commence work on the Panama Canal, in May 1904, the United States having helped Panama gain its independence -- a matter settled more conclusively in 1921 with a check for the sum of $25,000,000 payable to Colombia in exchange for official recognition of Panama's separation (as aided and abetted by the U.S.) from Colombia.



Not the Panama Canal, but a quiet inlet with a boat-ramp and picnic grounds and docks, a watery cul-de-sac with a forgotten name off the Sandusky River, circa 1965.  My brother (in hat) engages in discussion of nautical rope tying or possibly the proper technique for casting off with an unidentified chum, aft, while my father mans the wheel of the family outboard motorboat which was to see extensive duty for several summers on the Sandusky and its tributaries and along the southern shoreline of Lake Erie. 

Because I now live far away there is something about this image, the way the light reflects a white sky in the water, on the canvas and the boys' shoulders, that reminds me so clearly of summer in Ohio, and helps me recall the heady mixture of heat and humidity, mosquito spray and diesel exhaust and cut grass on the verge of turning brown and Coppertone suntan lotion which, when mixed with sweat and Old Spice aftershave, was a kind of aphrodisiac -- although in those days nearly everything was an aphrodisiac.   Any kind of movement, whether provided by boats, bikes, the family station wagon, even passing clouds overhead inevitably became a contributing factor to unsettling thoughts and amorous longing. 

Summertime, and the living was not so easy.  My memories of those days are full of painful jolts, remembrances of regrettable urges, dangerous inklings, momentous might-have-beens and if-onlys.  I had not yet learned to swim very well and I hated fish.  Self-consciousness and an orange life jacket combined to make for intense bouts of humiliation in a childhood spared infinitely worse forms of abuse.  I mean, come on.  I had a Dad who bought a boat so we could take advantage of a river flowing past our own backyard.  And where was I in this picture?  On shore.  Not, I should point out, dying from yellow fever like the poor Army Corps of Engineers on the Panama Canal; far from it.  More like languishing from restless fretting and discontent, wishing I'd been born into a family with a yacht and a chateau on the Cote d'Azur, about which I had somehow heard or read, probably in the Public Library (my refuge) in downtown Fremont.  Day-dreaming of impossibly white beaches, turquoise crystal water and a finer, grander life than Dad could muster.  Ungrateful, callow youth that I was. 

Still, looking at the picture now, it's the light that impresses me, like a madeleine of heat and sun and sluggish catfish-prowling brown water and dragonflies wafting over the surface of the day, the smells and promises of faraway places hanging listless in the air.  I can taste the bitter self-imposed exile and the sad sweet longing and uncertainty, sitting in the shade with my mother and sisters, waiting for the Boys -- Dad included -- to go for their boat ride, so absorbed in things the way other boys always seemed to be, accepting of Life as they found it, preoccupied with the details of knots and fish and the currents of muddy bottomed rivers, as they drifted along without a breeze or a care, content in the moment of a summer afternoon.