Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 170
In Antofagasta, the Chilean port of our destination, my father put the whole clan up in a
little waterfront inn. I followed my cousins, most of them older than me, in exploring
everything on the rocky ocean shore. I looked at everything, from the fishermen’s nets
to a pelican’s bill, discovering creatures I would never have dreamed existed. It was the
first time I smelled the pungent odor of clams and seaweed and felt the salty sea-spray
off the rocks. On the rocky shores I saw little monsters scampering about that turned out
to be crabs and mollusks and had nightmares at night. In vengeance I started to chase
them the next day. At the beach, I waded in the ocean and resisting the waning surge of
the waves that crashed on rows of white-capped walls of water I felt shifting sand under
my feet. It was a little scary but I loved it. Not to my liking, I tasted fresh fish in the
restaurant. For the first time I met people who talked with a different accent. It was a
true trip of discovery.
In early 1952, when Dad was in charge of building a railroad through the jungle from
Brazil to Bolivia, he took us by plane to a beachfront hotel on the world famous
Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There we stayed for a whole month, and my
brothers and I really had fun in the surf. I believe that my serious love affair with the
ocean started then. We also spent part of that summer in Corumba, Brazil, a town on
the Paraguay River that marks the border between Bolivia and Brazil. It was the
railroad’s headquarters and Dad’s base of operations. The main pastime was piranha
fishing but we also did some learning. Dad took us to see a nearby steel smelter, the
first industrial installation I had ever seen. Air conditioning was unknown in Corumba,
but life for we children was enjoyable despite the fact that most of the year the heat and
humidity there make Houston in the summer feel like spring in New England.
On another occasion in 1954, we went to the Pacific port of Arica, as a reception
committee for my sister Toqui who was returning by ship with my father after attending
prep school in Pennsylvania. Although my parents believed correctly that traveling
opened up the world to us, I now think that the main lesson we learned was the
dedicated filial love that they had for their children. They shared everything they could in
the most exemplary way, establishing a pattern of generosity that we would all follow
with our own families in our adult lives. We formed our characters on their image and
passed them on to our own children.
Another environment that without a doubt was very instrumental in forming my character
was the school I attended. As I mentioned in Chapter 2 of this book, I went through the
complete cycles of elementary and secondary education in a Catholic school operated
by the LaSalle Christian Brothers of Spain. It was a boys-only school that excelled in the
quality of its graduates. We learned stuff that, unbeknown to me at the time, was of
college level, as I discovered at Villanova University. We didn’t have labs or fancy
textbooks but we took ample notes and were given a lot of homework, which we did.
Anyone who consistently did not do homework was kicked out.
Autobiography.doc 170 of 239