…Mom would always say that the best time of her life was in El Pao with all her children about her….
Moving In:
I can’t be sure but I think we moved to Venezuela in 1953 (I was 6 and my sister was 2). Dad was an IMCOV employee hired as a Mine Foreman and left there in 1961. Our first on Delta DC7 going from New Orleans stopping in Havana, Kingston, Montego Bay and onto Maiquetia (I can’t be sure but I think flight time was 7 hours). From Maiquetia to Ciudad Bolivar on a bumpy DC3 (Plenty of barf bags on board) and by company vehicle to El Pao. Our first night in camp was really something. Red Howler monkeys would growl like lions and all of us were too afraid to sleep. My sister Mary Ellen and I ended up in bed with the folks for a couple of weeks! The camp weather was nice all year round including the rainy season-no HVAC.
Most of my memories were from a kid’s perspective and Venezuela was a great adventure for me but I knew it was very different for an adult. It takes a special person to spend a lifetime in a place where there is considerable isolation in language and culture not to mention the absence of family connections (my Grandmother the daughter of a New York City policeman lived in a mining camps in Chile and Mexico for almost 40 years). Outside, communication was not possible when we lived there, we had a short-wave radio and when atmospherics were right about 7-8PM we would get the news from the US, but not too often. The mail service was always touch and go. The commissary was in the labor camp. I remembered my mother would bake bread twice a week and would have to sift the flour to get the hundreds of black bugs out. We still managed to get some protein from the bread even after the sifting. Sanitary conditions were not optimum there. I remember that the women would travel to the Oil Fields to get frozen vegetables and Ice Cream about 3 times a year. Meat processing was done at labor camp the which took sanitation to a whole new level.
Bo Johnson was an exciting character, a geologist and a Pilot with a lot of flight hours in Venezuela and other parts of South and Central America. He would take off and land on the top bench of the mine until the day he crashed landed. He and Ted Heron salvaged most of the plane and stored the parts in the machine shop with the idea of rebuilding it. I left for school in the states around that time, so I don’t know if that ever happened. If anyone could fix something it would be Ted. Ted and Dad worked together in Inspiration Az-(Anaconda Copper) Ted’s expertise was in mining equipment maintenance.
In 1953-54 El Pao had a serious maintenance problem. Dad convinced management to hire Ted to solve the issue, which he did. When Dad went to Mexico in 1968 there were a similar maintenance issues with the Autlan’s Molango Mines and Ted was back in business. As I recall, Bethlehem Mines had a longwall shipped there from “I think” Mine 131 Boone Division that was giving them fits I don’t know if that problem was ever fixed.
Camp School:
The camp school was a one room structure. There were two teachers, Mrs. Dorsey and Mr. Shipe. Mrs. Dorsey’s husband had died in El Pao, but she continued teaching there. When my mother went to the States to have my brother Tim, I stayed with her, a great lady. I had one year of Mr. and Mrs. Eller. Both were very nice, however I thought Mr. Eller was a little strange wearing sandals in the jungle which was always a topic of conversation with the kids. Mrs. Ivanoksy was my piano teacher. She was a very eccentric but a wonderful French lady whose latest husband Boris Ivanosky was a huge Russian, who drove a very small sports car and always wore his French beret while driving. Both of them were getting up in age and she would sometimes speak to me in French, sometimes in Spanish and rarely in English. She would always have a snack for me after practice to soothe my invariable headaches? Needless to say, I really didn’t progress very far as a musician but loved my teacher.
The Mine:
I spent a lot of time at the mine with my Dad most likely to give my mother a break (I was a handful). The crusher was a constant issue and the greatest bottleneck in the operation, so we spent a lot of time there. There were a couple of nasty crusher accidents one incident involved a third shift worker who had climbed onto the conveyor belt for a nap and didn’t wake up when the crusher started up in the morning. He was dismembered when he reached the head frame, just an awful accident. There was another accident (luckily no one hurt) when a dump truck unloading clay overburden tipped over while unloading and ended up about half way down a very steep and high dump site (a buildup of clay inside the bucket might have caused the accident or maybe operator error). Shortly thereafter one of the trucks was outfitted with a device to scrap clay buildup off the buckets, improving productivity and safety.
I got a chance to operate dozers and went to countless blasts with Sam Wright and my Dad which was really fun. The shovels would be positioned outside the blast zone and we would go inside the shovel bucket for protection. Dad or Sam would keep the pickup running, light the fuse, jump in the pickup, and race down the bench out of the blast zone (which was relatively large). The blasts were really something and everyone was different, a cloud of red dust and large sized debris (mostly 2-4” rock projectiles) flying in all directions. I was almost killed by a dump truck driver, so I was confined to the pickup after that when the mine was operating. IMCOV safety is a little less stringent than Bethlehem Steel’s!
Labor Unions were strong there. I remember one time Dad had a rather nasty disagreement with the union and he was arrested by the Guardia and put in jail. In Venezuela the police were actually not local but a Federal Military force called the Guardia Nacional. I do believe that Dad was taken into custody for his own safety but really not sure of that. I always thought the Guardia was a good organization but who knows nowadays.
Fishing Tales
Full Fine Print Disclosure I hate eating fish- so catch and release was the operative action.
Actually, there was considerable risk in living in a remote mining camp. Dick Guth was my Fishing Buddy and we went fishing at least a couple times a month. He would pick me up at 4:30 and drive down a dirt, sometimes gravel road to Palua (with Conucos on both sides of the road). It was right before daybreak that we would be on the Orinoco. It was beautiful calm water like glass with flocks of parakeets, parrots, and occasional guacamaya overhead. We would go downstream to our favorite fishing bend in the river and during the dry season come ashore. During the rainy season the Orinoco would overflow its banks flooding the surrounding low lands then would recede during the dry season, leaving behind lagoons full of fish (great opportunities for the Caiman and us) We’d head back (Orinoco would begin to get rough at midday) and troll upstream.
We would always get a Payara strike-AKA saber tooth barracuda great game fish average size 30-40lbs with two 2-3” long fangs in its lower jaw and go up to where the Orinoco and Caroni merged (amazing line of clean “Caroni River water and Brown Orinoco Water”) just upstream on the Caroni past Puerto Ordaz and back to Palua and head home.
I didn’t think about it at the time but it would have been a real problem if the outboard 30HP motor would have quit on us when we were downstream from Palua – since the banks of the Orinoco were impenetrable at that time. Amazing rivers full of fish, river dolphins, tarpon, sharks Crocodiles. I’m sure you know that the camp water was pumped up from the Caroni. Pumping station was slightly downstream from the amazing Falls (which was somewhat ruined by the dam). See below:
Dick Guth, Ted Heron, Ted Jr. and I would go spear fishing off the coast. We would travel to Puerto la Cruz take two Zodiac type boats and motor out to an uninhabited island about 1- ½ mile off shore and stay there for 3-4 days. Great adventure for all of us. The water was very clear and relatively calm. We’d catch Longostinos (Spanish for little lobster) and boil them over an open fire. We were all strong swimmers and would sometimes venture out into blue water. On one occasion, I had gone out pretty far and Dick and Ted were yelling and screaming for me to get out of the water. I thought they were yelling because I was out too far. As it turned out they were yelling because there was a large shark close to me which I failed to see.
As you might have already guessed, fishing was really an important part of my life since organized sports of any kind was not an option for me. It didn’t stop when I was not in Venezuela. My Uncle Bob Broadley (a great angler) taught me a great deal about fishing during summer trips to Pensacola Florida. We would go out early mornings stop off at B&B Donut shop around 5:30 and off to the Pensacola Beach Pier on Santa Rosa Island and fish for Kings and Lings (Cobia). If the fish weren’t biting there, we would go to the pier at Fort Pickens and fish for Spanish (Spanish Maceral).
No one would believe the number of 8–12-foot hammer head sharks that used to circle the Pensacola Beach Pier. In those days the beach was packed with swimmers! Uncle Johnny McCluskey was another angler that I loved dearly. He was a great man of character, that I was fortunate to be a part of my life. He took an interest in my life and was always my buddy. He was a boxing fan and we would watch the Gillette Saturday fights together along with his son Mathew McCluskey. Just great memories. Johnny would fish for Mullet with a net since that was the only way to fish for Mullet.
Also, it’s important to understand that, although it was fun to fish, the relationships with my fellow anglers’ memories of them were and still remain the most important for me.
Many of us mining camp brats can appreciate how much our mothers sacrifice for their families. They are the true heroes of the mining camp life. Without them we would have not survived it.
My mother a Pensacola, Florida gal, met my Dad on a blind date in 1943. Dad was in flight training in the Naval Air Station there and after a six-month courtship they were married in Jacksonville, Florida.
Pensacola was always home base for us. Even today we always manage to return often to visit my brother and parents’ gravesite there.
Mom would always say that the best time of her life was in El Pao with all her children about her.
To be continued….