Living the good life in Cuiaba' ... for a month

When I entered the Peace Corps they gave me five months of Portuguese lessons in the state of São Paulo before they sent me to Mato Grosso, a state on the borders of Bolivia and Paraguay.

I was to work with the Brazilian extension service, giving technical orientation and assistance to ranchers and farmers. Part of the job involved formulating loan proposals, then providing oversight as to how the borrowed money was invested in the property.

Another one of my responsibilities was to draw blood from cattle the producer ´planned to buy with borrowed funds. We examined the samples for brucellosis and refused to finance cows that tested positive. I probably tested 20,000 head in the six years I worked for the extension service.

Almost all the cattle were roped and thrown for me to draw blood and number brand. The zebu breeds can be aggressive, and things could get close once in a while.

I only got hurt once when a board fell off a fence and onto my foot. It hit the arch and broke the first metatarsal, probably because I was only wearing flip flops.

There were no doctors in Barra do Bugres in those days, so I hopped around on one leg for a week, hoping the foot would heal spontaneously. That didn't happen, so I caught a ride to Cuiabá to communicate with the Peace Corps and find a doc. They took some x-rays, then told me that I needed surgery to put some pins in the bone and fasten it back where it belonged.

The second day in the hospital, the doc came into the room. We chatted for a bit, then he asked me to hop into the bathroom and bathe my injured foot in the sink.

His idea of pre-op hygiene surprised me, but I was in my twenties, and immortal. I still remember that the bar of hand soap was pink.

The doc worried about infection. He left me without a cast so he could watch the incision heal, and I spent a total of two weeks in the hospital before he gave me a cast, and then I had to stay for another three days.

The hospital rules were lax (this was in 1975), so I asked my visitors to bring me a six pack of beer from a little bar across the street. I lay in bed for days, reading books and drinking very warm beer. I threw the empties out the window. Life was good.

The doc didn't want me to go back to Barra do Bugres for thirty days, and I thought I would have to spend a month doing nothing in a cheap hotel. Luckily, the Peace Corps director was leaving to spend a month in Bolivia, so he asked me to stay in his house – a beautiful place.

For a wonderful month I had a huge house with a cook and housekeeper all to myself. The director's library was rivaled only by his liquor cabinet and two refrigerators full of beer. Books and alcohol – my two favorite things.

I read about twelve hours a day, and drank for eight of those. My housekeeper/cook put breakfast on the table when I clumped down the stairs in the morning, and my room was clean, with a made bed to fall into every evening. Life was better. It showed promise.

Four or five blocks down a red, dusty alley there was an enclave of houses of ill repute. Once a week or so I dragged my cast down the street to play canasta or something akin with the girls. We drank Campari with key limes while we gambled in a game I never fully understood.

I lost every round, of course, but the bets were small and the girls were all pleasant people. Even with what they endured, they never complained. Sometimes, when one of them had too much Campari, she would cry a little, and we would commiserate and cry with her, then order another round and start laughing again.

My plans were to get a cab downtown and refurbish the stock before the director arrived from Bolivia, but I hadn't considered the vagaries of latin cultures, and he got back five days early. He caught me with his ravaged liquor cabinets before I got a chance to replace what I had drunk.

He was terribly irritated, but still gentleman enough to try and not show it. I felt like a dog, so I packed my little bag and got out of Cuiabá, heading home to Barra.

The director and I later came to be close friends. He's been to Montana a few times to visit me, but never mentioned or even alluded to the alcohol I drank.

I still have the pins in my foot, and they remind me of the time when life was good and getting better. At least for a month.