Digging the Panama Canal

Some memories stay with you because of their scale.

Others stay with you because of the strange way life circles back on itself.

 

When I was stationed at Howard Air Force Base in the Panama Canal Zone, one of the jobs I held was in the Repair Cycle Support Unit. Our work was simple enough on paper. Equipment would come in that needed repair—radios, radar components, various pieces of gear that had stopped doing whatever it was they were designed to do. Some of those items could be repaired on base. Others had to be shipped back to a depot in the United States.

 

Part of my daily routine was picking up these items from different units on base and processing them in a hangar before taking them to another hangar where they were packed and shipped back to the States. Occasionally, I had to drive over to Albrook Air Force Station to pick up repairable equipment from the Inter-American Air Forces Academy, then haul it back to Howard.

 

That was the best part of the job.

 

Not just because it got me out of the hangar for a while, but because it meant driving across the Bridge of the Americas, that sweeping span over the Panama Canal where, for a few moments, the Pacific lay on one side, and the canal stretched away on the other.

 

As you approached the bridge, the road began to climb slowly. The truck would downshift as the grade increased, the engine humming steadily as the land dropped away behind you. A cool breeze moved through the cab.

 

I usually had the radio tuned to the Southern Command Network. If it was morning, there was a good chance Charlie Tuna was on the air, his familiar voice coming through the speaker as his program entertained troops scattered across the world, courtesy of AFRTS—the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.

Then, almost without warning, the view opened.

To the left, the Panama Canal cut inland through green hills and jungle, its narrow ribbon of water carrying ships slowly toward the locks, specifically the Miraflores Locks, where ships began their slow climb and descent through the canal system, moving step by step between oceans.

 

In the distance straight ahead, I could see the buildings of Panama City rising above the haze.

 

Closer by stood a mound of earth created from the tons of dirt and rock excavated when the canal was carved through the isthmus. Around it lay the streets of Balboa, one of the towns in the Canal Zone.

 

Just below the bridge was Canal Zone Junior College, where I had once taken a history class during my time there.

 

To the right, the Pacific Ocean stretched wide and gray-blue under the tropical sun. Sometimes ships waited offshore, lined up like patient travelers, their turn coming soon to pass through the canal.

 

For a few moments on that bridge, you could see the whole story of the canal at once—the city, the ships, the locks, the earth that had been moved to make it all possible.

 

Every time I crossed that bridge, I felt the same quiet thrill.

 

It was a strange feeling—part pride, part wonder. After all, this was one of the great engineering achievements of the modern world. For years, workers had carved that passage through rock and jungle so ships could move between oceans without sailing all the way around Cape Horn.

And there I was, a young serviceman driving a government truck across it on a routine workday.

For a few moments on that bridge, you felt suspended between worlds—the canal to your left, the open Pacific to your right, ships moving slowly below like floating cities.

 

Then the road would slope downward again, the view closing behind you as the truck rolled toward the other side.

But that brief crossing stayed with you.

 

And every time I crossed that bridge, I thought about a clay model in a sixth-grade classroom.

 

Social studies class.

 

Our teacher, Mr. John Stopa, had divided the class into groups and assigned each one a different part of the world to build out of clay. My group got Central America.

 

We shaped countries and coastlines on a board, pressing rivers, lakes, and mountain ranges into the soft clay with our fingers. Someone made Mexico. Someone else worked on Guatemala and Honduras. Another shaped Costa Rica. Nicaragua.

 

And guess who got the most interesting job?

 

Digging the Panama Canal.

 

There I was, a kid with a plastic ruler and a lump of clay, carving a tiny trench across the narrow isthmus while the teacher explained how ships could pass from one ocean to another.

 

At the time, it was just a school project.

 

A geography lesson.

 

I had no idea that years later I would find myself stationed in Panama, driving across a bridge overlooking the real thing.

 

Life has a quiet sense of humor that way.

 

One day, you're a kid digging a canal in clay.

 

And before you quite realize it, you're crossing it for real.