Zone Policeman 88; a close range study of the Panama canal and its workersFranck, Harry Alverson
History
Zone Policeman 88; a close range study of the Panama canal and its workers
Franck, Harry Alverson
Panama Canal (Panama); Police -- Panama -- Canal Zone
It is the "gum-shoe's" duty to know and be unknown in as many places as
possible. Wherefore on such nights, whatever his choice, he drifts
early down by the "Normandie" and on into the "Pana-zone" to see who is
out, and why. In the latter emporium he adds a bottle of beer to his
expense account, endures for a few moments the bawling above the scream
of the piano of two Americans of Palestinian antecedents, admires some
local hero, like "Baldy" for instance, who is credited with doing what
Napoleon could not do, and floats on, perhaps to screw up his courage
and venture into the thinly-clad Teatro Apolo. He who knows where to
look, or was born under a lucky star, may even see on these merry
evenings a big Marine from Bas Obispo or a burly soldier of the Tenth
howling some joyful song with six or seven little "Spig" policemen
climbing about on his frame. At such times everything but real blood,
flows in Panama. Her history runs that way. On the day she won her
independence from Spain it is said the General in Chief cut his finger
on a wine glass. The day she won it from Colombia there was a Chinaman
killed--but every one agrees that was due to the celestial's criminal
carelessness.
Down at the quieter end of the city are "Las Bovedas," that curving
sea-wall Phillip of Spain tried to make out from his palace walls, as
many another, regal and otherwise, has strained his eyes in vain to see
where his good coin has gone. But the walls are there all right, though
Phillip never saw them; crumbling a bit, yet still a sturdy barrier to
the sea. A broad cement and grass promenade runs atop, wide as an
American street. Thirty or forty feet below the low parapet sounds the
deep, time-mellowed voice of the Pacific, as there rolls higher and
higher up the rock ledges that great tide so different from the
scarcely noticeable one at Colon. The summer breeze never dies down,
never grows boisterous. On the landward side Panama lies mumbling to
itself, down in the hollow between squats Chiriqui prison with its
American warden, once a Zone policeman; while in the round stone
watch-towers on the curving parapets lean prison guards with fixed
bayonets and incessantly blow the shrill tin whistles that is the
universal Latin-American artifice for keeping policemen awake. On the
way back to the city the elite--or befriended--may drop in at the
University Club at the end of the wall for a cooling libation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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