ASSIGNMENT IN MÉXICO CITY
In 1957, Mel was assigned to Mexico by the CIA under the cover of Klein & Saks Group LLC, a management services provider whose president was Richard Davies. He was informed of Mel’s real activity, and he and his wife Peggy remained lifelong friends of the family.
We lived on the 9th floor of an apartment complex in Las Lomas the Chapultepec. I went to a local school and would get chased home by the older boys, who wanted to beat me up for being American. Fortunately, I was a fast runner. My father tried to show me that getting hit was not so much something to fear as the thought of getting hit, and he tried to demonstrate this ‘theory’ by making it as though he was going to sock me. I wasn’t buying it and cried like the devil. But later in life, I did absorb that lesson and, in my boxing classes, and I never flinched when sparring and a jab came my way.
Carmen was not happy when she heard the news. She wrote, “When we were absolutely happy at the Paseo Rosales 28 tower in Madrid, Mel announced that we were leaving for Mexico. I packed the furniture with the intention of staying in Palamós, where my father had made a deal with Dolores and Victor Mir to have a home with a view of the sea at Calle Notarías. The last night in Madrid, I never went to bed. Our taxi driver, Agustin Boix, from Palamós, had come to drive our Buick car. The Gisperts gave me a beautiful dinner, and we talked until dawn. Our principal housekeeper, Adelina, came with us [to Palamós] as Carmencita’s nanny.”
Eventually, Carmen and the children left for Mexico to join Mel. Months later, she wrote, “We arrived in Mexico and loved it!” Her reaction is not surprising. Mel was often gone, and she had a torrid affair with Marilee and my art teacher, who would come regularly to give us lessons at our apartment. On Christmas Eve, Carmen and the art teacher managed to travel to one of the major cathedrals near Mexico City and spend the night there. Marilee told me about the affair; she was always very observant, and nothing escaped her. Years later, Mother told me about it, and I told her that we, the children, already knew and that Marilee had told me. She was amazed that we knew her secret.
Mel did manage to find time to take the family on weekend trips, and we often visited fabulous ‘haciendas’ and the great Aztec ruins. But, in general, he was often gone, and we had the run of the place because Carmen paid little attention to us. On weekends, we would go to the American country club and the fantastically large home of some American friends in the section of Mexico City called ‘El Pedregal,’ where everything was made of volcanic lava, including the natural formation swimming pool and outdoor shower, whose lava floor absorbed all the shower water that miraculously disappeared beneath the earth.
ASSIGNMENT IN CARACAS, VENEZUELA
Unfortunately, the family was only in Mexico for six months. Mel was assigned to Caracas, and it was a miserable time for everyone. Mel and Carmen fought often, and Carmen smoked cigarettes constantly. Caracas was a young city with tall buildings next to jungle growth, trash heaps, highways and open sewer rivers where children would often drown. Our building had a jungle on the sides and a large trash-strewn field in front of it, with a highway bordered by the city’s open sewer.
Our first experience with the high cost of living was when Mel bought the family a single ‘banana split’ that cost $5.00 in 1957 prices, equivalent to $45.87 in 2020 prices! We never ordered it again. Instead, we had a bakery on the first floor of our apartment building that emanated delicious baked bread smells all day long, with the result that everyone in the family put on several pounds in just six months.
For me, as an 11-year-old, there was great excitement and adventure in having a real jungle next to our apartment. I had a large slingshot and spent many hours hunting huge lizards and other wild animals. Those reptiles were huge. Once, on a weekend trip to a resort in Maracaibo, Mel saw a large grasshopper that was apparently floating dead in the swimming pool. He picked it up to show us how large it was. The grasshopper had saws on the back of its legs, and in one thrust, it had cut Mel’s index finger down to the bone. We were all extremely impressed, and, to Mel’s credit, he did not complain.
Marilee attended the Sacred Heart school system, and I attended the Jesuit one since they both applied standard international teaching systems, which theoretically could be applied worldwide. So, it allowed students to move from one country to another without learning difficulties. The anti-American sentiment that I’d experienced in Mexico continued in Venezuela, and both fellow kids and adults persecuted me. The carpool driver who took me and several other boys to school would stop along the highway to let the boys get out and beat me up. By that time, I had become immune to the beatings.
There is not much to write about the life of Mel in Venezuela. He was often gone, and when at home, there were usually great fights between him and Carmen. Weekends were boring; beyond killing lizards, there was not much to do other than go to the American Country Club, which was fun because there were many activities for children. Marilee and I did find one source of entertainment those weekends. It was to drop marbles from our 9th-floor apartment to the road below when cars would drive by to see whether we could hit them and make a hole. We did succeed often but had to stop when our aim got so good that we hit the rooftop sign of a taxi, and the driver came after us with the help of the building’s porter.
As in most places we lived, Mel took advantage of some weekends to take the family to various places outside Caracas since he knew that we would not be there long and wanted us to experience the culture of the country. But there were limited sites. We went to the mountain top next to Caracas by cable car, which was adventuresome due to its unreliability. We flew to the jungle town of Maracaibo, where we not only got to see a giant grasshopper slice through Mel’s finger but also walk through the jungle with the expectation of finding giant snakes on the other side of downed trees along the jungle path. The week after we were there, Mel’s close friend flew there on his Cessna propeller plane, crashed into the jungle, and was never found.
Fortunately, we only remained in Caracas for six months. I do not think the marriage would have lasted much longer had we remained in that country.