(ARUBA) NAMES FROM THE PAST
BY
BILL MOYER
SECTION III
Thinking of Mike Alemany also reminds me of the “chloral caper--the time Bob Drew and I made knockout drops and experimented on Mike with them. Our high school science teacher allowed us a certain amount of creativity in chemistry class, and Bob and I had a wonderful time cooking up things in unofficial experiments. We fermented cornmeal and yeast, then distilled it into whiskey. Next we did the same with molasses, making rum. (Both were small quantities, and both smelled and tasted pretty bad.) Then we read somewhere that bubbling chlorine gas through ethyl alcohol made chioral, otherwise known as “The Old Mickey Finn” or knockout drops. Bob and I made a little and wondered when we might be able to use it. The occasion was a weird one in many respects. It was at what might be properly called an orgy, or as close as I ever came to one.
Hans Wolff, a bachelor who lived in the Colony, occasionally “house-sat” the houses of married couples who went away on vacation. He was staying at the house of, I believe, the Binnions, when the incident I am going to relate took place. Hans offered to let a bunch of us boys have a fish-fry party at the house. We could use the kitchen to cook the fish, and could bring beer or other booze. if we wanted to. It was while we were preparing for that particular fish-fry, in fact, that Bill Mello sank his boat as I related earlier, and the shark swam under me. We brought all the fish we speared that day, as we had for several other days, to Hans’s place, storing them in the refrigerator-freezer until there was enough for the Big Party. The party itself was a lot of fun, especially at the beginning, but it got a little wild as the evening wore on and we all had some beers or other alcohol. I remember, for example, Bill Mello going to sleep on a bed and several of the rest of us trying to get his hand, dangling from one side of the bed, into a bucket of cold water because we had heard that a hand in cold water would cause involuntary urination. In the spirit of science, in other words, we wanted to see if we could get Bill to pee in his pants. It didn’t work--he kept pulling his hand out, and was still sensate enough to mumble, “You guys are trying to make me pee in my pants, damn you!” The other drink-related incident was giving Mike a Mickey Finn, again, in the interest of science. It was a very small dose, thank goodness, and although Mike got much drunker than would have been normal for the three or four alcoholic drinks he had that night, he didn’t get knocked out or hurt. Like Bill, in fact, he was still sober enough to say, when he learned what we had done, “Damn you guys!”
Prostitution in Aruba was legal. “La Hija del Dia”, in San Nicholas, was a little two-story hotel that housed perhaps 20 girls at a time, and they stayed a month in Aruba and then went to other islands, in part of a traveling vice-syndicate controlled by a couple of history’s biggest crooks--Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Batista in Cuba. The Dutch government in Aruba tolerated prostitution as a release of sexual energy that otherwise might have been diverted into sex crimes (of which we had none, as far as I know). The girls were inspected by doctors once a week, I was told, to avoid passing of diseases, and they were then licensed to carry on their profession legally. They didn’t grant their favors in the Hija del Dia, but rather were taken by their clients to “Bichi-Bichi”, which could mean any place from a beach to a deserted sand dune area, but most often was an area west of San Nicholas where some car seats were left out in the open. We boys used to cruise along in front of the Hija del Dia or park just across the street and watch the activities there. Girls would stand on the sidewalk or in balconies upstairs, and flirt with prospects. They weren’t much interested in us boys, knowing we were young and mostly without money, but they didn’t seem to mind our presence either. There was a bar on the first floor, where men sat at tables and bought drinks. The first of the month, when the new group of girls came in, was a festive one, with men all over the place to meet the new girls.
Bob Drew is a successful businessman now, and came to Dallas recently to attend a sales convention. He called, and he, Sue, and I had dinner together. In the course of the evening he mentioned “Ralph Stahre’s car”, which has got me thinking of some other wild times in Aruba. Ralph Stahre (pronounced “star”) was a friend about two years older than me who got his driver’s license before the guys my age, like Gleb Aulow and Bob Drew. Ralph’s parents were Swedish, I think--really nice people who spoke with slight accents. Ralph house was near mine and he walked home along the same route with me and some of the girls in that neighborhood like Mary B. Spitzer, Katie Hussey and Willie DeWeese. Sometimes he would let various kids of our group, both boys and girls, ride around with him in his parents’ car. Mr. and Mrs. Stahre didn’t go out much, apparently, because the car always seemed to be available for Ralph.
The car was old, and quite a specimen. It was a Chrysler or a La Salle, with old-fashioned features such as running boards and a hand-throttle. Running boards probably were a throw-back to the days of horse-drawn carriages, when riders could jump on the outside of the vehicle and stand on the “boards” running along the side of the car and joining the front and rear doors on each side. The hand-throttle was an advanced idea, equivalent to modern systems that allow you to maintain acceleration without using your foot. You could just pull out a little knob on the dash to the driver’s right and the car would accelerate without any pressure on the foot-pedal. Those features made for some interesting riding experiences.
One favorite trick for Gleb, Bob, and me, for example, was to wait until Ralph was distracted by something (such as the guy in the back seat jumping around or screaming!) and surreptitiously reach over with our left hand and pull out the throttle! The car would take off, with Ralph grasping the steering wheel, pumping his right foot, and for some unexplainable reason not quite realizing at first what was happening! We would roar ahead, beads of sweat would pop out on his forehead as he fought for control, and then he would see and hear us breaking up with laughter and realize what had happened. He could slow down (with difficulty) by braking, of course, so the maneuver wasn’t quite as crazy and dangerous as it sounds, but almost. He could also push the throttle back in, as soon as he realized what had happened, or one of us would quickly push it back in if we saw danger approaching. Gleb or Bob even figured out, one night, how to climb out the left rear door, creep along the running board, and then “Yeoww!” spread himself, arms outstretched and facing inward, on the windshield right in front of Ralph. That was a real shocker for Ralph and for me who was sitting in the right-side front passenger seat at the time. Since the guys in the back opened the rear doors frequently, even while we were moving along, the sound of the door wasn’t a particular warning. But, all of a sudden, there was the wildly grinning face looking right in the windshield. Ralph swerved a bit at that one, but kept things under control as the “wild man” returned back along the running boards the way he had come. Other times, people in the back seat would suddenly cup their hands over Ralph’s eyes while we were zipping along, leading to still more merriment. The person in the right front seat had to be alert to help steer in such emergencies, which, fortunately, were brief and infrequent. I sent a copy of this story to Gleb recently, and he reminded me that the Stahre’s had a little dog named Buster. Buster had stiff hair and was probably a terrier-mix”. Anyway, Gleb said, Buster’s blanket was always in the back seat of the car, and it was this disgusting thing, with its bad smell and prickly hairs, that was thrown over poor Raph’s head to provide a little excitement from time to time!  What an incredibly good natured guy he was!
Cruising with Ralph, we usually ended up at the soda fountain at the Esso Club for a root beer float or similar delicacy. Or we went bowling, or to the Thursday night open-air softball games at the Junior Esso Club, or to a movie. Or we went out to the Seagrape Tree Grove to spy on “Bichi-Bichi” couples. The Seagrape trees provided shelter and privacy in that area between the B.A. Beach (B.A. for “bare-assed” because that’s where early bachelors working in the oil refinery used to swim in that attire) and a line of dead-coral cliffs. The ground was coral rock with beach sand blown over it in gentle ridges rising to higher dunes against the cliff line. Seagrape trees can grow even in sand, with very little water. There were rough paths in hard-packed sand winding between the trees, where cars could go if you were careful to avoid softer, sandy areas, but the place was challenging enough not to attract normal motorists. All the more reason for people going “Bichi-Bichi” to go there.
Our approach was to drive very slowly into the area on nights when a little moonlight helped you drive without headlights, until we spotted a parked car. Then we would drive up close behind the “target”, flash our headlights on Bright and even honk the horn if that was needed. Usually, the headlights did the trick pretty quickly. The couple in the car would stay down for a moment, then realize this jerk was going to keep his headlights on them, whereupon we would see two faces looking out the rear window at us first in puzzlement, then in anger followed almost inevitably by threatening fist-and-finger-signals. We, of course, would just stay put, all of us giggling gleefully. Finally the man would start to get out and come get us, and we would back out, swerve into a turn, and make our getaway. It made for an exciting evening in the days before TV, and you can readily understand why “old timers” long for those simpler days when kids had to be creative and develop their own entertainment.
Gleb Aulow and I used to have great times on Thursday nights in Aruba. That was softball night, and my Dad and his brother Lon attended the games religiously. My mother and Aunt Mable were less interested, but Clyde and Lon smoked cigars in the strong Aruba breeze and shouted their heads oft for their departmental teams, cheered on combatants when fights broke out among the players, and had an all around good time. Lon had been Superintendent of Schools in Cedar County, Missouri, before coming to Aruba, had been a championship track athlete specializing in the 400-yard run, and was very skilled with his hands. He whittled wooden chains, for instance, and carved wooden spheres within spheres. He had a woodworking shop in the garage of his home and spent a lot of his spare time there, making things for his children such as jigsaw puzzles, other puzzles in which you slid a flat block of wood within a frame from one corner to another (these things are made from plastic now) and other things. His job in the refinery had to do with training young Aruban boys in the manual arts. Many of them had never seen a wrench or screwdriver before, and in the refinery they had to know how to handle tools. At one stage he was given a company-owned motor scooter to use in getting around within the refinery, between work sites and training facilities. The scooter had a side-car. He was allowed to drive it home at night, and on the nights of the softball games, he drove it to the games.
That’s where Gleb and I came into the picture. Uncle Lon said I could ride his scooter around, if I wanted to, while the game was going on! I would drive away, pick up Gleb, and we would head for the highest hill in the Colony. That was up near the hospital. From there, we had clear sailing on a straightaway to the west, with the wind at our backs! We would open the throttle wide open, hunch down low, and roar down the hill as fast as we could go. The little scooter would bump and swing on its springs, and give us its best shot, but it wasn’t too stable even at moderate speeds with the sidecar occupied. We didn’t care. The speed was delicious and the breeze was cool. We had to shoot through one major intersection, but then were on another stretch of straightaway until we hit a giant bump as the road entered a more populated area with driveways and side streets. We’d bounce off the seats and hang on going over the bump, and then slow down, exhilarated. Then we’d turn and climb the hill again, and repeat the procedure until we were tired of speed runs and thought of somewhere else to go. Those were great evenings. I hate to think what it must have done to Lon’s scooter’s motor and springs, but he never complained or even cautioned us. I guess he figured we couldn’t get into too much trouble no matter how hard we tried. He was right. We couldn’t, though we did try our best.
John O’Brien. I remember playing with lead soldiers in John’s back yard as a little kid. He had the kind from World War I with doughboys lying down behind a Browning machine gun, or carrying bayonets in “Out of the trenches and attack, boys!” position while wearing silver-painted helmets and wearing regulation-brown uniforms. Much, much later, I remember John in connection with the annual Christmas tree riots.
The Company supplied one tree to each family at Christmas. They were brought down from New York under tarpaulins on the deck of a tanker, and then delivered by truck. You didn’t get much chance to choose, which is probably why I’m not fussy about Christmas trees to this day--the truck pulled up, my mother would go out and collect whatever she was given (maybe pleading with the crew to give us another if the first choice was really scrounge, but not necessarily with success.) We would then decorate it with love, smelling the fir ecstatically because it was so unique, particularly when compared to anything we grew on the island, and leaving it up as long as we could, usually until after New Year’s.
Then some special fun began. We boys would collect our own tree and those of our neighbors and try to assemble them for a bonfire. The first year we got together and had a nice fire--nice enough to show that, the more trees we had together, the more spectacular the blaze would be. So the next year we really worked at collecting. I went around to every house I could (and not just in my own neighborhood, but all over town) soon after the trees were first delivered, and asked people if they might be willing to save their tree for me to collect, once they were through with it. People were generally pretty receptive since, of course, they had to dispose of the tree anyway. Many other kids did the same.
Then came the time for trees to be thrown away. Resentments soon developed over “poaching” by boys who spirited away trees that had been promised to other boys. This sort of ungentlemanly, unsportsmanlike behavior led to the inevitable--sneaking into other boy’s yards in the dark of nights to restore collected trees to their more legitimate owners. This went on for several days, limited by the fact that we had to go to school by day and our parents (though they didn’t yet realize what was going on) insisted we get to bed at reasonable hours at night. Little by little, though, John and I, and a number of others, built up a nice stack of trees which my parents didn’t seem to mind our storing in my back yard patio, protected by tall lattices and fences, and Whitie’s reputation as a barking, biting dog. We even staged a Friday night raid on a similar stache, in Jack Pakozdi’s yard, which netted a glorious addition to our supply.
I went to bed Saturday night with visions dancing before my eyes of the spectacular bonfire we soon were to have. The next morning, however, imagine my righteous dismay when I went out to survey the treasure of drying trees, only to find the yard empty! Nothing but a few stray sprigs and pine needles remained. Then a frantic search was on, finally leading to a low-ceilinged cave below John O’Brien’s house. Our supply of trees was jammed inside! A group of my friends and I began dragging them out, only to be met in mid-retrieval by another group of boys who laid claim to the same trove. Some fighting followed, and much pulling on trees that were increasingly falling apart anyway because of brittleness. Finally, a truce was reached, and we all pulled the trees down to the flat area below the cliff, where we had a big fire that night.
As I recall, someone was burned pretty badly in a Christmas tree bonfire somewhere else that night, and the Company ruled that the trees had to be collected henceforward by the Boy Scouts and burned on the point near the Esso Club, with adult supervision. That made for a nice ceremony every year afterward, but nothing that matched the romance and excitement of our earlier approach, with mass movements into forbidden back yards at night and the endless gloating that followed as each group of boys counted its hoard. I can still remember the spookiness of the Pakozdi’s dark, dark patio as we lifted the latch on the gate as quietly as we could, waited for the someone getting a drink in the kitchen to turn off the light and return to bed, and then resumed our evil deed, moving Lord knows how many trees away without being detected (and then the indignation over having the same thing done to me just a night later!)
Ken Work recently reminded me of the bicycle “races” we used to hold on the basketball court at the Junior Esso Club. Bicycle demolition derby would be a better description! At that period in our lives, some boys became very creative with their bicycles, especially Tinker Baggaley, Ronald Turner, and Joe Carroll. I helped Tink with his. He took an old frame, we cleaned it off with lye and emery paper, and he turned the frame completely over then repositioned the pedal-shaft on the top of the frame rather than the bottom. Next he got someone in the refinery to weld a rod on top of the inverted frame and mounted the seat on the end of the rod. He could sit about five feet in the air, with pedals perhaps three feet off the ground, and propel the bike forward more or less normally, steering by wooden broomsticks stuck in the handlebars which, of course, had been mounted on the reverse side of the frame. (Tink also built a unicycle, and taught himself to ride it, but that’s a different story.) Everybody was soon riding around on old bikes, many of which had been modified enough to be really distinctive. Mine was stripped down but otherwise relatively plain.
During noon hour from school, we all rode our bikes home for lunch, stopping en route to play a while at the Jr. Esso Club, perhaps swinging from exercise bars or just sitting around talking. One day someone decided it would be fun to race by circling around the cement basketball court, which was small enough to. make frequent, slippery turns necessary, but big enough to hold six or eight bikes at a time. These races became big deals, attracting more and more kids, and (like modern hockey) they became rougher and rougher almost as if through the workings of some natural kid law. It wasn’t long before we were smashing into each other, pedals were projecting into the spokes of moving wheels, and bikes were coming apart at the seams. Defeated gladiators would drag crumpled humps of wreckage home on wheels that would hardly turn, or that wiggled with tremendously warped rims. I remember squaring off with Joe Carroll once and both of us being pretty mad, and my bike being more or less totaled on another occasion, but I don’t remember what stopped the “races” unless we all just ran out of equipment eventually. Anyway, they were fun while they lasted!
One other thing Ken Work reminded me of was the work he and some friends did waxing cars. It was a lucrative business, and important in Aruba where the salt spray decomposed car bodies pretty quickly unless they were washed frequently with fresh water and coated with Simonize or Johnson’s Wax or both. Ken loved cars and was a good worker, and made a lot of money offering regular washings and waxings to selected customers. He would pick up the car, take it to his house to work on, and return to the owner’s garage. Regular customers would leave the key and trust him to get the job done. Ken said there was one special Jaguar or similar luxury car that he loved so much he drove it all around, the owner remarking that he couldn’t understand how anyone could drive 200 miles for a wax job on a 14- mile-long island. It wasn’t just that Ken drove it himself, but he also used it to teach Penny Richey and other girls to drive! Ken related that, during one of these lessons, someone had backed a customer’s luxury car off the street into a coral patch where the flywheel shield had been dented into the flywheel. After a brief moment of panic, Ken decided his best hope for rescue was the Carroll’s “shade tree garage” (where Earl Carroll, Joe’s father, was always working on some car or other in an area in back of the Carroll house.) Ken arrived as the family was finishing lunch, and Joe left the family to come out and talk with him, but Ken heard Mrs. Carroll say, “Don’t go with Ken Work! You’ll get into trouble!” Joe did come and help get Ken out the fix, however. Ken told me a story about his older brother Clarence (“Dippy” was the only name I ever heard him called) that I’d like to pass along, too. I remembered hearing Dippy had been born a triplet, and was the only survivor of the three. Ken confirmed this, adding that the triplets were born in winter in Wyoming, and initially all three were believed to have been born dead. Mr. and Mrs. Work mourned the loss of all three of their firstborn children, and family members sadly put the little bodies in shoe boxes and sat them out on the back porch of the house until a more permanent solution was decided upon. A little later, however, an aunt coming in through the porch noticed that one of the premies was moving! She rushed into the kitchen with it and warmed it in the oven. That was Dippy’s start in life--an unusually dramatic one!
About the only thing I remember about Dippy in Aruba was that he had a bottling machine at their house, and brewed and bottled his own root-beer. It was the only contraption of that type I had ever seen. I never saw it work, and never sampled the brew, but it sounded like a great idea. You could buy root beer extract in a bottle in drug stores in those days, and I tried diluting some once in soda, but it didn’t taste special--maybe Dippy’s brewing made it better.

RETURN TO BILL'S STORY DIRECTORY