Panama - Louis D. Chirillo

(from a 26 March 1946 letter)

I went ashore at one o’clock yesterday afternoon and continued having a great time until six thirty this morning. After seeing much of Balboa and Panama City during daylight, I went to the Lido Club that is known for American entertainment. I recognized one of the chorus girls from the Bali Club in Miami. I hadn’t met her then, but I did last night. She had danced in New York’s Diamond Horseshoe and also in Leon and Eddie’s. The next stop on her current tour is Rio de Janeiro.

Of course we made an evening of our old friendship, dancing between shows and having an enjoyable time with some of the other officers and show girls. Because the evening was too short, after the two-thirty closing time Gwen and I went to a beautiful outdoors club that stayed open until dawn.

The dance floor was made from tiles of various colors and was surrounded by red-tile rooftops. The thick building walls, made with heavy stones, were cleverly designed with outside stairs and buttresses. The meal we had was too late to be considered a midnight snack and too early to be called breakfast, so it remains unnamed.

When the sun announced daybreak by peeking over a nearby hill the tiles assumed even brighter colors; everything seemed to become more charming. Too bad that we will leave Panama in a few hours, because I do not recall anything as peaceful and beautiful as being with an attractive girl in that enchanted place.

lou

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