DO YOU REMEMBER THE SANDINISTAS?

They were a rebel army in Nicaragua back in the ’70s and ’80s. If you’ll recall, their fight was against the ruling party of Nicaragua — the party of Anastasio Somoza. Somoza was the last of a family line of dictators who’d ruled the little Central American country since the 1930s.

And the Sandinistas toppled him from power in 1979.

But that seems like an obscure topic for this week’s column, doesn’t it? Well it is, sort of — but here’s how it fits:

Last Saturday, after my soccer game, I dropped by Starbucks for coffee. While there I heard the man behind me in line make a joke to the lady at the counter — well, he was in the middle of making a joke when he came to a word he had trouble pronouncing — so I helped him with it.

I figured it must’ve been a word that was unfamiliar to him in his native tongue, which sounded to be Spanish. He thanked me and that started a conversation between us. As we sat down he told me he likes Starbucks because of the music they play there — but more on that in a minute.

First let me tell you what the man told me about himself.

His name was Arturo, and he was from Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. He said he was the oldest of nine brothers, and in the school he was attending (a school that fed recruits to the Nicaraguan Army, the army of Somoza) he was studying music, which he loved.

He said he was a good singer and that the only thing he liked about the political school was his music studies. But when his father found out he was studying music he went down to the school and pulled Arturo out of the class. He told the school that they were no longer to teach his son music, but rather should teach him only practical things.

The father then told Arturo that he must forget all about music and study only things that were worthwhile. Arturo’s father said studying music was a bad example to his younger brothers. He said that music is for bums, and if Arturo continued he would cause his brothers to become a family of bums.

So Arturo stopped.

After that he studied only the main curriculum of the school — which had mostly to do with the corrupt policies that had led Somoza’s Nicaragua to rise up against their president in rebellion.

And when Arturo graduated he rose up, too.

He joined the Sandinista Rebels — but did so on one condition: That they not take any of his brothers. Arturo didn’t say as much, but I got the impression that he saw (and did) things during the war he didn’t want his brothers exposed to.

He knew that the rebels would no doubt take at least one or two more of his family. But when they took four of his brothers he told them they had broken their agreement with him — and he started looking for a way out.

Not only out of the rebel army — but out of Nicaragua.

Arturo told me he’d long heard of how wonderful America was — and it was then he decided to follow his dream of someday living and working here.

And many years later, after making his way to Mexico, and then Mexico City, and to California, and then the San Francisco Bay Area, he bumped into me, in a Starbucks.

I told you earlier that Arturo liked the coffee shop for its music. He said he was standing in line there one day when he heard the most beautiful song playing through the speakers. He asked the lady who pours the coffee what the song was.

She told him it was “Begin the Beguine,” a Cole Porter song sung by Frank Sinatra.

So Arturo found the song and bought it — and then set about learning it. He told me that he had most of it down, but some parts he could not yet remember all the way through. He said to do that he had a friend translate those lyrics to Spanish so he could better connect with them, and thereby remember them.

I kind of like Frank Sinatra too — but there’s a singer from that era I like even better: Tony Bennett.

Now Tony Bennett is from before my time, but I know of him anyway — due in large part to my Dad.

When my Dad came to this country — from his own small country that had become, well, no longer his home — he fell in love with the music here, too. Because, like Arturo, I suppose, he grew up with a love of music.

And like Arturo my Dad held on to his native music, and loved it deeply, but he also loved the music of his new home.

And, like Arturo, he had once left home and headed, against the odds, for a place called California.

A couple weeks back, as I was cleaning out my Mom’s garage, I came across a cassette tape. The label on it was blank, because it was one of those tapes you bought empty and then filled with your own recordings.

And just on a whim, I don’t even really know why, I put it into the old cassette player that sits on my mother’s counter.

And what came out of the cassette player was amazing.

I guess I’d forgotten about it, but back in the ’90s, some years before Dad passed away, my brother Brian had recorded him for posterity. He’d put the blank tape on “record” and asked Dad questions about his home country, and why he’d wanted to come to America, and how he got here.

And on the tape my Dad, who’s been gone for too long now, in his own voice, told me and my family as we stood there almost dumbfounded listening to the recording, of how he made his way to Canada, and then British Columbia, and then to America, and then to the San Francisco Bay Area.

And in his description he would, like he used to — and like his love of music sort of made him do — stop the words in order to sing a song every now and then. He’d tell of the city he had made it to at that point, and then he would say what year it was when he made it there, and then he’d say the title of a song that was popular on the radio at the time — and then he’d sing that song.

He did that for city after city after city.

There are times in our lives when we stop everything we’re doing and are transfixed by what is happening in front of us. We don’t want to talk during such times, or even do much else — we just want to be there, and experience, and enjoy and remember.

That was one of those times.

I’m moved by immigrant stories — but there’s one I like better than all the rest.

John P. Gavin is the author of “Online Dating Sucks… but it’s how I fell in love,” which is available on Amazon and at Bookshop Benicia.