From My Notebook 48 Years Ago: In The Zone

From the rough and ready life on the road in 1975 I’m transported to the big rock candy mountain, a bubble of luxury kept inflated by the US Navy and its Marines.

April 15th, a Monday

Life in the Canal Zone begins on Rodman Marine Base. Thirties barracks buildings, big, spacious, landscaped – now a golf course runs through the middle. Captain John B. Mallard jr USN (that’s one down from Admiral in the US) lives in the last house of five with open porches and garage below, a fleet of rooms above.

John and Ann Mallard, daughter Lynn was nurse, is married to USAF helicopter pilot on rescue service in Iceland. Born of Russian émigré family. Wedding was Russian Orthodox in New York State. They also have a son who is about to do post-graduate work at the University of Salamanca in Spain. John is nearing fifty and expects to retire in two years or so. I don’t know Ann’s age. She’s small, grown dumpy, but very active. Hair grey, face still youthful. Saw picture of her at 18 in scooped crinoline dress, belle-of-the-ball, all firm flesh and sparkling eyes – a great catch. She has developed ideas about social work – “one to one.”

The Admiral, Blunt, is the butt of all jokes and criticism. He’s a weak man, but ambitious. They say he’s determined to get to Washington but he’ll never make it. But just before I leave he’s posted to Washington, to some office of research and development. They say it’s a meaningless post where he’ll fade forever from the sight of man, surrounded by hundreds of the same rank.

The Admiral has arranged for tulips to be brought by KLM. He wants all the officers’ wives to buy them, for charity, and Ann is put in charge of selling them. She thinks it’s an imposition but doesn’t quite see the essential absurdity of it. The tulips, when they arrive, fall to pieces. If they were plastic the petals would have been stuck on firmer, no doubt. These tulips are wear-dated.

She and all the other ladies are all disciples of the Mola cult – vying with each other for superior understanding and judgement of these folk-art pieces.

(Molas are brightly coloured pieces of appliqué, usually about a foot square, stitched together by the natives of the San Blas islands, not far off the coast of Panama. Originally they were stitched by hand but now, since the Peace Corps brought sewing machines to the islands, they are sewn by machine. Inevitably only the hand stitched ones are considered authentic.)

My Mola – stitched by hand, of course

Marge Asman, wife of Commander Bob next door, repairs my hammock expertly (It was ripped by Skip Kaltenhauser on the boat to San Andrés). She sews two little Molas on by hand.

The marines have movies every night, picaresquely described – “Rape, murder, pillage and violence” – and violence?

Marines are very tall in their seats, spring up as from dragon seeds to obscure the screen.

The Canal controversy is very low key here. (Panama is pressing the US to relinquish the Canal Zone to local control). Nobody seems to imagine that much will happen, although John is mostly resigned to a shift of power eventually. Vietnam finally collapses while I’m there. He has a ruminatively resigned appreciation of the faults of USA. Any criticism can be voiced in his presence and receive attention.

He wants to build a house in North Carolina to retire. He will get 75% or more of his full pay. Thinks it’s ridiculously extravagant and seems most worried about the general waste of public money.

The visit culminates in the big party with fairy lights on the green, two bars, an enormous display of warming dishes, but all the work was done by the ladies themselves. Servants in the Zone are paid $2 an hour by order, (two dollars then would be roughly eleven dollars today) and the USN goes out of its way to avoid any charge of exploitation or discrimination against Panamanians. Money buys the image.

John was in submarines – his commands were all under water. I grow very fond of them both, and they make me very welcome, always renewing their invitation to stay on.

April 29th, Monday

I leave for Costa Rica.

PS: Some of you were intrigued by a remark I made in my notes, a few weeks ago. I wrote:

“The explanation of these fits of urgency, interspersed by periods of timelessness, must be explored somewhere.”

I didn’t get around to doing it then but, thinking about it now, it seems to suggest that there are actually two journeys going on simultaneously, the conscious “real life” journey and another subliminal journey across the ocean of the subconscious, sometimes peaceful, sometimes threatened by anxieties, like Scylla and Charybdis, demanding hasty escape.