Tortola, British Virgin Islands. In either 1980 or 1981, Bill Hall and I set out from Melbourne, FL to go to Tortola. It was a trip I arranged for us to go down there and basically hang out for a week or so. I think I remember flying Miami to San Juan and then taking a smaller plane to Road Town. As we headed to the hotel from the airport there was a guy with huge dreadlocks herding some goats. The place looked a little rough. Our hotel was called the Prospect Reef and it was a place that accommodated a lot of divers. It was fairly nice and right on the bay in the middle of town. I don’t recall where we ate that night, but the next morning was Sunday. Bill said, “I’d like to go to church.” I thought that was weird, wanting to go to church on vacation, but being the good Episcopalian, I did some checking and found out that there was a church right up the hill from us. We headed out.
When we got there, the place was packed and the only place to sit was up front. The windows were wide open and soft breezes were blowing in. The congregation was about 50-50 black/white and the singing was hearty. It was just beautiful. After the service the rector, Fr. Granfeldt spoke to us awhile and invited us to a cocktail party that evening at his house. Strangely, I felt like I was back at Christ Church in Harlan. At least in terms of hospitality.
He lived in a bungalow on the side of the mountain. He had a daughter named Bettina. The party was delightful. It was the town leaders, the mayor, the banker, the librarian. The town’s duties were equally split between blacks and whites. But there seemed to be no compulsion to like each other. They enjoyed each others’ company. I’d never seen this before, nor have I since. It, too, was beautiful.
I was interested in Bettina. I convinced her to go on a catamaran ride with me to the Baths, a place with huge rocks near Virgin Gorda. But it went no further than that. Meanwhile, Bill got interested in this girl from Boston who was down there with a group of friends. He asked her out several times and finally I told him to back off or the guys in her group, which seemed highly Italian, were going to harm him. She was quite cute, but he relented.
We then switched hotels to the Long Bay owned by Terence Cook, an Englishman. It was more secluded and way nicer than the Prospect Reef but not as fun. He had a fourteen year old daughter who looked like a fashion model who lounged by the pool all day. She wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody, by her father.
Bill had a Walkman. He had two cassette tapes, one by the Doobie Brothers and another the first, and perhaps best, album by the Australian group Men at Work. We listened to the Men at Work tape until it broke. To this day, the songs on that album are absolutely haunting to me.
Tortola has had some major hurricane damage in the last few years. There may be a guy that sees this entry named Michael that goes to the USVI that knows what is happening at Tortola.