1961 January 20

When John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated, I was in school at Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela.  We had a radio and we listened to the ceremony in class.  I remember Robert Frost reading a poem, but that he had problems.  What actually happened was that he had written a special poem called "Dedication" for the occasion, but the sun that day was so bright he was blinded and couldn't read the poem.  He had to recite one he knew by heart.

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's

She was our land more than a hundred years 

Before we were her people. She was ours 

In Massachusetts, in Virginia, 

But we were England’s, still colonials, 

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, 

Possessed by what we now no more possessed. 

Something we were withholding made us weak 

Until we found out that it was ourselves 

We were withholding from our land of living, 

And forthwith found salvation in surrender. 

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright 

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war) 

To the land vaguely realizing westward, 

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, 

Such as she was, such as she will become.

1961 Sparks Fly

Much of my childhood (and adulthood for that matter) was spent in a dentist's chair.

When we returned from Venezuela in 1961, we lived for a while in Chestnut Hill with my aunt Audrey and uncle Abbey and my 2 cousins, Paul and Douglas.  It was one of the worst times of my life.  

Add to that my twice weekly dentist appointment with Dr Hovestat to work on my caps (or crowns).  He had been my grandmother Frieda's dentist, and also my mother's dentist when she was a child.  He was very tall and very old.  He walked stooped over.  His office was in a brownstone in downtown Boston and was carpeted throughout.  He would walk slowly over to his tray and get a pick, then walk slowly back to the chair, the whole time dragging his feet on the carpet.  As soon as he would touch me with the pick, electric static sparks would fly.  

It was the first time I ever misbehaved at the dentist.  The dental work was bad enough, but knowing I was about to be shocked every time he approached was just too much.  One day I said no.  I told my mother if she ever took me back, I was going to kick him.  

Apparently she believed me because we found another dentist.

1961 Donny and the Ford

Our next door neighbors had a son named Donny.  He was much older than me, in his 20s I think.  He was heavyset and a little slow.  But they had a white Ford Fairlane that I thought was pretty cool.  It had a red interior.  

One day we were standing outside talking about the car and a couple of big red and green parrots dive bombed us, one actually bounced off the roof of the car.  Donny said he had been trying to catch one to take it back to the US.  That really impressed me, I thought it was admirable.  Of course, had he been able to catch one, which he never did, he would not have been able to take it through customs.  But he never stopped hoping. 

1961 School in Venezuela

Our school was a small prefab building; there were several of them that constituted the entire school.  Each one held 2 grades.  I remember listening to Robert Frost reading a poem for JFK's inauguration during class.  That would have been January 20, 1961.  Our Boxer, Velvet, was always escaping from our yard and he would come find me at school.  The teacher would let him in the classroom, and he would lie beside my desk all day.  

At the time, I could still speak French, and we were being taught Spanish.  Our teacher couldn't speak English at all and so it was pretty confusing.  Every time I tried to say something in Spanish it evolved into French!  I spoke Spench or Franish.

I remember once during a bad storm, I was sitting at my desk with Velvet beside me, and a fireball came in through the window and flew across the room and out the window on the other side.  We were all stunned..  It smelled like electricity.

1961 Boom

In Venezuela, we lived in an oil camp in Puerto La Cruz.  We had a beautiful country club with a wonderful, big pool that looked out on the Caribbean Sea.  We could see all the ships waiting in line.

One day I sitting at the pool looking at the tankers anchored  offshore.  Puerto la Cruz was an oil terminal.  Tankers would anchor and hook up to the underground pipelines off shore to bring the oil to the refinery.  There it was a Phillips refinery.  Sometimes there would  be 10 or more ships out there. 

I was sitting there in a dream and suddenly I heard 2 weird flat booms and when I looked out at the water, 2 of the ships were in flames.  Apparently someone had set bombs.  Eventually 3 others exploded as well.  It was quite a sight and our security increased tremendously after that.  

We were sent home about 2 months later, all the families were.  I was sad to go.  It was a beautiful place.  

1961 Fidel Castro

When we lived in Puerto La Cruz, I had a mad crush on a boy named Dane.  His dad worked for Phillips Petroleum.  I remember one day in class, we had to tell where we had lived before coming to Venezuela.  My story was pretty boring.  We lived in Port Arthur, Texas, for a short time.  This was notable for 3 things, which I will post elsewhere.  

But Dane had a much more interesting story.  He and his family had moved to Cuba in the mid 1950s and still lived there during the revolution in 1959, when because of Castro, they fled the country (along with all the other Americans).  After a short stint in the US, then were transferred to Venezuela. 

1961 My 14th Birthday

On my 14th birthday in Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela, it was the day before school was to start.  My friend and I went down to the school to see what was in store for us.  The school was just a small building, with several room inside.  The grade I was in was combined with another in the same room, I think there were 6 in my class and 4 in the other.  It was hot, and we sat on a bench near the school under some banana trees talking.  

Suddenly I felt something flutter down around my neck.  I didn’t really pay much attention and we kept on talking.  There were a lot of bugs, mosquitoes, butterflies, etc., in that climate.  Later on, I realized that the ‘thing’ seemed to be inside my shirt.  I was wearing shorts and a blouse outside my shorts.  I asked my friend to see what it was and to my horror, she started to scream “it’s a tarantula, it’s a tarantula!”.  

A few weeks earlier we had heard of a little boy who had been hospitalized from a tarantula bite.  Apparently he had put on his shoe not realizing  there was a tarantula in the toe and it had bitten him quite severely.  

My friend started jumping up and shaking her hands and telling me not to move.  ‘I’ll go get help!" she said and ran away as fast as she could.  I sat there for a while, wondering what to do, wondering if she would ever come back.  I could feel the ‘thing' walking around on my back.  Tarantulas have sticky feet and I could feel each foot as it lifted from my skin.  

After what seemed like 8 or 10 hours but was probably 30 minutes, I noticed the school janitor approaching. I  called to him in Spanish and he came over.  I tried to explain to him what was going on but it was not until I pointed to my back and I guess he could see something moving under my shirt that he understood.  In spite of the language barrier (my Spanish was not too great at that time), we developed a plan.  

I would stand up and hold my shirt away from my back as much as possible and he would use a branch to stick down inside the shirt and knock the spider out.  I still remember, it was a blue and white checked seersucker shirt!  With my heart pounding, I did my part, and it worked!  The tarantula walked down my back a bit, and I felt the branch pushing against him, but then he jumped to the ground.  He was big!  But not as big as I had imagined.  In my mind he was about the size of a chicken.  

I walked home and told my mother about my exciting birthday.  I didn’t see my friend again until school the next day.  Some friend.

1961 - Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela

We moved to Venezuela in December 1960.  I remember my parents sitting in the living room in Toledo discussing it, and whether they should let me stay in the US with my aunt and uncle in Boston or take me with them.  They also gave me the option of going to board school.  I didn't want to do either, I wanted to go!
 

Mother, Lydia, and I took the Grace Line ship, Santa Paula, from Port Everglades to Caracas, where Daddy met us.

The next day, we went up a ski-lift type thing to the very top of a mountain to a hotel. above the clouds, it was amazing.

Then we flew from La Guaira Airport in Caracas to Barcelona.  It was a small prop plane.  I was sitting on the water side, and I looked down and saw a circular rainbow, like a rainbow ring.  


Then when we arrived in Barcelona, we were driven to Puerto La Cruz.  We lived inside a compound.  My father was an engineer who built refineries.  I guess Americans were not particularly popular at the time with local Venezuelans so we were kept under lock and key for our own protection.  When we needed to go to the grocery store, we had a driver who escorted us to the store and I guess would have protected us if something had happened.

Even at age 14 I remember the poverty and the grimness of the locals.  There was a Sears & Roebuck in town, which surprised me. Inside the grocery store my mother would sing along to the music on the radio (usually old American classics) which totally mortified me.  She would say "I was good enough to sing on the radio but I’m not good enough for the grocery store".  I was embarrassed because people would look at us, ‘crazy Americans’.  We had TV, but of course it was in Spanish.  I remember watching Olivia de Havilland in a movie and being amazed at how good her Spanish was.  We watched "Bonanza" and "77 Sunset Strip" in Spanish too.

The main attraction there was the country club.  There was a huge pool surrounded by palm trees on a grassy ledge overlooking the Caribbean.  It was beautiful.  That’s where my dad taught me to drink beer, sitting looking out at the water, watching the iguanas come up to be petted.  They had a big outdoor movie screen and once a week we would go see the popular movies showing in the US.  The only one I  remember is "Song Without End" about Franz Liszt which had to be the longest movie in known history.

I had a pretty good friend there name Pat and she also had a Boxer dog.  She and I would climb down the rocks from the Club and take our dogs to where there was an old pier.  Then we would throw them off and haul them back in.  I think they enjoyed it, I hope so.

I had another friend, Laurie, who looked like Elizabeth Taylor.  I didn't like her much.

What I remember most about our house was that there was no glass in the windows.  I remember talking to a kid in my class, Mark Hankinson  on the phone for 5 hours.  I'd never done before and never have done it since.  My main crush, though, was Dane Petrie.  He looked just like Paul Petersen on the Donna Reed Show.  His dad worked for Phillips Petroleum.

Our school was a small prefab building, there were several of them.  Each one held 2 grades.  I remember listening to Robert Frost reading a poem for JFK's inauguration during class.  That would have been January 20, 1961.  Our Boxer, Velvet, was always escaping from our yard and he would come find me at school.  The teacher would let him in the classroom and he would lie beside my desk all day.  At the time, I could still speak French, and we were being taught Spanish.  Our teacher couldn't speak English at all and so it was pretty confusing.  Every time I tried to say something in Spanish it evolved into French!

We were sent home about 2 months later, all the families were.  I was sad to go.  It was a beautiful place.  We had camellia hedges and banana trees.  Our yard was like a small jungle and I would sit up in the mango tree and eat them until I was sick.  The taste of a ripe mango still takes me back to 1961 in the hot fragrant jungle.

I can't find any trace or mention of that oil camp.  I'm sure it's long gone.  The Venezuelan government took over all the oil operations.  I wish I had some pictures.  I loved that place.  These look a little like it.