It was November 1956, Jacksonville Florida. We had time to waste. The movie was Kid Creole and I cried at the end because at that young age, I didn’t quite get it that Elvis Presley was still alive. My sisters made fun of me and my mother, concerned but amused explained that he didn’t really die and that it was just a movie, but somehow that made no difference. Not a good memory for the start of a new life, but that’s another story. The next afternoon we left on the long flight via MATS (Military Air Transport Service) to the military base at Guantanamo Bay. I remember the drone of the prop engines on the eight-plus hour flight down the coast of Florida to the island of Cuba. We were all tired and sleepy that evening but the rush of the warm, humid Caribbean air as we exited the plane transformed us. And for the next eleven years, barring the intervening few years back in the States, GTMO, Cuba and the Caribbean became our home, our travel destinations and my most memorable experiences.
My mother was very keen on us experiencing the world. She had grown up in NYC, married my dad, a Texan, and the two of them moved me and my older sisters, at my tender age of 6 months, to the Lone Star state. I distantly remember Corpus Christi and my first years of school. I also remember my mother announcing one day that we were going to Cuba. Cuba? Where’s that? Maps were shown, geography discussed, but it wasn’t until we stepped onto that runway that Cuba became real.
We quickly adapted to the eternal summers. The beach became our weekends. Shorts became our norm. My dad’s suits quickly gave way to the Guayabera, that straight, short-sleeved, pocketed dress shirt so popular with the Cubans. Mother went to mumus with heavily floral patterns. It was the 50’s, it was the tropics and we were there. We weathered hurricanes, closing the floor to ceiling jalousied windows that let the tropic breeze flow unimpeded and turned our house into a fortress against the wind and rain. We went to the base’s outdoor theaters at night in the middle of December in jeans and t-shirts to see Bob Hope and the USO shows.
We ventured into Cuba in those pre-Castro days, mostly to Guantanamo city and the environs although I did get an opportunity to see Havana briefly. My mother’s plan all along was that we were going to live outside the base so that we could experience Cuba and all of her beauty but by 1958, Castro and his group, who had taken up residence in the Sierra Maestra mountains just outside of the gates became much more active. We were barred from leaving and thus became unwitting prisoners in paradise. This is not to say that we didn’t travel. If Cuba was off limits, the rest of the Caribbean certainly wasn’t and my mother meant to travel. We frequently went to Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and, of course Puerto Rico. I remember us wandering through the Iron Market of Port au Prince Haiti with its exotic smells of fish and tropical fruits. We sunned on the white sandy beach of Ocho Rios, Jamaica and climbed the stepped stones of Dunn’s River falls where the cool, fresh river flows directly into the sea. We grew up swimming in the warm waters of the Caribbean and riding horses in its mountains.
But time moves on. I left for college after graduating from Wm. T Sampson, the base high school and after one summer back I have never returned. Today the base has a dark history with its controversial detention camp, curiously located next to Windmill Beach, the main family beach, complete with a protected swim area created out of the coral. Strange bedfellows, indeed, but that’s the military for you.
I have lived and traveled throughout the United States and have spent an inordinate amount of time in colder climates watching seasons change. Maybe that’s why the endless summer of the Caribbean has a magical draw for me. Cuba is still a forbidden land and Haiti is still recovering from its disaster. Puerto Rico, while it has its share of issues, is my destination of choice these days. Beautiful people populate this island with its wonderful scenery that I never grow tired of. And, of course, the one thing that I can count on is that every time that I step out of the Luis Munoz Marin airport into the humid night air, for me it is 1956.