1950

This is the Salvation Army building that remains in Marañon
in Panama City today. It still bears the emblem and logo in Spanish that
reads “Ejercito de la Salvación.” The original building, however, was a two
floor structure, the top floor occupied by residents and the entire ground floor, facing
the street, was dedicated to the Church and its activities.

The year 1950 witnessed some significant changes on the surface of our troubled planet. While it was the year that the United States forces invaded North Korea by crossing the 38th Parallel, it was also the year in which the charming Peanuts comic strip was first published in seven leading newspapers in the United States. At the top of the music charts the world would be delighted by Fats Domino’s The Fat Man and Nat King Cole’s Mona Lisa, while in Latin America Cuba’s Perez Prado was beginning to take Mexico City and the world by storm with his new sound called “Mambo.”

For me 1950 would be the year that my character truly blossomed and, for the first time, I was consciously formulating important decisions for my future. Towards the end of my sixth grade school year, however, I was anticipating the same boring experience I had foreseen from the beginning of the school year. One event would change the course of that year for me, however, once I was appointed assistant to the English teacher who had the task of organizing that year’s Fair and Dance.

In fact, it was Miss Ana Sanchez, who was not only our school’s English teacher but my next door neighbor, and who made it a point to seek me out as I sat quietly reading one day. “Mr. Reid you come with me!” she commanded and I immediately responded without exactly knowing what it was all about.

Little did I know that I would end that crucial school year with the most unforgettable memories- memories that would shape me for the rest of my life. At first I felt like I had taken on a tall order since added to my duties assigned to me by Miss Sanchez, I kept up my quasi apprenticeship at the Dental Clinic while staying available for my grandmother and her multitude of errands that usually took me all over the city of Panama.

The other great change in my routine at this time was that my Auntie Berenice, the Zone maid and cook, who was working for a white family, suddenly stopped coming home on the weekends thus ending my usual Sunday School lessons at St. Paul Episcopal Church. It was then that I decided that it was a good time to change to a more “mature” environment by attending the Sunday School in the area of Wachipali’s Marañon Salvation Army Sunday School.

It would be at that Salvation Army Sunday School that I would, for the first time, become involved with reading the Holy Bible. The formal study of the Scriptures I had heard read since I’d been a newcomer in my grandmother’s home at one of the various churches established by one of the many powerful spiritualist Westindian lady’s homes suddenly started taking on more meaning. Noticing a marked improvement in my comprehension of Holy writ during those special scriptural readings of Bible verses I was determined not to miss any of my Sunday school classes.

The fact was that I had not had what one would call a Christian conversion as yet and the treks with my grandmother to one church or the other on the outskirts of the city had amounted to just adventures for me until the moment in which I started my Bible reading lessons at the Salvation Army. In reality I never understood the background behind the stories I had been reading in that blessed book while on my previous attempts in Sunday school at learning to read.

Until that year’s Easter Movie, a special feature of attendance at the Salvation Army Sunday School, I had never truly pondered the whole concept of Jesus’ crucifixion. As I sat in the dark that Sunday evening in the popularly frequented Capitolio Cinema at the corner of “P” Street and Central Avenue in my barrio, I was suddenly and irreversibly won over to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

For almost a full six months I became a true convert, a zealous student of the Lord’s teachings, who would read scripture with my grandmother and literally force her to listen to what I had been reading. This helped me a great deal, in fact, with my avoidance of the streets, something I had accomplished without compromising my manhood-or so I thought.

At school during the close of that year I also made a friend in someone I really liked this time since I was always kind of picky about friendships. It was a girl who had stood up and defended me at one time, saving me from another situation that could have caused me some embarrassment and even expulsion because of my past “reputation.”

This story will continue.