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
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