num_pages: 230
description: When twenty-two-year-old Christopher Colie was packed off to Panama by the US Army, he'd already spent several adventurous years riding the rails and shipping out on freighters headed to the Caribbean, sleeping in flophouses and hobo camps, and when he bothered to turn up, baffing his Reed College classmates with his exploits, and worse, his indifferent attitude towards academia. One of his fellow students at Reed was a sheltered young redhead named Carole Calkins; Chris proposed to her within hours of their first meeting.Drafted in September of 1952, only four months after marrying Carole, Chris chafed at the loss of freedom that came with army life, and twice went AWOL before being sent not to Korea, but to the Canal Zone. Naked to Love (from Kenneth Patchen "Nothing is clean, or real, or as a girl, Naked to love, or to be a man with.") brings together the remarkable letters Chris wrote to his new wife during their separation. Writing in the latrine after lights out, leaning over the hood of a truck or brooding beside noisy pool tables. Chris faithfully pursued his twin getting his love for Carole down on paper, and capturing his visions of Panama and the wild rabble of conscripts he lived among.Bundled for nearly fifty years in an attic suitcase, these real love letters are a unique contribution to intimate history, with their nostalgic view of the Canal Zone in the early fifties.
language: English
title: Naked to Love: Letters from a Young American in Panama, 1952-54
titlecomplete: Naked to Love: Letters from a Young American in Panama, 1952-54
publisher: Council Oaks Distribution