Strictly Business

Ever since North Carolina-born Bank Teller William Sydney Porter fled to Honduras in 1896 to duck an embezzlement charge in the U.S., Central America has been a raffish sanctuary for some of North America's rarest wild birds. Some went there to evade U.S. justice, some were shoestring promoters brewing or forgetting get-rich-quick schemes, and some were merely fugitives from an over-mechanized world, attracted by such tall tropic yarns as Porter himself later spun under the name of O. Henry.* As a group, they answered philosophically to the name of Tropical Tramps. Since World War II, their ranks have been swelled by scores of footloose veterans.

Low Costs. One postwar practitioner, a certain "Johnson," wanted for manslaughter in Oregon, evolved the idea of solving the housing shortage in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, by putting up standardized low-cost houses. Writing personal checks, he acquired land and materials for a pilot project, then tied up the funds completely; by the time the checks bounced, the men who had endorsed them found themselves forced into the building trade as Johnson's partners. In all, the mass-housing group succeeded in erecting one house.

Another member of the fraternity, though unequipped with a pilot's license, spent several years flying passenger planes in Honduras and Nicaragua. Fired at length for letting his wife fly the plane, he persuaded two Managua operators known as The Baron" and "Wheeler the Dealer" to put up $1,500 for him to go to the States and buy them a brick-manufacturing machine. When last heard of, he had indeed bought the machine--and set up in business for himself with it in Miami.

Gaudiest of all the latter-day tramps was a loudly dressed, 2501b. giant named Charles Colfelt. A former Iowa bricklayer and California caterer, Colfelt breezed into Tegucigalpa at the head of a caravan of cars, trucks and house-trailers, and rented a whole floor of the Pan American Hotel. As president of the Honduran division of a Salt Lake City stock company called the "Pan American Mining and Development Co.," Colfelt announced that he had chartered a fleet of DC-3s to haul equipment upcountry, then began setting up drinks for all comers in the hotel bar. One suspicious investor flew down, took one horrified look at the show in Tegucigalpa and hastened back to his fellow suckers in Salt Lake City. Colfelt was last seen in a small boat, heading out into the Gulf of Mexico.

High Standards. Almost all the tramps do their work with one elbow firmly propped on a bar. Last week Harold Beckland, proprietor of Managua's Gran Hotel, decided to lay down some ground rules for the game. For the benefit of the scores of promoters who daily congregate in his lobby, he posted this notice: "Discussions of business deals involving less than $500,000 not permitted in this lobby. This is a high-class hotel." As a bittersweet note, Beckland added: "Credit at the bar--even to half-million-dollar operators--will not be extended until the first gold shipment is made."

*After six months' exile, Porter voluntarily returned to the States and served out a three-year prison term, during which he wrote the first of his short stories.

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