Epistles from Pap: Letters from the man known as 'The Will Rogers of Indiana' Part 27

In short order we circled over Santiago and landed. Gosh-a- mighty! Was I glad! We landed at 1:15 p.m., one hour change of time. It had been a three hour trip. And right there at the airport was a representative of one of those Heaven-sent U.S.

corporations I've been talking about, ready and willing to take us and our one remaining jug of St. Thomas rum through the customs and to the Carrera Hotel.

And now we are going on our big adventure into and among the unknown. Daughter Joan and her husband, Bill, met a couple in Paris, France, last whenever it was who are from Nehuentue, in southern Chile, near the lakes and volcano region. Sight unseen they have asked us down over Christmas, and sight unseen we are going. They are of French extraction. Speak Spanish fluently, but no English. Sugar Foot speaks and understands considerable Spanish. But what am I to do? How am I to learn where the bathroom is even--if there is any.

IN CHILE: ROCKY ROADS, BIG 'FARM'

The train from Santiago to Temuco, where we were to meet our unknown host, is a three or four car diesel train. In English, it is "The Arrow." All seats are reserved and it is probably an extra fare train, all first cla.s.s. The train left at 7:45 and arrived in Temuco, about 450 kilometers away, at 6:10 p.m.

Going south toward Temuco, we kept in the valley with fair sized mountains on each side, quite a distance away. Garden truck, fruit trees and wheat, cattle of European breeds, considerable dairy stuff, but nary a Hereford. Huasos (Chilean cowboys, corresponding to the Argentinean gauchos) in their mantas (cloth blankets with slits in the middle to put the head through) became common.

Temuco is the biggest city in south Chile, about 65,000. On the platform we met our host, a clean-cut, energetic young fellow about 32 years old, and another young fellow who turned out to be a schoolmate of our host in Paris. Our hostess was home with a slightly ailing four-month-old boy.

The two men were to take us southeast to Pucon in the lake and volcano country, 50 kilometers away. The road was a bit rough and we must hurry because we should see the scenery enroute and then spend the night in the fine resort hotel at Pucon. Then back next day to Temuco and thence due west another 80 kilometers or so to mine host's fundo (farm) near Nehuentue. It was all arranged.

We got in a 1947 Chevrolet that had taken a beating since it left the factory and started over the road described as "a bit rough"

. . . Man of Samaria! Was that road rough! And did the loose round rock fly. . . Our car had a special network of steel bolted to the frame to keep flying rock from damaging the underside. And 7-ply tires--I never heard of them. And most of the time our speedometer ranged from 45 to 80 kilometers per hour, depending on how the road looked to our host. He mis-guessed many times.

We had three blowouts on that road to Pucon, and the first one tore the inner tube all to the devil. We never saw the valve stem. Our friends donned overalls, spread a piece of thick material and got under.

The blowouts caused us to change plans. We couldn't make Pucon and its splendid resort hotel that night, because we might run out of tires. We would have to stop short about 25 kilometers, at Villarrica, near a tremendous volcano of that name. Our host knew a French woman who ran a hotel there. Not much of a hotel for looks and all of the comforts, but the food would be exceptionally good. It was.

That late evening was the last time we were to see Villarrica. A mountain of a volcano, snowclad, it stood high above everything else, cold, white and still. It appeared shaped like one of the pyramids of Egypt, except that the top didn't come to so acute an apex. It erupted last year after a long period of dormancy. It awed me something like the Grand Canyon of Arizona does. Next day brought a big haze.

QUEST FOR HOT WATER

That hotel is something to write home about. The evenings and nights were cold. We wanted a room with twin beds and bath. By golly, they had it--such as it was. We wanted heat, but that they didn't have. The bed was too short for me, even sleeping crosswise.

Next morning I turned on the hot water faucet for shaving. No hot water. My interpreter, Sugar Foot, was asleep, so I thought I'd try to make myself understood. I asked the first girl I saw about hot water. She spoke and gesticulated rapidly, which opened the flood gates, and five or six more came running. Thus reinforced, we all ventured back to our room.

They must have forgotten all about any daughter being along. She was asleep and covered up, head and all. I called her. When she got unraveled and that head emerged, framed in all those aluminum and tinware bobby pins, the nearest girl gave a wild-eyed half shriek. When the baby of the family unwound some more, the girls, seeing no blood, finally consented to listen. With a something in Spanish or French that evidently meant, "Oh, that was what he wanted," the girls filed out. Aura May, in a tone they don't teach in finis.h.i.+ng school, said, "They will bring some hot water as soon as they can make it."

She gave me a crab-apple look, turned over and wound up again.

In far longer than due time, a long-eared boy brought a pint container of water. It was just enough to take the chill off the bottom of the lavatory. And the rubber plug leaked, to boot.

The trip on to Pucon was uneventful, concerning tire trouble. We were never to have any more. The hotel looked all it was represented to be. There were few guests. The beach was as bare as our dry lots after a year of feeding. One motor "put-putted"

out on the lake--30 miles long--but the occupants looked like they'd prefer being somewhere where steam heat was on. It is true that the season was just begun--hardly that.

We all four had had enough. We started back to Temuco over that same road. The day was cold with very poor visibility. Some of the volcanoes were no doubt smoking like they had for hundreds of years. We couldn't see them.

Something keeps telling me the weather south of Chile will have to change to make that hotel a good go. I want none of its stock.

I'd rather have mine in Russellville Bank, and the Lord knows some of the stock holders think that is bad enough.

TREE FENCES AND OX CARTS

But we did see sights I never knew existed. I'll tell you how they built fences 50 to 75 years ago. The country was full of big timber. They wanted less timber and more fences. They cut the trees into 9 to 10 foot lengths, split the timber into 9 inches to a foot for thickness, squared the sides, dug long trenches three to four feet deep, and set these timbers side by side, close and tight, and then filled in and there was your fence, horse high, bull strong and pig, yes, chicken-tight, unless they flew. There are thousands of miles of that kind of fence still down there, old and moss-covered but still pretty sound and serviceable. Think of the work and loss of timber that involved.

Another big sight is the oxen and their carts. On this trip most of them were hauling timber of one sort or another, logs or sawed stuff. We saw hundreds of oxcarts and oxen. Some carts had spokes, steel tires, steel axles and metal fellers, or whatever it is the axles fit into. Many of them had wheels made of round logs with no metal tires or other metal about them. The axles ran through holes in the bare wood. They were the primitive kind, but there were hundreds of them.

WORLDS OF CASTE

All the time we were pa.s.sing huasos in their mantas astride their horses--hundreds of them. There were so many they almost got monotonous. Never was a "h.e.l.lo" said, or an arm lifted in salutation. We were in a car, and that was enough. Worlds of caste separated them from us.

The back track to Temuco was about the same. We missed a few of our original boulders but made up for it with new ones. To be sure, much of the little stuff, say from four inches down, we had shot from under the tires out into the wheat fields and pastures, so it was out of our way, but that was only a fraction of the available material.

We headed west from Temuco toward the Pacific. The road was to be about like it had been for some 55 kilometers and then get "rather bad at times from there on." The "bad roads" turned out to be dirt roads with big chuck holes.

We entered the Mapucha Indian country. They live in thatched shanties and lean-tos, some in sort of caves they had dug in steep banks along the roadside. There were plenty of dogs and children. Once, at some distance, I saw a lot of smoke coming out all over a roof. I thought the place was on fire, but our host, by way of our interpreter, Aura May, said roofs are made to let out smoke. An Indian builds his fire on the floor in the middle of the house. I suppose the rain comes in the same way the smoke goes out.

A WHALE OF A FUNDO

The big moment came: We were at the home of our host and hostess.

The big white house sits on a round natural knoll, the top of which is about 100 feet above the surrounding ground. Flower gardens practically surround the house and are about as well kept and beautiful as any you will see anywhere; some mighty tall eucalyptus trees; a fine cement tennis court with a judge's stand and seats all around for spectators; double garage; a long, turning, bowered walk leading from the base of the hill up to the front door, the bower made of trimmed and trained small sycamore trees.

A fundo in Chile corresponds to an Argentinean estancia--a big farm to a whale of a big farm. This fundo has some 3,000 acres.

He has another down the road back toward Temuco. Fundo No. 1 has a big Delco lighting system, so you know what that means--three or four all time men.

I shall not try to account for the army of men and women this "fundoist" (let's just coin another new word) employs, but I'll give you a rough idea. He pays off through a window of his office in the house. From about one or two p.m. to five o'clock that Sat.u.r.day, when he and his overseer knocked off for tea, they had paid 62 men and women. After tea they went back at it and then again after dinner. I was never told the full count.

He always has a long list of potential employees. He is good pay.

And yet I know a smallish man back home who gets exactly 10 times the money that this man pays his overseer per month. Now maybe you can begin to account for those beautiful gardens, those precision trimmed hedges, that spick and span house, those neat walks, weedless lawn, splendidly cooked meals faultlessly served, and so ad infinituma seeming inexhaustible supply of fabulously cheap man and woman power by our standards. Not so much down here by Chilean standards, in Chilean money, made in Chile.

Our room in the Carrera Hotel in Santiago with twin beds, tub and shower, service galore, large, airy and well-appointed in every way, on the 14th floor with French windows and magnificent view-- a splendid room in probably the biggest and best hotel in town-- cost us 606 pesos per day, sales tax and tips included. In our money, as we exchanged it, that means $6.06. Even a Durham wouldn't kick on that.

We will get back to the fundo and go out the front door, make a right angle and have a look. Below and directly in front are the barns, barn lots, drives, pens, slaughterhouse, enormous two story wheat granary, potato houses, stables, sheds, blacksmith shop, lumber room and sawmill pretty well equipped to make any wooden thing a farm needs, the Delco building, the flour mill, the cheese factory and probably a lot of other "small stuff' like that.

He had six riding horses in one stable when I looked in. Two of them were thoroughbred Chilean horses he seemed rather proud of, although he is extremely modest about what he owns. Aura May went riding to the nearby Indian town and back on the big hills, taking a look at the Pacific Ocean off there to the west about two miles.

Beyond the aforementioned barns and so forth is the highway, and beyond that is near 2,000 acres of about the finest bottom land in all Chile. It is supreme. It extends over a mile to the river and almost three miles up and down, to a very small town, Nehuentue, his post office. The river is rather narrow, but deep and navigable--salt water up past him, and with a small tide, say two feet. He has his own private dock on the river where he loads his wheat, potatoes, cattle, sheep and whatever else he may want to s.h.i.+p.

He appears to think his livestock is a small part of the fundo.

And yet, when he got the idea I thought a good deal of cattle, he took Sugar Foot and me into a pasture of an excellent sort of strange gra.s.s where he had 50 or 60 gra.s.sers he expected to weigh 1,000 pounds by cold weather--next July or August. They were of all colors and duo colors, but good boned, uniform, and in good flesh--the best I had seen. I saw perhaps another 300 animals, 40 or 50 good-sized hogs and a good many sheep. And still, he isn't in the livestock business--much.

THE MISSING PURSE

Early Christmas Day afternoon, we started to Temuco to catch the train back to Santiago. We had one of the four compartments on that long steam locomotived train, which arrived in Santiago the next morning at 10 a.m.

We stepped jauntily into a well worn taxi and started for the Carrera Hotel when Aura May jumped straight up. Where was her purse, her pa.s.sport, over $300 in U.S. currency, about 3,000 pesos in Chilean money, the s.h.i.+p tickets to Panama, the flying machine tickets to Los Angeles, her hair tinware and other feminine goods and wares too numerous to mention? We got the driver turned around and back. The train was still standing in the shed. I had to watch the baggage to save what we had left.

Aura May took off like a teal at Le Pas, Manitoba, five days after opening day. She flew past the gate man like he wasn't there. Gate men seem to know when women mean business. The last I saw, she was headed down the right platform.

To me a long time elapsed. . . Then here she came--with the purse, shoulder sling and all, intact except for a few hundred pesos she, in her grat.i.tude, had scattered to whomsoever would take them.

The porter had promptly taken the purse to his superior. . . If you ever again hear me speak ill of Chilean porters, call my attention to this item of my experience.