Roney Plaza Hotel, Panama, Peru and polo – 1947
It was the summer of 1947 and plane reservations were still hard to get after the end of WWII, but somehow my mother and I made our way onto a flight to Miami as the first leg of out trip to Peru. My stepfather, Frank, had been brought in to be the president of Cerro De Pasco Mining whose principal operations were there. I remember him as a powerful person. He had his nose broken wrestling in college. A rugged, stock six-footer, he had a heavy beard which left a slate grey stain after shaving which he covered with 4711 after shave lotion. He was demanding; had to have special cigars, a particular blend of coffee and his old fashions made in an exact proportion. He had been at Yale, Skull and Bones, rowed at Oxford, been president of Lockheed Aviation, sat on many boards so was a man of power. He wanted me to do chin-ups. He had traveled to Peru often and we were now to join him for the summer. What I didn’t know until much later was that he was having an affair with the woman who was acting as his hostess while he was there. My mother was on her way to confront him on the situation. To me at sixteen, naively, this was only an adventure in travel with the possibilities of seeing amazing new things. I was kept shielded from the big events.
We were delayed in Miami, waiting for connections so checked into the Roney Plaza Hotel. I could tell my mother didn’t like the place, but it was what was available. There were white marble walls and gold leaf decorations with vacationers collapsed in lounge chairs around the pool. The middle class milieu was not her arena. To me it was a place to swim, sun and a beach nearby in a social climate that offered no challenges.
Two days later we flew on to Panama to another delay and another hotel. The climate was hot and humid, the rooms not airconditioned, but there were three screen doors in each of the rooms to a porch that circled the building. Under the ceiling on the outside walls of the rooms were a row of large windows that could be opened for circulation. When I traveled with my mother I noted she was concerned about people coming and taking things. She was very careful to lock and to be sure her jewelry was safe. She had a three inch square gold broach with an inch square aquamarine with four red rubies that Frank had had made at Van Cleef and Arpels. I had nicknamed it “Dumbo” for a vague resemblance to the Disney elephant. He also gave her earings each with a large blue stone surrounded by eight diamonds that I called the “Blue Fairies”. So this room was a challenge to her. I was oblivious to her stress level and her concern and enjoyed the tour of the Canal and swimming in a nearby pool.
In a few days we were off again, this time landing in Bogotá, Columbia late at night in a driving rainstorm. There was no radar, no real guidance systems at those times. The pilots had to feel their way down through the clouds onto the rolled dirt landing strip framed with rows of lights. I remember the bumpy descent, the rain pouring past the window and the lights glistening out of the fog. With relief we found a taxi, a rather basic hotel and slept immediately.
The next day we flew to Lima, Peru. The city is often covered in a low cloud layer so the pilots turn the planes out to sea then drop under the clouds, skimming the water, racing toward the coast, then lift up over the shore cliffs and drop instantly onto the air strip. Just a week before there had been a crash when a plane missed the airfield. It had been a difficult trip for my mother I am sure, but I seemed to be insulated against fear in these situations. Powerless to make a difference I tended to give into the probabilities and expect to be taken care of by some controlling force.
The next evening we attended a party. My mother and I arrived around six, as invited, to find seven elderly women waiting to play bridge. She sat down and picked up her cards and I was left to wander. In true Spanish tradition the guests were to arrive around nine for a late dinner. I did not speak a word of Spanish so was nervous that someone would find me and ask me to explain myself, but the rooms were empty. The walls were lined with elegant paintings and the furniture pieces were all antiques. I stuck my hands in my pockets and stared at the walls trying to look involved. It was clear that I was not to return to the bridge room so I continued to roam until I found the servants setting up the buffet. I watched them, sampling dishes to stave off my hunger. Some were incredibly spicy to my great surprise. By the time the other guests arrived I was bored to death and stuffed from nibbling. My stepfather arrived late and swept in surrounded by his office group. I was never close to him, felt daunted by his ego and he had large expectations of me which were a pressure.
I was told that I would be taking a polo lesson, which came as a bit of a surprise, but I always loved to ride. My mother had ridden to hunt and my great uncle had been a great polo player. I was taken to the stables and left for the lesson. Given a horse, a mallet, a ball I was shown the polo field and told to practice. With no instructor I spent an hour and a half trying strokes, returning with a fully cracked ball but no damage to the horse. I felt a link to the portrait of my great uncle who had been a 10 goal player and whose portrait hung over my bed. I loved trying out something new, the horse was very responsive and together we had worked well and had some great moments.
Back at the hotel I was told my mother had been taken to the hospital with stomach problems and a bad rash, probably a result of the stress of the flight and her marriage situation. There was a note on how to order a “Tea Completo” which I did. It came as tea and cookies, which became was my lunch. I spent a quiet afternoon standing on a chair and practicing polo strokes with my mallet while wondering how my mother was doing and what would happen next. She was still not back the next day so I was in for another polo lesson and another “Tea Completo”. Unfortunately the nice horse I had had the day before had had an accident and they had had to put her down by slitting her throat. I found the blood still in the trough on the stable floor. The impact of that and the last few days left me depressed and the zest was gone out of finding new polo skills.
But in another day my mother returned a little pale, but composed and we left Lima immediately to tour the Cerro mines. We were in a convertible as we started to climb up into the mountains, the dirt road twisting tightly through switchbacks and once even making a figure eight. Our destination was Oroyo, but we stopped along the way to tour a mine. Seeing snow beside the road as it was winter in this hemisphere but summer in New York I leapt from the car to get some. By the time I got to the front fender I was out of breath. We had climbed to 13,000 feet in a few hours and I had just learned about the thiness of the air.
As special guests we were outfitted with hard hats, lights and coveralls before stepping into the rail cars that took us into the mine and to the elevator shafts. Huddled together in the elevator we rattled down some 3,000 feet in the mine and rode in ore cars through tunnels where steam hissed from the walls. We came to a huge generator room then on to smaller tunnels where miners were working with picks and shovels. It was exciting, dramatic, amazing. It was hard to believe that the miners came here day after day to work in the dark and the heat and the danger of these conditions.
Back on the surface we drove on to Oroya, a small town with its huge smelter where all the ores were processed into iron, copper, lead, silver and gold. At 12,000 feet’ it is above the tree line and whatever vegetation there is is further stunted by the fumes from the factory. It is a landscape of rugged hills, dirt and rocks.
Walking the plant at night there was the roar of the furnaces, the noise of the cranes and the movement of the ore cars. The orange color of the furnace flames and the glow of pouring molten metal cast deep shadows across the floor. In one room we came to big circular pools of shiny, silvery, molten lead seven feet across. Men had the job of raking the impurities off the top. At that time I knew nothing about lead poisoning so did not even think of what this was doing to their bodies. One of the workers had tripped and fallen into one of the pools the week before. We visited him in the hospital, passing like dignitaries reviewing, discussing the case with the English-speaking doctor, marveling at how the man had not lost a single member. He made no movement as we passed, only his eyes followed through the bandages.
We took a couple of days to acclimatize and avoid the altitude sickness (soroche). There was a nine-hole golf course which was one continuous sand trap with oiled sand for “greens”. It was one of the most unusual rounds I have ever played. My mother seemed settled and we were away from the mistress’s territory. Our next step was to visit other sites. When we went short distances we went by “autocarile” which was a Bentley equipped with railroad wheels so it could run on the company railroad lines. The steering wheel was turned to the right to tighten the brakes and there was a siren to chase the llamas off the tracks. This was all high adventure to me with new images every day.
When we went to Golliariskisga (spelling in doubt) it was a longer trip so we had a private Pullman car added to the trains just for us. It was fully equipped with berths and a dining area for overnight stays. We stopped at the mine entrance at 16,000 feet. We dropped into the mine to follow the shaft down and through the mountain coming out the other side to find a greenhouse developed flower garden. We had rattled through the dark tunnels with our headlamps on then to burst into this radiant array of flowers. It was like leaping back into life.
One day we rode horses for four hours on a high plain to an isolated lake to have the cowboys plunge in to the cool water, forming a human weir trapping magnificent, large trout that they caught in their bare hands and offered to us for dinner. My mother rode strongly with experience from keeping up with her father who used to take large fences when riding to hunt. Frank rode adequately. I was given a Maclellan saddle, an old army saddle with hole down the middle for the horse’s backbone. It fit me badly making for a most painful day.
We returned to Lima for a short stay, then on to Miami with uneventful flights. There had been hoof and mouth disease in the Peruvian cattle that summer so they had not let us drink the milk. Landing in Miami I lunged to the restaurant and inhaled a quart of milk. Within an hour we boarded a Lockheed Constellation for our return to New York. , Designed in under Frank’s reign as president of the company, it was a four-engine propeller driven plane not equipped with oxygen so we couldn’t fly over storms. We churned through several on the way and with all that milk rolling in my belly it made for a very uncomfortable trip.
I went to my father’s then back to school. My mother went to a dude ranch in Nevada and a year later was divorced. I never was told what happened, but as Frank’s mistress’s daughter was also at my prep school I learned from her they did stay together. He and I crossed paths briefly years later when I worked in the same building and we met in the elevator. It was a very polite encounter. He invited me in to his office and gave me a tour of his boardroom demonstrating how the view screens went up and down electrically. It was all very impersonal and positive; each working on good behavior. I heard he eventually he died of cirrhosis of the liver. I ended feeling sorry for him.
It was an amazing summer with fantastic adventures. Glad I got to do it.
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