Kirby

Latitud Cero
Carl D. "Doc" Kirby
Commonwealth Publications
574 pp., $6.99

In the late 1960s, Carl D."Doc" Kirby ('38) of Homewood, Ala., had reached the time in life when most men start looking ahead to retirement. The Lula, Miss., native and World War II veteran had been a farmer, equipment salesman, successful entrepreneur, and traveler in his already long and varied career, and had made several trips to the South American nation of Ecuador to speculate in farming and mining. He and his wife, Lucy, had raised two daughters and a son.

At 52, Kirby "settled" into a comfortable job with an import-export company in Mobile. The job paid well, was interesting, and allowed Kirby to alternately spend time with his family and indulge his passion for travel. Life was good.

And then one afternoon, he learned from a Marine Corps major that his son David's F-4 Phantom had crashed into the sea off the coast of Puerto Rico with no survivors.

Unable to cope with the loss, Kirby escaped to the tiny Ecuadorian hamlet of Esmeraldas, where "there was the grace that there was nothing in this land, with its jungled hills and palm-fringed beaches and small, dark people, to remind me of the tall blond boy who was gone."

Latitud Cero is Kirby's robust and skillfully written account of the next three years, when he lived with the Plata family on their hacienda-trying to farm, partying, drinking, and hanging out with the most colorful and eccentric characters to be found anywhere.

Kirby's story is true and its people real: prostitutes, pipeline workers, peasants, thieves, drug runners, landed gentry, and an old friend from Memphis who steals his ex-wife's Mercedes and drives it to the Plata's Mahogany Mansion, but none is more fascinating than "Tio Carlitos" himself.

No lover of highbrow, tweed-jacket literature, Doc Kirby is a straight shooter who takes a no-nonsense approach to life. He also is a gifted writer who has crafted a huge, comical, and heart-wrenching book. Doc might wince at the comparisons, but his prose has the flavor of Hemingway writing at the breakneck pace of Kerouac.

Latitud Cero is a fine read.