VOA标准英语2010-In Florida, the Cigar Trade is On a Roll

woman began wrapping tobacco leaves into cigars when she was 16. In her prime, she could produce 400 hand-rolled cigars a day.
If cigars are your thing, you need to check out the city of Tampa, on Florida's west coast, along the Gulf¹ of Mexico.

Tampa slumbered² as a little fishing village while East Coast beach towns began to boom as vacation resorts in the late 1800s.

Around the same time, Key West, off the southern tip of the Florida Peninsula, became the center of the cigar industry. It had largely moved out of Spanish-owned Cuba because of tensions that would eventually lead to war between Spain and the United States. 

Don Vicente Martinez Ybor, who got the Tampa cigar industry rolling, was a Spaniard who sided with insurgents³ in Cuba, was forced to relocate to Key West, Florida, then uprooted⁴ again, to Tampa.

When those tensions spread to Key West, and some factories were burned, Tampa's leaders invited its biggest cigar maker⁵, Don Vicente Martinez Ybor, to relocate there. He did, importing mild Cuban tobacco by ship. 

In their first year alone, workers in two little factories hand-rolled more than 1 million cigars. And before long, the waterfront neighborhood that became known as Ybor City had 250 cigar factories.

In the days when millions of men smoked cigars at work and at home, Ybor City was the undisputed cigar capital of the world, and brands like Have-a-Tampa became household names.

On Ybor's Seventh Avenue is the Columbia Restaurant's hand-tiled fa?ade. It stretches around the block.

But by the 1960s, cigar manufacturing had become highly mechanized, the government was heavily taxing tobacco products, and the importation of fine-leaf tobacco from Communist Cuba was forbidden.

By the hundreds, Tampa's cigar factories closed, and Ybor City became a blighted⁶ slum.

But it has made a huge comeback — and not just because more than a dozen small factories are rolling tobacco leaves again. Ybor City is full of bustling⁷ restaurants, nightclubs, and art galleries.

On weekend nights, as one artist told us, it's like Carnival⁸ without the masks.

 

1 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。

2 slumbered   

微睡，睡眠（slumber的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The baby slumbered in his cradle. 婴儿安睡在摇篮中。
• At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition. 就在那时，我的善的一面睡着了，我的邪恶面因野心勃勃而清醒着。

3 insurgents   

n.起义，暴动，造反( insurgent的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The regular troops of Baden joined the insurgents. 巴登的正规军参加到起义军方面来了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Against the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents, these problems are manageable. 要对付塔利班与伊拉克叛乱分子，这些问题还是可以把握住的。 来自互联网

4 uprooted   

v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的过去式和过去分词 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园

参考例句：

• Many people were uprooted from their homes by the flood. 水灾令许多人背井离乡。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The hurricane blew with such force that trees were uprooted. 飓风强烈地刮着，树都被连根拔起了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

6 blighted   

adj.枯萎的，摧毁的

参考例句：

• Blighted stems often canker.有病的茎往往溃烂。
• She threw away a blighted rose.她把枯萎的玫瑰花扔掉了。

7 bustling   

adj.喧闹的

参考例句：

• The market was bustling with life. 市场上生机勃勃。
• This district is getting more and more prosperous and bustling. 这一带越来越繁华了。

8 carnival   

n.嘉年华会，狂欢，狂欢节，巡回表演

参考例句：

• I got some good shots of the carnival.我有几个狂欢节的精彩镜头。
• Our street puts on a carnival every year.我们街的居民每年举行一次嘉年华会。