Interview with Andra English, 2015 July 2

Good morning. My name is Brenda Media. I'm here with Miss and the English. Andra. Andhra. English. I'm sorry. Um, today is July 2nd, 2000 and 15 were here with the Samuel Procter Oral History program at the University of Florida. Miss Andre, can you please start off by spelling your name, please?

A N D R A last name English. All right, Miss English. Um, can you just start talking to us about your early childhood when where you were born? How was that? Like Okay, well, my parents, um, went to the Panama Canal Zone in 1933. My father was hired as a machinist.

Um, hey had apprenticed in shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia, and both of my parents were from there. My mother was a teacher, but when they were married in 1929 she lost her position because married women were not permitted to teach. That had nothing to do with the Depression, which began really in full force in 1930.

That's where it was in a number of states because she now had a breadwinner. Um, Anyway, they were very fortunate to find position, and so they thought they would go try that. Try it out for a year and they wound up staying for 30 years. I was born in 1943 January, and my parents were living on the Atlantic side of the isthmus in the town of Katou noon, where my father worked on the gateau unlocks, which is three largest of the three sets of locks.

Um eso I spent my entire life until I went to college in the States, in the town of Katou noon, Um, which was about nine miles inland from the coast. The Panamanians city on the Atlantic side was Cristobal Colon, which translates to Christopher Columbus. Um, and we did all our main shopping there.

Although we did have a commissary Commissary, um meant not just groceries, but all the other goods that were that were sold. Um, your clothing, your shoes, hardware, all of that. Andi, At the time that the canal was first built, Panama was really pretty much of a Colombian backwater.

It would say it was a province of Colombia, not very developed at all. And they no way could their private industry sustain the population that came in to build the canal and then continued to maintain it. The United States had their own dairy, and in fact, we had to drive past the dairy, which was on the Atlantic Side.

Mindy Dairy, uh, to get to Mattoon from from Cristano. And the fellow who was a veterinarian for the dairy was also the vet for our pets. So anyway, we had a commissary, and we had what was called a clubhouse officially called a service center at that time.

But they started out as Y M. C A club houses for the men who were working for the canal as a place of recreation, and we all just kept the name clubhouses. It had a theater, it had a bowling alley. It had like a soda shop snack shop cafeteria, and we also had a post office in town and gateau in had to churches.

One was a nondenominational Protestant church called the Union Church, and there are union churches in other parts of the world. I've seen one in Seoul, South Korea, and there's one in Hawaii and Honolulu, and then the Catholic Church was more like a chapel where, as a priest would come up from come on or crystal ball and take care of.

Those folks have services there. And we attended gateau in Union Church. My dad was Baptist, My mom was Methodist and we had an elementary school. We went from kindergarten up through sixth grade. I couldn't ride my bike to school on my dog. Lady would follow me on the bike sweet and that she would go home.

There wasn't any pet control at that time. They didn't need it. Um, on she would go back and wait for me at lunchtime because we went home for lunch and and then the reverse. And she would often be waiting for me when the bell rang. Three o'clock to go home.

So it was really small town Yusa. There were other towns on the Atlantic side Margarita and Crystal ball. And there were several military posts Fort Davis, which was just a couple of miles from Gatun and then Fort Gulick, which was closer into the town of Margarita.

Um, let me see what else we had us working for and we had a gymnasium and we would have during the summer we would have story our for the little kids where I remember being read the adventures of Uncle Wiggly on and Raggedy Ann and those things, and we got older.

We would play volleyball and battle ball, and we lived at the swimming pool. Way earned all the Red Cross badges from beginners to swimmers, and they had races for us in the summertime. Fourth of July was a big, big meet swim meet, and at that time the swing full of gratitude was really the only swimming pool on the Atlantic side.

There were pools at the military bases, but we were not authorized to use them. The military folks were authorized to use our facilities, but we could not use. There's We could not shop in their PXs and commissaries or use their swimming pools unless we were with someone who was authorized to do that.

So all the other Canal Zone kids on the Atlantic side would come up to our swimming pool. There was another one at the Hotel Washington in Christo Bow, which was a hotel built during Teddy Roosevelt's days. I believe it is still there, and it was a saltwater pool.

I never I went there. I went to the Hotel Washington, but that is long gone now, although the hotel Washington Still there Privately owned, I believe. Let's see. We had such freedom growing up there. We rode our bikes all over the place. We were right on Gatun Lake.

We would swim in the lake, which I would not do now, because I understand there is a gigantic population boom of Cayman and crocs and alligators way sort of knew they were there, but not to the extent they are now. I understand. Now they have actually pulled fishermen into the canal and the lake.

Yeah, not good anymore way would paddle a little dugout canoes called Cuca's around the lake and hang out. It was called Data and Yacht Club. I used the term yacht. Uh, yeah, with a little bit of humor, because no one really had yachts. But a lot of people have votes, and there were a number of private clubs Now also, and that's what the guy junior club Waas.

Now we could also go across the locks we've across could cross the gates and ride our bicycles over to Gatun Dam, which held back the Shaggs River and created catching lake. But at the time it was created was three largest man made like in the world.

I think Hoover Dam, then beat it. But they had a spillway. And, of course, the Chagres River flew down below that on out to the Atlantic to the Caribbean and tarp. It would swim up and lots of other fish. It was huge fishing area, and there was a tarp in club over there.

And a lot of the boys and gals, I guess to they will go down along the banks of the river there and spend a lot of time fishing. Um, and the interesting time would be when the lake was too high and they would have to open the gates.

And you better get out of there because at that time, so because it would just be massive, people would love to come over and watch that happen. Um, yeah. A number of people of my friends growing up had horses. They had a saddle club. I my parents never wisely got a horse for May because, of course, you had to maintain and take care of that horse.

And they knew their daughter, I guess. And but the army at a program of mosquito control, Because, of course, That was an ongoing issue there, and they would. They had courses that they would put out into the jungle in what they called traps. They were stables that were covered with mosquito netting.

The mosquitoes never got to the well they would cover of screens. Mosquitoes never got to the horse, but they attracted them so they would capture the mosquitoes looking for the anomalies and whatever else, and then test them. And in the meantime, when the horse was not in the trap, it needed exercise.

They had stables, and on day they hired a fellow to groom them Thio to really take care of them, work in the stables, and they would let you be assigned for a certain amount of money to maintain it, to ride that horse when he was on in the traps.

So I had fun doing that for a number of years, and, yeah, that was fun. So we would way would ride our horses across the locks. Andi run because there were big fields over there to really run your horse. I'll never forget. One time I'm riding my horse with a friend across the locks, and my dog is following me, lady.

Well, Thea roadway of the gate was sort of an interwoven mesh metal kind of surface, and she followed me out on that, and she got stranded out in the middle with her paws splayed because it was painful and she wouldn't move. So one of the lot guards called to me and said, You got to come back and get lady.

Of course, everybody in your dog you got to come back and get lady because the traffic can't go back and forth. This is where the traffic going across the locks on the Atlantic side. So there she is, stranded out in the middle. I had thio time my horse up, Go back, pick up the dog, bring her over where i waas because, of course, she would try to do it again and then continue on with my dog following me on the horse.

So that was one of those crazy incidents. Another animal incident? Um, we lived in a house duplex that was right on the edge of what is now the canal expansion. It was called the third Locks. The United States started to build another set of locks just before World War two and they decided to stop construction and put all the money into the war effort.

While we lived right on the edge of this, that there were terrorists is up and and we could look over and see these chambers that were not completed a different levels. But there was a waterfall from one to the other, and we could see that from the back of our house, which was really lovely.

Now the jungle was all over on the other side of that and starting to encroach and grow back. So we were basically on the edge of the jungle or the tropical rainforests is. They later came to call it so we would get all the critters from there coming up like iguanas.

I remember seeing iguana run up the tree next to my house and stealing bird eggs and Cody Mundy's little troops of those guys which were like the tropical raccoons we call them, gotta solos in Panama and in Colombia to I met a guy from Colombia and that was their local name for qualities.

And one time my dad was posing under the house. Our houses were built on stilts, concrete stilts and the lower area was concrete recreation area garage on. We had a glider swing the springs on it and like a sofa, and he's hosing out underneath the house.

And what does he encounter, but a sloth slots? Yes. We always pronounce him a slope. I don't know, hanging from the springs, won't you this thing well, and you know, the claws on those guys air like this. And when they're hanging upside down, they're not exactly slow there swinging their arms.

Anyway, he managed to maneuver a broom handle and get this guy out and hang them on the clothes lines outside our house, which were very strong. Not not the They had cement posts with metal and then the metal, uh, lines. And, of course, we took movies and he had managed to get under that house.

Somehow I could just see himself dragging himself, you know? Yeah. So we had adventures like that. And another time, a colony of ants. I don't know what they were doing. They were looking for another place to build a nest. But the entire underside of my house was covered with ants gone crazy.

Now we used to have fun observing leaf cutter ants in their trails and watching, going to see what Bush they were attacking and then watch them going back and forth. That was fascinating, but these guys were going nuts all over. You could anyway, they had to call the whoever it was that took care of that kind of thing to take care of it.

So when we got to seventh grade, we then wrote a bus down to Cristobal Junior Senior High School, which was about nine miles on the coast. In our high school was a beautiful, um, sort of Spanish type construction stucco, looking with the red tile roofs. And I had to patios on either side in the classrooms and was right on the water in the bomb bay.

Um, in the late fifties, President Eisenhower and President Ramon in Panama one of these treaties that came along, and as part of the treaty, they decided to move all the Americans who lived in American housing in Crystal Ball and our housing and our high school out of Cristobal Colon and across what's called Montagny Obey to what was then and abandoned naval base called Coco Solo and you for John McCain being born at a naval base there.

Maybe you haven't. Maybe haven't. I didn't. Yes, yes. His father was a naval officer and he was born there. And because there was a big hoo raw about whether he was qualified to run his president because you're supposed to be a native born Americans. We all grew up knowing we could never be the president of the United States.

But anyway, a lot of that has changed anyway. It was a submarine base during World War Two, and they had all this housing where nobody was living, and they they renovated all the housing, and they renovated what was 1000 man barracks and turned that into our new high school.

So our class of 1960 was the first to graduate from that new high school, which we all voted to keep the same name Crystal Ball High school, even though it was now located in Coca Sola. So my last year of high school, I went there, uh, I managed to weigh, had football and all of those kinds of sports.

I went up getting to be a cheerleader. My senior year, we had junior ROTC, and I was what was called in ROTC sponsor my senior year, and we had dances. And and, of course, we love the music and our favorite Panamanian musicians. Name was Luca Escada.

I don't know if you've heard of that before, and if you hang around for the dances here, you'll you'll do the music. Um, but, um, way were pretty typical American kids, except we did have the experience of the multicultural growing up in Panama. We all had Spanish from elementary school on up through high school and, of course, driving to the Republic of Panama.

They were speaking Spanish there. We had kind of many kids that went to our high school. They paid tuition. Um, we traveled. My parents went up to the beaches on the Pacific side of the isthmus Santa Clara being one special one. But we also got to come back to the United States like every two or three years in this summer, our dads would accrue, leave, and we would come to the States on board ships that were called Panama Online and which originally docked in New York City and then later in New Orleans.

And on the trips up, we would pull into Haiti and spend an afternoon there. They picked up afraid, I guess, and then go continue on. And we would go back to Norfolk, Virginia, visit to visit family there in Arlington. And then I had an uncle in California, so we would go out to see him drive across the United States.

So even though we were from the Canal Zone, I saw more of the United States that many American kids that have grown up. So anyway, I wound up going to University of Tennessee, majoring in speech pathology and audiology and on to University of Virginia for graduate school in that field and in graduate school with me at that time was another friend from Gattuso, where I grew up, and she was working on her PhD.

So that was a small world. So and the summer between colleges, I met my husband, who was lieutenant stationed in Panama, and we wound up getting married, and first year we were married. We went back and lived in, lived in the Canal zone again, where I was a speech therapist until we had our ground up into it.

On driving up through Central America that the United States when he got orders for Vietnam. Any more questions? Um, yes. I kind of have a lot of questions. I wanted to go back a little bit. I wanted to ask you about your father and his kind of work.

So could you tell me a little bit about what he did on for the sake of the interview? Could you explain to us what the locks were? Um, Well, my dad was a machinist and the locks for a ship transiting from the Atlantic to the Pacific or the other way.

The and I am not good with numbers, but the way the locks were constructed, they were not a sea level canal that was decided early on that would not work in Panama. So they dammed the main river. The chakras created a lake, which is about 80 60 or 80 ft above sea level.

So to get to the lake, um, ships came in and went up three stairs. They would come in at sea level, the lock were closed behind. There would be a net closed lock and the locks operated on the principle simply that water will seek It's own level.

Very simple. So they had culverts underneath and from the control tower. They would open the culverts and they would raise the ship up and lower the water in in the other connecting lock until they were the same level three gates would open, ship would go in, locks were close behind him.

And that will continue on until the ship was sent up at the level of the lake. Ship did transit through the lake through what we call the cut, which was thehyperfix point of the Continental divide. The ring, the the line of mountains continuing on down through Central American data to the Andes and and where it was the steepest, it was quite narrow.

And then I would proceed on to another set of locks. These were separated. First, there was one lakh called Peter Miguel. And this ship would go down and be into what was called Mira Flores like, and then it would go to Miraflores locks and go down two more steps, and then it was the sea level on the Pacific side and proceed on.

Okay. Now, the machinery that opened and closed the gates was very important to maintain, and that was set into the walls of the locks on the locks of data. And there were actually two sets of locks with the center wall that had the control tower on it and everything was controlled from that control tower.

You would turn a handle, and I've done it. The open the culver Let the water go in and out, or close the gates and the control tower. Operators would take control of the ship and basically walked down this long panel with that ship and a time my father retired.

He had been promoted up to the level of what was called a lot master. He would be the man on the wall walking that ship through and signaling to the control tower when everything was when the ship was secured by the locomotives that were towing it and signaling to them, went to let the water in and out and went to open the gates.

Then when he first went down, he was a machinist. He was just starting off, and he was involved with the machinery inside the wall. You went down into these tunnels in the wall, and I've been down in there and you could see these huge circular wheels that basically turned on and operated the machine.

But it was extremely simple. All of that is now. Control is computerized. I've been up there and one of my first summer job. They would create summer jobs for us after we graduate from high school on. When we were down from college because there was no private industry in the Canal Zone, you couldn't just get a job in McDonald's.

There weren't any. So my first job after I graduated from high school was in that control tower just doing a little office filing and stuff like that. So I knew what it looked like up there. And when my husband went down and I went down in 2007, were very luckily met up in Gattuso on where no one was living except the gentleman who was running catch in locks.

Panamanian fellow now. And he was most generous, and I told him about my husband's job. He come to the locks tomorrow. He took us across the gates and up into the control tower, which ordinary visits. Visitors would never have that opportunity, and I was able to see this array of computers and all that air now, controlling a lot of things, but they are still using.

You know, that that huge panel and my husband and I were able to turn the handles and go out. There's a walkway like a balcony all the way around the control tower. And you're like, from here to that door. And one of the princess cruise liners was going through and we opened the gates for it, and we were, like, high.

We just left you through like, Whoa, what were these? Who are these Americanas? That we're doing this. So, uh, anyway, he was first a machinist, and then he was a locomotive operator. These were the locomotives. They were called mules because back in the original canal days in the United States, like Theory Canal, it was mules.

Tow boats trip. So everybody called them mules. Um, that so he operated a locomotive for a few years. I'm not sure how long I did manage to get his work records. So I know all this because you're a kid. You don't care what your dad does.

So so then he was promoted to like Master, which was really the highest. You could go if you were not, didn't have an engineering degree or something because my father didn't have that opportunity to get a degree. So that's what he did. And your mom did.

Your mom? Well, yeah. My mother, as I said, was a, uh, she had gone Thio. What is now James Madison University. It was called Madison College in Virginia. You may be right. And Longwood University now, which in Virginia, Um, if you want to teach elementary school, you went to one for two years.

If you want to go higher, teach hire, you went to the other and you wound up with four years of college. And this was in the 19 twenties, which was, you know, unless you were a teacher or a nurse, those were the opportunities open to women in those days.

As I stayed in before she lost her job, when she got married, went to Panama. Um, she she worked for a while for the army, doing clerical things. And then she became the society columnist for the Panama American newspaper. For the Atlantic side, it was a job.

She could have it home. Now. This was a newspaper that was printed in English. It was probably printed in Spanish, too. Um, but she worked from home. People would call her when somebody was getting married. When people were visiting from the States any kind of social event on the Atlantic side of the isthmus.

My mom reported on now she had also when she lost her job teaching, she had also gone and learned how to type and how to take shorthand. Do you have any idea what shorthand is? Google it? It was a way of learning symbols, and they taught this in high school.

I never took it. I did take typing, Thank God. And it was It was a way of quickly writing. Um what? Somebody is dictating to you way to take dictation very quickly. Everything more involved than it was like it was like a like a second language, not fanatics.

I had to learn fanatics. Um, no, it was a simple way of I never took it, but you could find it online, okay? And so she used her shorthand. And then she would type this up a home, and she had special envelopes, special typing paper. And every evening we would go down to the train station and Yatom and hand this envelope to somebody on the train.

And they had always had a free car, and that would be delivered to somebody in Panama City where the paper was printed. So I remember as a kid writing down train station, you know, handing it, handing it to somebody on that train. And of course, there was no retirement and anything and that for her.

She did some long term subbing for Junior High and coming to these reunions. I've had some, uh, some of my friends come up and tell me stories about when my mom was teaching them, and nice thing she said to them and that kind of thing. She applied for that job.

She had had a job. She had been long term subbing, I think in history, or I'm not sure which social studies from January to July, because the teacher had retired and gone back to the States. So he applied to get that job as a permanent position.

And I have the letter from Superintendent Essar telling her that they did not hire permanently women over 40 so she had sex discrimination and age discrimination. I've got the paperwork. So anyway, she gave up the teaching bit and she was hired by the Commissaries division, and she wound up doing what was called the What was Circular.

And that was something that was put every week and everybody's mailboxes in the Canal Za advertising the commissaries specials for that week and the movie schedule and things like that. And she put that together. Of course, she had a college degree. She could, right, you know, So you wanted someone who could do that and and she was able to retire from civil service and get a decent pension.

My father retired in 63. Unfortunately, he passed away in 64 the next year on, my mom stayed there until she retired in 65. Now we could not stay in the same home we hadn't get Tune because our homes were given to us, are assigned to us, and we paid rent according to your to your length of service.

And maybe the size of family played into it. I don't know, but when my dad retired, my mother could not stay in that home, and she was also working on the Pacific side, driving 50 miles to work every day across the Trans Isthmian highway. And so she was able to get a four family apartment in Diablo Heights on the Pacific side, and and so she stayed there until she retired in 65 which is when my husband and I got married back in Norfolk and she went back to Norfolk, where she had grown up.

She still had friends and family, so so that's what she did. Ah, lot of the women worked, and we were very fortunate in Panama because everyone had a maid that wanted one. I had the same lady working for us. Her name was Julie, Read From the time I can remember her family.

She told me that they had come from Montserrat as part of the construction days, when many, many people came from the islands for the workers laborers. But Canal and her family still lived in Gattuso in an area we called Silver City at that time, and she worked for us.

She did. The launch came every day except Saturday and Sunday, and and so my mom was able I would go home for lunch at school when she had a job and not when I was in high school, but and if Mom wasn't there, you only would fix me lunch and and And we were very close and she managed her.

Some of her daughter's managed to come to the United States, and I visit her. Before she passed away. She was living with the daughter out in Texas. So So that was great. She got out of there because Colon, where she lived Gulen has just disintegrated. Panama has really done nothing.

Thio Keep that from happening. Wow! When the United States left, a lot of the middle class folks who lived in go on moved into what we're canal zone homes because they could buy them or rent. Um, I'm not sure exactly of it. And so the middle class left come on and also into what was for Gulick military pose.

And that left only the poorest folks pretty much living and colon and faras. Maintenance and garbage. It's in bad shape. Unfortunately, Panama City is gone. Great guns, but they have just It's like they've abandoned Go on. Anyway, I was glad that you Lily, was able to get out of there.

She did, um, what year did you believe Panama? Well, I left when I graduated from high school, basically to go to, um, which was in 1960 to attend college in the States. Andi. Then after marrying my husband in 65 living there for another year, we left in 1966.

Kindly, um, how did you feel when you heard the news that there was going to be a transition from the Panama Canal being a U. S property to a Panamanian property? It's time to remember how I felt right at that time. I was kind of shocked because that's your home.

And you think it's always going to be that way. Understand that when people retired from the canal zone, you could no longer live there. You had to either move into the Republic. And since I had no other family there, I'm an only child. And, um, my parents were coming back to the United States, so I had no family there.

However, a lot of folks were like third generation folks. Their parents, their grand parents, have come to help build the Connecticut grandparent's well in my generation. They were there grand parents, eso my parents were born in 19 1 and 19 3. Wow. So they were older when I was born, But, um, you know, in some folks, of course, it was a great grandma was a great great and yeah, on DSA, um, have folks still buried there, you know, in Carcelle, which is still maintained by the United States, the same commission that takes care of the of the cemeteries in Normandy and World War One and World War Two cemeteries in Europe.

Uh, and Korea, uh, maintain the core is all hospital. Uh, not hospital core is all. There was a hospital. There was a hospital. Maintain that cemetery. So? So, as far as family ties, I didn't have that there. Um um and we have gone back on visited, and I'm happy to say that a lot of it looks pretty much the same.

Um, I'm now 72 and I know that nothing stays sing. Nobody can really go home again. I don't care where you're from. Everything changes. Um, uh, there are some people that are very bitter about it. Ah, lot of folks in my generation stayed on and had careers there, and they felt it a lot more then I had I had, I guess I had emotionally moved on.

Although I loved going back and is you can see I have wonderful memories of the place, but the people aren't there anymore, and that's what made it. And, um um, strategically looking at it through military eyes, there's no way you can defend that place anymore. You know, at the time it was very important, strategically and especially during World War Two.

Now we have fleets in the Atlantic and the Pacific, and we've got missiles. It doesn't matter where you are. Oh, so it's a different world, and I'm very happy to see Panama doing as well as it is taking care of the canal. Of course, A lot of people, I think, that Oh, my God, it's gonna be a disaster.

And, um, the concern, I think, is that Panama would not make it a professional, professionally run canal, that politicians would appoint people in charge who they owed or who were family members who really didn't know what they were doing, and problems would ensue. That certainly has not happened.

We have had, uh, head of the deep come and speak to us a different, uh, events. I've gone thio at University of Florida and, um, and it's been very interesting seeing the progression of the new canal coming along or the new set of locks. Unfortunately, half of my hometown is gone where they It's very interesting that where they're building it is right in the footprint of the third locks where the United States started to build it back before World War two.

It's never really mentioned anywhere when they're talking about the expansion, but I know perfectly well where that waas and where it, ISS and my hometown will be an island when they've completed this. Um, and all of what we call Newtown is gone where I lived when I was born and through up through fifth grade, I guess.

But on the other side of town, on the other side of swimming pool area, um, homes where I lived are gone, but there are some homes, very much that it same as where I was, and they are still there. The dispensary, the bridge. They had to move the train station because of the expansion.

So that bypasses get you. Now the train does, um so it's been very interesting. And watching him, this has been going, Yeah, I wanted to go back just for a second. Sure. So we know that there have been families that have been living in Panama for generations that they migrated from different parts of the world.

But you had a unique experience being that you were the first generation in your family to be living there and experience life. There s so I kind of wanted you to shed light on. Kind of like the relationships that you made with the different kinds of people in your life.

You spoke about your made. Was there anyone in school or was there anyone in your community that you created that sense off kinship family with? Yeah, my well, my, my, the close friends of my parents, Um, my aunt Lol, and my Aunt Lily. No, they weren't my aunts, but especially associated with our church.

But only that we all went to that church. Uh, the new hearts were a family that lived there and there. And Mrs New Hard was. Her name is Loretta. And both she and her husband, Fred Newhart were second generation zone IANS and they had two daughters and a son.

Uhh! And and Carol and and married a physician who went back and worked at Gorgas Hospital. Dr. Omar Franklin. They're both to see us now. And but Loretta used to make my birthday cakes. She specialized in decorating birthday cakes and things like that. Um, and she would make wonderful chocolate covered Easter eggs and decorate those and put your name on them.

And that was great. And then we had another family. The last name was pool Mom and pop pool. We called them and somebody in the States would send them. Ah, box of Tootsie Pops, which we could not get in power in the canal. Gia and the world would go around.

Mom and pop pool have 50 pops. Everybody would go and she would distribute this candy to the kids. Um, um, what were some of the other things that went on? It was a community where people just looked out for you. Now, not everybody in town, but, you know, there were just some special families that your parents were closer to.

My parents were pretty much were older than a lot of my friends parents, so they weren't necessarily close friends with my friend's parents. Um, mostly with a little bit generation ahead of them. Um Oh. And then there was our dance teacher whose name was Maj. Lock E.

I often thought that I would write an article for the Reader's Digest. My most unforgettable character match locked dancing, too. I don't know. Countless little girls in a few little boys on the Atlantic side. Her husband, they were from Scotland. I don't know how the heck they got there.

They lived in Puerto belong. They didn't They didn't live in the canal zone. Excuse me? Her husband was was called Scotty and he worked. He was like the caretaker of the Masonic Temple in Crystal Ball and Match. She wore a little a funny little bonnet. She had kind of dark, orangey red hair dyed and a dress and, you know, in her shape is like straight square up and down.

And she I think she had gone to every kind of folk dance festival that there waas because she would teach you Russian dances where you were down kicking your feet out in front of you. You know, like the Cossacks air coming and stuff like that with her hands crossed, she taught ballet.

She taught Scottish dance and Tapatio the Mexican hat dance. I danced at once, got a little, a little, you know on. And, uh, and she would travel by bus. Now we called the local Busses. Chibas. You may have heard that term before they're painted. Oh, yeah, And they were quite primitive compared to what they have now.

The original ones had wooden seats along the sides inside, like old Charlie's. Sort of like, I don't know, but anyway, and they were painted. Yet she and she had a pianist that would travel with us. Black fellow Jamaica. I'm not sure where he was from. Named Carl Cole.

The man could play anything. We had our dance lessons in what was called the tree foil house, which was an old wooden building which, with scouts met and there was an upright piano there. And Carl would play what a long suffering man he must have picked on.

We would come once a week and we would have dance, learn all these different dances and and then she would and she would go to Margarita. She would goto Kahlon and then at the y m c a In Christo go. There still was a y m c a there which had a stage she would put on a dance recital every year.

The woman painted the scenery, she had our costumes made and then she would Karl would play and she would play the snare drum and announce the dances. We have programs and all of this. And I remember one time I was the son and I had a little crown have in this little golden whatever costume.

And there was a well on the stage. And two of my friends were the morning miss when they were dancing in front of me. And they had these very floaty costumes and gray and pink gauze kind of things. And the music was, you know, it was like, uh, sunrise.

I mean, there were classical pieces, Don Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You may have heard. So they're playing this in the morning. And then when they started playing that I was to come up behind the well with my hands going like the rays of the sun, I'm coming up behind the wall.

Well, as I'm sitting behind a Well, while the morning Mrs dancing in front of me, I was probably nine. Well, I had stage fright. Anybody would. However, instead of throwing up, I managed to wet my pants. So it was a very damp sunrise. One of those things you never forget.

Now what anybody could see. I have no idea. But I never forgot that another time I was a chicken and there was a farmer chasing me. They ever David, David, David, David. I mean, all this kind of music was, you know, and then the tapatio Another time I was a rainbow e Another time I was a dog.

It's toy soldiers that left up, you know, just like the rockets. We did that. She was amazing. And she traveled around and caught these Busses, and I often wondered whatever happened to match And we had a lot of, like, professional studio photos taken. I have some of them is she was amazing.

It was amazing. And then she was a character and somebody I've never forgot. I wish I had a picture of her, You know, things you don't think to do. Um, earlier, you spoke about freedom and how, uh in your childhood. Probably adolescents. You have freedom. Can you explain?

What? What that meant to you? What? That issue? Well, only that you realize now in the United States, kids you hear about the helicopter parents and all that kind of thing And where a woman gets arrested because she lets her kids walk down to the to the playground by themselves.

And we had, uh, where we lived in get tune. We had no problems like that now the canals and had their own police force. But we never thought about anything like that. And catching was a small town. Yeah, And we just went wherever we went and you had to be home on the street.

Lights came on and we were playing. The streets were playing way called it the Playset Jim Nation. Go down to the lake and excuse me, I don't remember my parents. We didn't lock our doors. We did not lock our doors. Um, your pets had freedom. You'd have to worry about keeping them latched up and went everywhere they came overnight.

E think occasionally a cat might disappear in the bush and you'd never see them again. That happened. I e No. Um uh, Now, if things did happen, like there was a story of a of a man in my hometown who apparently had exposed himself at swimming pool to somebody you were out set back to the States if something like that could be proved Deported.

Yeah, Well deported. Yeah, I guess that's the term. But you couldn't have not stay there, right? Or some if someone committed offenses like that, like assaulting someone you know and understand, I never really was aware of any of this, But there was one young man in particular who the parents were divorced.

The mother was in the States, and he was living with the father. And one year he was not back because there was a rumor that something had happened. So it was no tolerance? No, they didn't put up with anything like that. If you had a Yeah, you know, because you were there, your parents were there.

You couldn't You could not be There are beyond. Unless you were the dependent of someone, or your family member had a job there. So and as I said when you retired moved into the because the housing and everything was for the people who were working either on the canal or in support of canal or in defense.

But that was the military folks. A whole other thing. Yeah, So I wanted to ask you about citizenship. Um, you when you were born in Panama, you were granted Panamanian citizenship. Well, nobody even thought about doing that. When I was born there. My I was actually born in the Republican Coulon, whereas people born on the Pacific side were actually born within the canal zone if they were born in Gorgas Hospital and my birth certificate says Child born of U.

S citizens living abroad and I never thought about getting Panamanian citizenship just never crossed my mind. I understood. I understand. Now I could do that if I wanted Thio. Um, when I was in high school, I believe we did. My mom did insist that we go to the customs office and I get sworn in again.

And I have another certificate saying that I'm a US citizen. Um, my mother, ever the pragmatist, said, What if you marry a military officer and you have a child that he's born in another country, then there could be some question and you know, she was. She was pretty close to right, except my three sons were all born in the United States.

But my husband and I did live in Germany and we did live in career, so that could have happened. But, you know, I got my Social Security number in the canal zone when I first had that will summer job. So there's been no question. But I'm a US citizen, right?

Yeah. Eso you just mentioned Germany, Korea, Any of those places Trump Panama. Oh, God, Well, nothing trumps your home. But I love both of them and my son is now an army colonel and he's been stationed in Germany more than he's been stationed anywhere else. He's over there right now, commanding a brigade, and we go over all the time.

And it's like going It's like going home to because he's in the same area where we lived at one time and where he lived as a little boy, actually, briefly and and Korea, I had had no real desire to go to Asia, but I wouldn't miss that for the world because so different and so fascinating, and I learned so much about Korea.

Um, and what great people those were. We lived in Tucson down on the coast there, and my husband commanded the Army port there. Um, where your cars and everything that Americans there came in and along with tanks. Things like that. Supporting the troops, up on the Dems, that kind of thing.

And we lived there for two years. Most of the men get sent there and they're unaccompanied. But because of my husband's position, um, way were able to go to That's nice. And that was great, too. So I wouldn't have missed that experience either. But it's hard to.

It's hard to be German beer and the Hofbrauhaus and and we're going We're going over and go to several big fests, you know, that are going on over there this fall again. So you got to get over there. I'm trying. Um, What is your best memory, or what is your favorite thing about Panama that you could remember?

Oh, just being there with my parents. And and it's funny because you're a kid growing up in high school and all that. You can't wait to get out. You gotta go. You know, you're just like you are. I'm sure you want to go to the bigger, bigger world out there and all of that in this place.

God, it's important. But, you know, you don't appreciate it until you're gone. And, of course, my parents are now gone, so of course, But like I said, you can't go home again. So those days I miss those days, and I wish I'd appreciate it more when I was there.

But that's life. Yeah. And you said that you actually I don't want to speak for you. So assed faras how the Panamanian government is now controlling the canal. Your sentiments? Are they positive? Neutral. Are you okay with it? Yeah. I mean, I'm happy that things were working off of them.

I still have Panamanian classmates that live in Panama. Maurice Bellenger Pauling a deer. Uh, Charles, you Chinese kind of Indian folks. Um, yeah. I mean, it seems to be going well, there's a lot of Americans living back down there on they apparently, you're treating the U.

S. Citizens that are living there pretty well too. They're giving ah, lot of discounts and things like that to retired folks that air there they have pretty good medical care. Johns Hopkins is down there. Um oh, yeah. There's a lot of benefits for Americans living there, so, I mean, they've got problems.

Like most countries. Dio. Yeah, and some folks have had problems with, um, with crime that Look who's talking, you know, we've got them appear to, so Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not bitter because, like I said, nothing stays the same. Very true. Um, well, at this point, is there anything that we didn't talk about that you would like to share with us?

No. I can't really think of anything. Way have gone down. I went down with my took My son's down in the late nineties when I had friends there we stayed with, and I'm hoping we're going to get back down there now that they're older, because what they really remember the most was riding on the back of my friends motorcycles because they were, you know, they were how he's going younger.

But it was very funny seeing them mhm walk into the bush in an area, but that we call the forest preserve. It's now this Operalia National Park, um, near Gamboa. And there was a highway going through there. But the Las Cruces Trail that Conquistadors used to transfer a goal from Peru to the Atlantic side to be brought back to Spain.

And you could still see the cobblestones of that of that pathway and you could walk back along it. And of course, there's rainforest, all on sides, And the look on my boys faces, they It was like they thought a guerrilla was gonna come swinging out of a tree and snatch them up.

Or at least a giant snake was gonna come after them seeing their faces. That was, you know, and we were so used to doing this and not even worrying about it. So So that was a lot of fun. So I'm looking forward to getting them back and my two older grandchildren to go back.

I have one who is almost two now also, but the other two are 10 and 12 there in Germany. So hopefully we'll all get back down there and see your mom and Grandy. I'm Grandi. Let's grew up. So I hate for them to lose that heritage of what their great grandfather, uh, and great grandmother experience and their grandmother so so that that will be a lot of fun for me, actually.

Have one last question. Okay, um, these kinds of gathering these kinds of conventions that you get to come now, toe What? What do you enjoy about this? What? What brings you back? Well, reconnecting with friends, right? And acquaintances. I mean, a lot of them were folks that you weren't that close to, But you have that bond and the music and the dances that we have.

I don't know if you're gonna witness any of that, but Saturday night, yeah. Especially e think Padre salsa will be playing. Have you heard about the salsa? No, but I love salsa. Well, e call it salsa because Because the gringos know what salsa is, right? Yeah, but it's cumbias.

And you know, all the other Tom burritos and which were more Panamanian. Um, Padres also is a Catholic priest, and he's from Colon, where I grew up. I believe he has a parish in New Mexico. Arizona somewhere like that. And theme music. I mean what they earn.

I believe a good deal of it goes back to Colon, which is, as I said, very badly in need. and and he plays this organ and with all the rhythm section and everything else that goes with it and plays all this music that we grew up listening to being played by Luis Gonzaga, who also played in Oregon and and one of the big problems of this re union in years past was finding a dance floor big enough because everybody is out there from the youngest to the oldest.

It wasn't just, you know, rock music that only a certain generation was listening. Thio. Everybody was out dancing to this, and we're singing songs that we learned in elementary school. What really great me during Noriega and who was his predecessor, I forget his name. Make comments that the American Children, the Canal Zone Children were taught to hate Panama.

And I'm like what we were singing El Tambo de la Alegria. I learned that in elementary school we were coloring pictures of the Sierras and, uh, and the National Arms of Panama in our classrooms, and we were learning all about Panamanian culture. My folks from Norfolk, Virginia, they didn't They didn't know any of this.

And Alaska, United States and P O P, O. P. o way were learning all of these that everybody in central South America pretty much knows in the Caribbean. Yeah, sure, sure, sure So And then another. There's another song that he plays is called Sopa de Free Holidays.

So pedestrian and my five years ago my kids, they all came to the region because it was my 50th high school reunion. And my son, he's out there dance anyway. And he says, What's he saying? Mom? And I said, He's saying, Being soup Hey, detainees. Okay, so I told him, We're coming to the rear and he says, Okay, have fun dancing to being suit.

So E said, You know, I will. So So, anyway, we come back for all of that. It's like a Touchstone. You can't go home again, but you can come to these reunions and this was very funny today. We used to play sliding down these dirt hills in my hometown.

It was red dirt. One of them was called Red Hill, you know, And, of course, trying to clean that off your pants. Yeah, but anyway, and the other was called Red Feather. And I was talking to a young man who was generation. I mean, he's my kids age who grew up and got him.

And he happened to mention this Redhill called Red Feather. I said, Oh, yeah, Red Feather. I said, You know where that name came? No. Where did that name come from? And I said, Well, I actually was able to google it. I said, when I was in elementary school, they had a fundraiser thing and turned out it was for the community chest that later became united fun.

And if you gave money, they gave you a little red feather about like this. So what's called a Red Feather community chest campaign and we as kids playing in the For some reason, we suddenly came upon this area. This hill was kind of shaped like a crest and came down.

We said That looks like a red feather. So we named the Hill Red Feather. He said, I can't believe it was you kids that named it Red Feather. And I said, I can't believe that you So this was like local kid lore. Mm. That where you grew up?

You probably had the same kind of stuff going on. You remember? All fuzzy. You were you know, some some unique person where you grew up. Everybody and his. They were still calling Red Feather. And now I told him where the name came from. So it's stuff like that goes on, you know, that's very funny.

So that's great. Anyway, I hope you all have great memories about where you grew up the same way. I dio, um I want to thank you for sharing your story. Sure. Thank you. So happy to do it. Yeah.