Travel by DAR

Grenada: Cowboys & West Indians

(First published in Esquire)

For Americans who lived through the Vietnam era, it is eye-opening to go somewhere in the world where we’re not merely tolerated but loved. Not merely not picketed, you understand – but cheered, admired, looked up to. Where the graffiti are actually in our favor. Where red-white-and-blue T-shirts are sold on the beach. Nowhere is our fledgling 1980s-style neo-patriotism more flatteringly mirrored than on the speck of island way down off the coast of Venezuela that we bombed the coconuts out of three years ago. No jokes here about making Grenada safe for Great Neck. Here they don’t call it, as we half-blushingly do, the Invasion. They call it the Rescue.

And you know what? This is a state of affairs you could get used to. It is more than charming to witness such nonrevulsion: it is edifying. Here, where the refrains of Springsteen mix with Marley, is our chance to learn not just about the Grenadians but about ourselves, reflected in their admiration. Here, where the bougainvillea wafts and no Cuban soldiers walk, we see ourselves as we used to: the hero-rescuers, at peace abroad in a place where we can let our hair down. It is pretty, it is lush, and yes, the Rastas really do sell Reagan T-shirts to the White House staffers who seem partial to flocking here by the jet-load. (Nor are all such sales akin to hauling coals to Newcastle – the Rastas also try to sell them drugs, and a funnier sight is hard to find. Picture it: coke-wielding Rastas rapping with White House pudgies on the sand, the politically disenfranchised jiving with the politically omnivorous in the noonday sun, tap-tapping their respective calculators not to deal but to see who is having whom.)

Not all these carryings-on are a direct consequence of Grenada's wondrous local drink. But it factors. If you've ever had the suspicion that serious drinking nations apply serious appellations to their potion of choice – Irish “jar,” German “schnapps,” Chinese “chung” – search no further for conclusive evidence. Here in the jewel of the West Indies presides the drink called “grog” (Grand Rum of Grenada) and a more onomatopoeic concoction never touched human tongue. Even to murmur it sets your brain to vibrating like a drinking-man's om. (Try it: “groggggg. “) Nutmeg, the island's cash crop and a reputed provider of out-of-body experiences, is added to local rum for a punch they claim is “psychotropic.” And what rum: one variety, fearsomely called Jack Iron, is so strong that ice is rumored to sink in it. (No one has ever tested the thesis by pouring in enough to cover the cubes, for the simple reason that no one has ever dared.)

So what, in all that drunken admiration, do you do? (A.) Breathe the air so forgiving, so balmy with spice (more spice is grown here than any place its size on earth), and so unlike the sharp rebuke of our chaste Northern air, you may feel absolved of colonial urges you didn't know you had. (B.) Study the sexual come-ons of the Rastas, who, when not trading hard commodities, ply a number of lines so poetic you only hope their luck rubs off on you. (Best line: “Are my words too soft for you, or is your heart too hard?”) (C.) Take a history lesson amid the windy ruins of the former headquarters of Maurice Bishop, the leftist leader dictator gunned down by even more leftist buddies (the action that precipitated Reagan's bombers). As you pick through the charred rubble of his redoubt overlooking St. George's, the prettiest harbor-capital in the Caribbean, your newfound luck may enable you to land a prize, as I did: a colored portrait of none other than Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. People's Exhibit Number 88 (in case there was any doubt): communism exported to the Caribbean.

Or for an outing with more zip, head over to Mama's. Mama's, the pastel-colored house with armadillos drying for stew on its tin roof. Mama's, the down-home gourmet palace that offers flying fish baked in beer and twenty other courses, all under ten dollars. Expect no nouveau wicker at Mama's. No matched crockery, either. All you get at Mama's is onomatopoeia of a grand order: blood pudding, cream of bluggo soup, hundred-year-old pepper pot and arguably the best company on the island. To your left sits a lovely local aristocrat, blithe in a flower-print dress (she is from one of the Scottish-French families who settled Grenada), whose bedroom at home, you just know, features original Hogarth prints and dusty photos of her forebears strolling with King George. To your right, your dinner partner may be one Chief Justice Dennis Byron, late of Antigua and most recently on loan to Grenada to preside over the trial of Bishop's alleged murderers. Without his white powdered wig, the justice is considerably less austere than his newspaper photos would indicate. In fact, like an overweight Eddie Murphy, he is the most happily lewd chap you've met m a while, all ribald double entendres (the aristocrat happens to have a cherry in her drink) – the roly-poly soul of the Caribbean itself. Chalk another one up to the forgiving air of Grenada.

But the main diversion, as I say, is to witness further the behavior of your countrymen, the White House rescuers at ease. Sunup: flat-footed on the ivory sand, staring strong and silent out to sea with beepers stuck to their bathing suits. Sundown: paleskinned in the rainbow-colored twilight, emoting soberly into their Dictaphones. But, ah, what revelations the Grenadian night yields. Whole new sides of the Reagan administration are revealed. Communications experts become communicative. Relations people relate. Okay, so maybe these Yanks aren't the sexiest bunch by day, but give them a semitropical isle where they've won a war recently. Give them a steel band in the dark playing “Feelings.” You won't believe your eyes. Blink: the fanatical gleam gives way to a glassy-eyed gaiety. Blink: the buttoned-down style caves in to a hootenanny. Rodeo yips; by midnight, here in the proudest liberated island of the Eighties, the White House staffers are making rodeo yips at the stars. No getting around it: we are a nation of cowboys.

[ Since there is an abundance of fine lodging in Grenada, I will refrain from singling out just one. Instead I offer the recipe for the best grog punch, m case you prefer to enjoy your hangover at home. Remember this ditty: One of sour (lime juice); Two of sweet (sugar syrup, best when simmered with cloves, cinnamon, and a bay leaf); Three of strong (rum); Four of weak (water). Note that it is not rendered juvenile with red strawberry syrup as in Jamaica, nor made childish with coconut as m the Virgins. This most spirituous of punches, when sprinkled with fresh grated nutmeg, is boasted to have killed more brain cells than any other in the tropics, and in the local parlance, “it goes all over your tongue.” Use no straw.]