The early mornings in Caracas were special. The air was cool and clear, before the buses dirtied it up with diesel fumes. In the mid-50’s we were living in Caracas and rented three different furnished houses during our two years in the city. The first was in a working class neighborhood, La Florida. The house was dark, with heavy Spanish furniture. Should you go into the kitchen during the evening we had to stomp out feet so as to scatter the cockroaches. They would scurry with a terrific noise, and then we would enter. The house had a veranda on the second floor and that is where we spent our free time. We would play cards up there, letting the breeze cool us. Sarah, our maid, was from Maracai, up the coast towards Columbia and was more Indian than Spanish. She loved our family and when our lease ran out I went to say goodbye. She was in the back yard crying. I promised to visit, but I never did. Sarah introduced us to Venezuelan cooking. She fried plantain and dusted them with salt. And she cooked what the Argentineans called “muchacho”, this was essentially a beef brisket that was baked until dry as toast. La Florida was not very pretty. But it was the beginning of our South American experience so well remembered.
The second place was in the Country Club area and, from its elevated position, had spectacular views of the city and the far mountains. At midday, clouds would form half way up the mountain, drop their rain, and then rise. We could see this from our house. We had a terrific lawn, which seemed to stretch forever. We had a chauffeur, Tony, who was from Italy. He got thrown in jail one night and my Dad hired a lawyer to pay off the police. Tony pruned our hedges, too. He was handsome and smart guy.
Our last house was in Urbanization La Castellana, up close to the mountain, overlooking the city from the other side of Country club. Up here one had the feeling a puma or some such might meander down the mountain at any time. The houses were all quite grand; every yard had fences, tall ones. And every house had metal bars on the first floor windows. But that didn’t stop the thieves. They would shimmy up the downspouts after taking off their clothes. And they would then grease up their bodies with oil in case a homeowner tried to grab at them. Then they would tiptoe about taking little things, usually jeweler they could carry. If awakened, residents usually stayed in their mosquito-netted bed or risk injury.
The evening moisture and the rainy season cultured exotic vines climbing our house. Orchids grew from trees in our yard. We had gardeners who would use machetes to cut almost everything. I never tired of exclaiming to these guys that their trusted machetes were made in Collinsville, Connecticut, my state, by the Collins Company. If the machete was not too rusted one could read the Collins trademark on the blade. The workers always struggled to say the state’s name and wanted me to repeat it over and over so they could tell their amigos.
This particular morning there was dew on everything and that was true of my Dad’s MG as well. It was a ’51 TD model and had been lovingly restored by a German mechanic in Caracas. I crammed into the back trundle while my brother, Dave, occupied the passenger seat and we waited for Dad. The dew on the beautiful pearl-green auto paint allowed me to draw little pictures with my finger on the back of the car as we waited.
Dad came down in his suit and tie and drove us to school. We had to leave early because Dave’s school started at 7am. They finished at 1:30 in the afternoon, thereby avoiding the afternoon heat. I had been switched from Colegio Americano to Major Gray’s (this was before I knew anything about chutney) School. I was performing badly at the Colegio, and Dad thought a tutorial environment would help. Was he ever wrong.
We turned down the mountain on Avenida La Castellana, which was a boulevard with palms in the middle. The street sweepers had done good work of picking up the fallen palm fronds as well as the mango pits spat from the mouths of Caracainos over the night. It was said that mangoes belonged to everyone so if you had a mango tree in your yard, which we did, anyone could take them. I frequently saw kids climb our fence to grab a ripe one.
The sun in Caracas, in the early hours, had a special light to it. There was almost an orange hue to everything. I loved that time of day.
The MG had a stick shift, lousy suspension and a temperamental engine. You had to use Castrol, not regular oil, or the rings would gunk up and sputter. But it was our family’s first real departure from sedans or station wagons and we were all very proud to have it and proud of Dad for buying it. We always had the top down unless it was the rainy season so as we motored along the streets I was able to look up at the palm trees or into the windows of busses as we passed.
Dad dropped me off first. I jack-knifed myself out of the trundle and hopped to the sidewalk. Off they went. Because school was not going to start for at least an hour I plopped myself on the second story veranda of the house where school was held. The veranda had bookcases with assorted volumes. After a couple of days just sitting there, waiting for school to begin, I picked up a book. To this day, almost a half-century later, I remember going to the bookshelf and picking up Robinson Crusoe. I remember scanning the shelf, touching this one and that until finally I settled on Defoe. It was one of those terrific British editions with wonderful paintings of Crusoe being tied down by the Lilliputians and such. So began my reading period.
I loved the cool mornings and the quiet of the porch and the comfortable wicker chair I occupied every morning. In the course of the next six months I went through most of the books on the porch. Defoe, du Maupassant, R.L. Stevenson, Melville, Flaubert and authors I had never heard of and cannot remember. Books about the French Revolution, British sea triumphs, Irish famines or foggy London mysteries. It was a struggle for me to close the cover when first class was called. After I finished with the books on the veranda I visited the English library across the street and became hooked on American Westerns and stories about Mountain men opening the American Western wilderness. I went through most of them.
The school was insanely weird. The headmaster, Major Gray, wore the same tired gray flannels, sky-blue shirt and regimental tie every day. A decrepit black leather belt held up his pants. And his stomach stuck out below the belt line. He had snow-white hair and a ruddy complexion. He puffed from various pipes throughout the day and muttered in an English accent so thick so as to be barely understood. He had served around the world in the British army. I was always suspicious as to how or why he settled in Caracas. And was he a real Major? In those years Caracas was filled with Americans and Europeans whose backgrounds were just a little askew and not easily verified. The Major knew no Spanish, nor attempted to learn, so it was up to the Argentinean twins to translate. The twins were Amazonian-like beauties with terrific pear-shaped asses and what seemed to me to be terrific breasts. They wore similar outfits everyday and these were mostly clinging cotton shirtwaist dresses; the kind that accentuated everything a fifteen year-old dreams about. This was the first time I had heard Argentinean Spanish and was enthralled by their “thathatha” instead of the Venezuelan “sasasa”. We said Yo, for the word “I”; they breathed “Joh”. It was lyrical. Anyway, they translated for the Major.
The rest of my classmates were from dozens of different countries. There were Dutch kids whose Fathers worked for Shell, Italians working for Fiat, Americans with Singer, Proctor & Gamble, Coke, etc. At the time there were more Americans, about 70,000, living in Venezuela than any other country of the world. So my friends were multi-nationals but not Venezuelans. The local ruling class sent their children to America for school, the middle-class were sent to private schools run specifically for them and the lower class didn’t send their children to school.
The country was still being run by a dictator, Perez Jimenez, but he was enlightened enough to understand that the oil of Lake Maricaibo was going to make him and his henchmen rich. But to make his dreams come true he needed modern manufacturing and updated marketing. So, tens of thousands Europeans, Americans and Asians flocked to Caracas. These were the salad days for gringos in Venezuela. Everyone was making twice their home country wage, had a housing allowance and paid no tax. All while native families lived under bridges or in huts with no water or sanitation. A year after we left Jimenez was overthrown. He went to Paris and lived well.
Our classes were held in what used to be the bedrooms of the Major’s house. Our desks were wooden planks set on sawhorses and our chairs were anything we could find. We would often move our chairs from one bedroom to the other. It was weird. Our French teacher, Madame, spoke no English or Spanish. She was from Paris and was angry with everyone until a sweet little French girl enrolled. Why this girl was in our French class I never could quite understand. But I did know that Madame loved her. And hated everyone else. The sweet thing was from Nice and so had a sharply different accent than the Parisian Madame. Madame spent most of one semester trying to get the girl to speak “proper” French.
Our mathematics teacher, Joe, having recently been discharged from the US Army, was an obvious gay who had “adopted” a Venezuelan boy about my age. Joe did not know his multiplication tables. The perfect math teacher. It was embarrassing to watch. Joe also smoked three packs a day so he was always sneaking outside after giving us a chapter to complete. When he returned his breath clouded the entire room. I still remember one of the twins waving her hand over her nose in a vain attempt to disperse Joe’s nicotine breath. The Major taught us Latin and did his translations with a Yorkshire slur. It was really quite hilarious. Our housemother, Sara, who cooked our lunches, was from the mountains, and was more Indian than Spanish and had a real thing for gringo boys. She would gleefully squeal as she grabbed for my crotch when I went in for lunch. A couple of times I let her catch me. One of her front teeth was gold. Most days Sara would cook arroz con pollo, plantains, or some mushy vegetable. We would eat outside, in the playground, on picnic benches.
After school I would go to the library then walk home. I’d take a different route most days. I’d walk on the shady side of the street, if possible. When we lived at the Country Club I would take my eighteen speed Italian racing bike out. There was so much to see and once I was out of the center of the city the traffic wasn’t bad. Some days I would travel twenty miles, or so. I loved the freedom that bike gave me but it was stolen when I carelessly left it unattended. There was an armed soldier near-by but I was afraid to ask him about it. There were instances of foreigners being arrested just for asking questions. So now, without a bicycle I took buses to explore. At first I didn’t know the routes but knew they all had to return to Chacaito. This was in the center and allowed me to find the right bus home. After being out on a bus for a couple of hours and returning to Chacaito I would always stop for an arepa. These are thick corn meal tacos. They were fried but the centers were not always cooked through. So when you ordered one the man behind the counter would spoon out the soft, uncooked part and add a filling of your choice. My favorite was chicken; arepa con pollo. Man, were they great. Then I would have a small coffee. For one locha, about one-twelfth of a Bolivar, which was then worth about ninety cents, I could get a tasita of thick, strong coffee. I’d add a lot of sugar. To get this snack I had perfected my Spanish. “Dame una arepa con pollo y un locha negra, por favor.” Give me a chicken arepa and a small coffee. After that I’d catch the bus home.
