| Previous | Glossary | Contents |
Next |
| Your View | Related Sites | Bookstore | Home page |
Yesterday I went up to visit an Americano named Grathwohl. He lost a fortune here in the last hurricane and now his creditors are all hounding him and he’s built himself a little shack on his ranch where he grows fruit. The shack has a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room and a porch, and though it’s as rugged as the devil, it’s still a lot more like home than any native shack around here. Grathwohl came down and picked me up at this “hotel” and then we went up and cooked lunch over a kerosene stove. After Spanish beans and rice, the fried pork, baked beans, pilot biscuit, and new spuds sure tasted grand. After lunch we went down to the river which runs through Grath’s land and looked things over. He has many different kinds of minerals on his place: copper, gold, silver, lead, iron, and manganese, though none of them in any great quantity. The river had overflowed its banks due to a storm of the past evening and black sand was deposited in the rocks and grass along the banks. We shot the breeze for some time and panned the dirt we dug out of small crevasses.... And when we cleaned up, we had over a dollar’s worth of gold! That’s phenomenal for this country. So we weighed it out nicely and I sold my half for fifty-two cents to the local druggist. So we have cigarette money at least and we can mail this letter. After we had supper we came back to the hotel and played blackjack for several hours. For matches as everybody is broke. I was theoretically two thousand dollars in the hole midway through the game but I came out a thousand dollars the winner. All of which must be intensely interesting.Grath’s wife is in the States, as he lost his big home here and most of his dough. There’s a pal for you. Sticks about as close as a drunken Irishman. Everything lovely as long as Grath makes dough and can support her in the style to which she is accustomed. But when the servants are no more and the maple turns into pine flooring and the bath is outside, the rat leaves the sinking ship. What a pal. And Grath feels remorseful because he seduced his house girl a while back. He says he’s gone tropical and can’t help it. Of course, he excuses his wife and doesn’t even mention her defection, but it’s damned obvious.