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This is Diana Dombrowski at the Panama Canal conference in Orlando, Florida. Today is July 7th 2011. Um, and I'm here to interview about life in the Panama Canal Zone. Could I ask you to please state your name and how you spell it? Okay. My name is Ruin Frank.

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Okay. E r W I I i r w a n k e r W o n f r and your middle initial z. Who? What does that stand for? Zine? Cool. Great grandmother. Grandmother. That's unique. My middle name is my mom's maiden name. Uh, what years were you in?

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The Panama E was born there in 1935 and lived there until my father retired. I graduated from high school. Elbow high school, class of 1952. Okay. Alright. To start off with. How did your family or you come to be in the zone? My father went there.

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I think he was 16 years old. His sister honed his sister and her husband, Charlie and Celia Cantor owned the Metropol Hotel, which was on this site, which was later the French Bizarre in Panama. I don't know if the French bizarre still exists, but at the time it was It had an escalator.

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It was fancy store in Panama City. So he went there and his sister, as I understand it, took him under his her wing. And he got a job on the canal. Um, I suspect he said he was 21 to get the job when he was 16, which it's no big thing.

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But he stayed for 40 years on in 1920 70 mirror. And my mother and I had a brother class of 1947 from Balboa High School who passed away about todo some 20 some years ago, and he and I were both raised in the canal's home. I lived on the Prato in Balboa.

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My whole life was from in two locations. Both were within a half mile of the state. Keep off the grass sign on the Prato, and so I'm a product. Definitely. The canal's home went from kindergarten through high school. Cool. What kind of housing did you live in there on the product?

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We had four family concrete structures, and it was quite a thing. Housing was assigned by service and my father went in 1912. He was a Roosevelt metal older. And because of his long service, we got very good housing so we could walk all over right next door to this dispensary.

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You could walk to the Stephen Circle, which had the clubhouse commissary in the post office. My mother didn't drive on, which was not uncommon in those days. So we had a pretty good housing. Okay. Were you close to school and everything? Yeah, I walked to school all the time, never locked the doors, who was never a problem.

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Okay, Was your house air condition? No. Grew up without without air conditioning and without television. At one telephone in the house was a Candlestick phone, and we lived well. It was a very good life. In fact, I think I lived well today, but I lived Justus well in the canal zone, it was just a different era.

00:04:04.660 - 00:04:33.790

So we had vacations on the Panama line, which were easily equivalent to say a princess line. Today, just the ships were smaller. Instead of being 75,000 tons, they were like 14,000 or so tons. But they were every bit as nice. And we'd go by either stop in Cuba or Haiti.

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on our way to New York and during the war way, flew on the Pan Am Clipper to Miami and went on the Pennsylvania Railroad in a Pullman car to New York for vacation. So looking back, I would say the older I get, the smarter my parents become.

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My father used to say it was a working man's paradise, and it's It's right it waas. There was unusual arrangement we had, as's faras for the working man, the especially for the white man theme Americans. The color was another story, but I grew up not knowing who was a thing called a racial problem or poverty because we had none of that in the Canal zone.

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Yeah, I used to go to my school problems. I have a tuxedo. Uh, no car had a radio. Women people didn't have radios. Certainly not heaters, because we were in Panama, but nobody had a radio. Uh, nobody thought about all these gadgets, but we lived very well.

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Just we live differently in a different time. Not differently, but a different time. We have maids I used to wear starched khaki pants, start shirts because we had maids. So, uh, today we don't even have. I don't have maids, e But it was a rarified atmosphere that we lived in.

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It was not looking back. I didn't appreciate it because I went to school. But most of the faculty or a good portion of faculty had masters degrees from Columbia Teachers College. Wow. In Balboa High School, the credit crediting association gave Balboa High School a, uh extraordinary or outstanding in many, many categories back about 1947 48.

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I remember seeing the report, and it was exceptional, but a za kid growing up You don't don't appreciate those things. You just know you have to go to class and put up with Oh, Thistle is another volunteer. She's gonna train. She'd like to take a picture, if that's okay.

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Um, but you're actually each person I've talked today has mentioned the high qualifications of the teachers at the school like that left a really distinct impression the teachers were not transferred from the inner city or anything like that. They were there for 30 years. They were part of the society, and my father used to, uh, play poker at the Elks Club with some of the teachers and It was never mentioned to me in school, but I e tell from the look on their face if they want her loss the night before, but they never discussed it with naturally.

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But those people were part of the to society. And I'll never forget one time when my trigonometry teacher who happened to be a graduate and then the U. S Naval Academy, who did not follow a naval career, called the House one morning that about seven and said to my father, Fred, where's that damn kitty years?

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He's supposed to be here. He didn't always trigonometry yesterday, and I went flying into that school room at about 7 30 in the morning, still chewing my breakfast. But now that, to me, was the ultimate P t A meeting. Yeah, that's when you get a call like that at the house.

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It sounds like a community, and and that's it was that kind of a community never locked the door. The key would be under the mat under the flowerpot somewhere, but it was never in need toe to lock the door. That's amazing. And the weather was nice.

00:09:01.900 - 00:09:18.500

It was a nice place to grow hay had never owned a sweater. Oh, my God. It was hot. One sick. That cool. And I had to have a sweater the whole time I was there just once. I don't know what freak weather or something like that.

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Where did you go in the United States? Did you need a sweater? My parents work in New York. Okay, so we could New York go to the cat schools? Yeah, whatever. Yeah, We had a next ordinary life. When I tell my kids today we live well, but there's no better than we had in the canal.

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So it was an artificial, uh, environment. Uh huh. Did you have much interaction with the other Panamanians? No, e. I grew up in the born and grew up in the country. And I don't speak Spanish, which I think it's symptomatic. And I didn't speak spanish because I learned it in school for four years.

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But that's not how you gonna learn it When you need it to eat, you'll learn spanish. But I have no need for Spanish. And there was very little interaction with locals. We were in American community on when Teddy Roosevelt was the president. He needed Americans to go there to be the cadre for building the canal.

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And basically, I think what he said was You will be living in an American community and it's true. There was so much so that way didn't eat Spanish. Nowhere in the canal zone, to my knowledge, did they fly the Panamanian flag? Yeah, I live 1952 12 years later, in Time Magazine's a story about flag riots.

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Yeah, the Panamanians were carrying on. It was their country s way. Had a room. Police force, our own postal system. Wow. If my mother gave the maid a plan a can of powdered milk. I grew up on Quinn, which is milk spelled backwards is powdered milk.

00:11:23.280 - 00:11:49.560

E probably couldn't get the last of it down today, but I grew up on it. But if it came in a gallon, can like gal in a pink can. Just a gallon can powdered milk. And if my mother gave the maid a can of Klin, she better give her a note because canals on police would probably stop her on.

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Want to know where she got the claim was stolen because she was on her way home to Panama on. So, uh, I didn't realize that I never in my life sat next to a black student. Schools were totally segregated. It was probably segregation was probably Aziz bad as apartheid in South Africa.

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So much so that there was no racial problem. Yeah, just no tension existed. The blacks did not on Li live in different towns. They used way had commissary books. They had a $2.5 commissary book. It was brown tan, the whites at five and $15. There were salmon colored, different color.

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They use different colored money in terms of the coupons for the commentary. The the dollar was what everybody used in Panama and the Canal sel. Okay, but the road, not just in the back of the bus, they wrote in different Busses didn't ride in the back of the train.

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They rode in the back of the car. They had a different section of the train, separated by the baggage car. They sat in a different. The railroad station was divided by the baggage room. It was total, the the segregation was complete. And that's what got the canal Booth Canal.

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The Panama Canal was Bill um, I would say, on the back of the black man, the white man was the cadre. Hm. He gave the orders. You might have been 5 7000 whites, but the bulk of them were from Barbados. Black man. He's the one who carried the bananas.

00:14:04.070 - 00:14:31.460

He's the one who dug the ditches. He's the one who had the DDT or whatever strapped to his back, spraying dishes for mosquitoes to clear up, more area, that kind of thing. The labor was done by the black man. Theseus. Per vision was done by the way man who was bathing goal on blacks were paid in silver.

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There was a gold role in silver role. So wow, that made all the difference in the world. And very, very few Panamanians were hired and some guy on the gold role. But most everybody else, just on the silver role and except for the Americans, continued with the commissary.

00:14:57.560 - 00:15:29.380

About colors to commissaries were not integrated. They were different. The black shopped in different commissaries. They were not allowed in the white commissaries. The black commissaries were in the black towns. Now, when they started that these people were brought from Barbados, the Panamanian is fair skin, but they did not hire the Panamanians.

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They brought people from the Barbados Jamaica places like this and those people live. They gave Ah house and three meals a day. So they've compared what they had. They were probably then in 1904 through 14. The construction period they probably did were living well, but the problem was that they had schools for the kids on where you had American class would be maybe 35 40 kids.

00:16:09.640 - 00:16:38.890

Black classes would be a whole different story where they have maybe a 100 year class or whatever it would be. It's and it wouldn't separate but equal. Far from it. But they ended up with the A generation that wanted better than their parents. And hence racial problems started.

00:16:38.900 - 00:17:03.720

Yeah, on I remember in 1950 the parade through Ball Boy, the town I lived in by the FL CEO on That was where the labor problems started. Before then, there was no such thing as labor problem. E. I'm chilling in here. Yeah, it's kind of cold.

00:17:04.120 - 00:17:20.460

Did you follow the racial problems when you were in the States? I beg your pardon Did you follow the racial problems when you're in the States like, did you keep up with the news back in Panama? No, I really them When I left in 1952 was over.

00:17:21.040 - 00:17:40.780

ASUs faras the racial with racial problem until I got to this country. But I can tell you this I did not know as they grew up, that the word *** was a derogatory term. Just never knew it. It was just a figure of speech. Like calling this the table.

00:17:41.240 - 00:18:08.750

Never knew. Now it's the end word. But I would never think of using such a word, but never knew there was a problem. Wow, just hit. Was that segregated? It's like saying, How much problem do you have with Aborigines? None. There are none. Same thing they're never mingled with.

00:18:08.750 - 00:18:41.660

The blacks never sat next to a black child in school. It was before I guess the armed forces were segregated about 1948. Truman did that, and by 52 it really hadn't hit. So we didn't have military kids in the schools. The only, uh, foreign kids we had either rich Panamanians or from the diplomatic corps would come with their limousines and so forth.

00:18:42.340 - 00:19:03.710

Other than that, strictly white. Wow, that's really isolated. What were your experiences in grade school and high school, like, you know, in terms of maybe rivalry between the other schools. Did you participate in that? There was another school crystal ball high school on the other side, The isthmus bond.

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There was a junior college, okay? And we had a rivalry there. That was about it. Okay. With the local local rate schools later to silver the black, there was no robbery way. Never played a game against him. Nothing but the rivalry between the schools. The dominant school with Balboa High School on the Pacific side.

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The one crystal ball was minor and canal. So in junior college was just smoke. Okay. Did you play any kind of sports growing up? Yeah. I played my letter in football and track. One year we flew from Panama to Miami to play and then my play against Miami Jackson High School in the Orange Bowl.

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Wow. Fluids up on the year, I think either. I don't know. It was before, after about 1950 I think maybe the year before Miami, Jackson came to the Canal Zone over Thanksgiving on the fellow Who's happened. We all put them up in in our homes. Fellows stayed with me, was named Delmonico in my house, and I think he was from the Delmonico Steak House family.

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But there was all kinds of sports in the summertime. They had programs. We live well, remember, had archery, tumbling, boxing all these things. Yeah, it was just rich. People don't live any better. Yeah, it sounds idyllic. It really it was something that will never exist again.

00:20:58.710 - 00:21:23.210

It was just a in oddity, but they'll never have it again. Did you ever ride on or do you have any memories of the Panama Railroad or the okay to this day when I c p r R which means Pennsylvania Railroad? I see Panama. Really? The P.

00:21:23.210 - 00:21:51.290

R. R. Was the way to go. It ran across the isthmus and get left Balboa. There was a 7 10, 12, 20 4 40 a 10 10. How's that for remembering? That's awesome. That's when they left Balboa the four trains a day. The trains were beautiful inside.

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They were rebuilt by the mechanical division in 1924. It was a sign painted in the car. The weaker seats. Gaslights. Andi, they were beautiful. One of them still remains at Summit Gardens. In this total just repair, you never know. It's the same Same car. Kids climbing one name now in Panama.

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But it was they were beautiful cars. They have since rebuilt the the track. The Balboa train station is not in use. They run this forest for Brazil. Yeah, to that gets now in to go on. But it z not the same train. The steam engines. When you talk to the kids today about a choo choo, they don't know what is Choo Choo is.

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We had really choo choose that his theme would shrug out of these air steam engines. And today they have decent. It's altogether different. Yeah. How are your holiday celebrated any differently from back in the States and Christmas? Not that I know. Off mhm. The only thing we have with the Christmas tree gangs on they made Chicago in the twenties probably looks like nothing.

00:23:16.470 - 00:23:37.770

The thing then was to take all the old Christmas trees and be gangs who would steal Christmas trees and have big bonfires and whatnot. And that was that was about it. I don't think there was much except for there was no snow. Hmm. It's funny. Innocent people in South Florida who do that, actually.

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But I've never heard about it anywhere else. I don't know if it's a tropical thing to burn your Christmas tree. Those Christmas tree gangs usedto really cause damage they would under the houses were all raised, and you park your car underneath. We'll build workshops and whatnot in the store, the trees in there.

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And then the kids tear this workshops down. And one time, the police made a sweep schools and took everybody in that they knew was involved with this whatnot. They missed me. I don't know. A lot of parents having it down to the police station to get the kids out.

00:24:18.440 - 00:24:41.100

It was a story. So you still some Christmas trees to Christmas trees? Christmas tree gangs? Hmm. Did you ever have a job when you learned living here? Yeah, I was a playing around the system for 60 cents an hour on, and that's about the only job that and delivering papers.

00:24:41.100 - 00:25:02.180

Maybe e. Used to set pins in the bowling alley, got my knee bunk by a bowling pin one time. But maybe like our jobs, those leaving the jobs you had, nobody really needed the job. It was no poverty. Everybody had what they had. Nobody was rich.

00:25:02.180 - 00:25:31.740

Nobody was poor and dependent job your father had. It's all. How has life changed? You know, when World War Two was going on? Just more military. My life really didn't change. One time I lived on the Prato in Balboa, which was like a Premier street. And one time a barrage balloon broke loose and landed right on a product.

00:25:31.740 - 00:25:56.560

That was a big excitement. Every fourth of July, we would have displays of military hardware and that kind of thing. My father worked 24 7 with the shipping because he was in charge of the reports about boy. He was called a stevedore foreman, but he never carried the bananas.

00:25:57.140 - 00:26:26.350

Hey was charged and it was total chaos, as far as I know for him, with the coming and going of the Pacific Fleet and always remember going aboard the Missouri when it came back. I remember going aboard the Boise, the North Carolina Shangrila, these airships that air part of naval history today.

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Remember when the Franklin went through? It was so badly damaged nobody went aboard, but it went through it in an angle. How it even got through the canal, I don't know. But it was just a awful lot off that. And we had Japanese prisoners at the quarantine station, which is now where the 15th Mabel district headquarters were.

00:26:52.740 - 00:27:17.050

And it's right near where everybody stays at The country ends in Amador. But we went driving by just to see the Japanese prisoners besides barrage balloons. And we had marriage shelters under the house. My earliest memory of probably the War years was when, uh, a six years old.

00:27:17.660 - 00:27:41.430

My job was a stand there and hold a burlap sack open so that the men would fill it with Fan Wei made sandbags were underneath the house was the eerie shelter, and the big thing was Thio break into the the locked cabinet and still needy the gas masks and all this.

00:27:41.430 - 00:28:03.480

You know, kids. We didn't realize that this was putting someone else's life, possibly a risk, but that's what they did. Yeah, but you didn't feel threatened. You know your safety or anything? No, no, never. When I was 678 years old. I was hardly understood. The Japanese might have bombed.

00:28:03.490 - 00:28:23.450

Yeah, nothing like that. Did you practice air raid drills in the shelters? We did. My brother was an air raid warden. Had a pith helmet in the whistle. It was a big deal. Hey, was five years older than I cool? No, I never felt threatened. Never knew the difference.

00:28:23.460 - 00:28:58.280

Okay. What were your thoughts and feelings about the turnover of the zone to Panama, or are your thoughts all we really turned over was the control of the canal. We never owned anything. We never owned the canal zone. Panama never ceded the canal zone. The canal zone was always always belonged to Panama Way had a lease on the canal zone.

00:28:59.040 - 00:29:27.790

That was never the treaty. Hay una very a treaty, which was 19, I think 1903 was never signed by any Panamanian. It was signed by you know Maria, who was a Frenchman. Okay. And he worked for the new French canal company, which was the canal. The company was formed after the lessons failed.

00:29:27.800 - 00:29:53.160

Building the canal he sold. He got himself appointed rather as the ambassador plenipotentiary by Panama, the President. Panama was not present when Hey did all this. But he went into the White House and went into the State Department. And with John Hay, who was then secretary of State.

00:29:53.540 - 00:30:24.610

He signed a hey, you know, very a treaty. The company from France was represented by Wall Street attorney, I think is Oh, okay. I don't think my friends all about that. Hello? Wow. Hi. I'm in the middle of being interviewed by the University of Florida. The delightful young lady who's a history major is interviewing me.

00:30:26.040 - 00:31:07.570

Yeah, okay. Call you later. Right by my wife in California. Wow. Anyway, so they signed the a boon for a treaty, and the French were represented by a Wall Street lawyer by the name. But I think his name was Cromwell. And $40 million was paid to the French for their in exchange for their rights to build the Panama Canal that they had received from Colombia.

00:31:09.030 - 00:31:33.080

And nobody to this day knows exactly what happened to that $40 million. Oh, boy. Now, the next day, the president of Panama named Amador arrived in New York, and he was fit to be tied. When he found out the treaty had already been signed. No Panamanian had signed it.

00:31:34.290 - 00:32:07.450

You know, very a was French. Uh huh. And it said Theo Treaty will be in perpetuity. So and it will be The United States will act as if they were sovereign. No lease in this country in the United States is good for more than 99 years, but still the least for the canal zone, which cut basically cut the country and half said it will be in perpetuity.

00:32:08.340 - 00:32:27.830

Well, when the Panamanians found out what was going on, they kinda have questions. But at the same time, they became a country. Before that, they were a province of Columbia. Now they became a country. So they had, I guess, mixed emotions about whether this is good or what.

00:32:27.840 - 00:32:50.660

But when they finally woke up to what they had, they had a foreign power cutting the country in half. It was as if we had a strip 10 miles wide, running the length of the Mississippi River with a foreign power acting as if they were sovereign in perpetuity.

00:32:51.340 - 00:33:26.120

That's what Panama I had. Yeah, eso that kind of dealing is so common in Central America all the time, but it was, uh, not tenable from the get go. In my opinion, it was an artificial arrangement. So when the Panamanians finally woke up in the pressure started and it started under Eisenhower, they they wanted their country back because no Panamanian was allowed to lawyer in the canal zone.

00:33:26.640 - 00:33:53.050

The maids with their tins flim in their notes Canal zone, police, new toe, let them pass. But Panamanians were only allowed to traverse the canal zone, but not loiter in the canal zone. Uh, when Panama woke up to what they had about under Eisenhower in the fifties, they started agitating.

00:33:54.140 - 00:34:16.920

1974 got to where they sign the treaty to turn over the canal zone. And they were smart. They had a 25 year transition period. Joe Rios, um, Carter. But Carter did not give away the canal zone. The Panama Canal Carter had happened to come to fruition on his watch.

00:34:16.930 - 00:34:46.910

But it started. I think, under the Eisenhower Administration, the Panamanians wanted their country back, and they're better off. I think Ford, because they've got this new canal under construction now have the Americans remain. Three United States taxpayer probably would not have invested to billions of dollars that's required to build a new canal Eso with the new canal.

00:34:46.920 - 00:35:14.990

It's a new day for them, but mhm So as far as getting out, I don't think we ever owned anything. I know we didn't never owned it, and it would have been a flashpoint had we remained with terrorism and whatnot because the canal today is a tooling proposition, and it would take a little more than a large firecracker to shut it down.

00:35:15.200 - 00:35:42.260

So there would have been a lot of trouble. And we've remained. Do you go back? Ever. I've been back about six times. Okay, uh, taken grandchildren and whatnot on It's probably obvious to you I've done a lot of reading on the subject. Yeah, pretty well kept up with it, but I've taken grandchildren and whatnot.

00:35:42.270 - 00:36:06.650

And one of the things I learned from David McCullough's book Path between the Seas was the Panama Canal was started the year after the first factory in the United States was electrified. Mhm. So here you had electricity for the first time and long. A year later, they started the Panama Canal, which runs on two things.

00:36:06.660 - 00:36:37.960

Electricity and gravity. And the Panama Canal was built with electricity one a year, so started one year after the first factory was electrified in the United States. It ran on 25 cycle electricity. Everything today is 60 cycle, and if you could find an incandescent bowl, I grew up with 25 cycles and you could see them flicker 60 cycles.

00:36:37.960 - 00:37:21.760

You can't see that. But then it was 25 cycles. And it was the first time that a consortium between the government and private industry worked. It was a forerunner to the Manhattan Project which built the atom bomb really well. We did the same thing there between basically I think General Electric and the United States government and later between the government and all these private companies who did them and Hatton Project, which built the atomic bomb.

00:37:22.330 - 00:37:57.460

So it it is a parallel? Not exactly, but it's a parallel of what can be done. That's what happened. Uh um, Let's see. Well, how important would you say that Panamanian culture was in your life when you lived there? Onley as human interest. Okay. Two people who were interested as an American.

00:37:57.470 - 00:38:24.020

I was not. When my parents did not get involved, I did not get involved with local culture. My father knew all the influential Panamanian business people because he ran the port of Balboa, which is at the southern end of the Panama Canal, and all the cargo for thestreet ores.

00:38:24.030 - 00:39:00.420

The upscale stores went across his docks. Therefore, he knew all the wealthy Panamanians who own those stores. And he got involved. My mother did not. My mother basically was from Brooklyn, and, uh, she never assimilated way kept doors ourselves. Eso the culture, the Panamanian culture. It was a nice, uh, but no more than the Canadian culture would be or the Mexican culture would be.

00:39:00.430 - 00:39:18.700

Yeah, it was. That's that's how it waas. Okay. What inspired you to do all this research into the history of the canal when you left? Were you just, you know, when did they do with yeah And why? Like, I became interested for your interest. I did it.

00:39:18.710 - 00:39:46.570

I I learned everything. After I left, I took a look at Where have I been? Yeah, I was living History E decided to find out what I had done. And so I did. Yeah, yeah. Uh, those air, actually, my questions Would you like to speak anymore about anything we talked about or, um oh, way.

00:39:46.570 - 00:40:18.930

Haven't covered. Just I think that the country Panama is much better off with the Americans gone. E think the Americans are probably better off with the Americans gone having left they, uh, pull the Panama Canal Treaty. The hay una Faria Treaty of 1904 was probably the swizzle huge swizzle that is thin eagle in perpetuity.

00:40:18.940 - 00:40:44.640

As if we were sovereign. Um, what went on in France with the French investing? Their money was the Madoff scandal of its day. And Gustave Eiffel of the Eiffel Tower was sentenced to prison as a result of that because everybody invested money and they lost it.

00:40:45.510 - 00:41:19.000

Gustave Eiffel never went to prison. He got off somehow, but he was sentenced to prison. So the whole thing when you get done, it was a thin eagle. However, it did create the Panama Canal, which to this day is very influential in world commerce. It's significant ships go through 24 7 Thio today.

00:41:19.010 - 00:41:48.550

There's gonna be more eso, uh, didn't accomplish something for mankind. Yes, it did. And was it worth it? Probably. But was it Ah, finagle? Yes. Okay. There's no question. Can you others say the same thing? So that z my story. Okay. Thank you. The Panama Canal.

00:41:48.550 - 00:42:19.110

The Panama Railroad was theme the highest cost railroad to travel on in the world. I didn't know that per mile. They charged more per mile than any of the railroad because all the goal was going back and forth. Also at one point, stock in the Panama Railroad was the highest price stock on the New York Stock Exchange.

00:42:20.000 - 00:42:42.490

Wow, I didn't know that either. I'm sure that kept Panamanians off the railroad and out of the market. Well, the railroad was owned by the by Americans. American entrepreneurs. One named Aspinwall. The town of Colon used to be called Aspinwall. They changed it to Golan, which meant Columbus for Christopher.

00:42:42.490 - 00:43:13.220

Columbus on Chris Sobel is Christopher and Colon was Columbus, but it was called Aspinwall. United States government later bought the Panama Railroad, and it was the first transcontinental railroad. It went coast to coast before the Union Pacific and Central Pacific went coast to coast. A crematory spike the gold spike A Crematory Point, Utah.

00:43:14.300 - 00:43:43.390

The Panama railroads started about 18 56 way before the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific across the continent. It was the first transcontinental railroad out of my railroad, most costly to travel on and the highest priced stock on the New York Stock Exchange without would not have been a Panama Canal to get the labor.

00:43:43.560 - 00:44:08.150

Remember the labor trains going back and forth and they moved the spoiled the excavation by way of the railroad so they could dio Yeah, you gotta put the land somewhere theme town I live in Balboa was built unfilled. Wow, I didn't know that the house I lived on lived in is now condemned.

00:44:08.340 - 00:44:31.240

The others on the house. Thea Others on the street. The other houses are used as offices by the pen Panama Canal Company. The kind of a canal authority The house I lived in is condemned. You could see cracks around because of subsidence. Okay, it was built unfilled.

00:44:31.250 - 00:44:50.010

Yeah, So it's moving. That's right. Then you can't go in it, but the rest of them are still in use. The product it's called cool is that p r. A. D p r a d That's now rename something Aleman, but it was known as the product.

00:44:50.190 - 00:45:08.610

Okay. Wow. I remember when they started Went from left hand drive like the English to right hand drive they instead of going down this side. You go this way. That's it. Okay. All right. Okay.