Minnewaska Musings

By Paul Gremmels

During a recent December thaw, I was sitting at my writing desk scribbling away. It was a beautiful winter day and I planned on getting outside after I finished a letter to an old friend. Then, a drop of water fell from above, onto my paper, ruining my salutation. Looking up, there was a dark spot on the drywall of the ceiling with another convex meniscus of water preparing to drop. Damn. There really is nothing much more depressing than having a leak in your roof. Troubleshooting the problem is usually difficult and, expensive. I retrieved a bucket from under the sink and placed it below the leak. I then put on some music, scrolled around until I found the song that had come to mind (Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling”) cranked the volume, and began to dance.

In the late 1970s through the 80’s, Nicaragua had come under the rule of The Sandinista National Liberation Front. Without trying to over-simplify and in the interest of editorial space, basically, the Sandinistas planned to expand their borders, mainly into the lands of their northern neighbor, Honduras. This era would bring much war, strife, starvation and hardship to the entire region. “The Contras, Daniel Ortega, Oliver North, and the Iran/Contra Affair” would become well known names and story lines. In the midst of it all, as in all conflicts, were the common people of the land, just trying to survive.

   The United States had promised to honor its alliance with Honduras and sent troops to the region along the Honduran/Nicaraguan border as a show of force against an impending invasion. One of those operations was called “Big Pine II” and the Marine unit I was assigned to at the time, was a part of it. We were stationed along the Coco River in the southeast region of Honduras and from our base we conducted patrols and set up numerous observation posts. Call sign, “Oscar-Papa-Six” was my favorite of these posts. It was on a slight hillock near a small village, that overlooked a beautiful vista of the Coco River valley and the trail that paralleled its flowage. The view, while standing watch there, made you question why we all just couldn’t get along? One afternoon, during a passing rain squall, a fellow Marine whispered out, “We got movement.” I slid up next to him and watched the trail. It wasn’t unusual to see villagers moving along the trail, but in this case, we couldn’t quite discern what exactly we were looking at. A long, wide, grey object was moving along the trail through the rain, wobbling side to side as it came towards us. “Alto!” (Halt!) was commanded. The object stopped. Turned out, it was a villager carrying a long piece of corrugated roofing tin over his head. He wore only a pair of denim shorts, no shirt and sandals cut from pieces of car tires. He began to plead with us in Spanish, holding his hands together as if in prayer. “What is he saying?” I asked the Spanish speaking Marine who was acting as an interpreter. “He’s asking that we please don’t confiscate his piece of tin. He needs it to repair a leak in his roof.”

   So, there we stood, two U.S. Marines in camouflage fatigues, wearing helmets, flack vests and bristling with weapons, staring down at a little, half naked man in a driving rainstorm. I had never felt more morose in my entire life.

   “Tell him, he can keep the tin and that we’re sorry that we bothered him.” The interpreter relayed my message. As the little man listened intently, his eyes began to widen as the verdict registered. He jumped with his hands in the air, laughing and dancing about in circles with excitement and pure, unadulterated joy.

   Of course, I thought of that Honduran villager when my roof began to leak. I have since repaired the roof at a cost that may well have been more than that villager would make in ten lifetimes. But I’m sure that he was as happy as I, at not having rain dripping on his head while sitting in his dirt-floored home. I have since given thanks to the memory of that man many times throughout my life. Indeed, I have thanked him repeatedly, for teaching me how to dance in the rain.