Christmas Eve is celebrated in many ways all over the world, this being a first for me, as it was the first time i had been away from home for Christmas, so I tried to observe fully how it was in the Dominican Republic.
Since I arrived on the island on December 5th 1956 to work at the missile tracking station near the north coast of the island I knew I would be spending my Christmas downrange at the station. Most of the fellow workers who were already stationed there had made plans to be elsewhere for the holidays.
Our station or base, as most of us liked to call it, was located just a mile south of the small village of Sabana de la Mar. The village was on the edge of the southern shore of the Bay of Samana, and naturally most of the towns people spoke spanish on this part of the island of Hispaniola, discovered by Christopher Columbus.
The handful of fellow workers who were left behind at the base, held a meeting on Christmas eve afternoon to decide whether to have a party at the base that evening or go into town. Because of the short notice in deciding on a party and thinking that not many local girls would attend we decided to go into town after we had supper at our mess hall.
The results of the meeting was that we would go to to the main local drinking establishment, which was called "Fremy's Bar ", a local saloon on the village waterfront, where most fellow workers hung out when off duty. It was a wonderful place to sit out on the veranda and take in the scenery of the town, the harbor, the mountains across the bay all the while enjoying a few bottles of "El Presidente" beer, the only beer served there or sipping on a daiquiri, a rum-mantic drink soaked in crushed ice and lime juice. Fremy's Bar was a fun place for a weekend party and now it would be the location of our gala Christmas eve fiesta.
A gang of us base workers left the base before dark and was driven down to Fremy's. It included Terry, Red, Queegle, Nuner, Brown, Suchuck and myself (some of these are first names and some are last names, as taken from my preserved notes). The evening was cool and it had started to drizzle by the time we arrived at the village bar. The security guard who had driven us into town went to see a few of the local senorita's to tell them of our plans before going back to the base. Word got around quickly in the village about our party plans. Due to the drizzling rain, and instead of sitting on the bar's veranda we moved the tables and chairs that were normally outside to the inside and arranged them along the wall so that the center of the building could still be used as a dance floor. The help at Fremy's brought us bottles of rum, soda, coke a cola, and pitchers of ice that we had ordered and the party had begun. Randy brought his girl and Hector came with his girlfriend, both of them base workers, but they sat at a seperate table across the dance floor. These two usually prefer to party by themselves.
It had begun to rain quite heavily and I was afraid that the party would be a dud if it kept up that way. But from the few weeks I had been on the island of Hispaniola I learned that rainstorms don't last long here. The rain soon subsided to let the villagers come to the bar. They surely heard Framey's juke box with "hi-fi" loud speakers blaring out the merengue, the national dance of the Dominican Republic.
The juke box had a few records of American songs too, mainly for the Americano's.
Soon the bar was packed with the holiday crowd of men, women, children and dogs were mingling everywhere and new friendships were made. We still kept our tables and chairs inside the building even though the rain had stopped. It wasn't long before the young ladies that we had particularly invited, came in and joined us, including one that I had met a few weeks earlier and had my eye on. She and I drank and danced that evening, with not much talking as I could speak no spanish and she could only speak a few words of english. But somehow we managed to communicate through an interpreter, who I later found out was a chaperone to the group of girls, as most of them were related somehow. As the evening wore on I know I wanted to dance more and more which I have to attribute to the rum that I was drinking. Not being much of a dancer, and less of a merengue dancer, I somehow managed all right with the help of my lady friend.
As the night progressed I was having such a wonderful time that I forgot the real meaning of why and what we were celebrating that nite. Around 11:30 the young lady I was with said she was going to the midnite mass service and that I was invited to go along with her. I was a little doubtful about this as I really thought it was a good excuse to get outside and do a little smootching. How wrong I was. All the young ladies at our two tables left the party together with most of us base workers following, they walked us to the Catholic church just down the street. They left us standing there while they all went home to get their head scarfs and then we all went into the well lit up and packed church that was decorated with the Christmas nativity scene. This brought me back to what Christmas was all about. We were really celebrating the birth of the Christ Child, whether it was here in this little village in the Dominican Republic, in Bethlehem, in Spain, or back home it was all the same the world over.
After mass we walked the girls home one by one, and promised to meet them soon. We waited in the town square for the next security run of the base truck that would bring us back to the base compound. I finally did manage to get a Christmas kiss that nite, and remember it to this day.
