Summer, 1954
In 1954 while finishing my first year of the two year program at the Business School, I roomed with a Frenchman name Gerard Fabry. Both of us faced the question of whether to use the summer break to get work experience in a consulting firm or merchant bank, or to try something different.
We decided it would be interesting to drive to Rio from Boston in a 1952 MG TD.
My father was kind enough to put up the bond that we needed to cross and I managed to get a sponsorship from the AAA to give us an the aura of officialness so critical in Central America at that time.
The deal was simple: I would use my mechanical skills to keep the car going if Gerry can manage to learn enough Spanish to get us across the borders. Amazingly we made it and had some even more amazing events along the way.
A Coup in Guatemala
The plan was to drive as far as we could through the US, Mexico, and Central America, and then put the car on a boat to go around the Darien Gap in Northern Colombia.
To this point, the trip had been fairly smooth. We had broken the leaf spring suspension and replaced it with hard wood in the Andes, which amazingly worked, although was particularly hard on Gerry when he had to walk the two days it took us to find a town with welding equipment.
We had also discovered how really different Spanish is from French, and that most people traveling across Central America don’t use trucks, not British Sports cars, but we hadn’t had any political trouble. Until Guatemala.
Castillo contra Matamoros and here are two business students driving out of the mountains at the same time. For whatever reason, the press decided we had some expertise and interviewed us for a front page article. Must have been the AAA papers.
A State Funeral in Brazil
Rio, even after a long drive, is a beautiful city. Although I wanted to sell the car and enjoy the city in a style to which it deserved, my Father would have none of it and insisted we don’t threaten the bond and ship the car back.
Haphazzardly, while we were there, the ruling president Getulio Vargas commited suicide. To our surprise, when we went to see why the crowd had gathered, we were ushered right into the mourning room to view the body and were included in the official state procession.
