The Motorcycle Cop Story

                                                    The Motorcycle Cop Story

                                                                         1958

                                                            Written 8/01/2019

                                                              Howard Yasgar

I think of this true story every time I read about the Marjory Stoneman High school police officer being prosecuted for not running into the school like an idiot and getting himself killed.

Back in the 1950’s, I worked part time in a small Gulf gas station in Westville Connecticut.

Every Saturday, at around 2 PM in the afternoon, our local motorcycle cop Eddy, would stop by for a Coke.

Those were the days when New Haven motorcycle cops dressed in normal police clothes, not like storm troopers.

Eddy would ride his Harley up to our outdoor soda cooler where he would buy a 5 cent bottle of Coke.

Eddy would then back up his motorcycle into one of the two bays of the gas station. 

When he was sure no one from the street could see him, he put down the motorcycle kickstand and sat there sipping his Coke.

Naturally I was always anxious to talk to him, after all he was the Police, and he was armed, he was our first line of defense against the bad guys.  

One afternoon as Eddy sat on his bike sipping his Coke, suddenly out of nowhere, a car sped by, it must have been going around 80 miles an hour.

I looked at Eddy and said, aren’t you going after him?

I will never forget what Eddy said, as he took another sip of his Coke, he looked me in the eye and said, “What do you think, I’m crazy, I could get killed”.

    

The Mardi Gras Trip 1983

                                               The Mardi Gras Trip 1983

                                                 A really unique experience

                                                       A Dracula in Drag

                                                       Written 2/11/2015

                                                          Howard Yasgar

    It was in January 1983 when my wife Katherine asked me where I was taking her for her birthday supper.

    Katherine’s birthday was on February 9, which is just around Mardi Gras time in New Orleans.

    It also happens that New Orleans was one of her very favorite places to visit.

    So, I suggested that we go to New Orleans for her birthday, not only could we celebrate her birthday there with excellent Cajun cooking, but we could celebrate Mardi Gras with the thousands of other crazy people that converge on New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras.

    In 1983, Mardi Gras was to end on February 18, so we knew looking for a room there might be difficult at such a late date.

    As it happens, we had been to New Orleans the previous year with our good friends Miguel Marquez and Raquel Roque.

    Both Miguel and Raquel were Cuban refugees, that came from small towns in Cuba

and neither  of them had ever experienced anything as wild as Mardi Gras.

    So once we knew Miguel and Raquel were coming with us, Katherine started looking for a place to stay.

    Trying to find rooms in New Orleans at Mardi Gras time is quite a task, as all the good balcony rooms overlooking Bourbon Street are booked years in advance.

    The best we could hope for was possibly finding a vacancy in a hotel on a side street.

    It wasn’t easy but somehow, Katherine managed to do it.   

    Katherine had somehow not only found a room for us, but she found a suite, that had ample room for our friends Miguel and Raquel.

    The suite Katherine located was at the Le Richelieu Hotel on 1234 Chartres Street in the French quarter, it was about two blocks from all the action on Bourbon Street.

    When we arrived we found out that the suite Katherine had reserved was actually the bridal suite, as nice a place you could ever find in New Orleans.

    Now, the reason I am mentioning our 1982 Mardi Gras experience now, is because it was the first time we were ever in New Orleans on the last day of Mardi Gras when it is at its wildest.

    So in 1982, besides from the hundreds of inebriated people throwing beads down to the crowds, there were many hundreds of people that were dressed in costume.

    Seeing all the people dressed in costumes and having so much fun, gave me an idea.

    I thought, wouldn’t it be wild for us to come to Mardi Gras and do it in a costume.

    So, here I was, a conservative person, coming from the small town of Westville, a suburb of New Haven Connecticut, and I was thinking about doing Mardi Gras in costume,

    Dressing in a costume for Mardi Gras was just not something that I would ever have ever considered before.

    The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

    As I was growing up, I always knew that I would enjoy play acting, but my coming from a small town in Connecticut, I knew that I probably would never, ever have an opportunity to do anything like that.

    So when we were considering going to Mardi Gras in 1983, I broached the subject with Katherine about doing it in costume, and she didn’t say no.

    She did ask what kind of  costume I was considering.

    I told her, that a couple of years earlier I had attended a dance school and they had a end of year costume party.

    As I had no costume for the party, and I had no intention of renting one, I came up with an idea.

    I was 6 foot two, with jet black hair, so I bought a women’s ruffled shirt, put on black pants and black shoes, then I slicked my hair back, got a set of plastic Dracula fangs and a little fake blood dripping from my mouth, and I was Dracula.

    I showed my wife a picture of me as Dracula, and I suggested that I would do it again for Mardi Gras and she could dress as a vampires.

    The idea took hold.

    There was a restaurant we frequented, near where we lived, it was called 36 West.

    The bar maid Susan, was a former June Taylor dancer, and when we told her about the costume idea, she loved it, and it just happened that her mother was a seamstress.

    Susan’s mom made me the most beautiful black satin cape with red interior and she made a beautiful white satin cape for Katherine.               

    I then bought a long sleeved ruffled woman’s shirt.

    I had the same black pants, black shoes and Dracula fangs from before.

    We decided Katherine was to be dressed all in white, and I had a long leash to lead her around with.

    Before we left, we tried on our costumes, and I had an idea.

    I knew New Orleans had a large gay community, we would always watch as they would throw beaded necklaces to the crowds.

    So I bought some balloons and I put two of them  under my ruffled shirt, and thus I became a Dracula in Drag.

    Some how Katherine did it and she again got us a room at the Le Richelieu hotel.

    I remember the first morning we woke up, we looked out our window to see around 20 gay men roller skating down the Chartres street with beautiful colored chiffon butterfly wings, and they were wearing only jock straps.

    That evening, as it got dark, we changed into out costumes and hit the streets with the crowds.

    We were a big hit, it seemed like everyone wanted pictures of us.

    As we walked along Bourbon street, all the people on the balconies were throwing down necklaces and  yelling, “Show your Tits”.

     I did my best to accommodate them, opening my cape.

    It was the best Mardi Gras ever.

    As we were in the plane flying home, to Miami, I was reading the editorial in the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper.

    It said, Mardi Gras 1983 was sensational, and they had even spotted a Dracula

in drag on Bourbon Street.

    Hey, that was us.

The Simple Hinge Replacement Story

 

                                                            The Simple Hinge Replacement Story

                                                                                   2012

                                                      Written 7/18/2016 Re-written 8/20/2016

                                                                         Howard Yasgar

This story is just one of many that we experienced trying to do a renovation project in the Florida Keys.

Most everyone we have ever spoken to has had similar situations, especially when dealing with local

Keys contractors or suppliers.

I have always considered myself somewhat of a craftsman, however this simple hinge replacement  project, and our dealing with a Florida Keys supplier, took me to my limits.

      

In September of 2001, we purchased a property located on 160 Palo de Oro Drive in Venetian Shores.

The house, as well as the property had been neglected  for several years.

The home itself was built in 1967, by a well known local Keys contractor named Gene Rhodus.

The actual owner and designer of the home was a Mr. Wittman, a retired engineer from Wisconsin.

Mr. Wittman had sold his wood burning stove business to Sears Roebuck and then he went on to teach engineering at the University of Chicago.

It appears Wittman didn’t like teaching college  in Chicago so he went on to teach in Japan where he was well received.

When Wittman, returned to the states, it was 1966 and he purchased a building lot in what was then a new development in Islamorada called Venetian Shores.

Once Mr. Wittman purchased the lot at 160 Palo de Oro,  he set about designing his house.

At the time hurricane Donna was still on the minds of people in the Florida Keys, so when designing his home Mr. Wittman built in all kinds of hurricane safeguards, like heavy duty concrete construction, twelve inch pilings and both gas and electric for cooking.

Being an engineer, he incorporated  revolutionary features into the homes design.

His design was  so revolutionary that pictures of the house appeared in Florida real estate news papers.

The rear second floor porch of  Wittman’s house faced “Snake Creek” which is the main waterway between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

Under the porch, Wittman designed  a boat slip that was 20 feet wide by 50 feet long, and he designed a walkway that crossed over it.

Under the walkway, on both the left and right sides,  he incorporated into his design, concrete storage lockers.

Each storage locker was  four foot wide by four foot deep and four foot tall. Wittman used them to store his buoys, rope and other marine related items.

By the time we purchased the property in 2001,  both concrete storage lockers had weather beaten and worn out plywood doors, that looked pretty bad.

It was the summer of 2012 when we were at a local Keys high school craft show where they had booths set up displaying work of local manufacturers.

What caught our attention was a vendor making outdoor Adirondack chairs and tables out of a material called TREX, which is a white, man made plastic lumber.

He also made cabinet doors and he was embossing pictures of palm trees or fish on them.

The vendor said that he could make anything we wanted out of TREX, so I asked him if he could make us  new doors for our storage lockers, and he said yes.

He came by our house and measured each concrete locker.

The fellow said that he would fabricate two door frames one for each locker, each frame was to have two TREX doors mounted in in it, and he said he would also supply a finished molding, all for $385.00

We told him to go ahead and to emboss green colored palm trees on the doors.

He was to do it, just like we had seen on items he had on display in his booth.

He said that was no problem.

About three weeks later, he showed up with the TREX doors already pre-mounted in the frames.

He said that they were ready for me to install.

However, I saw that the green palm trees were missing.

When I brought it to his attention that the embossed green palm trees were missing, he said, that it would be an additional $150.00 for each set of doors.

To say we were disappointed would be an understatement., but rather than call him a liar, I bit my tongue.

Realizing that we were in the Florida Keys, my wife and I were already used to dealing with vendors, that do not do what they promise or say they will do.

Also, we had already paid him $385.00 for the doors and frames.

So we reluctantly told him we would pay the extra money to have the four palm trees embossed into the doors.

He did emboss the green palm trees, and when he delivered them, I installed the frames and both sets of doors onto the storage lockers.

By 2013, we had started using the storage lockers to put away the extra tile left over from our renovation of the house.

One day when I went to open one of the locker doors it seemed to be very stiff, I found that it was because the all of the hinges were made of steel and completely rusted.

It appeared that the manufacturer had used regular indoor steel cabinet hinges, not stainless steel, salt water resistant  hinges that we assumed he had used.

In an attempt to solve the problem, I removed one of the rusty hinges off the locker door.

My wife and I then went to Home Depot to look for stainless steel salt water resistant replacement hinges.

After Home Depot, it was off to Lowe’s, and then all the independent hardware stores in the keys.

It appeared that everyone had similar style hinges but they were not the same, and none of them would work properly.

Not even one of the hardware stores had any style of stainless hinge that we could convert to use.

Then in desperation, we started searching the internet, and that project also soon became a nightmare, it appeared that no one had a similar hinge.

Now, don’t get me wrong,  there were tons of hinges available on the internet, but not one of the hinges looked or functioned the same as what we needed.

After many attempts including Amazon and Ebay, we were starting to get depressed, it appeared that the hinge we needed had been  discontinued and was no longer being made anywhere.

Several internet companies said that we should send them our rusty sample, but we didn’t want to do that and perhaps lose our sample.

Now one might ask why we didn’t go back to the manufacturer that made the doors.

It was because we were extremely hesitant to call him due to the bad experience we already had with him in the past regarding the embossing of the palm trees.

Eventually, I decided to just go out and buy a completely different style of stainless hinge and find a way to adapt them.

I bought several different styles of stainless hinges hoping that I could get one of  them to work.

Incredible as it may seem,  I learned that not all hinges work the same, and none of the stainless hinges I bought would work on our locker doors.

Finally, after a year had passed, we simply  gave up. We had spent quite a bit of time and money trying every style hinge available that might work.

After much debate, we reluctantly called up the fellow that had originally made the locker doors for us.

He said yes he would get us stainless hinges.

We waited several months, and we called him several times to remind him, but over a year went by with no word from him.

One day in the fall of 2016, we attended an art show at a local church, and the outdoor furniture vendor’s wife was working in their booth.

We told her that we had been waiting for over a year, for her husband to call us with the replacement hinges and she said that she would look into it immediately.

We hoped that she would be a more responsible person than her husband, but there was no such luck, neither she nor her husband ever called us back.

After another three months, passed, my wife decided to make one last try, and she called the door maker up.

He said, “yes” he had the stainless steel hinges waiting for us.

He said they cost him $70.00, and we could pick them up anytime, so we said we would go to his shop and get them that very day.

Once we were at his shop, his story changed completely.

He now said that the original style of hinge was a discontinued item.

However, the one he had was similar to the original, and he said that it would bolt up almost the same as the original, all we had to do was slightly alter the door frames.

As we sat there in his office, he was talking to us as if we were both professional  cabinet makers with a complete cabinet manufacturing shop at our disposal.

He held two small pieces of TREX in his hand as well as a new hinge and he explained how easy it all was to do.

He had already prepared four pieces of TREX boards for us, they were 3-1/2 inches wide by four feet long by ½ inch thick.

He said, all we needed to do, was to cut the TREX boards to length, and then install them in the doorframes.

After that, we could easily install the replacement hinges.

He assured me that all the screw holes in the doors would be the same.

Our bill was  $115.00 for the eight hinges, the four pieces of TREX board and the screws.

As soon as we got home, I immediately removed one of the locker doors.

He had said this was going to be a simple project so I thought we could get it all done that day.

The first thing I found was that TREX boards he gave us were too long.

Fortunately I had a cut off saw down in our utility room, so I set it up and I cut the pieces of TREX the correct length.

Then when I tried to fit the newly cut TREX Boards into the sided of the existing door frames, I found that they needed to be notched on the top and the bottom in order to fit properly.

Fortunately I just happened to have a carpenter’s casement saw to do the job, but I needed a way to hold the TREX boards.

Fortunately I just happened to have a bench mounted vice in our utility room, to hold the boards while I was notching them.

Then when I removed the other rusty hinges from the locker doors, I found that the new replacement hinges were completely different from the original hinges, all the screw holes were in different locations.

We debated if we should we drive back to his shop, and ask for our money back.

Fortunately I happened to own a battery powered hand drill and a large selection of drill bits, so I re-drilled the doors to accept the hinges.  

After re-drilling all the holes, I was able to install two of the new hinges into a door.

Then I found that the one half inch thick piece of TREX board he gave us was much too thick to allow the hinge to work properly, why he had said they would work I will never know.

There was no question, installing these new hinges was obviously a project better suited for a professional cabinet maker with extensive experience, it certainly was not a project for amateurs like us.

It now appeared that not even one thing that the vendor had told us was true.

We studied the situation over, and over, and eventually determined that the long TREX board pieces he gave us might work if its 1/2 inch thickness could be milled down to  1/4 inch.

Fortunately, we just happened to have a professional carpenters Dewalt wood milling machine in our utility room, and we were able to mill the TREX down to the correct 1/4 inch thickness.

Milling the white plastic TREX produced volumes of white  sawdust. The stuff filled our yard just as if it was snowing, it was a mess.

Fortunately we had an industrial size shop vacuum , left over from when we did our renovations.

I then went to use the stainless screws that the hinge fellow had given us to use.

That’s when we found out they were all special oddball size indented square drive screws.

Fortunately we had a bench grinder and I was able to grind down a Philips bit to make it fit the screws.

It was then that I noticed that the square drive screws he gave us were all too long to use anyway.

Fortunately, we had some of our own stainless Phillips head screws to use.

My wife and I had now worked almost an entire Saturday on the project, and we had used every carpenter’s tool in our possession.

Even with that, we had only finished one set of locker doors.

On Sunday morning, we made our only trip the hardware store for more stainless screws, and we finally mounted the last two locker doors.

It had only taken us a day and a half of labor, a wood milling machine, a cut off saw, an industrial vacuum, and every single carpenter’s tool we owned, to do the job.

My wife says that if we ever meet the lying bastard who sold us the easy to install hinges, she would thank him, and tell him we easily installed the hinges in 30 minutes, and they were a perfect fit.  

      

            

                 

                

The Juan Peralta Story

                                                                       

                                                       The Juan Peralta Story

                                                                    1968

                                                               A true Story

                                            Written 6/2011 Re-written 05/24/2016

                                                             Howard Yasgar

     When I first met Juan Peralta, he was a young mulatto Dominican boy about 14 years old.

     Juan was living with his mother and father in a small agricultural village in the Dominican Republic north coast, the farming village was called Isabella.

     When I first met Juan, he told me that he had a dream, he wanted to become educated, and he wanted to teach others.

     Juan knew that there was little hope of him ever being able to get a education, because of

his living in a rural community as he did.

     Then, just by chance, in 1968, I met Juan, and I had the opportunity to help him realize his dream.

     This is the story of how it happened.       

     In 1968, I had become interested in searching for the gold of Christopher Columbus.

     I had a theory that the Columbus gold was still in the Dominican Republic.

     I was certain the gold was where Columbus had built his second Colony in the new world, the one he called Isabella, after the queen of Spain.

     I had read that as soon as Columbus established the colony, he, and his fellow colonists started exploiting the native Taino Indians for as much of their gold as they could.

    After I studied in detail what happened at Isabella, I became convinced that there was plenty of gold that had been left behind, I felt that it was left behind by Columbus and his family, and by many of the colonists that had exploited the natives.

     I was absolutely certain there were caches of gold there that had been buried by many of the Spaniards, I was also sure that the gold had to be somewhere in the relative vicinity of the Columbus colony of Isabella.

     By the time I eventually got to go to the Dominican Republic it was 1968, and I was with my Cuban friend Miguel Marquez.

     As hard as Miguel and I looked, we couldn’t find where the original Columbus colony of Isabella had been, it appeared that the government had plowed it all under.

     At the time all we had as a guide was a Texaco road map, and it only showed a farming village of Isabella.

     I had read that when Columbus first established his colony of Isabella, he had to contend with a lot of colonists that were just young Spanish adventurers and former soldiers that had come along with him not to colonize but to look for gold.

    Those young adventurers were called “Los Hidalgo’s”, which means gentlemen in Spanish, but these guys were no gentlemen.

    They were just a bunch of  spoiled rich kids, the sons of the wealthy families in Spain, and they had come with Columbus only for the adventure and the gold that he had bragged about.

    Eventually, over time, many of these unruly colonists had left the colony of Isabella, and it was said that they did it to get away from Columbus’s scrutiny. Many of them simply moved to nearby to wooded  areas where Columbus couldn’t see them.

     My theory was that all those unruly colonists must have buried all their gold somewhere near where they lived.

     I was also sure that some of the colonists were able to eventually dig up their gold and return to Spain with it , however, I was also sure many of them had simply died and their gold has never been found.

    When I decided to make the first trip to the Dominican Republic, I enlisted the assistance of my good friend and employee Miguel Marquez.

    Miguel was a Cuban refugee that had escaped from Cuba in 1963, and had come to work for me in Miami.

    Over the years, Miguel and I had become close friends.

    If it wasn’t for Miguel’s darker complexion, we probably could have been taken for brothers.

    When Miguel first arrived in Miami he spoke Spanish, so I taught him to speak English and in return he taught me to speak his Cuban Spanish.

    Little did we know that because I spoke poor Spanish and Miguel spoke some English  the Dominican military would think that we were both communist infiltrators sent by Fidel Castro.

    When they were interrogating us, I certainly couldn’t tell them that we were just there looking for Spanish gold, because removing antiquities without official permission was also illegal.

    So to avoid more problems I told the Dominican Government officials that I was just studying the history of Christopher Columbus, and Miguel was my assistant.

    I don’t think they believed us, but they did eventually let us go, however we were sure they were watching our every move as we traveled in the country.

    Using our Texaco map, we drove from Santo Domingo to the City of Santiago de los Caballeros and then from there across the Cordillera mountain range all the way to the town of Puerto Plata.

    From the town of Puerto Plata we followed the map to the village of Isabella.

    However, once we arrived there, we determined that the present village of Isabella was not the original Columbus colony of Isabella.

    We asked several people about it, but it was apparent they had been told by the police not to talk to us, thus Miguel and I wasted a lot of our time looking around.

    When we returned disappointed to Miami, I knew I needed more information if I ever intended to find where Columbus’s original colony was.

    When I was in Haiti, I had developed a good relationship with Dr. Marc Bulliet, he was the chief archeologist there, so I asked Marc for assistance.

    I flew to Port Au Prince, and Mark was nice enough to steal a copy of an old map from the Haitian archives, and give it to me.

    It was a copy of a 1776 map of the entire island of Hispaniola, it was originally made by the Spaniards for the King of Wales.

    Once I obtained that map from Marc, it became my key to locating the original Columbus Isabella Colony.

    I felt, that once I found the original colony, it would be easy to find out where the rebelling colonists had moved to, and, then by my using a metal detector, I could find their buried gold.

    While in Miami, I went out and bought the best Whites metal detector I could find. Then we took the map Marc gave me, and the metal detector to the Dominican Republic.

    Sure enough after using Marc’s map, Miguel and I were able to pinpoint exactly where the original Columbus colony of Isabella was located.

    However, once we were there, we found that the whole area had been bulldozed over a long time ago, and now it was part of  someone’s farm growing crops.

    After discovering this, I thought about digging a few holes to see if we could find some of the original Isabella colony building foundation stones.

    I wasn’t expecting to find any artifacts of value, I just wanted to verify the colony’s existence.

    It was a hot day, and the noon time sun was beating down on us.

    My friend Miguel volunteered to do the digging and I didn’t argue with him. I think the temperature was probably in the high ninety’s and on top of that the ground was very hard and dry.

    Miguel started digging anyway, and after few minutes we had attracted quite a few local people that came to watch us.

    I was standing there next to Miguel with a big pad and pencil, I did it to make it look like what we were doing was official.

    It was then that I noticed  one of the onlookers was a young Dominican boy that I took to be about 14 years old.

    He was standing there looking very stern, with his arms folded across his chest and a scowl on his face.

    After watching us for a few minutes, he asked us in Spanish, what we were doing?

    I told him we were trying to determine where the original Village of Isabella was.

    Then he became more serious, and he sternly advised me that we could go to jail for disturbing  historical relics.

    The boy was speaking to us in Spanish but I understood every word he said loud and clear.

    I advised him, that we knew all about the antiquities laws and we had no intentions of disturbing anything, or breaking any laws.

    I acted nonchalant, but really I was very concerned, because I knew we had no official permission to dig anywhere, and the last thing I needed was this kid calling the police over, as Miguel and I  could both end up in jail.

    Miguel was sweating pretty heavy so as it was noon time, we took a break.

    I suggested that we walk to the ocean’s edge and look for a place to slip into the water and cool off.

    We found a sandy spot and we both stripped down to our underwear and got in the water, but we soon found that the water was very shallow and hot like a bath tub.

    We quickly got out of the water, and as I was dressing I saw that same young Dominican boy still watching us.

     He was about thirty feet away from us, squatting behind a bush.

     He wasn’t hiding from us, he was just simply sitting there and watching us.

     Miguel, said hello to him, and asked what his name was?

     He replied, and said that his name was Juan Peralta.

     Now, my friend Miguel was always quite the comedian and Spanish Jokester, so he started a friendly conversation with Juan, and before I knew it, Miguel and Juan were both laughing and joking around.

    Juan’s facial features had changed, he was no longer scowling, he was now laughing and smiling and happily talking to Miguel.

    Juan asked us where we came from, and what we were doing there in the Dominican Republic.

     I fibbed and told him that I was a student of Christobal Colon (Christopher Columbus). And I was traveling with my friend Miguel looking for the Columbus colonies.

     I told  Juan that Miguel was a Cuban refugee that had escaped from the Communists in Cuba.

     Juan was fascinated, with us, and he wanted to know more about America.

     I could see that Juan was really a very intelligent fellow, and I guessed we might have been the first foreigners he had ever spoken to.

     Juan was curious if we had found anything yet that pertained to Columbus and the Spaniards.

     I told him that we had brought over a metal detector to look for old Spanish coins.

     I could see that Juan had no idea of what I was talking about.

     I asked Juan if he had ever seen a metal detector and he said no.

     We all walked to where I had parked our rental car and I opened up the trunk.

     I assembled the metal detector, and to test it, I threw two quarters on the ground.

     Miguel had himself just a few days before learned how to use the metal detector, but now he was acting like he was a metal detector expert, and he was intent on showing Juan how it buzzed when he passed it over one of the quarters.

     After a few minutes, I told Miguel to let Juan try it, he did, and  I could see Juan was very excited as he put on the head set, and we could hear the machine buzz every time he passed the wand over a coin.

     Juan started walking all around the area busily picking up bottle caps and beer can tabs.

     After a while, he got tired, and he came back all smiles.

     I knew right then that we had made a friend out of Juan.

     We all sat down under a big tree and I told Juan what I had read about Columbus’s colony of Isabella.

     Juan said he learned all about the colony from going to school and also from reading books and newspapers, he had also learned all about Columbus by listening to local stories.

     Juan said that the original Columbus colony had been abandoned years ago after a disastrous hurricane and later, many years after the colony was abandoned, the local people came and removed all the original stones, using them to build the nearby town of Puerto Plata.

     I told Juan how I had read how Columbus had built a stone warehouse at the water’s edge, a warehouse that had a window overlooking the ocean.

    I had read that he did it so he could watch for ships coming from Spain with supplies.

    Juan smiled, he said that was all true and he said that sometimes the old floor of the warehouse became exposed, but it could only be seen at an extremely low tide.

    Juan said that the warehouse had  been bulldozed over for many years, but the waves from storms and hurricanes have since exposed it again.

    Juan said, “Do you want to see it”? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I said yes.

    We walked along the water’s edge all the way back to where we had first met Juan.

    I didn’t know it but that day it was a super low tide and sure enough, there it was. Juan pointed to a hand laid stone floor with lots of broken Spanish roof tiles laying on it.

    I picked up a piece of  the orange clay roof tile and I could clearly see the finger and palm print of the Spanish colonist that had made the tile for Columbus, over 500 years ago.

    I saw Juan watching me, so I threw the piece of tile back down on the ground.

    As Miguel and Juan climbed back up the embankment, I picked up a smaller piece of the roof tile and I put it in my pocket.

    We walked back to the car and sat in the shade.

    Then I asked Juan what he knew about the original Taino Indians that had once lived there.

     Juan said he knew all about what had happened to them.

     Juan said the Spaniards brought diseases from Europe that killed thousands of natives.

     He said that lots of Spaniards also killed the natives for no good reasons other than to take

their food and steal whatever gold the natives had.

     Juan said many of the natives had hidden from the Spaniards, he knew that because he had seen the hiding places.

     I was very curious, so I asked Juan more about it.

     Juan told us that one very  secret place was up on a mountain top and no white man has ever been there, nor has anyone from the Dominican government ever been there.

     I asked Juan if he would show it to us?

     Juan said we should come in the morning and he would take us there.

     The next morning we drove with Juan on back roads, driving deep into the Cordillera mountains.

     All of a sudden Juan said to stop, he said we were there.

     It was a big mountain that looked just like a haystack.

     We got out of the car and climbed a long winding trail to the mountain top.

     Once we were there, it appeared as if someone was farming the land.

     There were long furrows dug into the stony earth. At the end of each furrow was a tall pile of rocks.

     I set up the metal detector and started checking along the long furrows.

     As soon as I looked down I saw a small rubbing stone with all four sides worn down, it was some kind of Indian tool, so I put it in my pocket.

     That’s when I saw Juan and Miguel on the far side of the mountain top, they were waving to me.

     I went over to them and I saw they were standing right on top of the Indian village dump site.

     There were large piles of oyster shells, and there were broken shards from bowls and pottery. Some of the bowls had small clay heads all around the border and some others had designs etched into them.

    When Juan wasn’t looking I put a few pottery shards in my pocket.

    On our drive back, I asked Juan if he knew anything about the Isabella colonists lived, the ones that were rebelling against Columbus.

     Juan said he knew that many of the colonists had moved out of the Isabella colony and had made their homes at various places in the woods.

     Juan said that he had heard that some of those colonists had taken as many as five native wives, so I asked Juan if he could show us where they had lived.

    Juan said it would be difficult as it was now over 500 years since the colonists had built native style huts there, and many other families had since moved onto the properties.

    He said that over the years, some local people had even built permanent wooden homes on them.

    I didn’t tell Juan that I had a theory about those early colonists possibly having built small gold smelters on their property, and I hoped that possibly the remnants of those smelters would still be there.

    I knew that if I could find just one furnace, and then with a little luck, I was sure there would be gold buried nearby.

    Juan said he was afraid that we would find most of the old homesteads now had people living on them, but he remembered a couple of places that possibly had been abandoned.

     On the second site Juan took us to, there was an old wooden shack, that was now falling down, but there was a suspicious looking pile of rocks right near it.

     As Miguel and Juan were walking inside what was left of the shack, I looked for a likely places to check with the metal detector.

     I closed my eyes and said to myself, if I had lived there 500 years ago and I had some gold, where would I have buried it?

     I Turned on the metal detector and swung it near a tree root that was right next to a boulder and the metal detector started buzzing right away.

     I quickly shut the machine off  right away so no one would hear it.

     Then I kicked the earth by the tree root with my shoe and believe it or not a small piece of gold appeared.

     I just put it in my pocket as if nothing had happened.   

     The next day Miguel and I left the Dominican Republic for Miami, but I always kept in touch with Juan, and he wrote me often, always in Spanish.

     One day he told me that he could move in with an aunt in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros and he could attend High School there,  so I assisted him financially for clothes and books.

     Then, after high school, it was on to the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo.

     As soon as Juan graduated the University, he was offered the government position of inspector of rural schools at a salary of $40.00 a month.

    Juan was so happy, his lifelong dream had come true.

    A year later he wrote to tell me he had saved enough money to rent a small cottage for his parents, the letter was in English.

    Juan invited me to come to see his parents new home, he said he wanted to have a party for us, so my wife and I went to the Dominican Republic.

    The house he rented was just a wooden shack but it was heaven for Juan’s parents.

     For the party, Juan had bought a large watermelon, it was wonderful.

     In late 1986, I received a letter from Juan, again it was written in beautiful English.

     The letter said Juan  was now in the United States, and would like to visit us in Miami.

     On the very day Juan arrived at our house in Miami, we had guests visiting us from Australia.

     That evening Juan told us all his story, he said that while he was attending college he had a relationship with one of his professors.

    The professor was now retired and moving to France. So to join the professor, Juan had entered the United States illegally and was now working as a press man in a laundry in New Jersey.

    Juan said that he intended to buy a phony passport that would allow him to follow the professor to France.

    The next day, we all took a trip to Key West in my wife’s car.

    Katherine and I were in front seat and Juan in the rear seat sitting between our friends Neil and Rosalyn from Australia.

    When we returned to Miami, Juan said goodbye to us all and then left to return to New Jersey, and I have never heard from him since.

     I hope Juan made it to France.