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So the following interview was conducted with Marvel Towns and on behalf of the Panama Canal Museum Collection at the University of Florida. The date is February 20th, 2020. The interview was conducted at Marbles home in Gainesville, Florida. The interviewers are Betsy Bemis and John Numbers. Thank you so much for, um, meeting with us today.

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Can you tell me your name and your date of birth? My name is Marvel Davison Townsend. I was born December 3rd 1942 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. So tell me how you arrived in the canal zone and why you came there. Well, you remember. This was during World War Two, and the Canal zone was a strategic importance to the military.

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So my dad applied for a job there and got one. So he went down in August of 1942. But because of the war, my mother, who was pregnant with me and I had an older brother that's three years older, could not go down with him. So she went back to New England and lived with his parents because her parents had died and we lived there.

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So I was born in the States in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Had she gone down with him, I would have been born in Panama. She was unable to get passage until November of 1943. So the first time my dad ever saw me, I was 11 months old and my mother, well, bless her heart, flew down with airsick, had a three year old boy and a baby.

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And she tried to hand me off to my dad. And I said, No way. Who is this stranger? So she had a hard time giving me thio him toe Hold me. So that's why we didn't go down until ah year and a half, practically after he went down.

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Well, I'm So did he continue to be in military service? Well, he was not working for the military. The canal zone was government run and operated. But half the people there were not military. Half were. He worked for the supply division which had to do with the commissaries and that retail and so on.

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Eventually, my mother became a teacher down there. So I mean, people had jobs that were not directly on the canal, but they had to be there for have a community that's for sure. And then he worked there for another 31 years before he retired. The interesting thing there is when you reached age 62 you had to leave.

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You could not stay in the canal zone. It's a limited size, limited housing. People could move into the country of Panama, but the majority of them, when they turned 62 came to the States. So that's the reason people worked the amount of time that they did because they couldn't stay longer.

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Did your father ever talk about being in the canal Zone during World War Two? Well, we all love being there, but of course, you know, we had military ships coming through all the time, and, you know, this was a big deal. We could go see the the different military ships and tour them.

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And of course, I was in scouts and we take tours. The aircraft carriers were too big to go through. They'd have to go around, but the smaller ships would go through and they dock and we get, see that we had a lot of military Roman around, and the canal zone itself, as I said, had a lot of military bases.

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We were half military, half Aziz Canal Zone. And there were gates up. I mean, you couldn't just go into the basis you had to stop on MP would stop you. Now, as compared to going from the canal zone into Panama, There was nothing to stop you.

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You just on the curb or in the street. You're in Panama, the canal zone. But he never made a lot of reference to the military because he was not in the military. So where did you live? In this zone? Well, um, everybody refers to the Atlantic side in the Pacific side.

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And when we first were there, we lived on the Atlantic side and I was there all the way through ninth grade. And then his division got moved to the Pacific side. So I actually did 10th, 11th and 12th grade on the Pacific side. When they told me we were moving from the Atlantic to the Pacific, I said, No way.

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My friends were all here. I'm not moving. However, my brother had just graduated high school in 57. So for him it was perfect. He went on to the States, but I had to move in transition and make new friends. It turned out to be a blessing because those years were wonderful and there was a bigger school, more competition.

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It prepared me better to go to college than if I'd stayed on the Atlantic side. But you hear people referring to the other side or this side or that side. Well, that's what they're talking about. Are they very different? Your So your experiences were quite different.

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The difference for when I lived on the Atlantic side was I lived in Cristobal. There's also the town of Margarita and got to They were mawr self contained. But Cristobal kind of crisscross across Colon, which is in the country of Panama. So here I am, a little bit of girl and I would walk through Colon because commissary was far away from where I live and you had to cut through Colon to get there.

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Nobody ever bothered. May nobody ever worried about it. I just It just wasn't a concern. But you did not have that when you were in Margarita or a tattoo. Nor when you're Balboa now in ball boy, you could go into the country of Panama, but you didn't have to crisscross it like you did when you lived in Cristobal.

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When we lived in Crystal ball. My brother had a paper route because boys didn't have many opportunities to earn money. But he hated collecting the money from people. So I get my little red purse. I'd put it over my shoulder and I go knock on the doors and collect the money.

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Well, if they give me a dime tip, you gotta understand what money was like in those days. They give me a dime tip. I got to keep all the tips. Eso I liked that job. So it was. It seems like it was very fluid going in and out of the canal zone.

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As far as going into Panama, it was very fluid. Was that your experience? The whole time you lived there, Did that change at all? It did not change. Although when I was a little girl in Christo, Bill, they had some kind of riots one time and people had to kind of be a little careful.

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But other than that, I never lived there during the worst of the riots and stuff. I never felt insecure or any kind of problems now. There was a lot of stealing because people would come into the canal zone like if people hung up their wash and steal the laundry or steel bikes or if you left your toys out.

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But there was never anything terrible like murders. I mean, there was a lot of stealing, but, you know, a lot of the people were very poor in Panama. In fact, they had jobs in the canal zone as maids and gardeners and so on. And if they hadn't had those jobs, they wouldn't have any income.

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Hm? Can you talk about the kind of unique cultural and social traditions that remind you of the zone that you think about food or games or clothing, things that you did, that you felt like We're unique? Well, one thing unique is we could play outside all year round.

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We had no excuse me, no cold weather. None of that. And the times were always the same. So at six o'clock, the street lights came on all year round. When the lights came on, you had to go home for dinner, but we played outside all the time, and that was really fun.

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Unfortunately, I was not into the cultural food as much of that age, but we had what were called Chinese gardens, and they raised delicious papaya and avocados and, um, tomatoes and all kinds of stuff. So the big deal was you go to the Chinese Gardens and pick up some fresh produce and so on, and I didn't enjoy that a lot.

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Uh, I can't think of too many other special foods because I was a little bit of a fussy eater then. E wish I was now, but, um and then in terms of activities, is that what you all sure anything, anything that well, it was a big deal to be in things because we didn't have any TV and we did not have air conditioning until I was back down teaching later.

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So we went through high school with no air conditioning, and you could imagine how hot and humid it waas. But that's the way it waas, and we had no TV. So everybody was in scouts very active in the church. And then I was what's called the Rainbow Girl.

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It's part of the Masonic Association, and you were just in a lot of different clubs and things. And then everybody took dancing lessons. So I took a lot of dancing lessons. We had a lot of recitals, and that was a big deal. Um, you mentioned to go back to the previous question that in reference to the food that a lot of people did have domestic workers in their home.

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Some of the people had cooks that cooked more of Panamanian food or a different cultural cuisine. Did you have that experience? I did not. My mother was very particular. She did not want domestic help. Almost everybody. And I do mean everybody had domestic help and and sometimes including cooks.

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But she liked to do her own cooking. She liked to do her own cleaning. She hired a lady one time toe iron. Now, you realize in those days the men had those shirts you had to start in iron. But she she was not happy having a domestic help.

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But everybody had him. And when they left there to come to the States, a lot of them said that was the thing they missed the most. Right? So you experience that? Certainly in your friends. Oh, yes. All my friends had that help. Frank's family had a me for years and years.

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She's like part of the family. I mean, it just depended on how it was structured. But my mother was not in favor of fat when you when you did when you were roaming around during days and you had the freedom and the good weather, Did you?

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Did that include going out into the jungle and nearby land? Or was it just confined? Thio roaming around the e wouldn't say jungle because none of the communities really backed up to the jungle except maybe out if you were headed towards Katou and there was some jungle I backed up to the water in Crystal Ball on and I play a toe water all the time.

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It wasn't a beach, but it was water. And I love to go over and play by the water and have make believe in this that and the other. But I wouldn't say I roomed in the jungle because it wasn't that Crystal Ball had jungle around it.

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We were on the water. Balboa was a little bit backed up to a little bit of jungle. By then, I was a little bit older, so I wasn't interested. The boys would still go playing that stuff, but, um, in Balboa, I wasn't on the water like I wasn't Cristobal.

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But no matter where you drove down there, you were seeing water pretty much all the time. Because, you know, the land was only 10 miles by 40 or 50. So it wasn't very much. And we used to drive across the isthmus. That's what people used to say.

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Drive across the isthmus. It would take about an hour and 20 minutes. They have a better highway now, but that was virtually the only driving that we did. So when I came to the States, I had been driving down there. I had a hard time adjusting to the huge interstates and highways, and several life friends commented on that.

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It was hard to make that adjustment cause we had this little but he roads that we went on. We never had these big interstates and so on. Did you travel by bus? Did you walk places? Mostly. I mostly walked everywhere. I did bike some when I was younger, but when I was in high school, I walked to school and we walked back.

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We had what we call Chibas. So for a nickel, you could take achiever down the road. It was pouring rain. I might do that. But I walked everywhere. Since the water seems to have been a big part of your enjoyment experience of Panama. So in the recreation that you and your group of friends would do was voting a large a large component of that.

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Or was it mostly swimming? My father was not a boater, but a lot of my friends. Parents were, and I had a friend that had a boat. We went out a few times, but mostly it was swimming. We had beautiful pools in every neighborhood. There's one in Christofle on Get to an invaluable.

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So we swam in the pools. When I moved to the Pacific side, they had a beach that was on one of the military places called Amador Beach, and you could join as a civilian. Well, they had a huge shark net out around this alcove so you could swim there, be to keep the sharks out.

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I mean, the sharks for rampant, you couldn't just go jump in the Pacific Ocean and start swimming. So we would swim in a manure beach where the shark net protected us. Wow. That's I have not heard about you haven't heard. Start, start. Well, I probably exaggerated a little bit, but they were there for sure.

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Um, what other things did you do? So what was scouting like? Well, everybody did scouts. I mean, we had our troops and our activities, And then as we got older, we would camp out, and the commissary division had a place called Mindy Dairy. It was between Marguerite and Data and with all the cows, and they did their own milk and their own ice cream for a long time.

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But then eventually, they had to turn that operation kind of back to Panama. Which is probably why my dad got transferred to the Pacific side. But the scouts will go out to the Mindy dairy area and camp out. We hear the cows and the difference. But we wouldn't bother them.

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They wouldn't bother us. And that was a lot of fun. And then when I got older, I was actually a Mariner. In Girl Scouts, there was a Mariner troop, and so I became a Mariner because of the water and we went out on trips. And then, um actually, when I was in junior high, we made a couple of boat trips around, you know, nothing far.

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It was fun. And the rainbow girls that seem to be a pretty specific experience. Can you talk about that? Well, it was a part of the Masonic, you know, they have the Malays, women have eastern stars, and the men are all kinds of masons. And my dad was very active in that.

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So he wanted my brother and the Malays and me and rainbows. And we had a lot of projects and helpful things that we did. But ironically, because we moved from Christofle to Balboa and I had started at Cristobal, you progress according to when you join. So if I had transferred my membership to Balbo, I would have lost my position in the chain.

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So my parents, because my dad was very active in Masons, insisted on driving me across the isthmus to the meetings in Cristobal when I was in high school so I could work my way up. The highest office is like president, but it's called worthy adviser. So I did work up to that because they insisted on driving me across.

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Some of my friends thought that I insisted, but it was they insisted. That was probably good for you, in the sense that you were able to stay connected with friends that you had on the Atlantic side after you moved for. Well, that was a positive, because when my parents would drop me off, they would visit their Cristobal Atlantic side friends.

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And then I get to see all my Atlantic side friends. So it was a positive in that regard eso you have talked about, that it was difficult that you transitioned in the middle of high school which Bert, a student anywhere is quite difficult or can be challenging.

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Um, can you just talk a little bit about your experience with at school with the education experience in this zone was like, Well, you have to understand that they had a superb education system in order to teach in the high school, you had to have a masters which was not very common at that time.

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We had excellent teachers, excellent training. It couldn't have been better, but because there were only two main high schools, that was the competition. So it was all these Cristobal against Balboa. So we used to take the train across the isthmus when we had a game on the opposite end, and that was fun.

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But of course, when I first moved over from the Atlantic to the Pacific, I had to become a Balbo bulldog instead of a crystal ball tiger. Yeah, that was a little bit hard initially, but I I really like about Bo after we got moved over there.

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I have friends that, believe it or not, we still get together now, after 60 some years, once or twice a year, and we get together, We just have the best time, and we just kept in contact. We have such a common bond, and Bow Bow is a much bigger school, so they always be Crist Opal.

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But my brother played football and baseball and you name it at Cristobal High School. So I had to realize now I was rooting for Balboa, which was fine. There was a junior college there, and sometimes we play football against them, just have other people to play against.

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Because Balbo pretty much beat up on Christofle Man because the school was bigger, but the sports it was available. It's something like up here with all the different rankings and everything. And I mean, it was valuable on Cristobal and then a little bit with the junior college.

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So that were their traditions that came out of that. I mean, you know, it's kind of a very consistent rivalry, having just these two were there tradition, school traditions that that, you know, we're born out of that dynamic. Well, each school had their own cheers, and so I had to learn all the stubble cheers that I had to learn all the bow board cheers and each school had their, you know, their queens, and they're different things like that.

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The other thing that we had in school that I don't see much of now was dances almost every Friday night. After a football game, we'd have sock hops and stuff in the gym, and then we had all the Valentine's Day and the prom's and just we had dances all the time and everybody knew how to dance, and it was fun.

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And then some of us would would go into Panama to some of the big hotels that had Panamanian music and dance there. And so we knew how to dance. A lot of the Panamanian dances. Did you? Were those events, you know? Did you have communal activities between Balboa and Crystal Ball?

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Or did they or Crystal Ball? What did you keep them separate? Where the dances, all the dances were separate. They didn't because you had to go across the isthmus every time. So I mean, it was fun for football. You're all kind of crummy, and you're riding to stop the old trade.

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But for the problems and stuff, no crystal ball had. There's about boy had theirs. What was the experience of going into Panama and having you know that different kind of dancing environment? Can you talk about that? Well, of course you can't do it when we were really young.

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Yeah, but they would play, you know, the Panamanian music Lucha was really big at the time. And then later, when I started dating Frank, who is an amazing dancer of Panamanian music, we would go and dance to the lucha and some other Panamanian groups, and he learned from some Panamanians, I just kind of picked it up, and he's really good So it was a sort of cross cultural thing in the sense that we learned each other's dances, and at that time I spoke Spanish, so I hence haven't practiced and pretty much forgotten it.

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But I was pretty fluent at the time, said you could speak Thio to them in Spanish and it was fun. Did you learn Spanish in school? Is that something that you learned yourself or that your parents thought was important? They started teaching Spanish in fifth grade, and you could take it through your junior year in high school.

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As a matter of fact, I was pretty good at it. So when I was at Cristobal in ninth grade, another girl and I were put in 10th grade Spanish, which was pretty unusual. So I was kind of a great ahead when I moved over to Balbo.

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So here I come over the sophomore and I'm in classes with juniors because I had advanced a year in Spanish. So we did learn it in school. I think you could have picked him up. A lot of people picked it up from their domestic help in all of they speak Spanish Onley to you so it dependent on your situation.

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But I mostly learned it in school, but I made the big mistake of not practicing when I came to the States. Frank keeps practicing, and I made a mistake of not doing that. I can understand it some, but I can't answer back like I used to.

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I suppose I should try and work at that. Did you Were you involved in any other clubs or organizing any of these events or sports in school? Well, we had lots and lots of clubs in the schools. I mean, you know, you could be in the math club or, um, I wasn't a SP in, but that's being club.

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We had committees for the dances, you know? So you're all involved in something or other in the school organizations like that, which was a lot of fun. So I saw in your life history form that you left the canal zone in 60 and you returned in 66.

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So a lot had happened in the canal zone impanel in that time. Can you talk a little bit about what you saw that was different? Well, what happened? Waas when you graduated high school, you could go two years to the junior college there and some people did.

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But the majority of us left and fanned out all across the whole United States because people tended to go back to where their parents had come from, or where they had some relatives or whatever they tended to do that my brother had gone to school in North Carolina.

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So my mother thought that was probably sort of a good idea since we really didn't have any family to go to. So I ended up at Wake Forest in North Carolina. My brother was a senior when I was a freshman, which was helpful for me because, you know, I was only 17 and we were leaving home.

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No emails, no, I felt nothing. And, you know, nobody could believe. In four years, I never talked to my parents on the phone. Well, I went home in the summer, but I never talked to them when I was in college because you had to make an appointment with the cable office.

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And it was $7 for three minutes, which in those days that was the whole week pay for me. So you know, you never talked to them. Everything was snail mail, you know, you wrote letters and mail them, you know, And all the correspondence was by mail, and it was pretty isolated because you really couldn't contact them that much.

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So it was a little bit of a transition. It wasn't easy. But like I said, Balboa really helped prepare me because it was a very hard school which made me more prepared for college than my brother was who went there from Crystal Ball. He had a lot more of a struggle than I did.

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I did find and I ended up, you know, graduating. Then I went over to do to get my masters. And, of course, um, I had never seen snow. So I was taking a final exam and it started snowing. Right now it's snowing. Ice cream threw up the exam, ran out to see the snow.

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So I mean, people were very nice, you know, they knew that I was far away every Thanksgiving and Easter and spring break and everything. I had to go home with one of my roommates or a friend because they closed the dorm in those days and all my roommates and friends were very congenial about inviting me home, so I go home with them.

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I did go home in the summers, and I did go home at Christmas, But it's a long way to go and it's expensive. And here you're paying for college on top of it now. When I was growing up, there was a ship, the Panama Canal Line ship.

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There were three of them, and we went from Panama via Haiti to New York City. It took six days. That's how everybody came back to the states because the word waas that they would pay your way back to the States for every year you worked there.

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They pay in one direction, and then with the ship got fell, they would fly you. But that was pretty rare when I get a little bit older. The ship went from Panama to New Orleans in 3.5 days, and then they would. It's whatever supplies they needed there.

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So we we were on these ships. But they're not like the ship's nowadays. I mean, they pitched and rock and roll. I love them, but my mother could see sick the minute she got on board But when I went home at Christmas, I did fly because that was at our expense.

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So when I finished my master's, my parents were still living down there. I thought I'd probably eventually go with God's and work and teach overseas, so I thought, Well, I'll start down there. And so I contacted with them. In the meantime, I started dating Frank, so it turned out pretty nice for me.

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But he was, unfortunately now in Oklahoma to go down, plan my wedding and teach one year at the Bible High School where I had graduated. I was only 23. I had already talked to years in North Carolina before I went down, but all my teachers that were still there were just You're a teacher.

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I said, Yeah, I've been teaching in North Carolina. What, You know, when I had to do a club with one of my English teachers, we did the National Honor Society. I can't believe you're back here teaching. Oh my gosh. So they paid my way down and I worked there a year.

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Had I worked a second year, they would have paid my way back to the States. But because I didn't work a second year because Frank and I got married. I had to pay to send my stuff back to the States. Well, we decided to drive to the States.

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This is when they were starting to work on the Pan American highway, but it wasn't really complete, but people were doing it. So we decided to do it. And I had a 57 4 that we had to get to the States. Anyhow, we figured if it quit, we just fly on up.

00:28:34.340 - 00:28:50.730

So we drove my Ford from Panama through all the countries to Texas. We made it barely. We were driving like this by the time we got there was all at an angle because he was in graduate school in Oklahoma, at Oklahoma State. It was a lot of fun.

00:28:50.740 - 00:29:16.500

We figured if we survived that our marriage with last and it has 52 a half years. But it was fun, and and now you can't do it. And at the time Frank had just gotten out of the military. So he did have a military passport and he hung his uniforms in the window because we had to pass through places where there were military troops and, you know, he could speak Spanish and we speak Spanish.

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Oh, no. They kind of let us go on through. But it was scary. These guys would come out with their guns and all, you know, but it was a wonderful trip. And when you're young, you do that stuff. What? I wouldn't probably do it now, but the first night I think we were in Costa Rica.

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We couldn't quite kind to go capital the capital, but we couldn't quite make it. So we were in this terrible place and I went and I looked and I said, Where's the bathroom? You see that hole in the ground on? Where is the other stuff? You see that Sears catalog?

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It was pretty primitive if you weren't in the capital's. So we strove to go capital of the capital. But it was fun. What was it like planning a wedding in the canal zone? Well, because both said the parents were still there and we were able to get married in the church where his parents had gotten married because his mother group was born and grew up there.

00:30:15.290 - 00:30:32.100

So we were married in the same church as his parents, and it was a lot of fun. I had to buy my dress in the country in Panama City because the commissary had limited amount of things. But the majority of my girlfriends were not living there anymore.

00:30:32.100 - 00:30:52.510

They in the States had come to college and married, and we're in the States. So I had to muster up my entourage. One of my good friends was still there. She was majoring in modern, and then two of my sisters in laws were the other ones and then both sets of parents and other family.

00:30:52.510 - 00:31:12.850

I mean, it was a beautiful wedding, and it was just great. So our official honeymoon was We flew to Jamaica for a week and back before we drove to the States. Uh huh. Did you? So you said you went to Panama to get your dress? Did you were the flowers and the other traditional things that we think you have to organize invitations?

00:31:12.850 - 00:31:30.400

Did you were those things through the comments area? Was that all? Also through Panama, there were florists. Well, women, actually, that grew flowers. I had all orchids in my wedding. All everything was orchids on. A lot of them were grown by the women in the Canal Zone.

00:31:30.400 - 00:31:51.180

They would sell corsages like for prom's and stuff, so they had them available. I think we got the majority of them in the Canal Zone from these women that grew them. I'm trying to remember, and I know Frank had to go out Saturday morning and cut what we ought to call francie panties to put on the pews to decorate and those we cut.

00:31:51.180 - 00:32:09.550

I mean, we didn't get them from a florist. I don't remember getting flowers in Panama. I'm pretty sure we got him in the canals because a lot of people had their own little gardens and then I did have invitations. In fact, I still have copies. I'm pretty sure we ordered them from the States.

00:32:09.560 - 00:32:29.430

I don't think I got them in Panama. Do you feel like there was a sense of community among the women in the Canal Zone doing things like that, that trying to create a sense of normalcy with selling corsages and you know, did it with their bond between the women they're trying toe create a life huge bond?

00:32:29.430 - 00:32:46.810

I had a couple of huge showers on the Pacific side. But because I lived the both sides at another huge shower on the Atlantic side and all the women are very gracious. They all wanna do things for you. It was very, very tight community. Yeah, Yeah.

00:32:47.840 - 00:33:19.560

When you when you moved away for school and then you came back and you plan your wedding, Of course. In the intervening time way could have the 1964 riots. And can you talk a little bit about the changes may be in the interactions between between you and Panamanians are you and on even amongst Zonen's, where they're more safety issues and security worries and things like that that you noticed?

00:33:20.040 - 00:33:36.510

Well, I went home at Christmas of 63 when I went back to college by January of 64 they had just had the riots. I got out back to school just before the riots. It was pretty bad if you were living there. It didn't affect my parents.

00:33:36.510 - 00:33:58.260

Specifically, it didn't affect me specifically, but it was upsetting for a lot of people. When I went back, I didn't feel that a lot of things had changed. I mean, people weren't like nervous or anything like that. It happened. It occurred. It was done. I know there was a lot of trouble later on, but I wasn't living there at the time.

00:33:58.740 - 00:34:15.580

But I didn't feel effects of the 64 riots, like a lot of people who live there may have. Although, like I said, my parents were not specifically affected by I mean, if you stayed in the canal zone unless you went over where the I say border.

00:34:15.580 - 00:34:39.680

But it was just the street. That's where it took place. So when you and Frank drove on your fantastic adventure Is that Is that when you left the canal zone was And have you been back to Panama since then? Well, we went back until well, his parents retired first, my re parents retired second.

00:34:40.040 - 00:34:57.350

We went back in 70 with our daughter because she was one year old and had her baptized in the same church that we got married in. Then, in 72 I was pregnant with my son, but his sister got married, so we went down for her wedding.

00:34:58.640 - 00:35:16.600

Frank went down. I think one other time Thio give lectures, but I did not go back again after I was down for his sister's wedding until 1985 we took our two Children down to so they could see where we grew up. There were some changes, but not total transition.

00:35:16.600 - 00:35:37.250

Yet now Christofle had been turned over way, way before all of the other things occurred, and we did see a few changes invaluable, but not a tremendous number. We had a friend still working there who was a lock master, and so he said. Christmas Day was the slowest day.

00:35:37.840 - 00:35:55.790

So we took our Children out to the locks on that day and he let them. I wouldn't say do anything serious, but you know, they got to be up in the control tower was very special, and I had never walked across the top of one of the locks before that.

00:35:55.790 - 00:36:13.600

I've been out there, but I've never done that. It is scary because you're up so high and there's not much, you know. And here's the drop on one side, the water on the other. His mother used to have to cross it to go to school when she was a little girl to get from where she lived to get to school.

00:36:13.600 - 00:36:36.840

She had to cross the cross, the top of the locks. But I had never personally done it, and it was scary. So they got to do that. Then, in 20 13, we wanted to take our grandsons down to see if we wanted to wait til they were old enough to at least see sort of things.

00:36:38.030 - 00:37:00.780

Then we saw huge, huge changes we could hardly recognize where we grew up. The streets had changed. All the military had either been left in decay, the buildings or they had some things going on, but a lot of decay. It was heartbreaking, and we could hardly find our way around.

00:37:00.820 - 00:37:17.340

I mean, everything was just different. I'm not saying it was bad. In fact, Panama has done a great job running the canal. They built the expansion so on. But we got to get there. We went over to Balboa High School, have now been converted to kind of ah learning center.

00:37:17.730 - 00:37:39.460

But the library has been maintained, and all of our yearbooks are there. So I got mine out and showed my grandson's you know, so on. So that was a lot of fun, but they had a big memorial to some of the people who were in. The riots that were kind of put up is being martyrs, which we didn't agree with necessarily.

00:37:39.930 - 00:37:58.850

But Panama is doing a very good job, and they built another road across the isthmus, which is much better and much faster. And we took our Children to see a lot of places that we had been. Our driver didn't want to go to Colon because it's very dangerous there.

00:37:59.630 - 00:38:25.550

We insisted, just so they could see where I had grown up. But again, you could hardly recognize anything. It's just totally different. Then in 20 18, we took a cruise that went all through the Caribbean. Well, we stopped one day in Panama cause Frank wanted to see the expansion, and so we did get off the ship and got to see the expansion.

00:38:26.120 - 00:38:47.490

But, you know, we never went back to live or anything like that. Once our parents left, what are your Children and grandchildren's impression of it? Do you feel that you're able Thio convey to them that this the joy that you had there? Well, obviously, because none of them ever lived there or grew up there.

00:38:47.490 - 00:39:13.810

They don't have the feelings that we do. We have very strong ties and feelings that they don't have. But my Children appreciate all of it, and we're very grateful to go down and see all of it. My grandsons were a little bit youngish. I think they were eight and 10, but I wanted them to see it, and that was MAWR.

00:39:13.810 - 00:39:31.330

We did mortgage ugly things and things that they would enjoy. And then we went through the locks and they got to do all those kinds of things and they enjoyed it, and they appreciated that. The older grandson is history buff, so he's kind of interested in a lot of the history.

00:39:31.820 - 00:39:51.250

And of course, we've given them Roosevelt medals and so on, and they understand a lot of the history, and I think as they're getting older, they're appreciating it mawr. But they don't have the ties that we have. I'm sure mhm so as you know, we can kind of bring the interview to a close.

00:39:51.250 - 00:40:11.430

Is there anything that you haven't talked about that you want to any special memories or important things that you want people to know about what life was like there. Well, it was truly paradise. I mean, we could play all the time. We had good schools. There's nothing that I can say bad about it.

00:40:11.910 - 00:40:25.930

And the thing that's most special is the ties that I have with my friends from there, that we've just kept in touch all these years, even more than my college friends. You know, I don't associate with them as much as I do with my canal zone friends.

00:40:26.310 - 00:40:47.390

Now, part of it is the reunion that we have every year in Florida. But the other part is that I specifically get together with them and then, you know, everyone says, Well, what do you do for a week? And I said, Well, we talk about our growing up in our fun times and so on is just fun because nobody understands the situation.

00:40:47.400 - 00:41:10.210

Unless you grew up there and live there, you can tell people what the You just have to have been there, and it's it's just such a wonderful feeling. Sounds like there waas. Anything else, John? Yes, actually, just going back to something you said earlier you had mentioned, um, that it was difficult sometimes for Children.

00:41:10.210 - 00:41:25.810

Thio to get jobs. You mentioned the fact that your brother had the paper route, and that's that's interesting, cause I really haven't. No one's really discussed that with us in the past. I haven't come across that readings. Did you have jobs yourself Other than being the collector for your brother on his paper route?

00:41:25.820 - 00:41:40.540

Did you have jobs growing up when you were in high school, for example, the girls could baby sit. I mean, even though they were domestic help, they didn't usually not generally spend the night. So the girls would baby sit. I did a lot of Baby City, but the boys didn't.

00:41:40.540 - 00:41:57.740

They really couldn't do anything. They couldn't work at the commissary. We had employees, you know, bag boys and so on. So other than my brother having a paper route, I don't know of any boys that really had jobs. They really didn't have an opportunity to earn money.

00:41:58.210 - 00:42:14.020

I was fortunate. I did, you know, quite a bit of baby sitting because you know, my friends. Oh, come may be, you know, but jobs were not available for young people. I mean, now, you know, they worked at McDonald's or whatever, but in those days they didn't.

00:42:14.120 - 00:42:46.130

But having said that, I'm going to contradict myself about summers in the summer, the Panama Canal company would hire what they call student assistance. So you fill out an application, and if you got accepted, you get a job. So after I graduated high school, I got a job at the administration building in Balboa at 63 cents an hour after my sophomore year in college, I applied again After my freshman year.

00:42:46.130 - 00:43:07.230

I stayed up and went to summer school, but after my sophomore year, I applied again and I got hired at the Locks division. I worked out for the chief of the locks and because I had been to college God 75 cents an hour. I mean, you have to understand what money was in those days.

00:43:07.230 - 00:43:23.220

And of course, all of our parents grew up during the Depression. So I mean, it was, you know, and that's another thing about the canal zone. Nobody was rich. Nobody was poor. Everybody had a steady job. Everything was housing. You've got to sign your housing by your years of service, you know?

00:43:23.220 - 00:43:37.110

So my dad had kind of worked up to a nice house. And Cristobal, by the time he got transferred about boy, even though I was the same number service hey had to go to a smaller house because they weren't available. He would have had to work his way back up.

00:43:37.700 - 00:44:00.720

But they did employ some boys and girls in the summer. So my friends had jobs, often in the summer. I should have stated that earlier when you worked for the locks division, where you in the control houses? And then were you in the kind of inner workings of how the mail I worked out?

00:44:01.090 - 00:44:21.350

Mira Flores and the chief was there and I was in the office and did a lot of the paperwork, but because I was working there, they took me on tours, you know, down through the tunnels and stuff I had never seen before. So I was very fortunate to get that job because I learned a lot of things I hadn't known what was.

00:44:21.360 - 00:44:43.210

Do you remember any the most amazing part of those tours or? Well, I didn't realize how fortified the canal waas with these tunnels. I mean, I'm not saying it would have survived a bombing, but it was prepared for something like that if it happened, which I did not know growing up there.

00:44:43.590 - 00:45:02.960

But they had Thio be prepared for that sort of thing. Which I learned when I worked there that summer. Yeah, great family. So is that it? I think so. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about? Well, I'm glad that that you all are doing this.

00:45:02.960 - 00:45:17.820

And I hope you know that someday people will be able to listen back to what it was like down there because there's no way else to explain it. I mean, there's no other place on earth that was like this or will ever be like this again.

00:45:18.490 - 00:45:41.230

And so having this availability for people to hear about it is wonderful. And I hope I've expressed how great it waas. Sure. And if there if you feel that you have more to say and you want to talk about something specific, you really want to talk about growing up, we're happy to come and do another interview and we can expand on those things.

00:45:41.240 - 00:45:45.220

Yeah, well, thank you so much. We really appreciate your time