PPRuNe Forums - Going into USA

Here's a tale of two U.S. citizens re-entering the U.S.1977. Forty-eight years ago. Last week.

My former bride and I decided that since we had never had an “official honeymoon”, one was in order after eight years of (cough!) wedded bliss. I discussed this concept with my sainted/excommunicated mother, who, sometime between remembering where she had hidden a bottle of bourbon and gulping a few deep swigs, decided to gift us with a week’s sojourn to Jamaica, Mon! All expenses paid for a week! At the trendy and stylish Bay Roc hotel in Montego Bay! The only apparent flaw in this stratagem was that we already lived on a Tropic Island Paradise – St. Simons Island, Georgia, USA – so why visit another Tropic Island Paradise nearly a thousand miles away? Yet prepaid meant free in any language, so off we went. We took a grand in cash just in case.

The Bay Roc was as advertised, though showing her age. Chipped stucco here and there, rust tracks in the bathroom sink and tub. A TV without sound. Why complain? Bougainvillea everywhere; fresh barbecued goat; bepalmed alabaster white beaches, the fragrant, inimitably beautiful turquoise Caribbean! The hotel staff were all extremely considerate and polite, though we both found it to be a clash between habituation, common sense, and reality to hear lovely British accents spilling from the mouths of the bituminously-hued native populace. What white teeth! What kind people! The food was delicious, and our waiter, “Ronnie”, real name Franklin Buckham, anticipated our every need, including heavily-poured martinis and a full lid (ounce) of locally-grown Blue Mountain Weed of Wisdom. For $2.00 American! That toe-tagging marihooch was one hit, down for the count, magnetic hands and feet, insatiable munchies kinda stuff that would have sold stateside for, let’s say, $275.00! What could possibly go wrong?

Rain! Nonstop! All seven days! Some unnamed Tropical Depression must have taken a shine to the non-sceptred Isle of Jammyville and decided to stick around for a full week. What’s a honeymooning couple to do? Bueller? Bueller? Smoke da Ganja, Bro! My bride, a very conservative lass, had ne’er sampled the demon weed ‘til this time and place – suffice it to say she gained her baptism by blast furnace. She’d take a big hit, cough her ass off, adjourn to our balcony, sit in the trés comfortable rattan throne, and gaze across the azurine sea into infinity. For hours. She would then return for another dose, cough like an end-stage tuberculosis patient, smile, then take me to the bed lorded over by a serenely-revolving ceiling fan (Apocalypse NOW!), and hit me so hard when I woke up my wardrobe was outta style! With such force that my whole family fell down! So fast that I exclaimed: “Y’all stop!” Never, EVER, sell this short: sex in Jamaica on a rainy afternoon while stoned out of one’s gourd.

All good things must come to an end. Not now, please, you plea in utter supplication. Oh, all right, then. There is a second half to my tale. Here it is:

Before we departed for Montego Bay, my then-bride and I were enjoying drinks with our good friends, Eddie and Fran Rockefeller. Yes, that Rockefeller. Eddie, a lineal descendant of John D., had recently sold his 22,000-acre cattle ranch near Ocala, Florida, but had maintained several other residences. One was on St. Simons, where we had met this gentle and fine couple. (All twenty-somethings should have friends forty years their senior just to learn the ropes and avoid a few slings and arrows.) The Rockefellers mentioned that they had another home in Ocho Rios, Jamaica; they invited to spend some time with them while we were “honeymooning”. How could we say no?

Thus, after a week in the Bay Roc we procured a cheap car from Jamaican-Rent-A-Lada, and set tires and sail from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios. About every ten miles, my then-bride would jab me in my left rib cage and shout: “You’re driving on the WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD!” Old habits die hard. By some malformed quirk of fate, we made it to the White River place. Chugging and backfiring through what seemed like an endless palisade of tents and tin-roofed huts where everything from carved coconuts, voodoo dolls, to gimp bracelets was being hawked, I stopped to ask a native the location of the Rockefeller Residence, known locally as “The Upton Great House”. Looking at me with the sudden respect borne of potential familiarity with demi-godliness, she spread her arms, looked toward the summit of the horseshoe-shaped mountain in whose embrace Ocho Rios is cradled, and said in her lilting, mellifluous voice: “~~Behold, It is our Lord Jesus Christ, come to absolve us fr~~” Oops, wrong story. “You must know de Rockefellers! Dere is dey home!” She pointed at a huge structure atop the mountain. We drove there. As we approached the Main House, we passed what looked to be a one-story small motel. It was the servant’s quarters. Perhaps fifteen rooms. Overlooking - two-thousand feet below - the town and the glistening Caribbean. The sun had, at last, emerged from its murky funk.

In case I haven’t mentioned this, I emphasize that Eddie and Fran were two of the kindest, nicest, most generous people to ever inhabit this planet. They welcomed us with heartfelt hugs and gin and tonics which appeared unbidden and unexpectedly, served by a houseman in white linen garb. Never one to mince words, Eddie said: “You’ll stay a week.” Fran stood, offered my then-wife a hand, and said: “Let me show you around the place.” They were gone a half-hour; when they returned, my distaff wore the facial expression of a child at the Yuletide, beholding all the presents under the tree on Christmas morn. No wonder – the Upton Great House had ten bedrooms and more bathrooms than I cared to count. We were assigned servants around the clock. If I wanted a 14-oz. New York strip steak at 0430, I stuck my head out of our bedroom door, placed the order, et voila! Want to spend some time beach-side. No probs; Eddie and Fran had their own private sandy God’s half-acre. This was one of the most memorable times of my life. To this very day, when times are tough and my eight-and-one-half-decade old body offers up a new and painful annoyance, I think back and my soul smiles. What memories, yes?

But I forgot the last part of this, some of which revolves around that $1,000 I mentioned earlier on. We had spent/squandered every last nickel we had. We had given Ronnie and his family of six all of our clothing except what we wore. And $600.00. The the other money went for tips, side trips and tours, and lotsa Red Stripe brewtonic.

We departed the idyllic Paradise Ocho Rios and our Dear Friends, drove back to Montego Bay, and hopped the Air Jamaica crate puddle jumper to Miami. Thence, a Delta flight to Hotlanner and an Air South Convair 440 fright to Brunswick. Easy, eh? Mais Non, mes amis!

That same pesky tropical depression, that had kept us room- and dope-bound for a solid week, having tired of its Junkanoo in Jamaica, had decided to surrey on down to Miami, where if there were not sufficient Cubano population, perhaps a deluge of rain might suffice. This meteorological phenomenon served to delay our landing at KMIA and thus our ability to make our connection to Atlanta. It was before the Mariel Boatlift and Jimmy Cartier, but the airport was still full of cigar-smoking, stabby, robby, rapey people who didn’t schprekin das Anglais. Zero cash = Destination Totally Fcuked! It was like Jem and Scout and Bob Ewell and Boo Radley in a To Kill a Mockingbird Halloween.

But WAIT! WHAT’S THIS? My we-coulda-made-it-if-only Love, recently released from her tetrahydrocannabinol trance, remembers that her father’s dearest friend, Paul Marriott, resides in Miami - the Magic City. Yes, that Marriott. Brother of J. Willard and co-founder of the Marriott International Corporation, hotelier to the World! My former father-in-law, working for the F-ah Bee Eye during WWII, had met the Marriott brothers when Willard was selling root beer and Paul had a hot dog stand on Pennsylvania Avenue directly across from the White House. My f-i-l went on to found Federal Armored Express, a big-time armored car deal, and CoffeeCup, the company who sold you, me, and every other biped on the planet a cup of too-hot and/or luke-cold coffee from a vending machine. A penny a cup royalty @ 3,000,000 cups/day. You can do the math. Enough backstory.

We call the father-in-law and obtain Mr. Marriott’s private number. We call Mr. M. He directs us to proceed immediately to the Airport Marriott, where he, with a quick telephone call, will assure us lodging for the evening. We walk nearly a mile with three suitcases full of Jamaican tat. We are soaked to the bone marrow with the same rain that cost us a week of sun-filled fun. I am a bedraggled waif with a dirty shirt and a three-day growth of scraggly beard. My blond hair was matted to my scalp. My then-wife doesn’t look much better, but at least she has big American breasts. We reach the hotel and, breathing like Roger Bannister after a sub-four-minute-miler, hobble to the reception desk.

Awaiting us, like a rabid dragon/guppy, is the gayest guy from the gayest street in the gayest town by the gayest river in the gayest state in the gayest country on the gayest pla… well, you get the idea! “May I be of athisstanth?”, he lisped like a pressure relief valve on a live steam radiator. “Yes!”, I ejaculated in my most manly heterosexual voice. “Mr. Marriott has reserved us a room!” (I was tempted to do my most precise and amusing Clouseau impression and ask for a “rreum”, but this gentle soul had obviously left his sense of humor in Rosie O’Donnell’s broom closet.)

“I thee!”, responded the effeminate lad, elevating several inches from his loafers. “Mithter Marriott?”, he said, staring daggers and machetes from his contact-influenced limpid blue eyes. “Leth’s just check. I be back thortly!” The desk clerk pirouetted and adjourned to his office. We watched as he picked up his office ‘phone and deliberately dialed a number. He looked up and regarded us with the jaundiced stare of a safari hunter who was about to pull the trigger on a pair of trophy white rhinochahauruses. He spoke a few words, placed the ‘phone back on its cradle, stood up, and didn’t move a muscle. We exchanged immutable unvarying stares. We waited. For what?

The POPO! OH NO! Six policemen surged through the revolving door of the hotel! The last one, an obese and blatantly dimwitted organism, misunderestimated his speed and had to “go around” a second time. They ran toward us, brandishing handcuffs with their left hands, using their rights to unsnap then grip their still-holstered pistols. “Hands Up!”, the lead officer yelled. “We’re arresting you for fraud and attempting to gain residence through false pretenses!”, said another. Though I was thinking “What the FLYING FCUK!”, I had the presence of mind to allow my better half to do the talking. No dummy, she said: “If you will call Mr. Marriott, I am certain he can clear up this misunderstanding! Here’s his number….” She handed Mata Hari the piece of paper upon which she had inscribed Paul’s telephone number. It gets good here.

The Big Thilly dials the number and is surprised that the capo di tutti capi, President and CEO of Marriott International answers the call. With exaggerated sibilance, he intones: “Thorry to bother you, Thir, but I have a couple here that claim to know you and further thay that you have retherved them a room. I am having them arrethted!” (I feel compelled to interject that both Paul Marriott and J. Willard Marriott were good Mormons from Utah and that neither would ever take the Lord’s name in vain or utilize other scatalogical references unless pushed to the precipice.)

The first thing we heard Mr. Marriott scream was: “God Damn It, you Fcuking Squid Bait!” We witnessed the el Gibbity’s cranial blood supply vacate its customary residence. “But Thir!”, he tried to explain; it was too late. Mr. M. went on: “You put them in the Presidential Suite, you Motherfcuker, and if you don’t treat them with complete courtesy, I’ll make sure to have your Goddamned Ass thrown out of my property by those suhbitch police!” It got worse from there….

So it came pass in Marriott of Miami, that we wound up in the Presidential Suite of the Marriott Miami Airport Hotel. We were given a “Marriott Envoy Card” which entitled us free rein to spend any amount of money on any service or perk offered by the facility. Did we have room service bring us medium rare filet mignons accompanied by Maine lobster tails? Yes! Was there buttered spinach and Pommes Lyonnaise? Damn straight! Was there chocolate fudge cake for dessert? But of course. Did we wash it all down with a fine vintage of Mumm Cordon Rouge? Wouldn’t you? Did we have in-room massages after dinner. Hell Yes we did! Then we spent some on some worthless bric-a-brac in Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe. What an end to what a trip, what?

We returned to our home on St. Simons safe and sound. Our eight-year-old had missed us terribly and wouldn’t let us out of his sight for a month. Fall was soon to give way to Winter. It was good to be back, snug in our little house. It was good to snuggle in each other’s hearts.

One Saturday I went to retrieve the mail. We had been back from our Jamaican odyssey for a month. There was the usual complement of postal materials, but one envelope caught my attention. It was embossed in gold and the return address was J. Willard Marriott, Paul Marriott, Marriott International Corporation, Washington, DC. I walked into the house, sat down at my desk, and grasped my letter opener. As it smoothly cleaved that piece of mail, I thought: “How nice of Paul Marriott to write us, especially after all the kindness and accommodation he showed. There was one sheet of paper contained in the fancy envelop. It was a bill for $733.00!

No such thing as a free lunch, know what I’m sayin’? C’est la vie!