Castro: Not With a Bang...

I had my first political laugh in 1962, when I tagged along with my mom to the grocery store, and spotted the Mad magazine Fidel Castro "exploding cigar" cover on the newsstand. For decades afterwards, something inside me kept waiting for that cigar to go off, either in Castro's face, or - after being flung into a powder keg - on U.S. territory. At one point, during the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis, my mom even stocked up on canned goods, and bought material to line our windows, the way her own parents blocked the household windows in Ireland during World War II. As it turns out, though, we never went directly into hot war with Cuba. And now, the Cuban El Supremo simply has stubbed out his own stogie. Fidel has resigned his post. Only time will tell what his successor, brother Raul, has stored in his own humidor.