CHARACTERS I HAVE KNOW

STANLEY LUNN EASTON

From

"The Life and Times of a Wanderer"

By

William Reuben White

Almost anyone who spent time in Aruba up to the late 1950’s will remember Lunn.  Some in one way, some in another.

He was a tall, willowy Englishman, born of British parents (his father was a clergyman) on the tiny West Indian island of Montserrat.  Lunn retained many of the characteristics of the islands but his one-of-a-know personality also reflected much of England, particularly London, where he spend the later years of his youth.

Many of the idiosyncrasies (and he had some) did little to endear him to many people.  To me, they were just a part of Lunn which you accepted.  After all who was perfect?

I worked as his assistant in the Finance & Insurance Division of the Aruba Marine Department for some six years and I would have to confess that his almost microscopic attention to minute (sometimes unimportant) details nearly drove me to homicide on more than one occasion.  There were never any gray areas with Lunn-it was either black or white.  He learned every job by memory and to the most minute detail-but sometimes it seemed to me he didn’t bother to learn why.  But I learned to roll with the punches.  And there was another side to Lunn Easton.

I never knew anybody else who could make cocktails like Lunn.  Using Barbados rum he made one which he called a Magloock and which I never could duplicate although he told me how may times.  Some tiny unimportant detail I would have to guess.  Socially, particularly as a host, Lunn, with his wife Effie, were standouts.  And he had other facets of character which I found to admire.  All this is by way of leading up to the small story I’m about the tell.

Lunn was a very early comer to Aruba; 1928 I think. I think it was in 1931 that he decided to learn to drive.  In those days very few of us in Lago Colony had cars.  But Lunn, somehow, somewhere, managed to obtain one.  It was a Model T Ford which had been stripped to the bare essentials.  Just the running gear and a seat for two consisting of two six-inch boards over and across the gas tank.  Lunn learned to drive like he learned everything else.  He memorized, all the moves and the order in which they must take place, and that’s the way he drove from the time he pulled out of his parking stall until he returned.

This is long before Lunn acquired wife Effie, and at this time he lived in Bachelor Quarters No. 4.  His parking stall was in the center of the building, and when leaving he would back out far enough so that he could turn to the right and go around the southeast wing of he building and up to the road behind it.  When returning he had to come down the same road, turn round the same wing then back to the right and into his stall.

It was a Saturday afternoon and Lunn left on his Saturday afternoon drive.  It was to last perhaps, twenty minutes.  The departure was uneventful, with Lunn carefully performing each move in its proper sequence.

The return was not routine.  All the moves were made properly down to the point where he turned round the southeast wing and headed for his stall.  It was at this point that he confronted a completely new situation and one for which he hadn’t memorized the routine.  As he headed for his stall he was astounded to see two large, hairy and muscular Scandinavian legs extending well into his stall.

The legs which startled Lunn so, belonged to a big, muscular, rough lead burner from the Acid Plant, George Larson. Larson, whose stall was next to Lunn’s, was under his own car working on it.  Lunn was now in the midst of his final park-and-stop routine, and before he could adjust to anything so new as this he was already in his stall and bump, bump, his front wheel passed over Larson’s legs.  I’m sure that by this time he realized that his routine had not allowed for the Larson legs in his stall.  If he didn’t, the bear like bellow that emanated from under the Larson car must have told him that he had gone to far.  So. His foot moved to the reverse pedal and bump, bump, his front wheel passed back over Larson’s legs.

Fortunately, for Larson, the little cut down Ford didn’t weight much so that his injuries wee not worse than two severe abrasions.  And, just as fortunately for Lunn, that were enough of us present to form a wall between he and Larson.