I barely remember him and, unfortunately, my mother’s memory of him is not better. But he should be remembered, even if only briefly.
He was the camp carpenter — both the Administrative (“American”) and the Labor (“Otro”) camps.
And he did fine work with wood.
My early childhood years are roughly divided by la casa vieja and la casa nueva: “the old house” and “the new house”, meaning the house I lived in the first 6 plus years of life, and the house we moved to in 1960, after the birth of my second sister.
Mr. Montaño visited us in both houses, although I do not have specific recollections or anecdotes from “the old house” other than I remember seeing him there. And I do remember a bookcase that he built and which my sister bravely attempted to climb only to have the case fall on her. She was terribly frightened, but otherwise fine. At the time there were only a few books stored there, along with some photos and decorations.
In “the new house” my memories are a tad sharper.
“Remember to touch the electric appliance with the back of the hand, like so. Should you get shocked, you’ll easily move the hand away instead of inadvertently grasping the machine and prolonging the shock.” I’ve never forgotten that advice which he gave my mother as she asked whether he could take a look at the washing machine because for some reason everyone who touched it got shocked. I just watched and did not wonder about a carpenter being asked about electric matters.
Back then folks knew much about their field and quite a bit about just about everything else that helped with our daily lives.
“Here’s the queso de mano, Sra. Adita.” He lived on the carretera de Caruachi (the road to Caruachi) and somewhere in his neck of the woods was a lady who made the best queso de mano cheese I ever tasted. I know, childhood memories are notoriously deceiving, but let me enjoy the memory! It was great. And I’ve never tasted the like since.
My parents commissioned him to build a vinyl record storage piece of furniture. I remember the day he delivered it but did not appreciate the work done until many years later. We used it not only in El Pao, but also in Georgia where my parents had it shipped after leaving Venezuela. It is still in my mother’s house outside Atlanta, and I admire it every time I visit.
He was gentlemanly and proper and methodical. His Spanish was that of an educated man. I enjoyed his company.
I do not recall the circumstances of Mr. Montaño’s death. Only that it was a shock to us all, even small children. He was beloved.
May he rest in peace.
The vinyl storage furniture is seen in the background, behind my sisters, Brenda (left) and Elaine (right). The lamp was fashioned and preserved from a branch my father picked up from a shore of the Orinoco River. The vinyl storage is on the right. In the foreground are the Correa children, childhood friends from Fairburn, Georgia, circa 1979. In background, my sister, Elaine is seated on the left, my brother, Ronald, is in the center, and my sister, Brenda, on the right. Queso de mano (“Cheese of the Hand”) My father, Charles M. Barnes, not far from Caruachi, circa 1952.
Rainy days in the mining camp are cherished memories and I suspect they are so for many of my contemporaries. Put another way, rainy days did not get me down. (Although, every once in a while, Mondays did.)
Of course, the rains I witnessed in Hurricanes Donna, Cleo, Maria, and others were extraordinary and Texas rains that come with some spring seasons are dangerously intense. Nevertheless, the curtains of water that fell during every rainy season in El Pao made a lifelong impression on the memory banks of my childhood (Memory).
The rainy season ran roughly from May through November, with crashing rains especially concentrated in June, July, and August, which overwhelmed more than half the days of the month. I’ve been told that El Pao’s rainy season more or less paralleled that of South Vietnam’s monsoon season. If so, that explains how landscape photos or films of that part of Venezuela can be easily confused with similar scenes of Southeast Asia.
For example, after watching The Ugly American, my father’s first comment was how much the landscape in the movie looked like our area of Venezuela. Of course, this was a Hollywood film; however, Thailand landscape around Bangkok provided the background sceneries and some scenes were actually shot there, because they very much looked like South Vietnam.
A former colleague had served in the Vietnam War and when he visited our property in Puerto Rico, which looks like the regions around El Pao, he walked to the edge of our ridge and stood silently for several minutes. Later, as we drove back to town, he merely said, “This looks like South Vietnam.”
This might explain why I became so attracted to Singapore whenever I visited on business less than a decade ago. Unlike southern Vietnam and El Pao, Singapore has two monsoon seasons. One of them runs from June to September, which is roughly parallel to El Pao’s. The rains, her lush, abundant jungle foliage, the green which predominates, and the tropical climate surely were major factors for my remembering my visits there with fondness.
Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Puerto Rico, El Pao. In my child’s memory, I do not think of war and devastation. Just rains and green and beauty.
Monsoon rain in Singapore Monsoon rain in Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon) Rainy season in Venezuela Scene from The Ugly American Approaching rains in Puerto Rico
In response to my prior post (Leaving Venezuela — 1966) my friend, Mike Ashe, emailed me his own take about the same subject, as he also left at an early age.
I appreciated his recollections and thoughts and asked his permission to post, which he generously granted.
Hi Richard
I guess if we kids stayed in El Pao long enough, we ended up going solo to schooling elsewhere.
My dad left by train at age 14 traveling from Chuqicamata, Chile, to a high school in Buenos Aires. The Chilean Rail Line ran from Arica to La Paz. I don’t think that the train stopped in Chuqui; they had to flag the train down to board.
He would travel by train to Santiago and by taxi to Cordoba and take a train to Buenos Aires.
My grandpa worked for Anaconda Copper and spent 40 years in mining camps in Chile and Mexico.
In my case I shipped out at age 12 and spent two years at Admiral Farragut Academy. I did go back home to El Pao one summer. Holidays were spent in the school dorm or visiting friends
In those days there was no communication except by mail which most of the time was late or lost in transit.
A lot of my classmates were from South America so I had plenty of company that could relate. Also, I must say that my El Pao education served me well in transitioning into a different educational system. Admiral Farragut was a top-notch military school with high academics and an over-the-top discipline standard.
Seventy five percent of the graduates received appointments to the US Naval Academy, Annapolis Md. The most notable Farragut graduates are Astronauts Charles Duke and the first US Astronaut in space, Alan Shepard.
Actually, getting out of El Pao was a good thing since boarding school provided me with an opportunity to socialize with many boys from different backgrounds around my age. Cubans (great athletes), Colombians, a few Brazilians, and mostly US students.
The transition from being the oldest two or three boys in a mining camp to a school with hundreds of students mostly older and a lot more worldly, was bracing.
I was fortunate to have Chuck Gould as my roommate for two years (Chuck later played football at Michigan State). Chuck actually became my best friend, and nobody messed with Chuck. Or his friend! At age 13 he weighed over 200lbs and could outrun anyone in the Junior or Senior school including some exceptionally fast Cubans.
I did miss my family and El Pao but can honestly say that life was a great adventure for me in Florida. I was able to play sports for the first time. It was a great awakening for me. So grateful to have been provided that opportunity.
Also, both of my brothers spent their high school years in boarding schools Linsly Military School in Wheeling, WV. They also felt that going solo provided them with some great opportunities that they would not have had if they had remained in Mexico.
Really enjoy Pull of the Land
Take care
Mike
Panoramic View of Chuquicamata at 9,850 ft above sea level in the Atacama Desert (driest desert on earth). Mining of gold and copper started in 1882. My grandfather (Mike Ashe), an electrician on the New York subway system, accepted a job there in 1923 as an electrician working in the power plant. My dad was born in Harlem, New York his sister and brother were both born in Chuqui. In 1943 my grandfather accepted a transfer to another mining camp in Cananea, Mexico, also located in the Sonora Desert. The Cananea mine is the second deepest open pit mine in the world at 2,790 ft. The Bingham Mine in Salt Lake City is the deepest; both are copper mines. When I was working, I would fly into Salt Lake and never got tired of seeing Bingham from the air.
Researching and writing about the Bogotazo — whose repercussions are with us still — elicited a few childhood memories which, for what it’s worth, I’ll document here.
I left Venezuela in 1966, fully intending to return to live there one day. See Playa Hicacos, 1966 for my personal recollections of that year in my childhood, which was yet another tumultuous year in Latin America.
My intentions never materialized because, as the Spanish aphorism puts it, “El hombre propone y Dios dispone” (“Man proposes and God disposes”), loosely based on Proverbs 16:9, but quoted in classic Spanish literature such as Don Quijote. So, although I was able to visit a number of times, especially summers during student years, I never returned to live there again.
Nevertheless, as Whittaker Chambers put it in his magisterial Witness, “No land has a pull on a man as the land of his childhood.” And that pull is still with me.
In that era, “globalism” was an unheard-of term. Large companies, such as Bethlehem Steel and United States Steel, were known as “American” companies, whereas today such seek to be known as “global” companies, with minimum, if any, loyalties to the United States, regardless of their founding or corporate headquarters.
American families were stationed in myriad and distant spots across the continents and the early schooling of their children was addressed by establishing schools modeled after those of the origin state of the company. So, for instance, the Bethlehem Steel school in El Pao was generally modeled after the norms of state schools in Pennsylvania. So, as an example, when those schools required standard tests for the elementary schools across the state, those very tests were also administered to us.
As far as I know those who attended the school in El Pao did well once they transferred to the United States.
And they usually transferred at an early age. I was 12 years old when it was my turn to transfer, and I was not an exception.
We travelled to Miami for annual leave, but my stomach churned a bit that year because I knew that at the end of that vacation, I would not be returning with my family to Venezuela. We nevertheless enjoyed our visit with family in Florida and the Northeast. I was happy to see the Langlois Motel in Miami again. Our family had been staying there for years and it was a favorite of the cousins and us.
What I most remember, though, was the farewell at the Miami International Airport. Back then we had no obstacles to staying with travelers in the Pan American Airways waiting lounge and then at the gate.
My father and mother said their farewells to my aunt and cousins, as did my sisters. Then they each embraced me and expressed their hope to see me again at Christmastime. I bravely succeeded in holding my tears and keeping my voice from cracking as I hugged back.
Then we waved good-bye as they left the terminal and disappeared into the plane.
My aunt and cousins and I walked back to the parking lot, exchanging few words, but I could tell they were a bit anxious about me. I just wanted to get back home and find a spot where I could be alone.
But my aunt had other plans. She drove us to Miami Beach. I asked why are we going there, especially at this hour? “Oh, just for a ride.” Then I understood she was doing her best to distract me. I was not a happy camper for that, but I kept it to myself. The radio played that week’s top song, “Cherish”, performed by The Association. It seemed a bit too treacly, even for a 12-year-old, but what did I know. It became one of the very top songs of that year.
Then “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles came across the airwaves. That song, about loneliness, was more in tune with my sense at the moment. As the only surviving relative of Eleanor Rigby put it in an interview in 2008, “A lot of time has gone by, and Eleanor’s side of the family has run out. They were ordinary, hardworking folk, the Rigbys — joiners, bricklayers, farmers, and the like — not the kind of people you expect to go down in history. And now there’s nobody left.”
That about encapsulates my anomie back then.
Days later one of my cousins told me they were very surprised I had not broken down. I assured her that I had indeed broken down — inside.
Months later I learned that on the plane, a gentleman who sat across the aisle from my father had leaned over and told him about having been left in the United States years before in circumstances very similar to ours. Only in his case, the parents were headed back to Germany. He had noticed our farewells and wanted to assure my parents that all would be well. But he did not sugar coat it: he said that, even after so many years, he still gently grieved whenever he thought of that day.
The reader should keep in mind that in 1966 communication with El Pao was via short-wave radio. Or mails. It was like going to the other side of the earth.
Psychedelic drugs and English fashion — Carnaby Street, Twiggy, Alfie — were “in” and for young folks it was difficult to tell the difference between genuineness and just plain marketing and promotion. Regardless, it seemed the world was going upside down and that the self-centeredness of Alfie generally reflected western mores at the time.
As the American and British scenes seemed to careen off course, South America was wracked by coups and a violent Cordobazo in Argentina, further Communist infiltration into the highest echelons of the military in Venezuela, and, by 1966, La Violencia had caused the abandonment of over 40% of the arable land in Colombia.
So, as we asked, “What’s it all about?” the seeds of upheaval continued to be sown in abundance in Latin America. And the harvest in Venezuela became most apparent in the 90s and to the present day.
Langlois Motel, circa 1960 Pan American ticket counter, Miami International Airport, circa 1960 Number 2 song of 1966 Twiggy, 1966 Revolver, The Beatles, 1966 Carnaby Street, London, 1966 Michael Caine in Alfie, 1966. The song was composed separately as a promotion song and became a surprise hit.“Eleanor Rigby died in the same house where she had been born, was interred in the graveyard of St Peter’s Church, and had her name added prominently on an increasingly crowded headstone.” — The Daily Mail. She had married 9 years earlier and then discovered she could not bear children. She died of a massive brain hemorrhage a month after the outbreak of World War II. She was much loved by her family.
This being Easter Week, I thought it good to re-publish the post below, “Something Lost”, especially considering the comments by the old schoolteacher towards the end of the post.
I do not doubt that he was right: “I feel there was something lost, truly I do.”
Since I also remember the days he refers to — when the Bible was read and prayer made in class — that marks me as a Troglodyte. Maybe so, but my sense is similar: there was something lost.
I wish you all a good Easter Week.
Something Lost
A few years ago, I visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on a personal matter, after an absence of close to four decades.
To drive and walk around was to invite affecting memories, not only of Bethlehem, but of family, of childhood friends, of the steel company, of Venezuela, of what could have been. I was offered the opportunity to visit my uncle’s old former apartment site on Market Street, from which the Bethlehem Steel stacks are clearly, and augustly, visible decades after her bankruptcy in 2001 and dissolution in 2003.
While in town, I came across the transcript of an interview of the late Earl J. Bauman, a teacher in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania high schools for 30 years, who also worked for several years at Bethlehem Steel during World War II, and who otherwise led an eventful life.
Our teachers in El Pao were recruited in Bethlehem, although not all were from there. For instance, one of my teachers, Mrs. Miller, was from New Mexico and boy did she resent Florida being named “The Sunshine State”! She firmly believed, and could “prove”, that New Mexico was the true Sunshine State.
Mr. Bauman’s comments seem to be coming from my own Bethlehem Steel teachers in El Pao, Venezuela.
I believe the reader will appreciate the commentary by Mr. Bauman (1910-January 12, 2000), born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was the son of George and Matilda Bauman née Shearer. He was married to Grace E. Bauman, née Shoenberger.
Mr. Bauman taught history, government, and economics. A full transcript is linked below for those readers who would appreciate reading more of what he had to say.
Excerpts:
Well, I was born here in Fountain Hill [now a suburb of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] in 1910. We’ve been residing here ever since that time.
I attended the Fountain Hill School, and then went to Liberty High and then I quit. I was making more money than my dad was playing with a dance orchestra. We used to make as much one night as he made in a week just playing with the big bands. And then one thing led to another, and the Depression hit. And finally, there was no music market. I went to South America in one summer playing with a band, and come back, and then it was difficult to find any kind of work, because the Depression hit. It hit pretty hard. And then I had an opportunity to go back to school, then I went to Moravian Prep. And I finished up my high school work there.
Then I went to Moravian College and earned my Bachelor’s. And then, of course, it was still difficult to get work. I worked at the steel company as a clerk in the beam yard offices, and on their police force during the early period of the World War II. And then finally a teaching job.
….
And then I taught until I guess it was about the late Forties [1948] when I decided to go back to Lehigh for my Master’s degree in history, and I finished that, I believe it was 1954, somewhere around in there. Men like Dr. Harmon was the head of the history department, Dr. Gipson, Dr. Brown, and I don’t think any of them are there anymore. Some may have died, passed on, retired. And then I kept on teaching.
….
Teaching wasn’t quite the pleasure it used to be. Yeah, that changed quite considerably.
….
That’s the flu epidemic you’re talking about, yes. I remember because, and I can even take you where the hospitals were and they died like flies [emphasis mine, RMB]. It would have been right across the street from where I did my undergraduate practice teaching where this junior high school is now, right across the street in that area there, they had built these temporary wards. The hospital up here couldn’t handle it. It was too small. I remember that, yes. I remember a lot of— You’ll see in the pictures, see at that time I would have been nine years old, and I did get around and my parents talked, but that wasn’t the only thing, we had a lot of things like there was scarlet fever, and diphtheria, and polio. So many of my classmates were afflicted….
…. You had to put on your porch, your house would be quarantined, that’s the word, diphtheria here and scarlet fever there, and measles here, measles there, and today it’s wonderful how all these youngsters have been protected against these physical ailments, which make them more competitive in their life today.
[Note: the sick were quarantined. The rest went on with their work and lives. For discussions on quarantine and the current approach in most states and countries, see here, here, here, here, and here. Mr. Bauman’s allusion to the “flu epidemic” where “they died like flies” is a reference to the Spanish Flu, or The Great Influenza. See here for more.]
[Was crime a big problem?] No. No. You had nothing like—I can remember, we used to— I don’t think any of the neighbors really did much in the way of locking doors, no such thing. (chuckles) As a matter of fact, maybe this is something we should have kept in Fountain Hill here. In those days when I was a youngster, we had a curfew. When that whistle blew, you got off the street, you better not be out on the street unless you were with a parent.
….
So they said to me, ‘Well, would you do it?’ I said, ‘You’re asking me?’ I said, ‘I know that you squeeze a trigger somewhere and the projectile comes out the front, that’s all I know.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I can do much for them.’ Somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you try it?’ One person suggested that I call the Marine barracks and get help. So I did, and you’d be surprised how much fun I had over the years teaching safety and all this and that and I can’t hit the broadside part of a barn, and I coached for 15 years and one of my teams went to the state finals, so we won (inaudible) of the division title after I got to Liberty where we got a large student body. Two southern divisions and we had a District 11 and a Northeastern regional championship and we went to the state finals. Now my youngster has, he picked it up, but we wouldn’t let him have any rifles here at home until he became, I thought qualified. I hate to put material like that in the hands of kids. Now of course, he’s a specialist. He loads his own ammunition. He has guns and pistols. He’s in a pistol league and he can shoot. He stands 75 feet away and he’ll knock your ears off. He has terrific scores, close to 300, shooting at 75 feet with high-caliber pistol. He (inaudible) shoots better than a lot of the policemen. He says, one of the faults of the policeman, he said the policeman doesn’t know his tool that well. He said they misuse it.
….
Well, I remember, you wouldn’t remember this, but I remember when the Lord’s Prayer was banned from school and that was like—I don’t know, I can’t see it because of that, but I think the morale tone of the school began to decline. The mode of dress became careless. The mode of conduct became care— Not by all the students. Some students still come from a home that’s still a home and that insists on certain moral standards.
And I guess a lot of it came from the aftermath of the wars and there would be a lot of things that influenced it, but I think the dropping of that in school was one thing that wasn’t good, because I remember we always had—I used to have my youngsters, and I never had one refuse, and I had Catholics, Protestants, Jewish students in my class, and I always used to read our schedule. And I think once a week we got a guidance period and I used to plan, I felt the kids should take part in opening exercises. It exposes them a little bit into leadership. I used to have them all read passages, and I didn’t insist that anybody read any specific passage, but they were allowed to read from the Old Testament, the New Testament, whatever they would like to read, and then they would lead the Lord’s Prayer, and then we’d have the salute to the flag. It was sort of starting the day off in a sort of moral tone in a way.
Then from then on, things would go from one thing to the other. But I missed that, and I thought it was something that was lost through it. I can’t prove it. I’m not sure. Maybe it were the other factors that made this moral tone of dress and carelessness go down, because as soon as kids start coming in my classes with jeans on and patched—And it wasn’t that they came from poor parents because they had money, because the kid had more money in his pocket as spending money than his new pair of pants and shirt would cost, and they had weeds galore in them. If they weren’t smoking Chesterfields20, it was something else. They were loaded with money. And that may have had something to do with it, the income of the families.
So, I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of factors and the fact that we dropped the reading of the Bible and the Lord’s Prayer and all that sort of thing sort of took something out of the classroom. I don’t know. I felt something was lost.
After it was gone, well, then what could you do? I mean, the law said you didn’t dare do it, so you didn’t do it. You still had the salute to the flag, and then oh, in the beginning I didn’t stop altogether, but I didn’t break the law. I asked them to have a moment of silence, soft prayer to themselves. I don’t recall ever anybody objecting to that, and then we turn around then and had the salute to the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance and that sort of thing.
But I feel there was something lost, truly I do.
….
For those interested in reading further, the full transcript is linked below.
Bethlehem Steel main plant, Bethlehem Pennsylvania The stacks as seen from Fountain Hill borough. Mrs. Miller never forgave Florida for “stealing” New Mexico’s logo. Above is a 1932 license tag proving her case. The logo was first used by New Mexico in the 1880’s. Florida was known as “The Citrus State”. But they cleverly adopted their current logo by formal resolution, something New Mexico had failed to do. And the rest is history.
