Panama

I feel the warm rain as it pours down from the heavens above, as the black clouds build in the afternoon and then spread themselves heavily over the isthmus.  My isthmus.  Days spent in the safe-as-a-convent streets and casetas of Fort Clayton.  Floating paper boats down the rushing gutters to the grates that take it all away.  It rained daily for weeks at a time in the summer and just slacked off a bit the rest of the time.  The water so warm, stained deep red by the clay that was the soil of the jungle in front of our house.  We played in the thick, slimy mud and slid down the many hillside ravines created by our butts.  We picked fruit, mostly ripe mangoes which served us well as lunch.  Lemons and limes for lemonade and limeade were as available as water.  Bougainvillea's and tall magnolia trees bloomed everywhere and the place smelled of lilacs and red earthy mud.  The jungle was just that, a jumble of huge leaves and a multitude of tropical trees and vines that seemed most impenetrable, especially for small kids.  It  was, for us, another world full of unknown dangers and dripping water from the canopy above. It was "off limits" by all measure but was the boundary of our smallish world.

David Woods was my best friend as we grew older and a pretty girl who lived two houses down named Margaret joined in our reveries as well.  I found myself infatuated with her at the ripe old age of six and she was equally fond of me as well. Margaret made a lemonade stand which she set up on the entrance to the housing area and made a decent amount of coin from the comings and goings of the residents.  It was very warm in Panama and her icy lemonade was cold and delicious and, best of all, free to us boys.  David and I were dear buddies, played ball together and whatever adventure and mis-adventure was at hand we both shared in.  My father made toys that we all enjoyed, he even made an 1/8th sized wood jeep that matched the one that sat in our driveway.  It had the guts of a pedal-car and we would take turns chasing iguanas up and down the street in the little jeep.  The iguanas grew to four feet in length and those monsters were very challenging to capture without getting bitten so we mostly chased smaller ones and limited the keeping to one or two around the house.  My mother loved them when they would lounge in the sun on our veranda flicking their tongues to catch the errant flies and bugs that were so common.  There were many, many lizards and birds that frequented the lawns and trees that surrounded the house.  Multi colored parrots called from the jungle and monkeys screamed insults to one another as they ran from tree to tree or past our government homes.  We had all the free pets we ever wanted.

A Story, Not So Short

This is going to be a multiple page remembrance sort of thing.  Not a diary and not, certainly a biography, it being written by myself to you the world wide reading audience and you'll be visited with the usual array of bad language, angst, piss-off ed ness and whatever.  I'm going to try to keep it all facts and dated as well as I can recall but the early parts are going to be an admix of my own feelings and such and what I was told by others.  Broad strokes will be taken along with trivial bullshit that probably means nothing to anyone except myself.  I beg you forbearance if I pain you in anyway or say inappropriate things that create a sense of hurt. 

Life began at Mercy Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana.  I've been there since and wrote to them upon occasion regarding my birth certificate, needing it for one thing or the other.  They answered with explanations so I suspect that Mercy was indeed the place of my birth on August 17th, 1943, a summer's day.  My mother's name was Anne Lute and her maiden name was Anne Teriaca.  My father was Nelson Lute a Corporal in the US Army at the time and had been in the service some 8 years when I was born.  He was 23 at the time and had been implored the way the military implores you to ship out, family in tow, to Ft. Clayton, Canal Zone, Panama.  I, of course, had no say in this travel whatsoever and as I awakened from my very early childhood I found myself amidst a rainy, humid, tropical place and grew adapted to it over the years. 

                                                         Mercy Hospital, New Orleans

 

We had a maid named Louise, a black creole she was, a native Panamanian and my personal "wet" nurse as well as being our household's keeper and cook.  She slept overnight on the screened veranda overlooking the parade ground.  She woke early, fixed us breakfast and departed to shop for lunch and dinner.  She was warm, kind and spoke with a lilting voice that sounded like music to me.  I loved her.  She didn't live with us but lived a bus ride away in Panama City on the Pacific coast.  She stayed the week and went home to her own family on the weekends.  Sometimes she took me with her.   I would play in the streets of Panama with her children and her neighbor children as carefree as we could be while the war in the Pacific held it's own threats against us all.  My days on Ft. Clayton were spent playing with neighboring GI children while my father had left us for his own very private war against the Japanese in the Pacific.  In later years when asked he would not discuss it, it broke his heart it seemed and he lost a brother fighting in Corregidor in the Philippines.