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My name is Pat Egger. Patricia Edgar. I'm one of the many Eggers in the canal Zone. I'm a third generation, um, zoning. And I guess you might say both my grandfathers came down when they were young men and brought their wives and their Children with them toe work for the Panama Railroad.

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One of my grandfathers was a dispatcher. The other one was a baggage man. Um, I was born and raised there. Uh, it was a wonderful life. It was It's something that I wish I could go back to. But, you know, you could never move back. The building of the Panama Canal, I think, is the single greatest engineering and construction feet feet that has happen from the 1920 to the 21st century.

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I even think today the dams, the buildings, Dubai, whatever they're building can't equal what was accomplished in in Panama and the building of the locks, the infrastructure, the how it was designed. Um, it's it's still working today, and that's an example. 100 years later, of their of accomplishment of United States.

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What is the single most vivid memory I have of living in the canal zone? I was born and raised there. I never knew anything any different until I left at the age of 20 to go to college in the United States. My memories are the memories of my life living in the canal zone.

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The people are life, the people that I grew up. I still have relationships with people that I went to nursery school with. Uh, one of my aunts had a nursery school on the point in Old Crow Strobel and anybody who hears this will know what I mean.

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Uh, published pictures of nursery school out there. My Aunt Marge. And there are a lot of people still living who we went to nursery school. So we grew up, went to grade school, went to high school, went to junior college. And, of course, our lives fractured from that point and split.

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And we all moved on to other parts of the world and in the United States. And this what we do now, as faras are re union, is go back and rekindle our relationships. It's not necessarily about Panama or the Panama Canal. It's about our life. Because this was our hometown, which no longer exists.

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The hometown is in our heart. It's in our lives. And it's in our relationships that we have today. The Panama Canal Zone symbolizes to me a way of life. I was born and raised there. I never knew anything else. Um it is something similar to a military base.

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I am government born and raised. I worked for the government. I retired from the government. I married an army man, a military man. We traveled all over the world. Consequently, I have been cared for by the government all my life. Not everybody has had that, Um has not.

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I don't know how to say this has not had that been able to do that. Consequently, I consider myself very blessed. Three canal. The canal zone was an insulated place to live, and those of us that live there were very fortunate. However, the people that work there and grew up there served a purpose and running the single largest, um, entity for shipping in the world.

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At that time, that allowed people to move through, uh, the land Bridge of Panama and cut off having to go around the Southern Cape of South America to get around, which enabled my father was a customs inspector and I know about the shipping. I know how it ran.

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I know what went on because I heard it my whole life. So I don't know how to in camps how to say that it was It was a very, very good life. Toe live. However, we served a single important purpose and running the canal to enable world shipping to go through there.

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When the war's happened, all the battleships, the small ships could go through. All I have is I have things that I bought at the Panama Canal Society. That memorabilia I left in 1963 um, to go to University of Arkansas, graduated from canals on college. I have an old mola.

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It's probably the only artifact or the only old thing, Um that my dad bought off the back of the sandblast Indian lady in 1952 and it's framed. I don't I really don't know what she was wearing underneath that he never did say eso I actually have on Lee an old mola.

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Everything that I brought with me was is in my memories. It's in my life. It's in my friends. It's who I remember, and it's what I remember and how we lived. The music. Panamanian music is the most beautiful, um, experience to dance and to listen to.

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And there's not a sad song in Panama's repertoire of music. You will never unless it's changed in the past 50 years since I left. But when I was there, there was no sad music. It was all beautiful, upbeat, happy, uh, music. And everybody loved to dance.

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If I had to state one single experience, I'd have Thio single in on swimming on the apron of the GATT tune spillway when the gates were closed and we weren't supposed to. And of course, uh, it's very dangerous. It was very dangerous and you could die.

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And we crawled down on the rocks and crawled up under the apron. There was little caves and stuff underneath it. So if I had to say that was an experience, that would be my experience. I would have to say that it was something that eventually would have happened.

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It's It's some and it was time in the United States no longer had need for the military or the or the economic maintenance of the canal anymore. So it was a time, even though it was seemed to be disruptive and everything. If everybody looks at history, it was time for the United States to give it up.

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There was there was no need to keep it. And even though I hated to see it go, and it's not the Panama Canal or what you want to call it today the infrastructure, the streets, the houses they've been renamed towns have been renamed streets have been renamed.

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And it's not where I grew up, and it's not where I lived, which is fine, because my hometown is in my heart and it's in my friends, and it's in when I see them now there's nothing left that even reminds me and why I'm not interested in going back.

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It doesn't There's nothing left there that reminds me of what waas It's all been erased, which is fine. Panama has that right to do it, so that's that's how the world goes. You should have grown up there. There is there will never be another. All right, I'm going to step out here.

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I think that the Panama Canal Zone was the most perfect experiment in socialism that has ever existed. Nice way to live