a show we called Gomaespuma on Saturdays at two oclock in the morning. The Antena 3 executives gave us space at that inconvenient hour because they couldnt find anyone else who wanted to do a live show for so little money, but we accepted with the hope of capturing the attention of some night owl. Gomaespuma means foam rubber in Spanish. I came up with that name because I wanted our show to be very elastic and flexible, including discussion of serious news as well as comedy and all sorts of emotions. Foam rubbers air bubbles reminded me of sparkly champagne bubbles, which I associated with the late-night show and the fresh new radio style that we were creating.