Back                                                                 Puerto Rico

I vacationed in Puerto Rico on three different occasions during the late 1960 through the early 1970. I haven’t been back since, except to change planes on a trip to the Virgin Islands.

I wouldn’t be putting these trips on my site as I don’t have much information on the island as it is today, but I recently received a letter from a girl I haven’t heard from in almost 20 years. A girl I met on one of my trips there. So I’ll reminisce a little.

I’m not  even sure what year it was when I took my first trip to Puerto Rico. I had been out of high school for a few years and had been traveling to Florida. First to Fort Lauderdale (Where the boys are.) during spring vacation, around 1963. It was still the way it was in the movie. I went with a group of my friends and we had a ball. I don’t remember much about that trip but I do remember standing on the corner by the Elbow Room and I remember getting into the back seat of a car that had stopped for a red light. An attractive girl was in that backseat and what better way to meet a pretty girl then to go for a ride with her. I got the surprise of my young life when I looked in the front seat only to find that the driver was her mother. She wasn’t a college girl but a senior in high school who lived in Fort Lauderdale. They were very nice people and I ended up getting their address. The mother was amused by my nerve and we drove around for awhile as we got to know each other. I wrote to them for awhile after I got home but eventually lost contact.

I also recall streaking from pool to pool along Ocean Drive and watching one of my friends get a whack on the rear, with a night stick. The cop couldn’t catch him so he settled for giving him a red butt.

After two trips to Lauderdale I discovered the Florida Keys and have been going there every once in a while ever since. I’ll have to tell you a little about my early trips to the Keys in later articles.

Anyway on to Puerto Rico. Remember now, these trips were 35 years ago and I didn’t keep a journal till much later. I will however try to keep them as accurate as is possible from memory.

I didn’t even plan to go on the first trip. One of my friends backed out at the last minute and the others who had already booked the trip asked me to take his place. I’ve always been ready to travel, so I told my boss that I was on vacation starting the next week. He wasn’t very happy but he let me go.

We flew from Philadelphia to San Juan and took a cab to the Dorado Hilton where we had to spent three days till our rooms at the La Concha in San Juan were ready. They had a convention over that weekend.

So we spent the weekend playing golf. I don’t remember who won or what the scores were but I do remember sitting at the bar after the 9th hole and spending somewhere around $20.00 each on drinks and tips. A lot of money at that time. Then playing the tenth hole which ran along the fence, that separated the golf course from the rest of the island, and seeing families living in large shipping crates with tin roofs. It was the first time I experienced cultural shock and this wasn’t even a third world country. I wanted, even then, to pick up the cute little kids with dirty feet and bring them back to the states. They deserved better then what life had dished out to them. I’ve since seen much worse.

Well, we finished playing golf and with our exile over, we headed down from the mountains to the beach and our rooms at the La Concha. We were quite surprised when we ended up in cabanas overlooking the pool. What great rooms for a bunch of guys, looking for girls.

It didn’t take long. I no sooner got into my bathing suit and went to the pool, then three girls came out of the lobby and into the pool area. One was really cute. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, it was her personality, She bubbled. Oh! she was attractive but more important she was vivacious.

She ended up being from just outside of Camden, N.J. just a thirty minute drive from my home in Trenton. We had a ball and even dated for awhile after coming home. She was a store detective and ended up marrying a Philadelphia Police Officer. I haven’t heard from Bobbie for over thirty years but I’ll never forget how after we lingered over drinks at the airport,  not  wanting to let go of each other

she missed her plane and didn’t even worry about it. “Oh! Well, I’ll just get another flight. Maybe I’ll end up staying another night.” She told me, laughing. It seems she was always laughing. I hope she  still is.

Bobbie & Me on our patio at the La Conch

Kibby, Sue and me, same place, different time.

I also met a girl from Cherry Hill, N. J., also  a short drive from me, who flew for Allegany Airlines and after Bobbie decided she was really in love with her cop, I gave Sue a call and went to meet her at her apartment. She invited me in for dinner. We had beef stroganoff and she introduced me to Rod McKuen, who at that time was big in California but not on the east coast.		I really liked his poetry and have since adopted his style. Well, we dated for awhile but as usual I got cold feet. I haven’t heard from Sue in thirty years either. On our last date we went skiing. We, My friends and myself, had a ski house for the winter and on our last weekend at the house I took Sue and a friend (Kibby Walsh) took her
girlfriend up to the house for the weekend. We had a great time and decided to go back on the next weekend. Well we had given up our ski house the previous weekend so we stayed over at a place we partied at. The bar closed at two p.m. and we retired to our rooms only to wake the next morning to a blizzard. We had taken Kib’s M.G. and when I looked out the door I couldn’t find his car. Sue and I went next door to Kib’s room. They were still asleep and didn’t know about the storm.
To make a long story short, everything in the Pocono's was closed including the roads in and out. We ended up partying for two days while waiting for the roads to open, we never did get to ski that weekend. Damn! Talk about luck. I’ll take all of that kind of luck I can get.
It was on my next trip to Puerto Rico that I met her. We again had a cabana and again three girls came out of the hotel to the pool.
I'm not sure exactly when but I fell in love that week. Her name was Rosemary. It seemed as if I'd always Known her.

L to R Rosemary, Grace	Rosemary in our pool	I brought my underwater	Me and Rosemary
and Lorraine		camera	Good looking couple?

She had the same great personality that Bobby had, and when she smiled it seemed that the clouds (of which there were none) had moved to one side and let the sunshine in. The day seemed brighter with her around.

I was happy once again. Oh! We had a fantastic time. (Puerto Rico is one of those lovers paradises that I’ve found while roaming the globe. It’s a place where romance oozes right out of the sand or blows in on a sea breeze.)

Well, we met and we talked and she had me feeling at home right away. When you can laugh with someone that you have just met, you feel that way. In no time at all she had me feeling as if I'd known her my all my life and I was falling into a love that has lasted me for my entire life.

We left the pool and went back to our rooms, I crashed. I had been out late the night before and up early that morning. I wasn’t asleep more then an hour when Kibby or it might have been Donny knocked on the door and said that the girls from New York City had decided to go out to dinner with us. I still hear about it today. Hear about what, you ask? Well, I got up; jumped in the shower, shaved, brushed my teeth, put on slacks and a sport jacket complete with a tie (Full Windsor Knot) and was out the door in less then 10 minutes (some say, it was about 6.) The girls got a laugh when they heard about how fast I had shaved.

I might have been worried that Rosemary would latch on to Don. He had blond hair & blue eyes and had stolen girls off me before, though I did win a few off of him from time to time & I won this time.

Dinner was fun except when the cab driver jumped the curb on a sharp turn on the way to the restaurant. (He ran right over the sidewalk, talk about cutting corners!) We ate in a really nice place and the conversation was great. These kids were just fun to be around.

Rosemary on the cannon

and on the cannon balls.

The next day Rosemary and I strolled, hand in hand through Old San Juan (It seems like we were always holding hands.) and explored Fort El Morro She climbed on a cannon and a pile of cannon balls and posed for my camera in many other places in the fort. (I wasn’t into photography at that time, so the photos on this page were taken with a Kodak instamatic or some may have been taken with the Nikonos underwater camera that I bought when I started SCUBA diving. (The one of Rosemary underwater definitely was.)

I’ll never forget Old San Juan and I hope she never does either.

The rest of the week was equally as great. We sat by the pool in the La Concha while a Troubadour (Rafi Santana) sang love songs, mostly in Spanish. He did sing one song in English that Rosemary liked . “Yesterday I heard the rain", whispering your name, asking where you’d gone?” I learned to love that song too and sometimes, even today, when I’m walking through a little town, in the rain, I’ll start to sing the lyrics and think about the girl I loved, so many years ago. When we left Puerto Rico The girls bought an album that he had just recorded. I bought one too. I must have lost it somewhere over the years.

We played in the pool and drank Pina Coladas. (If nothing has changed and you ever stay at the La Concha order your drinks from inside the hotel The ones at the poolside bar are nowhere near as good.) Sometimes we just relaxed in the lounge chairs around the pool. We just held hands and talked, we held hands a lot during that vacation.

One evening we walked, hand in hand, on the beach. It seemed like a beautiful evening, cool but not cold, with a nice sea breeze, but after we walked for awhile it started to drizzle. We didn’t care, we were busy falling in love. We had brought a beach towel, from the hotel, with us. We had planned to sit and watch the ocean. Instead we wrapped ourselves in that towel and cuddled and kissed. Two lovers in the rain. It is still one of my most romantic memories. For several nights after that, we slept in each other's arms on that beach. Someday, maybe I'll go back, take a blanket and a pillow from the hotel. curl up on the beach, hug the pillow and remember those days.

Our love story isn’t all that I remember. I had promised to teach Kibby to snorkel. So with mask, snorkel, and fins in hand, we waded through the shallow surf behind the hotel. When I got about waist deep I put on my mask and leaned over to take a look at the bottom. Stunned, I stood up and yelled “Kibby, don’t move!” To late, Kibby had just placed his foot on one of the hundreds of long spine black sea urchins that littered the sandy bottom. I was fifteen feet in front of him and I had missed every one of those little devils, talk about luck. Anyway, he quickly picked up his foot and just as quickly lost his balance. He was only mid-thigh deep and when he fell he ended up with urchin spines in his foot; legs, hands, arms and chest. You can’t pull these spines out. (They are serrated and being calcium break off easily, They have to dissolve. This process take a few weeks.) So Kibby had to put up with the pain for awhile. That night at the bar we spotted an orange glow in the corner. If you guessed a neon man you’d have been right. Not only did poor Kib have to suffer the urchin spines, as if he was a human pincushion but he was sunburned like no one I had ever seen. (He’s Irish and fair skinned and burns easily.) Well! he sure did this time. He braved it out and didn’t complain, to much, but I know how he felt. Not the sunburn. I almost never get sunburn but I had been nailed by an urchin in the Florida keys and believe me it hurts.

Back to Rosemary. One night, I don’t know which night it was, we went out to dinner and then came back to the casino to try our luck at Black Jack. After about two hours and surprisingly a couple hundred dollars to the good she started to feel sick. So I took her back to her room, tucked her in and gave her a kiss goodnight. Romance falters when you feel sick to your stomach. Anyway I told her I’d see her in the morning and went back to the casino, back to win some more of their money. Wrong, In no time flat I lost all the money I had won plus a couple hundred of my own.

Luck was no lady that night, so I left the casino and since Rosemary was sleeping by that time and Don had a girl in our room I just went down and took a walk on the beach.

I walked down to the surf, and sat just out of the reach of the gentle waves. I was thinking of that night in the rain and worrying about Rosemary. How would she be the next day? Would she be sick for a long time? Remember we only had a few days left and I didn’t want to waste even one second. I got up after about fifteen minutes or five cigarettes and started to walk, forlornly, back to the hotel. Hoping that Don was done with our room.

I stopped to light a cigarette and walked on.

“Excuse me, but could I get a light.” I heard a voice in the dark.

“Sure.” I replied, and noticing that he was a native, asked him what part of the island he was from. I’m always interested in meeting new people.

“I’m from Ponce,” he said, proudly. “It’s on the other side of the island.”

I already knew about Ponce. It’s the art capitol of Puerto Rico, has a bay where fluorescent algae would glow if disturbed (as when fish swam through it). and the University of Puerto Rico. I had wanted to get there but never have.

We struck up a conversation as we smoked and strolled along the beach. I told him about Rosemary and he told me about his city. Then, he stopped me cold.

“Can we go back to your room?”

Shocked, I asked “What for?”

“For a little fun.” he replied.

Gay! A gay guy on a beach in Puerto Rico and he had to see me light my cigarette. Lady luck sure was in a foul mood that night.

“Sorry,” I said, pointing at some guys further down the beach. “that’s not my thing but there are a bunch of guys over there, maybe you can get lucky.” I told him as I hurried back to my room, alone.

The next day when I told Rosemary about the incident. She asked me why I hadn’t “Punched him out?” She said that most of the guys she knew in New York would have. I told her that what he did with his life was none of my business. He probably would have gotten clipped if he pushed it, but he hadn’t. No harm, no foul. She ended up respecting me all the more for my actions, or lack thereof.

There is a small jetty behind the La Concha and it was swarming with fish; sergeant majors, blue tangs, Queen and gray angle fish, parrot fish and a lot that I didn’t know at that time. There were also urchins, both the black ones that were Kibbys’ nemesis and white ones with short spines. It was the white ones that I brought back to shore. You can let them walk, crawl, dance or whatever you want to call their locomotion, (They move by moving their spines back and forth) on your hand. I don’t remember whether or not I let Rosemary hold one but I do know that quite a few kids on the beach got a kick out of the tickly feeling of one of those critters moving itself across their hands.

We (I) went diving in a little town south of San Juan with a group from the hotel. The town is/was a small fishing village south of San Juan called Fajardo. When you stand on the beach in this little town you can’t see the horizon. It’s all little islands overlapping each other. If your ever in Puerto Rico don’t miss diving in this area, it had some of the loveliest coral reefs I’ve seen in all my years of diving. The reef are shallow, so you can free dive down to them and the abundance and diversity of the sea life was amazing. You won’t get the adrenalin rush that you’d get from a deep dive but it’s a great place to just relax and enjoy the beauty of the sea. I’m sure it’s built up by now, but it should still be worth the time.

Rosemary and the girls left us but only for a day, they went to the Virgin Islands. It was the loneliest day of my vacation. I should have bought a ticket and gone with them, I didn't. We did have a going away party, the night before they left, so all was not lost. When our vacation finally ended I couldn't wait to get home and contact her. Suddenly New York City looked better then Paradise.

Our vacation was over way too soon. We had to head back to the real world. Rosemary to New York and me to Trenton. I’d see her again but only a couple of times. What she hadn’t told me in Puerto Rico, but I’d find out all too soon, was that she was engaged to a guy named Dick. She wasn’t sure about the engagement and was trying to find out if he was really the one she wanted to spend her life with. She said she loved me and I think she meant it but she also loved him.

She came to Trenton one weekend and we walked hand in hand through New Hope, Pa. and had a great time. Before she left I asked her to marry me. She was the only girl I ever asked. She said that she was ready to stay with me, but on her way home she stopped at Dick’s apartment, to tell him she was sorry and then wrote to tell me that when she walked into his apartment she felt like she was home. Somebody’s heart had to get broken and it turned out to be mine.

She ended up marrying Dick and moved to California. The Marriage lasted two years. He was both mentally & physical abusive. She ended up marrying a guy she met the night she divorced Dick and has been happily married to him for 25 years.

I’m glad she’s happy, she deserved love. I’m only sorry it couldn’t have been mine.

So for the last 32 years I’ve been roaming the world trying to find another Rosemary and though I’ve met some really great girls and had some fantastic romances, I’m still single. It’s funny but every time I found a really romantic place (It didn’t matter if I was with someone or not.) I’d always wish she could have been there to share it with me and I’d get depressed. I always sleep hugging a pillow when I sleep alone and I have no idea how many pillows, in how many hotels, in how many cities around the world, I’ve called Rosemary. I could see her sometimes when I closed my eyes. I also couldn't tell you how many times (With other girls) during the heat of passion I called her name. I do know when I'm physical pain, (As I was when I broke my leg skiing.) I can close my eyes and go back to that rainy night on the beach in Puerto Rico and forget about the pain.

I've only met one girl as I traveled through life that I would have given up my freedom for. I met her, by a pool, in Puerto Rico.

So go to Puerto Rico and fall in love but be careful, sometimes love can hurt.