Ride of Your Life, Chapter 1

Brits, Italian, Germans, and Puerto Ricans

9 Minute Read

I dedicate this to two people. My dear friend Arthur, who talked me into doing it.

But only kind of, so don’t blame him.

And my wife Julie, without whom I wouldn’t have the luxury of writing. Or much else.

Cooking and Language School

Benjamin Elias Spencer, from just outside of London, was 19 in 1918 and serving King George V in World War I. A member of the 101st Field Company of the Royal Engineers, he had been assigned to build roads and bridges in the mountainous Dolomites, on the border between Britain’s fellow Allied Power Italy and the Central Power foe Austria-Hungary.

“Excuse me, but aren’t they called the Italian Alps?” he had asked a superior when first getting the assignment, but now he knew better.

Indeed, a year in, Private Spencer knew that and quite a bit more. First, and in no surprise for someone from Shepherd’s Bush who had been exactly nowhere, he was astonished by the splendor of the Dolomites. He had seen pictures of mountains before in school, but he found the jagged spires that surrounded him astonishing.

Secondly, in between the long days with shovel and pickax in hand, Ben had developed a talent for cooking for his colleagues. Specifically, he had a knack for sourcing local meats and cheeses and peppers and breads and making the best sandwiches anyone had ever tasted - and this from a Brit? During a war’s privations? Even the stoic locals of Val Gardena were impressed.

It helped that, over time, he had picked up quite a bit of Italian and even some German; he even could say a few words in the native tongue of Ladin. Learning languages seemed to be in Ben's nature.

During his 14 months in The Great War, he had built roads, bridges, and sandwiches and got out unscathed, although his time in Italy had a major impact. He returned home to England, but soon emigrated to the United States.

Because while he didn’t know it at the time or had even heard the word (coined by the French economic philosopher Jean-Baptiste Say in the early 1800s), Ben was an entrepreneur. He was determined to take what he had learned and do something with it independently, in a place where that was welcome, unlike in Britain.

So in 1919, Ben left Blighty for good and landed on Ellis Island and then made the short trip to Hoboken, New Jersey. It was fortuitous timing, because America’s immigration clampdowns were coming in the form of the Quota Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924. The inflow of Irish, Italians, Jews, Germans, Poles, and yes, even English was about to end.

But Ben made it to America and would live out the rest of his life at 4th and Washington, near the docks and on Hoboken’s commercial corridor. The family he and his wife Chelsea would raise there were lucky he made it.

The Wedding of Constance Spencer, Act 1

While New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller was trying to emulate his father’s monumental Rockefeller Center with his South Mall in dreary Albany, his best friend and brother Laurance was doing a bit of building of his own.

But in far nicer places. And instead of offices, he was creating some of the world’s finest hotels.

In 1956, he opened his first, Caneel Bay Resort on St. John in the US Virgin Islands. Just two years later, he had finished his second, Dorado Beach Resort, about an hour’s drive west of San Juan on Puerto Rico. In 1964, the British Virgin Islands would get a RockResort of their own, with Little Dix Bay on Virgin Gorda. And in ‘65, Laurance sprang the incredible Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the world; it was the first resort on Hawai’i Island.

But it was his still new-ish Dorado Beach masterpiece in Puerto Rico that was the location for the December 8, 1963 wedding of Benjamin Spencer Sr’s beloved granddaughter, Constance.

He and 38 other guests were here to see what not too long ago would have been unthinkable: the marriage of a privileged white girl from Hoboken to a Puerto Rican. It’s partly why when Constance - Connie - insisted they marry on her 21st birthday, they chose this resort rather than her gritty and gray hometown.

And of course, Alvaro Carrión was no ordinary Puerto Rican. His father, Rafael Carrión, was a founder of Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, the largest bank in Puerto Rico and one of the largest in all of Latin America. When Hoboken’s Puerto Rican population began to take off, the elder Carrión sent his son Al there to establish a branch of the family business in 1958.

It had worked out great in more ways than just financially: the Hoboken bank was where Al and Connie first met, by chance, when she stopped by for a roll of dimes. He was 6 years her senior.

While Laurance Rockefeller didn’t need a loan (or dimes) from the elder Carrión in San Juan, he did need permission: Nothing much happened on the island without a nod from Señor Carrión, pictured here during the wedding weekend.

And with that, plus some of his cash spread liberally around the island, Laurance Rockefeller was able to build and open his Dorado Beach Resort. He did such a fine job that it soon became the place to go for the northeastern’s elite, and those wishing to appear so.

Like the Spencers.

So when Alvaro and Connie got engaged, and she pushed for a December ceremony, the Dorado Beach Resort was an easy choice. It would be perfect, they thought.

It wasn’t, as the timing turned out to be awful. Because while Connie believed it would be fun having her wedding on her birthday and that of her best friend, her fraternal twin brother Benjamin Elias Spencer III, some horrendous events meant the wedding would be dark, despite the tropical sunbeams.

First, John F. Kennedy had just been murdered in Dallas. Having happened just a couple of weeks prior, it still cast a pall over most everything. But while some of the Irish back home thought it rude she didn’t postpone, Constance moved forward. After all, she reasoned, she hadn’t rescheduled her nuptials when her Mom committed suicide. Why do it now because of Camelot’s destruction?

On St. Patrick’s Day, just 9 months prior, Genevieve Laroux Spencer, wife of Ben Jr and mother to Connie and Eli, carried out what she had threatened for years. Except nobody had paid much attention then to the always-histrionic but charismatic Gen. One of her favorite jokes about her twins was that Ben Jr and she didn’t have much sex, but when they got hammered together at The Elysian on St. Paddy’s in 1942 and did, they got two for the price of one.

In a final, horrific stroke of the narcissism she had displayed since their birth, she slit her wrists on 3/17/1963. Everyone in the family supposed she did it in one of the cars in the garage in Manhattan as a final fuck you to Ben Jr, and on the day of the twins’ conception as one to them, too.

In her own mind, Genevieve Spencer killed herself to prove to Ben Jr, Elias, and Constance what they had heard forever: They had let her down. Ben Jr with his various dalliances in Manhattan with God knows who, and the children? She had resented them from the start and could never hide it.

While Connie proved resilient in the face of this tragedy, her twin Elias (the family never called him Benjamin) fell apart. 20 and already well-versed in both the drinking arts and underachieving, his mother’s suicide had sent him on a months-long bender. Indeed, Connie almost canceled the wedding not because of personal and national calamity, but rather because of Eli’s drunken and erratic behavior.

But he had promised to behave this weekend. They were best friends and he was determined to stay sober.

The Spencers’ Tupper Lake cousins Craig and Bob Laroux were chatting about all of this on the pillow-soft and golden sand beach that fronts the hotel. There weren’t very many secrets in the Spencer and Laroux families.

It was Friday in the later afternoon, and the wedding was Sunday. Tomorrow would bring the rehearsal dinner on a 70’ sloop on the warm Atlantic, but today and tonight were at leisure for the guests.

The palms - and there were a lot - swayed in the damp tropical breeze. But the moist wind wasn’t doing much to cool the two Laroux brothers. Being snowbirds to the core, they had chosen loungers fully exposed to the sun.

“Hey, it’s too fucking sunny – let’s get some shade,” muttered Craig, as he polished off another Schlitz and muffled a burp. He and his fellow mountain man brother Bob didn’t get much tropical sun in Tupper Lake, and it showed. They were hot and red, and not unusually, they wanted to grab a couple of more beers, preferably somewhere air-conditioned. Which wouldn’t be a problem, although getting to the hotel itself hadn’t been easy for them.

They had taken the New York Central from Tupper Lake Junction in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains to Utica, connected with a train through Albany for New York, and then got themselves to Idlewild Airport. At least the flight was nonstop to San Juan on Eastern Airlines; this was a very popular route now. The two country boys availed themselves well on their first jet flight. In fact, the captain was so charmed by their authentic aw-shuckness that he walked them out onto the tarmac at the San Juan airport after the flight, so Bob could take this snapshot.

The others? As pretty much all of the Spencers and most everyone else attending the wedding came from Hoboken or very close, it was easy: There was also nonstop jet service from Newark to San Juan.

Given Ben Jr’s success, it was no surprise his daughter’s wedding wanted for nothing. Although he “only” owned a car service (as he put it), he was still one of Hoboken’s most prominent and respected businessmen, as was his father, deli owner Ben Sr.

So among other things this weekend, that meant a fully-stocked, 24-hour hospitality suite. It was big, luxuriously appointed, and nicely air-conditioned. And Ben Sr’s influence was certainly felt in terms of the quality of the catering. It also had a large, furnished veranda that offered an expansive view of the beach and ocean below. Overall, it was one of the nicest suites any of the guests - some well-traveled - had ever seen.

Into this opulence sauntered the sunburned and decidedly non-opulent Craig and Bob Laroux. Knowing the family as they did, they were not surprised to find most of the family hanging around the free and expansive selection of top-shelf booze and beer. Wine? Only the French Champagne that Connie had insisted upon, although it looked like Ben Jr had bought several cases.

“Hi, buddy,” cousin Bob greeted the barman, who was clad in a crisp white jacket. The color of his coat contrasted with the deep cocoa shade of his skin, which was darker than that of the bridegroom, but not by much. Many still couldn’t get over Constance was marrying a Puerto Rican, no matter how rich or handsome.

“Or snobby,” Craig had said to Bob previously when the subject came up.

But the cousins’ real focus was getting buzzed for free on Uncle Ben’s dime. “Two double V.O. and waters, please,” and he turned and said to Craig, “Let’s get off the Schlitz and I can’t stand daiquiris.”

They then surveyed the room.

While a red rose was brought to every gathering that weekend and set on a chair to represent the missing Genevieve, the whole clan was present otherwise.

The bride and groom were nuzzling off to the side, Ben Sr dozed on a couch, while his now-widowed son sought solace from both a Jack Daniels and his mother and daughter’s namesake, Chelsea Constance Poe Spencer. Born on exactly the same day in exactly the same year, both of his parents were now 64 and had been married for 43 of them. Indeed, Connie got the idea to marry on her birthday from her parents: they had wed on September 9, 1920.

Chelsea, a Hoboken native and not from its pretty part, was her typical loving but direct self. “You are going to have to keep it together. We both know she was never right after your twins were born and it’s been a fucking roller coaster. But look - you are only 41. You have a big part of your life ahead of you and you need to pull your head out of your ass.

“Plus, you have so much pussy in Manhattan, you may end up happier.”

Benjamin Elias Spencer Jr, even after an entire life hearing it, was still taken aback by his mother’s obnoxiously foul mouth. And he simply ignored her now-frequent digs on his infidelity.

“Well, it feels awful, but in some way I am relieved she’s gone. I can only say that to you, Mom. I don’t understand my feelings.”

He looked lost. Chelsea gave him a long hug and then looked at both of her only grandchildren. Elias was thankfully drinking only ginger ale, while Connie - no surprise - was drinking Champagne and perhaps too much, thought her grandmother?

Ben Jr by now had walked away from his mother and approached the record player he had the hotel set up in the hospitality suite.

“Excuse me, sir?” had been the polite response at the front desk when he first asked, but they soon found one, and even the records he had requested. He had picked out some of his favorites from the year, and luckily a bellman found a record store in San Juan with everything. Well, luck and the motivation of the crisp $20 Ben Jr had flipped him.

Because Ben Jr loves and needs his music, especially now: Like the other diversions he now sought, music temporarily helped him forget his decidedly mixed emotions over his dead wife. He stacked the records, the needle dropped, and the party was on.

The younger among them especially enjoyed his first pick, although just about everyone tapped their feet. Like the Spencers, the music was a product of Britain.

The first record he played was the debut album from a band called The Beatles.