A long and fascinating letter comes from Dart today. The first part brings the news that his eyes have been determined to be badly sunburned and he’s been ordered to wear dark glasses for several days while outside. Additionally, he’s still slathered with tanic acid and jelly, unable to shower for fear his badly singed skin will peel away. He feels and looks disgusting.
His sleeping compartment has been reassigned. It’s better in that it has fewer men, more space and a larger locker. It’s worse because it’s adjacent to the diesel engine room and cannot escape the noise or vibration of the mighty engines. It’s also a public thoroughfare and home of the post office. He mentions that a huge load of mail came to the ship today, but none for him.
Then he begins the tale of his liberty in Colon. Near the mouth of the Canal Zone is a double city. The American side is called Cristobal – Panama Canal Zone. The Panamanian side is called Colon, Panama. It was the latter that played host to Dart and some buddies during their brief visit.
He describes the beautiful approach to the city by ship through green waters. All of the buildings a brilliant white with tile roofs that match the water. They are primarily made of open porches, screens and louvered windows and are surrounded by lush tropical gardens and white driveways. “The Navy and Army bases are so perfectly laid out and so well maintained that they look like drawings in Fortune. … The white heat of the sun makes the whole scene shimmer with little wrinkles. The heat is oppressive. The slightest exertion makes beads and streams of perspiration. Walking from the shade into the light is like stepping into an oven full of baking bread, like walking on an electric hotplate.”
He mentions something called Jitney buses that carried the men into the”evil and sinful” city of Colon. There, he describes women of every color, size and nationality “selling her body for what it was worth to her.” He says there are plenty of other business around, but the primary livelihood of Colon is prostitution. It’s obvious and out in the open, making it more depressing to Dart than when it is carried out undercover.
The group he was with shopped for over-priced curios and Dart bought six rolls of film before they all found a clean-looking restaurant and had some dinner. Then they went to a night club to see the floor show. At 50 cents each, Dart’s Cokes were as expensive as his buddies’ beers. As soon as they took their table they were approached by a group of “Blue Moon Girls,” hired by management to get patrons of the club to buy them $1.00 drinks (of sugar water). “I made a standing joke of myself by refusing the one who sat down between me and Rollings, but she didn’t bother me much after that. Neither Jimmy Cox nor I bought a single drink, nor did we indulge in any of the obscenities we saw.” He says the floor show was fair, except for the two strip-tease acts; one of them was more strip than tease, the other was the opposite.
Finally, the “girls” got too obnoxious, the boys were losing too much money, and Dart realized he and Cox would have to buy the next round, so he told the waiter and the girls “no more,” and he and his friends left shortly afterward. “Cox and I escaped with our ‘honor’ and our money intact. It was an experience that must be seen to be believed. Now that my curiosity has been satisfied, I want no more of it.”
The next morning, the Craig lined up behind her sister ship the Orleck to await their turn to travel through the Gatun locks. Dart describes in colorful detail the process of entering the lock, being surrounded by massive stone walls high enough to block out everything in sight, feeling the ship rise rapidly as the locks filled with water, and gradually regaining the view of mountain tops, then small settlements on the mountain sides, then tall trees along the shoreline, and finally the whole panoramic scene as the boat rose to the top of the giant walls. This process was repeated five times as the ships climbed from sea level on the Atlantic side to the high jungle lake from which the locks took their name.
After several hours of making their way gingerly across the island-filled lake, the ship passed into a narrow notch called the Calebra Cut. “This is the ‘ditch’ of the Canal. It travels several miles of level waterway, cut, dug and blasted out of high, rocky mountains.” At the end of the cut, a single lock lowers them to the level of Miraflores Lake. After a short run across the lake, it’s two more steps down to the Pacific Ocean, “and the sun which rose over us in the Atlantic, sets over us in the Pacific.”
Dart speaks of the almost mythical nature of the Panama Canal – one of the world’s greatest waterways. He’s been through it twice, and unless he has a return trip heading East, he hopes he’s seen the last of the Canal – at least the last without Dot.
“I wasn’t thinking of you on that liberty. You are so completely foreign, so absolutely opposite to any and all of that, that it’s impossible to see that stuff and think of you or any other decent thing. Thanks to your presence, though, I was able to resist all.”