EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION It is funny the things you remember when, as I do, work into the wee hours of the morning. I remember as a child, my maternal grandfather C.A. COLEMAN —leaving home around 6:00 am in the morning for work—combing his hair in the mirror, tying his tie and taking off for work. At 3:00 pm, like clockwork he would be on the RADIO STATION –RADIO ATLANTICO, his sign on was “you are listening to RADIO ATLANTICO, station HOL and HOLA, in the CITY OF COLON, IN REPUBLIC OF PANAMA, THE CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD. That is the title of the book I am writing—CROSSROADS. He would sign off, come home, and work on BILLS OF LADEN for ships passing through the CANAL. We would go to bed and he would be working that UNDERWOOD TYPEWRITER, we would wake in the morning, and he would be standing in front of the mirror, combing his hair, fixing the tie, and heading out the door. Here I am doing the same thing. Writing into the wee hours. Sipping on grapefruit juice, or my mixture of KALE, SPINACH, BANANA and ORANGE JUICE all blended together, or instead of NESCAFE or OVALTINE—for me it’s PEETS COFFFEE. The lessons that I learned from my paternal grandfather ARNOLD FOSTER—a contract worker from BARDADOS about the CANAL CONSTRUCTION ERA trumps the foolishness that I have read in books and seen in documentaries that are pure fantasy and bullshit. As a child, every chance I had to pick his brain about the experiences that he lived was an education. From the building of the third GAMBOA BRIDGE, the sewer lines in COLON, the BLACK SWAMP just outside GATUN, what THE CITY OF COLON was like circa 1905, the FLOODS cause by the CHAGRES RIVER before the GATUN DAM and the SPILLWAY construction, the danger of NEW PROVIDENCE, the Hanging of prisoners at CULEBRA, and the explanation of why the CANAL was a dangerous place to swim. The suction created by the GATUN LOCKS pulling water from GAMBOA to GATUN to fill the locks, often times the water would be moving at 30 + miles per hour, that was no place to be somebody. I never understood as a kid why men like Mr. Scott would come to our house and sit down with me and let me the history of the CONSTRUCTION ERA. Mr. Scott would take me for walks and tell me things about that era which I, as a child found fascinating. Mr. Simpson, a blind man, would often come for dinner and tell us history that was captivating. But, more significant, my mother would have me walk him to the railroad station to take the 10:00 pm train to FRIJOLES, where he would walk from that station to his shack in the bush. I use to feel guilty that I could not go with him to make sure he got home safely—but, sure enough, he would be back the next day. I guess even though he was blind, he saw better than most people who were sighted.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 08:39:08 +0000
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