A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama

I read a review of The Canal Builders when it was first published.

The book's author, Julie Greene, examines the workers who converged on Panama, displaced the earth, civil-engineered locks, and connected Atlantic waters with Pacific waters via a man-made artery through the Panamanian isthmus.

Aside from the fact that this is exactly the sort of thing that fascinates me, and its guarantee to conjure the oft'-quoted palindrome (see blog entry title), I have a more personal cause to read about the lives of the workers who made the canal a reality.  My paternal grandfather was among them.  He went to Panama to work as a telegrapher.

I love that.

My grandfather -- born in the 1880s -- died when I was around 8 years old.  I wish I had known him as an adult, because I think we would have had a strong connection.  He looked a bit like E. B. White.  And his physical similarity to one of my literary heroes has only served to heighten the myth that I've nurtured through the years.

When I first learned of the Panama connection, I was mesmerized by the notion of my grandfather working on the canal.  I conjured many fantasies (none of them based on any knowledgeable source) of what it might have been like for him.

This month marks the 122th anniversary of my grandfather's birth.  My dad was the youngest of his siblings, arriving later in my grandparents' lives.  And Dad was 44-years-old when I debuted on the planet.  So, the generations have been stretched out through the decades, ensuring that I have little insight and considerable curiosity about my grandfather's life.