A Day in my Life with Ivan

It was a hot and muggy morning in mid June 1965. I had a bucket of spottails and mud dobbers waiting for me in a bait bucket at Gatun Yacht Club. I went over to the Klasovsky home to see if Nick wanted to go fishing. As I ran up the back stairs to the kitchen, I found Ivan sitting at the kitchen table (with his feet on top of the table because Mom wasn't around). Ivan told me that Nick was in Balboa visiting with friends, but he would go fishing with me. We walked to the Gatun Yacht Club with our fishing gear and then we set out on the 'Jack Killer', my small row boat, to intercept the large schools of Jack Crevalle that came out of the Gatun Locks with the first south bound transit that enters Gatun Lake after sunrise. We chased the largest school of Jack for miles: west to the Ski Docks, then around Navy Island and then South to the open channel before the Jack finally settled down and disappeared from the surface. Exhausted, we put ashore at the south tip of Navy Island and started walking up the east shore of the island looking for things to do. We were nearly a half mile from the boat (and our fishing equipment) when all of a sudden, a school of very large Jack exploded in the shallows near where we were walking. Without our fishing equipment, I picked up some rocks and started throwing them at the Jack. Ivan did the same and then he just stopped and exclaimed "Look at this!". He pointed to a couple of dark smooth 'rocks' laying in the red clay mud. He picked up the larger one and said "It's a stone axe!". Then he picked up the smaller one and gave it to me. Ivan didn't have to give me one of his stone axes, but he did so out of the goodness of his heart. Being Unselfish was one of Ivan's biggest strengths. We went home without any fish that day, but finding those stone axes with Ivan is one of my fondest memories of life in the Panama Canal Zone. I now have more than 200 stone axes from Panama, but the first one that I found with Ivan has a special place in my heart. I didn't have a lot of days with Ivan because of our age difference and Ivan wasn't home much when I was old enough to do the really cool stuff, but Ivan did take me fishing and skin diving and on walks in the jungle and on trips to Santa Clara and El Valle, etc. He treated me like a brother and I love him because of that. Vaya con Dios, my brother. - Ted Bailey