Arrival and First Friendship
The Puerto Rican west coast town of Mayagüez (mah-jah-WEHZ) became the ground-zero of my new geography in life. Known as “The Mango City,” Mayagüez’s terrain varies a lot, from coast plains, river valleys, marshland, to hills and mountains.
Compared to Ponce, Mayagüez looked to me “tighter” than Ponce, its buildings closer to each other, the streets narrower. I remember its climate also as cooler and much wetter than my hometown’s. I recall its thunderstorms as loud and reverberating across the Mayagüez’s semi-valley, and quite awe-inspiring.
I landed at Doña Delia's male student hostel in Mayagüez that August. The hostel's location was a housing spread near the UPRM campus named Mayagüez Terrace. The homes were identical in layout and pattern as Mercie's Villa Grillasca in Ponce. The owners of many, former duplex homes, had converted the homes into larger steads. Doña Delia owned one of these. I crashed at the room closest to the outside kitchen and dining area. Big mistake. It was noisy at night.
My first coterie of friends and acquaintances came from all over the Island. I only can recall one name, that of Manuel Fuentes, my first roommate. He was from San Juan and was to major in electronic engineering. His father was a high-ranking US Army Medical officer. An ebony-skinned Afro Puerto Rican, Manuel had a suave personality and a winning smile that made him attractive to every female in his orbit.
Manuel taught me how to play Risk and chose to always first occupy Australia on the board. He did so not only because owning a continent gives the player a multiplying factor for armies, but also because the band Air Supply hailed from there. Hence, he reintroduced me to Air Supply, which then became one of my favorite music bands. I say “reintroduced me” because I was already familiar with their songs but had never bothered to bind the songs under their name.
Manuel is the only person I’d remained in touch from my UPRM college days. He had and still retains his brilliant intellect, a winning smile, and suave personality. He’s also the father of triplets, now all adults.
Mayagüez Ditty
I soon learned a ditty an anonymous student had composed long before my time there and had become part of the local lore. It went like this:
¡Oh Mayagüez, pueblo oscuro!
¡En ti no hay nada que valga!
Si Puerto Rico tuviera nalgas,
Tú, Mayagüez, fueras el culo.
It wasn’t a flattering, complementary ditty, as you can see. But the students declaimed it with great conviction on every occasion, happy or sad.
Life that first semester
The guys called me Ponceño and I liked it when they did. Ponceño means "the man from Ponce." I liked it because I remembered an anecdote by Papi in which others had called him Ponceño. I like both the distinction and the association the appellative had with Papi.
The orientation day was a disaster, in my estimation. It was rowdy and disordered, followed by a movie night as bad as the orientation. I felt dissatisfied at the lack of decorum and respect. I’d expected something with more gravitas, more seriousness. It was my first of many disappointments.
I took a load of 18 credit hours, having tested out of most basic courses. I signed on to Pre-Calculus and advanced English, Spanish, Air Force ROTC and I don't recall what else. As an ROTC'er I got to wear a military uniform for the first time. I drilled once a week, and also attended classes on Air Force history at their building on campus.
Not much of a “Joiner”
My scholarly homebase was the Physics Building, of modern construction with its own planetarium and observatory, large laboratories, and a Foucault Pendulum that didn’t work at the time. Yet, I spent most of my class time in the General Studies building.
I joined the Society of Physics Students, the Catholic Mass music group, and the Catholic Student Group. Mass was celebrated every Thursday at the Student Center. The Opus Dei had a student center just off-campus and would also hold their weekly reflections every Thursday. I attended the Opus Dei reflections on occasion.
Off-Campus, I attended the weekly Charismatic Prayer Assembly held at Mayagüez’s baseball park. They even gave me an electric guitar to play. And, as much as I denied and clarified I hadn’t been a member of the Ponce Music Ministry, they identified me as such. In fact, the more I denied it the more they insisted I was a Ministry member which brought me and them some measure of prestige. I stopped my denials and the clamor waned.
Apart from the above, I joined nothing else. That is, I joined no fraternities, no sports groups, nothing of the sort. I didn’t carouse, drink, or smoked anything either legal or illegal, at all. I abused no drugs, and didn’t tattoo myself, nor went for any “punk” looks. I was myself in non-descript jeans and polo shirts, just being a student in a larger context.
I know. Boring. It just wasn’t in me to do these things. It wasn’t me.
Walked Everywhere
I walked everywhere I went. I had a bicycle but I’d left it back Ponce. I had no way to bring my bicycle with me. I had no racks to do so to mount on the car, and no concept of them. It wouldn’t fit Mercie’s car either. Also, I used the bicycle back home to go to and from Mercie’s. I needed it. Therefore, I walked everywhere, in and around the campus.
Though I first tried to cook for myself I soon gave up after trying to cook rotten meat. Thankfully there were lots of eateries catering to the student crowd. The one I frequented the most was a kind of dining hall located at Alfonso Valdés Cobián Avenue, near the campus. Its name now escapes me, but I do remember I could buy ticket books to cover my meals for a month or so.
Outside of school, church, and eating, I would visit the Catholic bookstore in the downtown area, now called Anawim though I can’t recall if that was its name back then. I shopped but seldom bought anything. I learned to avoid the bar El Garabato located at Bosque Street, if anything because every time there was a student fight it tended to be there. For people with Type A personalities, partiers or bohemians, however, this was the place to be. Since I wasn’t gifted along those lines I avoided the place, especially on Thursday nights, before everyone went home or elsewhere for the weekend. Thursday nights were the rowdiest nights.
Waiting for the Weekend But Dreading its End
Of course, despite all the excitement of being a new student in a new place, I was miserable. I missed my Mercie terribly. In retrospect, I know now I spent my days with a low-grade melancholy bordering on mild depression. The reason was I loved her and I felt incomplete in myself and therefore, dejected. She’d started her studies at the Catholic University in Ponce and soon entered a close-knit circle of friends. She was doing very well in her studies, but she was stronger and more able at compartmentalizing her own loneliness and angst than I was. It wasn’t that she didn’t suffer our separation, for she did. But her ability to transcend suffering and do what needed to be done fr surpassed mine - even to this day.
I would call her from the only public phone nearby at least once a week, sometimes twice, always collect. Sometimes I had to stand on line waiting for someone else to finish a call, or I had to rush my conversation because someone else was waiting to call. It was like being in a prison. It was heartbreaking for the both of us.
As soon as I finished classes on Friday I would walk to the Public Transportation Center in Mayagüez, the Parada de Carros Públicos. A “carro público” in Puerto Rico was a shared taxi car well before the advent of Uber, Lyft, and such. It consisted of a private car with special car plates that its owner turned into a taxi for a fee. The driver will take all riders to specific destinations in other Puerto Rican towns.
It was the poor person’s transportation mode.
In the first few months of my college years the público would drop me off at home and I would then bike to Mercie’s with my laundry. Come Sunday afternoon I would grab another público for my return or catch a ride with fellow students returning to Mayagüez. As time went by my Mercie would drive me there.
A secret wedding
Our separation got old real quick. Being and staying together was our principal goal. We felt time passing by fast, and every second without each other was irrevocable.
We were gravitating to a solution and it came in the form of a formal commitment: we would contract a civil marriage. We would keep it secret from everyone. Only the witnesses would know. One such witness was Maritza, a nursing coed who had become Mercie’s best friend at the UCPR, the other was Ramón, Maritza’s then boyfriend.
And so we did. One day in September 1983 we went before a judge and got married. No one was the wiser.
What About My Walk With The Lord?
I continued on my walk with the Lord, attending Mass and frequenting the sacraments. Yet, the afterglow of my “second conversion” was dimming. I wasn’t getting into a rote. I just pined for something more, but I was unable to recognize the need, much less verbalize my need. In retrospect I can tell I had a need for growth and direction. I didn’t know it then but I would have to hack my own path and direction towards the Lord. I didn’t know either where the path would take me, but knowingly or not, I was on my way with Him in my heart.
Freshman in College
The ditty about Mayagüez me hizo pensar en Jtown 😅
BTW, that ditty local lore 😆🤣, made me laugh. So if Mayagüez was the "C---" then where that puts Coamo?? The belly button ... Jajajaja OMG 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣