Dover

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Walk down Blackwell Street in Dover, and your eyes, ears, and nose tell you that you\'ve landed in Latin America. There are the banquerias, but there are also store signs and advertisements in Spanish, and restaurants serving the wide range of Latin American cuisine, from Mexican food with its spices, to the mild, savory cuisine of Colombia. Punto Saboroso on Blackwell street in Dover\"There has been a tremendous increase in the number of businesses owned by Hispanics, and that has helped attract people from all over (Latin America),\" says Demaris Fuentes, director of the Morris County Organization of Hispanic Affairs, whose office is on Bassett Highway in Dover. Fuentes, whose organization provides some of the same services as Wind of the Spirit in Morristown, says that Latin Americans come to Dover from other parts of the state and country, having heard from friends or relatives that it is a Latin-friendly town. \"I used to live in Dover several years ago, when I first came here,\" says Fuentes, who comes from Bayamon in Puerto Rico. \"It was very convenient. There were lots of bodegas (small Puerto Rican grocery stores), there was work, and there were good transportation connections.\" The town\'s train station, is where commuters to New York change for New Jersey Transit\'s midtown direct trains, and where they change again on the way home for trains headed for Hackettstown. For many non-Latins who don\'t live in Dover, the train station platform is as much of the town as they see. But the town is worth the two-block walk to Blackwell Street. As soon as a visitor turns the corner onto Blackwell, he hears salsa pulsing from the radios of passing cars, sees the street lit up for business, smells the food, hears Spanish being spoken in half-a-dozen different accents. Walking west on Blackwell, the visitor\'s nose and eyes might well take him inside the Punto Saboroso (The Tasty Point), a brightly lit Colombian buffet with a big window opening on the street ­ great for people watching. Recently, a visitor with an Anglo face and serviceable Spanish, but no knowledge of Colombian food, walked in with the after-work crowd, picked up a tray and took his chances with what looked good ­ and just about everything looked good. \"Arroz, por favor,\" the visitor said, pointing at the yellow rice. The server packed the tasty stuff into a mold, turned the mold upside down on a plate, and waited for instructions. \"Y esto, por favor,\" pointing to fried plantains. The server added them. Then the visitor saw some meat with peppers and onions in what looked like an enticing sauce. \"Y este carne, tambien,\" he said, and the server gave him a dubious look. \"Es higado,\" she told him. He couldn\'t hear her, and asked her to repeat. \"Soy viejo,\" he told her, but She shook her head and assured him that he was not old at all. Then she repeated, \"Es higado,\" and this time the visitor heard her loud and clear. But the visitor, hungry, eager to experiment, had no idea what higado meant. He was proud of his Spanish and not about to force the server to speak English, so he motioned the server to pile it on. She obliged. Higado, it turns out, means liver. As liver goes, it was fine, but it\'s not the best choice with rice and plantains. After that, the visitor needed some familiar food, and so went down the street to the Pollo Loco (Crazy Chicken), which serves Mexican food. It was early yet, and he was the only customer. The only staff member was a young woman who was making a humongous vat of chile in the back. They spoke in Spanish, and the visitor was glad to see he knew what everything on the menu meant. He asked the woman where the customers were and she said they\'d be in soon enough, when they got off work. \"Are most of your customers Mexicans, or do you get many gringos like me?\" the visitor asked. \"All my customers are Mexicans,\" she said. \"You\'re my first gringo, I think.\" She had been in Dover for four months she said, having come from Vera Cruz. \"Are you homesick?\" the visitor asked. They had to wrestle with the concept in Spanish, settling on nostalgia, spelled the same in both languages. Yes, she said, she was very homesick. \"But there is no work in Vera Cruz, no opportunity,\" she said, and went back to her work. \"This is home now.