My Friend Jerry

I met Jerry Eiden in a Spanish class in San Jose, Costa Rica. We were both trying to learn Spanish, unsuccessfully, because we were too old, the language parts of our brains were long gone.

Jetty's family had moved from Illinois to LA to get in on the housing boom going on there. Where he met a man who had plenty of money, who offered to finance him if he went into business in the Canal Zone. Jerry took him up on that. and was soon part of this very lucrative, and corrupt economy.

He was soon a personal friend of General Noriega, the dictator of Panama. Jerry would work on his property for free, and the General would give him some contracts, without him bothering to bid on them.

Jerry has his own plane he could use to fly nonstop to Florida, where he had warehouses he could use to store his building materials in.  When they were full he would use Container ships to move the contents to Panama. He was a Big Dealer, like many other Americans in the Zone.

But then the American military invaded the Zone, and that life was over.

Americans had no idea what was going on down there, and the huge amount of money that was lost. But it was gone, never to return.

In Costa Rica, he developed a close relationship with another family who helped him take care of his property. When realized his health was failing fast, he sold his house and two cars, to one of their daughters. It took her her six months to get a mortgage, but he waited for her. 

He went to live with one of his daughters in Florida and died there.