The Bamboo house.
One outer side of Joe’s large bamboo house.
Laura and her husband Joe were also some of my closest friends in Rincon. Laura was probably Sanita’s closest friend, partly due to ride-sharing Sammy and Will to the Seso school, (the private school in Mayaguez, half in English, half Spanish for rich kids) which put her in daily contact with Laura, but also because they were a unique and stand-up and happy couple. Joe had built a large house on a hillside near Sanita’s rented place entirely out of bamboo, even the furniture. It was hidden in trees and beautiful, an architectural wonder, a museum of bamboo and many Americans toured the place in awe.
He was called ‘Bamboo Joe’ by everyone. He was a bamboo fanatic, had read shelves of books about its amazing versatility and strength and from his constant work with it knew even more than any book contained. It grew in many spots on the West coast there. I had a grove of it near the top of my hill where I parked. Nobody minded him harvesting it for all his projects so he built his huge house with entirely free wood.
They’d both been teachers in the States and moved here and lived off savings. They had a daughter, Sophie, three years younger than Will. Joe worked all day on projects around the house, always adding to it, while they both gardened on the hillside. Joe built an irrigation system out of sticks of bamboo sliced in half, fed by a spring above the house and surrounding the whole lot, (several acres) feeding the vegetables they grew on terraces below.
He even took me one day, with Sam and Will, and showed me his method of harvesting bamboo. He pushed into a grove with his machete and cut what I thought were dead, ugly shoots in the middle, gray and covered in green moss. He loaded them in the back of his truck and took them to the nearest beach and washed them in the surf, letting them roll in the waves and rubbing them with sand. Within minutes he had the finest stalks of fresh, light brown bamboo, aged and strong, ready for any use in construction. As I watched this quick transformation it seemed miraculous.
In return they valued my company because I’d stop by their place several times a year on a Friday night with a six-pack of beer, (stoked up with a few lines on the ride back from San Juan, but not noticeably high) and we’d sit and talk a few hours, Joe drinking one beer to my five. Laura didn’t drink and neither did drugs. But we all enjoyed our conversations, almost always on the topic of education.
I loved that subject and would spill out my lore of classical knowledge, quote Quintilian and Milton, Johnson’s and Matthew Arnold’s ideas about it, Newman’s and many others, and they’d listen fascinated, with me equally delighted just to have an intelligent audience. That’s why I’d drop by. It was important to cultivate such friendships, not just for the pleasure they returned but as Americans in a foreign place, in Rincon, there were a few wolves roaming about, local thieves, which the police did little about, (as in Mark’s case with the American girls) so a tight knit set of friends was a safety net. If anything happened, someone in our group knew the right local to get to the bottom of it, and the friendly locals would spread the word so it wouldn’t happen again. And wolves are always on the prowl for loners.
No one else in Rincon gave a fig about education. At the end of such talks they’d always remark that I should have been a teacher with such a fund. But theoretical knowledge and the practice are two totally different skill sets. I told them I was happy to be a weekend teacher to Will and Sammy walking through the hills, full of talk on all varieties of subjects. The fact that Sammy was always eager to spend Saturdays with us and in a glow of happiness each time he came home also endeared them to me.
Sammy and Sophie live in the bamboo house and surf there to this day. Will and his former girlfriend Rebecca visited them for a week five years ago. Laura and Joe gravitated back to the States at different times and for some reason split up. They seemed the perfect couple in Rincon, but I can see any adult getting tired, (if not sick) of that place. It’s just too limited and provincial.
Sanita, Joan, Laura and friend. Her support group in Florida.
Laura remained a good friend to Sanita and visited her several times in Florida after she escaped Mark’s beatings, just to make sure she was doing O.K. and offer advice. After Sanita fled Mark she moved in with another Rincon friend, Joan, who by a lucky coincidence had moved back to Florida a year earlier and was well off. Joan still owned a large house near the Tamboo, right on the beach and it was at a party at her house, just days after we arrived in P.R., that I met Richard.
Sanita and Joe
I know I digress again but I like to describe the actors in these events in my life, or else they’re just names and the scenes confusing or meaningless.
