ON TRACK AND OFF I GO

Fanny on the day of her graduation in January 1968


As we started to dance an old romantic bolero and I tried closing in, as this slow music was usually danced among young people, I felt Nena’s left arm discretely putting a barrier to keep me from getting too close to her, my forethoughtful but continued efforts to get closer and talk to her ears were futile as she firmly kept her left arm against my chest which obligated me to think of a Plan B. I started a conversation by telling her how beautiful she was and how much she had changed over the last ten years, she just smiled, kind of forcefully, she really didn’t look like she was feeling very comfortable or enjoying the whole thing, however, I continued trying to start a conversation which would allow us to continue dancing in the next and the next and the next songs, as I really felt attracted by this shy little brunette whom I knew was feeling kind of nervous by dancing with a man who was eight years her senior. She was then only 18 and I was 26 going to 27.

The party went on until about two in the morning and, by that time my Plan B had started to payoff. I invited Nena to the movies (it was the only place in those days where young people could meet in private, and still this was possible only with the custody of parents or other custodians from the family). She was very hesitant but finally accepted my invitation but warned me that she could not go out alone, but accompanied by her Aunt Luisa (who was single and about six years older than Nena), which I agreed with.

The following Sunday we did go to the movies where Aunt Luisa discretely sat a few seats away from us, so allowing me to start touching hands and talking to Nena’s ears, as the least of my concerns was what was going on in the movie. Nena was not feeling comfortable (or pretended not to) but allowed me a little touching hands, but allowed no kissing. As we went out from the movie theatre, we joined Aunt Luisa and went to a soda bar nearby to have some ice cream, at which time, I asked loudly if we could go to the movies again the following Sunday. Nena did not respond, but Luisa’s answer came back before I finished my sentence “yeeeaa, sure we can” she said, at which point I knew I had an important ally on my side. I’m sure Luisa played a very important role in convincing Nena that I was a man she should seriously consider dating, in spite of our age gap.

Weeks went by, my mom was under my care as we were living in a two room apartment at Letty and her husband’s old three story building on 631 Luque St. at Boyacá Ave. in downtown Guayaquil, only three blocks away from my office. I was making plans to rent a bigger apartment, and move into it after buying some nice furniture, as soon as I came back from my training program in Cali, Bogota and Mexico City. The month of June soon came and I had to pack and go to Cali for the 8 week crash accounting seminar starting early in that month.

While I was to be away in my training, mom and I agreed that she would stay with my sister Flor, but that she could also go back to Pallatanga and stay with my dad for a few weeks, and that she could choose her timing as she pleased, within the next three and a half months. I was perfectly aware of the fact that mom was always worried about my dad being alone and without any one to take care of him; at the same time she was also aware that my dad did not like the idea of living in Guayaquil. He was born and raised a peasant and he never, ever wanted to change that. He loved Pallatanga, his friends, his farm, the climate, his brother Antonio who also lived there. Pallatanga was his life, period.



The swimming pool at the Aristi Hotel in Cali

At the beginning of June, 1969, off I went to Cali, with a bag full of hopes and expectations, as I knew this training would fill the big gap of accounting knowledge between the rest of the auditing staff in my office, and me, as I was not an accountant, neither I had an accounting job in my lifetime (except for the few months I was an accounting teacher at the Jose Enrique Rodò School in Guayaquil, back in 1964). The training began on the first Monday of June. The program was directed by Doctor Salas, an ex professor of the University of Havana and, at the time, an accounting professor at the University of Florida in Miami. One of the instructors was another Cuban citizen, also a professor of Advanced Accounting at the University of Florida, with a CPA diploma from the State of Florida. The other instructors were experienced managers of the Buenos Aires, Cali and Bogota AA&Co offices, whom only a few years later became partners of the Firm. We had a triple A teaching staff.

We were staying at the Aristi Hotel in downtown Cali. The training started, it was a tough one, beginning with the schedule. We started classes at 8.00 AM, stopped for a lunch break at 12:00 noon, resumed classes at 1:30PM and went on with the classes until 5:30 PM, at which time we stopped for a shower or a little swimming or sauna session at the hotel then we ate dinner at 7:00PM and started working on our homework at about 8:30PM and went to bed between 11:30 and 12 PM. This was Monday through Friday. It was like a real studying marathon, I had never studied so hard nor had I absorbed knowledge at such level and at such speed. But not all was so hard; the reward came on Friday nights, at which time we received an envelope with our weekly per diems (about 1,000 Colombian pesos a week or the equivalent of US $400) which allowed us to go wild for the weekend. Cali was then, and still is, well known for the beauty of her women, the inviting warmth of its music and the friendliness of her people.

We were 34 students in our program. Included in our group there were young men from almost all countries in South America, except Argentina. At 8:00PM on Fridays we must have looked like a horde of Huns going out to the conquest of Cali. We used to go out in groups of five to six; each group had its own fascinating program which invariably included partying with Cali girls, drinking “aguardientico” and dancing till late, late in the night. It was really something we looked forward to during our hard week days of study and learning, in fact it was the way we all released our tensions developed during a week of super intense studying. I’m sure the guys who planned this training had this fact very much in mind when they developed this course’s program, I’m sure this weekend frenzy did not happen spontaneously or unplanned. In the mean time I had been corresponding with Nena without much enthusiasm from either side. I sent and received a weekly letter with more polite stuff than romantic reading to comment on. The intense studying and the Cali girls had fully captured my attention for now

The weeks went by fast, before I realized, we were just about two weeks away from the end of the seminar. I had been doing extremely well considering that most if not all of my classmates were accountants with some level of experience or with an academic curriculum with emphasis on accounting. On July 24, just about a week from the end of the course, and while I was doing my homework, I was called outside the classroom by the director of the Training program, his face very somber but trying to seem calm, he said to me “Rafael, I’m sorry to have to give you a bad news, you are going to have to return to Guayaquil as soon as tomorrow because your mom has fallen very sick and your family think you should return home”, then he continued; “don’t you worry about the seminar, you have been doing extremely well and we don’t think your missing the last week will make any difference in your already excellent preparation in accounting”. Two weeks later I was advised that my score in the Cali Accounting Training Course had been the number two among thirty in the class.

In my next posting: WHAT AN EMPTY WORLD

ON THE RAILS AND READY TO GO

The newly hired personnel, including me, spent the rest of the morning chatting and talking about our own experiences at school and our immediate and long-term goals; we were just killing time until lunch time, as we had been invited for lunch by Pepe. I was the only one who was single; the other three were married and had kids. Their urgencies were different than mine; I wanted to make a career in the Firm, and I said so during our conversation, whereas the other three thought that their agreed salaries would not be enough to keep their families going, so they said they would, sooner or later, start looking for a better paid job. At lunch time Pepe talked to us about the Firm`s history, about its Swedish founder, about their goals in Ecuador, a country where they had good expectations for their business. Pepe also discussed with us about the Firm’s training programs which comprised tree important seminars abroad in 1969, and at least other two on an annual basis thereon. The ones in 1969 included an eight week long program on Accounting, to take place in Cali, Colombia, a one week Introduction to Auditing in Bogota, also in Colombia and a three week intensive Introduction to Auditing seminar, in Mexico City, one after the other, beginning in June. I was thrilled. Not only I was going to have a first class training in areas that were not my strongest (accounting and auditing), but I was also going to visit places I had never been to, and had always wanted to visit. The staff’s training program also included locally conducted seminars, as well as “hands on” training provided by the most experienced staff, including senior auditors brought in from Colombia, Argentina, the US and Peru.

My first local “training” consisted of literally adding up the local telephone book. The fact of the matter is that, since I came from a non accounting school, I never learned how to use an electric adding machine without looking at the board and using the five fingers, therefore, when my first supervisor, Jerry Windham saw me adding an inventory list using only one finger and looking at the machine’s board, he jumped on me and asked “what are you doing Rafael?”, my answer was “I’m adding this inventory list”. Jerry laughed and didn’t believe what he was seeing; he just didn’t believe that an auditor didn’t know how to use an adding machine. Patient as he was, he asked me to stop my work and ordered me to start a crash course in “how to add like a real auditor should”. “I don’t care how long it takes Rafael” he said, and added “you take this book (showing me the three inch thick local telephone book) and start adding it using your five fingers and without looking at the machine’s board” , then he gave me a couple of tips about how to do it the right way, and he continued jokingly “I know exactly how much that book should add up to, and when you are finished, I’ll tell you if you pass this course”.

It took me a full week of struggling with the damn machine, at the beginning I thought that my fingers were not going to respond, I felt they were lazy and dumb, it seemed that I was not going to be able to do it and therefore "i was going to flunk the course", but such is the virtue of training, that at the end of one week, I knew how to add relatively fast without looking at the board. Jerry was happy to see that I was able to add “like a real auditor should”, but I was even happier that I had passed the test.

Since I was the only English speaking staff member, I was always assigned to the jobs where Jerry and Pepe were the senior and the manager in charge, all the working papers in these audits were in English and I surely benefitted from such a great supervision and the “on the job training” that came with it. The other staff members always had to work with either Colombian or Peruvian seniors whose training was not as good as Jerry’s. By the beginning of April, I had participated in a number of audits and had the chance to see the final product of them, The Auditor’s Reports and the byproduct that came with it, the so called “Blue Backs” which was a memorandum of “Recommendations to the Management for Improving the Company’s Internal Controls, Policies and Procedures”, which resulted from the auditors’ work. I was very happy with my job, my supervisors were very happy with my work and everything was going on rails.

It was by mid April that I met Fanny, my wife of 37 years with whom we have made a family we both feel very happy and proud of, and both have said many times over that we would marry again and again if given the chance to live one or more new lives. It was at the Sweet Sixteen Party for my niece Chachita, on April 15. This was basically an extended family gathering to celebrate Chachita’s BD and what is called in our country “the girl’s introduction to society”. I had just returned to Ecuador after two years of absence and was just trying to reintroduce myself to the extended family and family friends. It must have been about 10 PM in an unusually fresh and slightly windy summer night, the party was being held in the terrace of the building where my sister Lilia and her family lived, right across the Alcivar Hospital on Calderon Street, one block from the Mighty Guayas River front.




FANNY (WHITE DRESS) AT 18

There must have been about fifty people in the party; my niece Chachita looked beautiful in her pink sweet sixteen dressing gowns, and she was transpiring happiness as much as her proud parents were. The speech introducing Chachita to society was delivered by a family friend in which he pondered not only her beauty, but also, and more important, her virtues as a young woman, as a student, as a sister and as a daughter. Her parents, Lolo and Lilita were still emotionally sobbing when the music started. The music and the drinks that followed began to put “the pepper” to the party when I saw this pretty young brunette standing by and talking to my brother Pancho’s wife Clara. “Heck”, I said to myself, “there is someone I could enjoy the party with”. I thought she was very attractive, and since I had no one to dance with, I approached my sister in law and asked her to introduce her friend to me. Showing a surprised face, Clara said, “Rafico, I don’t have to introduce her to you, you have known my niece Angelita for a long time, you just do not recognize her, she’s Nena, you have known her for at least ten years, since she was eight”, and added, “She’s the daughter of my older sister Fanny, her father is Facundo, you know them very well, don’t you”. Surprised and still not quite sure, but trying to hide my lack of good memory, I said, “Oh sure, I remember her now (I really didn’t quite recognize her, but I didn’t want to look like a fool at that moment), but, I added "it's amazing how much she has changed, she is now a complete and beautiful señorita”, and without much to add to the conversation, I asked Angelita (her name is actually Fanny Angelita, but I have always called her “Nena”, which is her nickname since she was a child), if we could have a dance together. I could see then that Nena was a little shy (not quite any more, I can tell you!), but she accepted my invitation to dance.

In my next posting: ON TRACK AND OFF I GO

BACK IN GUAYAQUIL

GIRLS IN GUAYAQUIL DRESSING IN LATE 60'S STYLE

I flew back to Guayaquil on January 15. Besides a full bag of hopes, I took with me nothing but my black and white TV set, my Hitachi transistor short band radio, a suitcase with my clothes, including a pair of brand new business suits, a few dressing shirts, a half dozen dressing ties and about four thousand dollars I had saved during the two hard and long years I lived in NYC. The heaviest luggage I had to carry was in my heart. I was going to miss Anita, her voice, her smell, her hugs, her kisses and everything we did together, but I knew it was all behind, we broke up for good, and I needed to make my best effort to forget and start anew, which I finally did. It wasn’t until after at least a year and a half that I felt comfortable going out with another girl. I used to look around, and every time I saw a young good looking girl I couldn’t help but compare her to Anita, and no one, but no one, was even close to her! During the first three months after I got back in Guayaquil my nights were horrible. I had difficulty going to sleep as I used to think about her for hours before falling asleep, and even then I used to dream of being together again. Sometimes I thought I was obsessed without remedy, but, then, slowly but consistently my obsession began to vanish and I started to see some light at the end of the tunnel. It was only then that I started seriously dating Fanny, my wife, and the girl whom I dated for more than four years before I made up my mind and asked to marry me. As I said to my daughter Angie one day when she and I were digging deep into our hearts, “I’m very glad things turned out the way they did, because if they didn’t, I wouldn’t have had the family I have; I would have had the children I have; I wouldn’t have had the wife I have, I wouldn’t have been as happy as I have been for the past 37 years. Placing the bricks in this part of my life’s building was not easy, nor was it fast, it took more than four years to do it, but I did it with the mastery of an experienced mason, I did it in a way they would be solidly in place for a lifetime!.

My mom and several members of the family were at the airport to welcome me as I arrived in Guayaquil. I had missed mom very much, I had never stayed away from her for so long in my entire life, so I was extremely happy to see her again, but I found her very feeble. Something was telling me she wasn`t in good health. Though her lovely smile and her brilliantly loving eyes were still there and shining, they were undoubtedly trying to hide the pain and the sadness she had been carrying for some time, and her whole body was showing signs of. I told her I was going to fulfill my promise, I was going to bring her to live with me. I told her I got a good job which would allow me to be fully responsible for her health and well being, and that she didn’t need to worry anymore about making ends meet. That was going to be my responsibility and I was prepared and ready for it.

Everyone in the family was very happy to see me back. I needed to make a few arrangements before I rented an apartment and furnished it before my mom and I were to move in together, but I wanted to speed up the process and decided to rent immediately a couple of rooms at my sister Letty’s house, which would allow my mom and I to be together right away. I didn’t want to wait any longer; I saw the need for me to stay close to my mom so I could take care of her, especially her health. She suffered from hypertension (which I have inherited from her) and needed to be constantly seen by her doctor, her cousin Dr. Joffre Lara-Montiel, one of the best cardiologists in the country. I knew the savings I had brought with me would be very helpful to start out, and so, in less than a week time my mom and I were back together.

Just as it had been scheduled, on January 19, 1969, at nine AM, I showed up for work at the ARTHUR ANDERSEN & Co. new office in Guayaquil. I was instructed to dress with a two piece suit and tie. That was the way “auditors” used to dress in those days. I was met by Pepe in his nicely blue carpeted office located in the third floor of the PYCCA building on the corner of Boyacá Ave. at 9 of October Blvd., in the heart of the Guayaquil business district. Pepe was a 36 years old, about 5’9”, his nose slightly oversized, fair skinned, black, getting grayish hair, elegantly dressed and easy smiling, who’s accounting and auditing education had been taken at The University of Havana, in his native Cuba in the late fifties and early sixties. He had been working for The Firm for eight years and had been trusted to open the Firm’s office in Ecuador, due to his gentleman’s personality, his vast knowledge of Accounting and Auditing and his experience acquired in the Firm’s Miami office.

BOLIVAR SQUARE IN DOWNTOWN GUAYAQUIL

Pepe made me feel very welcome; he explained to me that the new office was being opened because the Firm was anticipating a new era of business opportunities in the country. Ecuador was just beginning an era of fast economic growth because for the first time in history, it was going to become an oil exporting country. This, he said “will make the country attractive to foreign investment, it will create job opportunities for people, especially for young ones, and will bring prosperity and wellbeing to the population”. He was right; the decade of the 70’s was one of unparalleled economic boom for the country. The resources brought in by the oil exports allowed for the construction of new highways, hospitals and schools around the country, unfortunately, the country did not mature politically in parallel with the economic development, and the ever present corruption in the government and in all other areas of society in addition to the totally uncontrolled growth of the government bureaucracy and the corresponding expenses, did not allow people in the lower income levels to enjoy the benefits of the oil boom. By the end of the 70’s the country entered an era of “aggressive indebtedness” which not only slowed down the country’s economic and social growth, but ended up placing full brakes to the rhythm of economic growth and social development. The two following decades had been properly called “the lost decades”.

Pepe introduced me to the few people already working in the office, among them, three graduates of the Monterrey Tech School in Mexico (Raul Molina, Franklin Mazon and Fernando Doylet), whom I had previously met at the U of G, and who were joining the Firm the same day as I was. He also introduced me to Manuel Alvarado, a graduate of the Getulio Vargas University in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who had been hired months before us, and to three locally hired young men who were still attending school. Pepe took me around the premises, which were not big and comprised of two offices looking to the Blvd, one of them was Pepe’s, and the other was the conference room. There was another office right across the conference room, which was empty at the time, and was later occupied by my first direct supervisor, Gerald (“Jerry”) Windham, a Viet Nam veteran who was a senior auditor and came all the way from Chicago on a three year assignment to Guayaquil. At the end of the corridor and to the right there was a space for the secretaries and a files’ room, and at the bottom there was a 700 square feet space with no desks but only large working tables assigned to the auditors’ staff, where I was going to have my space for work as one of the junior staff members of THE FIRM.

In my next posting: ON THE RAILS AND READY TO GO

THE END OF A DREAM AND THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER

SPRING TIME IN THE CENTRAL PARK, IN NYC


That was the happiest night and day I ever had with Anita. In New Years’ Eve, we partied again in the same place and with the same people, but she suddenly started to talk about marriage and, though the night was not ruined, it never got to be as pleasant as Christmas Eve. So is the roulette of life again. One day you feel happy as a butterfly and the next you feel annoyed by someone’s attitude or words and you want to hide as a snail.

In 1968, just as it was in a good part of 1967, the Canterbury Restaurant became my second home. Tuesday to Friday I left school at 3PM and took a train at Union Square and went to the restaurant. At 3:30 PM I was having lunch and studying or doing homework until 5:30 when I started setting tables to be ready to serve dinner by 6:30 PM. The last customers were normally leaving at about 10:30 PM, at which time we went downstairs to change and leave to go home. A train would take me home in about 20 minutes, so, by 11:30 I was home taking a shower before a 90 minute studying session until 1:30 AM, at which time I went to bed to wake up at 7:30 AM., ready to start a new day. I was very happy to have my six hour sleep!

Anita and I continued dating throughout the whole year, we enjoyed being together on Sundays, and once in a while on Saturdays, before my work, which started around 5PM, at which time I used to take her to the bus station on W. 42nd street and Nine Ave. We enjoyed having mini pick nicks and walking at the Central Park, especially in Spring time as well as at the beginning and the end of Summer and beginning of Fall. We tried to stay away from the Park when temperatures got too hot and humid. Our relationship seemed to have stabilized to the point of mutual undertanding of our goals and time availabilities. I was always transparent with her, she knew my immediate goal was to finish school and get back to Ecuador, once back there, to get a good job and put my finances in order and then, and only then, to get married and have a family. She also knew I had committed myself to take care of my mother as soon as possible. She seemed to have digested all of this, or at least she did not try to change my priorities

Classes at the U were Monday through Friday till 3PM. The winter, spring, summer and fall semesters of 1968 went just fine, by now I had accumulated a total of 110 credits toward my BS degree and I graduated, with a GPA of 3.49 at the end of December. No parties, no ceremonies, I just got my diploma and went home to call Anita, whom I took for dinner at a fancy restaurant.

These were the times of the Hippies and the protests against the Viet Nam war. The Hippies movement did not go unnoticed in our school. This culture of disobedience and revelry had grown to enormous proportions during the entire decade and had penetrated the universities, the streets and the parks in many of the largest cities in the US. They were basically young people between 15 and 25 who created their own culture of rejection of the teachings of their elders, who openly expressed their revelry by either dressing up in an extravagant fashion or protesting in a noisy way with their drums in the streets of America, smoking marihuana and taking LSD, manifesting their radical opposition to the Viet Nam war and to whatever they thought the establishment represented.

In 1968, Washington Square, not very far from our school, and the entire surrounding Greenwich Village (“The Village”), had been literally taken over by the Hippies. On every Sunday, The Village used to have hordes of singers with banjos and drums celebrating their youth together. There were many drugs that the Hippies used, but none was more used than marijuana. From 1960 to 1968 the number of Americans who had tried marijuana had increased from a few hundred thousand to near ten million. Near the end of 1968, three friends from school and I were having a walk around The Village. They wanted to try pot and just feel what it was like. They were far from being Hippies; they were just plain students who wanted to “try” marijuana. Frankly, I was not opposed to the idea, I was curious but not to the extent of taking the initiative. One of my friends approached a guy who was selling the stuff and bought it. We sat in a bench nearby, looking toward the western corner of The Village’s Square and they started smoking it while I was just watching them do it. The smell was horrendous; it felt sickening, I began to feel a headache and nausea. I rejected the offer when a cigarette was offered to me and I said, “guys, I`m sorry but I`m not smoking that shit. I felt glad they did not insist. A few moments later, they started to act and talk strange, they felt dizzy and nauseating and one of them actually vomited; we went to a bar nearby and asked for water, which they drank abundantly. We went back to the bench and started a conversation during which they did not talk coherent, but about one hour later they were fine. They had satisfied their curiosity for good. That was the closest I ever got to smoking pot. I was offered it a couple of times later on in Guayaquil, but I again refused to take it.




NYC-TIMES SQUARE AT ITS BEST


Job interviews started in our school in early December. Arthur Andersen
(“AA&Co”.), at the time one of the five largest and prestigious Public Accounting Firms in the U.S. and the world, had scheduled interviews throughout the month and I was one of the students they wanted to interview. Frankly, I didn’t know much about them, except for a letter I got from my brother Pepe (who at the time was working for Peat Marwick, Mitchell & Co in Guayaquil), in which he said AA&Co. was setting up an office in Guayaquil and they were looking to fill open positions. He also said that it would be good for me to apply for a job with this Firm, which I did. I also got from the school an envelope with a nice brochure describing AA&Co. to students who might be potentially interested in joining them.

In the last week of December I was interviewed by two relatively young recruiting officers who were very enthusiastic about their Firm. They had reviewed my resume and carefully analyzed my academic credentials. They weren’t sure about my academic qualification for the positions they were trying to fill, as accounting and auditing were not an important part of my curriculum, but they were certainly very interested in the fact that I was an Ecuadorian, that I spoke good English and that I wanted to go back to Ecuador as soon as possible. They invited me to visit their NYC office and to interview with their boss on the first working day of January, which I did. By then, they had discussed my case with their newly appointed head of the Guayaquil Office, Mr. Jose (“Pepe”) Garcia, a mid aged Cuban man with a U.S. citizenship, already residing in Guayaquil, who had openly and enthusiastically recommended my immediate hiring. Details about salary and transportation back to Ecuador were discussed and agreed upon on the spot, but other details were to be discussed personally with Pepe upon my arrival in Guayaquil where I had already been scheduled to show up for work on January 19.

At the beginning of January, as soon as I told Anita I was going back to Ecuador within two weeks, our relationship got really sour, she complained again about my lack of interest in marriage and she did not like the idea of me getting back to Ecuador at all, whereas I was more than ever determined to return. On January 12, only three days before I flew back to Ecuador we broke up. She broke in tears and complained that I did not love her, that I had never loved her, that I had played games with her, that I had lied to her and that I had just been trying to fool her for the last three and a half years. Nothing I said to the contrary would convince her, which left me broken hearted, because I really loved her and I knew I was going to miss her very much, which I did, and for a long time. It was hard, very hard on me as I suppose it was hard on her. A couple of years later, Anita got married to an Irish guy whom she had a daughter with and divorced from, only a few months after their marriage. Several years later she came to Ecuador, she looked for me and we got together to talk about ourselves and our lives. While she told me how bad an experience she had in her marriage, she also said she found consolation in raising her daughter whom she dedicated all her life to. By then I was already a father of two adorable kids and had married Fanny, the girl I chose to ask to marry me, when I was sure of what I was doing and had a solid foundation to base our lives together on.

In my next posting: BACK IN GUAYAQUIL

MERRY CHRISTMAS NEW YORK!

Radio CityMusic Hall in Christmas

Contrary to what happened at the beginning of the year, when I was terribly afraid of opening my mouth to talk and not being understood, by late 1967, I felt very comfortable moving around in the Big Apple. I could talk to all kinds of people, I would ask people in the stores for what I was actually looking for, I was able to buy what I needed and not what first came to my eyes, I was no longer afraid to ask and not being understood. I spoke a reasonable good English, I had a well paid job in a nice restaurant not very far from my place, I had two very nutritious meals a day for free at the restaurant, and I had completed my second semester at the U with a decent GPA (3.3), and was poised to get even better. Best of all, I didn’t have to eat my own cooked meals, ugh!

Our guests at the restaurant were mostly theatre goers, visitors from out of town, and even some of the actors and actresses performing in the many nearby theatres. I enjoyed talking to these people while waiting on their tables. Most of them were pleased to talk to me, and at the end of their meal, they were reasonably generous with their tips. At the end of the week I was making all in all, almost $250/week. Inflation considered, that was the equivalent to approximately $2000 in today’s dollars. That was a heck of a lot of money for a young guy like me, especially considering that tips were only partially taxed, and in NYC, then, as it is today, that makes a lot of difference in the bottom line

Horacio Capellatti, a 36 year old Argentine guy from Buenos Aires (a “Porteño”) who spoke with that nice sounding Buenos Aires’ accent Spanish, somehow reminiscent of Italian, was my team partner waiter at the restaurant. He was a very funny guy; he was always joking around and loudly making fun of everything and everyone around him. Like his Italian ancestors, he used his hands as he spoke, making his talking even more gracious and Italian like. At about four O’clock Tuesdays to Saturdays, we, the waiters and busboys used to meet in the locker room at the basement, to chat while getting dressed for dinner time with our white shirts, black slacks red jackets with The Canterbury Code of Arms, and black neck ties. This was the time Horacio used to make his own daily show, telling jokes and funny stories and picking on someone to make us laugh.


The emblematic Christmas Tree at the Rockefeller Center in NYC

On Christmas Eve, we were very busy at the restaurant; we have had two full sittings during our shift and as usual I was working in a team of two with my partner Horacio. By 11:00 PM, Horacio and I were exhausted after working almost nonstop for at least the last six hours. We had only one party of six left in our station and were desperately waiting for them to pay their bill and leave, as we had our own Christmas Eve plans to attend afterwards.

Finally, at about 11:30 PM, this heavy wine drinking party called for their bill, which I tendered immediately. They paid their bill, which amounted to about $150 altogether, and left on the table a $100 dollar bill for tip. As my partner Horacio (who had, himself, drank a few glasses of wine, as we all did) picked up the money and the tip from the table, he approached the leaving party and bowed his head almost to his knees, and with his eyes wide open pulled a wig from his head and let his shiny bold head be seen by everybody while loudly thanking the customers in heavily Argentine accented English, Spanish and Italian, waving his hands from side to side and wishing them a merry Christmas and a Happy New York!. It was incredibly hilarious, loud laughter came from all corners of the restaurant, and everybody laughed their hearts out, including our very generous customers who left the dining room as happy as they could be, and continued laughing as they walked down the street toward Broadway in their way to continue celebrating Christmas Eve. None of us had known, until then, that Horacio was as bold as a pool ball.

After laughter receded, Horacio and I split our tips 50/50, and after passing on a 15% to our busboys and giving them an extra $20, we were left with approximately $160each. I felt rich, so rich that I took a taxi to go see Anita in Hackensack, NJ, a ride which took approximately half an hour and 30 bucks. I felt like saying loudly, Merry Christmas, I love New York!

In my way to see Anita, I took the taxi on Broadway to reach 42nd St. and turned right to get to the Lincoln Tunnel. At this point I began to wonder about the imponderables of life, I thought about the day I had just lived through and the difference from my previous Christmas when I was jobless and wondering about my future! Such is the roulette of life, one day you feel miserable and the next you are the happiest person in the world! I firmly believed then, as I believe today, that there is no such thing as “someone’s destiny” or “someone`s good or bad luck”. Getting deeper and deeper into my thoughts, I was convinced, more than ever, that we are the architects and the builders of our own destiny. Our lives are nothing but the result of the good or the bad way we place every single brick in the never ending construction of our own life’s building.

Anita was waiting for me, she looked gorgeous in her brand new red dress, the smell of her perfume that night was the sweetest and most lovely perfume I had ever smelled until then (and remained in my nose for years), she had placed a big, beautiful white rose in the left side of her light brown hair, her lips were shiny red, which made her snow white teeth look even more beautiful as she smiled to me, her emerald green eyes were full of happiness as I finally made it to her place well past mid night. I felt and knew that her beautiful smile was for me, and for me alone. We embraced and kissed each other in a show of real love and affection right in front of her brother and sister.

Anita had been one of the cooks for the night and dinner was ready and waiting for me to start serving. We ate shrimp ceviche to start with, the main course was baked stuffed turkey just as we used to have it in Ecuador for Christmas, and we also ate a delicious cheese cake for desert. We drank Champaign and a few drinks of scotch and water, which helped making us even happier, we danced all night, wished a Merry Christmas to everyone in the place and exchanged presents with some of the people in the family. We partied until past 5 AM. I slept in a couch until past 11AM and then, Anita and I headed to Main Street Hackensack to get the bus back to NYC, as I had bought tickets for the two of us for the Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas show.

In my next posting: THE END OF A DREAM AND THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER

SWEET AND SOUR NYC

The Brooklyn Bridge-NYC

By the end of May, I was able to move to a nice room located in the second floor at 58 West 72th St. between Broadway and 8th Ave., only one block away from the Central Park and close to the place at which in 1980, John Lennon, the most famous of the four Beatles was tragically shot and killed by a maniac. I “inherited” this apartment from some friends who had lived there for years and were now moving to a larger apartment in Queens. Together with the small apartment, I also inherited an old queen size bed with some used bed clothing, a small table, an inflatable mattress in case I ever got visitors, and a couple of chairs. That was all the furniture I had while I lived in NYC, but it was enough, I lived very comfortably there. Color TV was a luxury in those days and I did not have it, but I bought a small, used, black and white TV set for $40, and a short band transistor radio which allowed me to watch and or listen to the news, and little else. Watching the news helped me improving my listening and comprehension skills, while watching young Johnny Carson in the Late Night Show used to frustrate the heck out of me because I was unable to understand most of his jokes. For most of the time I lived in NYC, my black and white TV set and my transistor radio were my only companions. Many years later, in the early 80’s when my family and I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Late Night Show still hosted by Jonny Carson became one of my favorite shows, second only to “The Smurfs”, which our entire family and I, used to watch on Summer Saturday Mornings, while all of us were still in bed until close to noon time.

My friend Jorge Alberto Terreros was, right from the day I arrived in NYC, and up to the very day I left it, like my guardian angel. He was always behind me, supporting me, sometimes comforting me, guiding me to get every single job I got in the Big Apple or teaching me my way around in the complicated NYC’ subway system, or moving around in the inner and intercity buses, or even getting my drivers’ license which I never got to use it as a driver. But, in spite of his street smartness and his noble spirit and personality, he was never able to go beyond the severe limits imposed by his lack of better knowledge of the English language. Many years later in 1979, when I was the CFO of one of the largest banks in the Ecuador, he visited me in my large tenth floor, fancy corner office in the COFIEC building in Quito. I was extremely happy to see him after so many years and invited him to have lunch across the street at the Hilton Colon Hotel. There, he told me he was tired of living in NYC; that he was thinking of returning to Ecuador, but he didn’t know what to do after his return except to open a small restaurant in Guayaquil, which he did. A few years later I was shocked to read in the news he had been detained as a suspect in a ring of drug traffic. I visited him while he was behind bars; there he confessed to me, in tears, that his biggest mistake was not to have followed my path in education. One year later, his participation in the drug trafficking business was proved to have been minor and he was released. As far as I know, he divorced his wife Angela and went back to NYC, where he probably still lives. I have completely lost track of him, but, wherever he is, or whatever he does; I want him to know I’m very, very grateful for all his guidance and help. He was a great example of human solidarity and unselfish behavior. I wish more people like him would populate the world.

Just as I had many happy days and nights in NYC, I had many sour days and nights while I lived there in solitude, I was tempted many times to ask Anita to marry me and come to live together, which would have made her very happy, but I resisted the temptation and I didn’t do it, and I have no regrets about it. I missed Anita and I thought a lot about her every single day while I was in NYC and many days and months afterwards, I missed my friends and family in Ecuador, I missed the music, the food, the weekends rowing at El Salado estuary in Guayaquil, and, of course I missed my mom and my friends in Ecuador

I was raised Catholic and I remained Catholic then as I remain Catholic today, I never missed a Sunday Mass while I was in NYC, and my prayers there went, first and foremost for the health of my mother and father, and then for me to be able to endure the hardships of my solitude, for me to keep up my firm attitude toward my future and for me to survive this tough period and never give up hope. I firmly believe my prayers didn’t go unheard. I was convinced then, as I am convinced today, that creating anything meaningful takes a lot of effort and a lot of sacrifice; therefore, I decided to be unyielding to the temptations for an easy life and decided to keep going, to keep engaging. I’m sure my solitude and my tough life in those days contributed enormously to the formation of my character as an adult

In April 1968, two of my older sisters (Letty and Florcita) came to visit me, and stayed with me for two weeks in NYC. I felt very sorry that because I was so busy, I did not have the time to take them around and show them more of the Big Apple, as I would have wished, but in two consecutive weekends I took them to see Times Square and its large and impressive neon lights, to Radio City and its always fantastic show, to the Central Park and its incomparable beauty in Spring time, to the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn bridge. They really got scared as we crossed the Lincoln Tunnel in a big intercity bus that we took at the bus station in 42nd St. at Ninth Ave.

My siters wondered how I was able to endure the pressure of full time studying and full time working, and were fascinated by my ability to express myself in a language they did not understand at all. They told me they’ve heard me talking English while sleeping and, though they did not understand any of my words, they knew I was discussing in the classroom while sleeping, because they both had been teachers all of their lives. I did not feel I was doing anything really excessive; I was already then, as I am today, a veteran soldier of many previous wars. I grew up fighting for survival; I was never going to let myself sink in desperation. Yes, I felt physically tired many times; I even remember I used to feel some kind of pain in the upper left side of my back, especially when I was carrying those big trays full of dishes at the restaurant, but it did not cause a bit of concern to me, as I used to feel just fine after I got back home and took a shower. On the other hand, I was never psychologically tired. I was always ready to go on pursuing my goal, and in April 1968, I knew I had to push even harder for another year, which I did.


Lovely NYC-The Central Park in Spring Time
By this time, Anita, started visiting me in NYC on Sundays and we had a real good time together as we went walking in the Central Park, visited museums and monuments, we went to the movies, to the Zoo at the Bronx and many other interesting places, but she started to talk about “getting married”, two words I had become allergic to or was very scared of, and preferred not to talk about. This soured in some way our relationship but we continued dating. I wanted to take my time to know her much better before I made a decision which could have had long lasting consequences, and more than anything, could have derailed my long-term plans. I didn’t want to break up, I really liked her and I still believe I loved her then, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit myself just yet to something I was not quite ready for. I was, like we say in Spanish, “a scalded cat”, or, better, I had already gotten burnt, and I was terribly afraid of the fire. Anita was not ambitious, I’m sure she would have been very happy if we got married, had children and would have lived off two salaries while working in an unknown factory somewhere in NJ. On the contrary, I was living a time when I thought only the sky was my limit. This was, perhaps the main difference between the two of us.

In my next posting: MERRY CHRISTMAS NEW YORK!