In Spanish, mariposa means butterfly.
No, my title is not about the Mariposa diner on Magsaysay Steet, the main drag in Olongapo when the town across the bridge from the U.S. Navy’s Subic Bay Naval Base was the closest thing to Fiddler’s Green that has ever been.
Some of us Navy folks might have experienced a wild night or several wild nights out in that crazy place. However, one of our favorite pastimes in Subic was to walk out of the Naval Base main gate, cross the bridge over “shit river” and watch in amazement as sailors tossed coins into the filthy waters and Filipino young boys dive off of the small skiffs or the bridge itself to retrieve the coins. From there, Mike Peck, Pete Toennies, Al Pavich, OW Wright, and i would walk down Magsaysay roughly a half mile and enter the Mariposa diner. The small open-air restaurant was below street level. The few rickety tables offered a great view of the street. Across Magsaysay was the Wagon Wheel, a bar with many women and where sailors flocked for fun and…
In the Mariposa, we each would order a half-pint of rum made up in the mountains to the north. i believe the rum maker was “Pine Castle.” We would add a coke and ice. The serving cost seven pesos. The ice was four of those pesos. The rum and coke was three pesos.
There, we would watch the show. The shore patrol’s paddy wagon would cruise up and down Magsaysay. They would frequently spot a hungover or drunk sailor, often with only part of his uniform still attached. The shore patrol would corner the sailor and proceed to the paddy wagon with the sailor attempting to get away. Often his attempt was abetted by a young woman who would emerge from the Wagon Wheel or another bar and start swinging wildly at the shore patrol until the SP’s managed to get the sailor in the back of the paddy wagon and lock the door.
It was a grand show to watch while sipping our rum and cola under the old, rusting service tray, which had been painted and hung on the wall. We all admired that tray and thought it was hilarious.
On one such occasion, we were talking when i revealed it was my birthday (January 19, 1970). Mike Peck went up to the proprietor behind the bar. When he came back, the group had kicked in a couple of dollars to buy the tray. It was my birthday present. i wanted to hang it in my home office but Maureen put her foot down. The sign now hangs in my briar patch, my garage work shop and escape from reality.
◆ ◆ ◆
But that “Mariposa,” aka butterfly, is not what i was thinking about.
i was thinking about Bob Lind’s 1965 song “Elusive Butterfly of Love.” Thank you, Dr. Bill Holland.
You see, i came under the spell of an amazing man, the aforementioned Dr. Holland when i began my real journey from my misspent scholarship courtesy of the Navy and two glorious years at Vanderbilt. i went from a very poor engineering student to a hard working three-job, commuting student at Middle Tennessee State University choosing to pursue a Bachelor of Arts in English, something very rare at that time. In fact, i think i was the first student to get a BA degree in English as nearly all English majors were pursuing a BS degree to become teachers.
So i wandered with great wonderment through every level of capability in professors, loving it, punching my tickets for non-English requirements, and wallowing in my deep adoration of literature. Primed with my experience of Dr. Scott Peck and his Shakespeare course, i fell under the spell of Bill Holland. We became friends and i would skip other classes to wander with him across campus and to his office where we would wander further off Romantic Literature and Wordsworth and Robert Penn Warren to investigate the then new idea of Atlantis being in the Aegean, not the Atlantic, and symbolism and hidden meanings of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe.”
Eventually, we got around to Bob Lind’s “Elusive Butterfly of Love.” Now, that’s the mariposa that caused me to start this post.
The lyrics:
You might wake up some mornin’
To the sound of something moving past your window in the wind
And if you’re quick enough to rise
You’ll catch a fleeting glimpse of someone’s fading shadow
Out on the new horizon
You may see the floating motion of a distant pair of wings
And if the sleep has left your ears
You might hear footsteps running through an open meadow
Don’t be concerned, it will not harm you
It’s only me pursuing somethin’ I’m not sure of
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love
You might have heard my footsteps
Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind
I might have even called your name
As I ran searching after something to believe in
You might have seen me runnin’
Through the long-abandoned ruins of the dreams you left behind
If you remember something there
That glided past you followed close by heavy breathin’
Don’t be concerned, it will not harm you
It’s only me pursuing somethin’ I’m not sure of
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love.
i know we arrived at about a half-dozen hypotheses and never settled on one deeper meaning of that song. But our discussions covered a wide breadth of connections from biblical, history, literature, and even math. i learned so much from Dr. Bill Holland and forever will be grateful.
Then, reminiscing about my halcyon wanderings from seventy-nine years ago, i reexamined “Elusive Butterfly of Love.”
It seems to me i chased that damn elusive mariposa for about twenty-eight years. i have loved women since somewhere on the south side of puberty. i loved so many who will never know of that amore i had for them. Many will. It was easy for me to love, almost a curse. As Bobby Moore and the Rhythm Aces put it, i was “Searching, Searching, Baby, for my love.” But the love i sought was fleeting, elusive. It didn’t stick. i loved them then; i love them now. But they found all sorts of reasons to not love me. i suspect my going to sea might have had some impact in many of those cases.
But in my late thirties, i told that mariposa of love to take a hike. i was done, burnt out. i decided a single man was what i wanted to be for the rest of my life. i wanted to love women, but i wanted my (and their) independence.
So being the goofy guy, i met this woman. Come the end of July, we will have been married 42 years. She remains gorgeous while i have wandered to old bald man silliness. Yet, she loves me.
And that, my friends, is the best thing that has happened to me.
You see, that friggin’ elusive mariposa of amar ended up in my net.
