Herco. Yes its all pretty common for. A comfortable home we live in the car park to. The park mechanical got to the ball car. Pool for every car as a right to expect an education. Satisfying recreation for everybody. In america you are. Here that another day. A. Woman to return. Her come on come on come on come on i came from georgia my dad ahead branch had a pompous shout and im just still a major. Back marketplace. Taking years old i decided. Just walking downtown i saw a sign saying sam wants you to put me in Aviation Council maybe a ship that dan i dont know about now he needed a good grade. Pass along but we dont have a basin pass along. That we have one road this is down on the beach so he gave me a chair. And already noticed. Thats why ive never seen. On october 14th 1953 i went into the countryside with a bicycle and some cattle and i saw a convoy of cars coming towards me. Hey stand back get off the road. Things were very authoritarian back then so i guess somebody important was coming alive and i. Could tell up on the whole dark i was working at my office in the castle. And suddenly im not orions franco is here i said sister what are you talking about franco yes she said franco is here so we went up to the keep and there he wants franco was looking around and suddenly said could you please tell me where the salado reverse. Commute i said it was there behind those trees. Ok ok he said and that was it he looked around a while and then said ok very well. From the left and everyone was wondering what he was looking for and why he had come to rota but we had already read in the newspapers that spain had signed a treaty with the United States and what it was all about. Spain was not in any condition to negotiate and this would become obvious in the agreements it signed because they did the country a lot of damage. From your. Right. If a foreign country attacked the base we have to defend it and defend the americans. And the like but listen if you have the most impressive firepower in the world and aircraft an atomic bombs because there were atom bombs here what are we going to defend for you. Know im alive and then i was out there ok. Right here then freed of. My father at a place on a plot of land near a computer. Used to store 4 or 5 girls of wine aerator south every year my eyes were swollen from crying when they drove me off our land i was 17 years old and they told us we had to go and we left the doors open and all our stuff there and nearly killed me me and my thought of me for that i mean for there was a huge upheaval and hit everyone hard some people took their own lives hang themselves and so on but the most remarkable thing was that nobody realized there were alternatives that only came later be no they put. Well you look even to the i remember the day i saw the 1st american jeep when i started surveying the area you had it i was looking out my columns and watched the monster drive into a pond and sink you mean like thing do you. Mean my friends used to catch mackerel for a living and. One day we were at. The 5 of us and a big guy came into the bar and said hey guys do you know where we can find some workers around here do you want to work so we started building the jetty and that after wed finished a dutch engineer id met asked me antonio do you want to join the navy. I didnt have any more work so i said i dont have any papers here he said it doesnt matter my uncle is the commander do you want to join that i said of course man who doesnt you know so i was assigned to a tanker shipping oil from to the warships in codis. This was during the draft sell the draft and if you werent doing well in school you know theres a potential to be drafted theres a combination of the single girl for losing my job and flunking school so i said i have to do something and i dont want to go to vietnam so i was Walking Around downtown. Portland oregon and to recruiters had a place with the old school stuff. And the Staff Sergeant from his desk he looked to mean he said you want to join the marine corps right son or sure he said you want to join for 4 years right and i said sure and it was one time all day q over London England name course and here was a very strong risk they. Are going to spain. So 2 times that i really. Did not have to go to vietnam during the sixtys. An army green. I came from the United States i was born in a small town of 5000 inhabitants in pennsylvania. Electronics was my hobby but my parents couldnt afford to send me to college so i enlisted in the navy. During the final training sessions and to Spanish Air Force sergeants told me just go to spain there are a lot of pretty girls there by years by year which im happy bunny that much of bonita so i said ok then ill go to spain little baby as luck would have it us where i was assigned to kano pose on a submarine support ship because i was a specialist in measuring equipment calibration and there was a laboratory on board to service the submarines that should be said. That. There were only 2 main streets there grand way downtown from the base and Everything Else would you think feel like. Special because it was like they remind me of. My own. People only different and noticed that when i went to town in back in america i would. I would always hamburger but over here. You look at all the seats i didnt say that it was very Old Fashioned i prefer to just say that it was very different cultures the cars the way people dressed the way the streets and buildings looked like they were all made from concrete and i came from pennsylvania where the houses were all timber and there were forests and things like that possible skase ecosystem see. I think there were about 10000 american soldiers and civilians and. I remember it like it was yesterday. We were kids playing in the street downtown and suddenly the jets flew over. We were all paralyzed by the noise what the hell was that. Took place because they were small helicopters we called them little devils. My mother was outside doing the laundry as usual and fled into the house yelling flying saucer. When the americans arrived they were 1st met with rejection mainly because some locals had lost their homes and land and were in a very difficult situation. And any kind of rendering iraqi when the americans arrived they didnt waste any time they threw coins and other stuff into the waiting crowd. Almost all of us on the dock bent down and tried to grab Something Better way to. Get you on your arm those were difficult years in spain. It was the postwar period and there was a shortage of everything. So when we kids saw the america. On the street we ask them for money to set up a center. And they say the city. Set out cheaply theyd give us koreans are gone more candy or something because i could imagine that this was the tactic the americans used to build good relations with the spanish people honestly i mean they also did not. Represent more. Than all right by all the forces worldwide so we can strike anytime. That any time. Through let us say that wrote down the road to base played a very Important Role in the cold war because it was on the atlantic and also very close to the entrance of the mediterranean that many there are many silent mobile and you see the list of missiles some. Of the most survivable in our nation. Palermos Nuclear Submarines can carry up to 16 missiles with a maximum range of approximately 424500 kilometers. And later in scotland made it possible to get them in and. Bush. May have been considering it was a place where those ships could come in a place where they can store whatever they want to store i dont know but this story. Has happened here for forums there is a place for thank you do the populations for. If. They have a submarine tender that was stationed there. Its just like a transitioning place for europe for the minute training and. For hundreds of thousands of young people find employment each year. Growing goodbar they do produce things which make life better in peacetime can be our greatest protection in time of war. The finish quickly became dependent on the military base it created new jumps in the Hotel Industry taxi business and leisure activities. When i became mayor and i worked to build good relations with the naval base. They were the ones who could help us to move on to the Spanish State hardly supported us at all. At 1st the americans couldnt believe it they said your mayor you must make a lot of money but i didnt do it for money. On the front of the. I did it out of love for my hometown the ties to the town develop quickly womanhood it was a time of great economic growth. Last. Year old looking at the workers of the world i focused. On. My father took me to see a movie there was a scene where a plumber went to a house to fix a pipe he turned up in a car and i said to my father. Did you see that the plumber with the car with it i feel my father said it was propaganda and he simply could not comprehend that a plumber could have a car. And they go from the never the no one question. Was. 96 to wonderful new. Cars started appearing in town everyone believed that the americans were all millionaires. To be getting. Like. Signals the beginning of a new era. Before the 1st manned moon shot like nasa brought the space capsule they would be using for the lunar journey here to test how it landed at sea like a plane flew by and started dropping parachutists 14 or 15 of them carrying flashing lights sometimes 2 or 3 men went missing at sea because their lights had gone out today what could we do you know i took my boat out to sea and stopped the engine i could hear one calling there is that i did that several times that one day they lost 5 men and i found all 5 of them can you imagine how it feels to be 7810 miles from the coast alone with a. Parachute in the middle of the ocean its incredible only when they jumped into my boat the day hugged and kissed me like it was their wedding day. That you guys are going to be i. Was born of a little california my dad was in the navy and we moved from base to base to base and then we ended up the road a spanking and i just remember getting off the plane and just hit by this wave of heat. It wasnt so much a Culture Shock for us at 1st because we were on the base and on the base we had all the amenities we were able to to stay on the base for the 1st few months that we were there and then we ended up moving off to school. When i got here in 1969 i remember we had a pad and pen. Entering was chiquita and she scared the hell out of us we had to do a mood test every morning with a banana see she was going to buy this. When getting off base it was just how Different Things were so there was a lot of places to explore and things to do but the people to i think you didnt have nearly as much as this they do today but i i do think. That thats humility i think i mean in people being so friendly and reach out even though i dont have much what i have i will give you and then are made her name was it was anna like so many families that had the maids we kids grew up and sure if we felt like we were all want you know she would content that she can oh well. And she just loved us thats why i would be so nice and my mother loved her as well to. See when theyre going about it when they came into direct contact with american women. That broke the local moral code. All these women had their in concert something almost unimaginable for the girls from well. Were talking about the early 1960 s. You know they could easily obtain certain contraceptives that were not available in spain at the time. That women could do little more than read and write in your. Local market lately the opening up of the dictatorship that took place in the late seventys began him much earlier. And hes a little man in your group about. What. I believe thats when the base was opened i worked as an assistant to the nurses there one of them Mary Chisholm became my friend she asked me what my greatest wish was and i said joking i want to go to america bonding together and so when i actually arrived in new york i was so impressed where am i am i in a theater ive never left wrote a before there. Were only one even when you then we went to northwood massachusetts. And not such a. Country to the world wide roads and i thought why dont they build roads like this and spank. Their sexuality i looked at her parents house and went to high school. Student every week her mother gave me money but i didnt spend it i saved it all and i dont you know the time our then no one and the other thing i want to. I wasnt you know was that when i came back to spain i bought my mother a television the 1st one on our street all the neighbors came to watch it the neighbor across the street came to watch a bull fight when she saw the bull on t. V. She ran out of the house because she thought it was going to attack a. New ban on retarded my brother was a famous bullfighter back then. Well when he had bought a cadillac and organized a party. Going to be there if you were going through memory i never imagined id meet an american so when i saw this guy there i liked him immediately he was well built women dont miss that kind of thing when. We had a very nice wedding we were very well known because of my brother so a lot of people came a bullfighter system as an american a black man he got a lot of compliments. And i did get a future for freedom. I decided to break the news and i said look i think. That long ago he was a nice friendly person but he was coming nearer. It was intensified investigation ive seen in my life so in a way he finally got down to what you want to know hes how much money do you make among. My pay was so high i am eager to take a pay cut he said i just want to know if people can you promise me when you take a very. Quick look at aon up after i remember a part of the golf course was almost in the village so we kids used to go there you know there was a barbed wire fence there but there was 30 centimeters between the wires so we could slip through. The medium or into the loft so we told each other if the americans catch us theyll shave our heads and make us play the drums in the hot sun till we drop. Not without. A doubt it was a whole different world for us back then that there was a big gap between the backwardness in spain at that time in the American Standard of living. Down there. Thats now when we went on base it was like being in an american movie. Because what we saw in the movies really wants their way of life youre seeing. A lot of people when they played baseball they set up stands and we kids would go there and maybe get a pack of cigarettes or a beer. And they were like things from an alien world. For going on here we would have a 4th of july we should have forces you know we had a rodeo and we had a big rodeo right across from the drive in theater and thats where we would invite spanish to come on the base and experience a slice of americana with us just as they would sure the feria with the americans so it was very cool that cultural exchange. Supermarket symbol of the High Standard of living in this country today. And that is what interested the people in the outer most were the products in the socalled Navy Exchange the commissary which was actually the Americans Department store which the Navy Exchange just wanted to sell as much as possible they didnt care if you were american or spanish however they go to you severely in front of the base did they check just like they were running a customs checkpoint practical and. They had magazines like penthouse and so on which we didnt have and sports magazines here everything you can imagine every brand of tobacco a huge selection of food the meat for example was delivered from germany in refrigerated trucks it was fantastic meat if you could afford it i mean with me from here we honestly never claimed there was there was some American Products that you can buy everywhere today but at the Time Chocolate bars and cookies as well. Thats right and sunglasses were very popular in town the people who had access to the base bought them in large quantities and then sold them out of their garages. In that case. Although i always asked 1st i did get a lot of things from the base here. And i went so far that one day an american commander his name was captain yang said to me father if you go on like this and take everything with you will have to swim back to america. I took everything i could people who know me knew that i didnt keep anything for myself it was all for the people of wrote. To. Me one day the chaplain told me he wanted to buy a stereo for a friend but he didnt dare take it off base because the civil guard would confiscated he asked me to pick it up for him i said sure so he bought it on the base and brought it to me i told him to put it in the car next to me he said but how would that work theyll see the packaging wont they i told him just put it there because im going to tell them the truth as i drove through the gate the civil guard stopped me and asked me what i was carrying so i said im smuggling their reaction was oh youre always making jokes father and they let me pass. You may have. Been one of the my brother wrote a record player because there was very rare in spain back then he came from the base free philco the american brand of phillips and i loved music. But i was mainly influenced by a black man who was married to a woman from toronto. His name was chase. He owned a bar traces place. He. Played bass guitar and i used to sit there and listen to. People and apparently he noticed that and that i loved his music and so he used to give me all the records he didnt want anymore. And thats how i started listening to blues jazz rock. No theres other new music here. He told us i mostly. Used to look after the soldiers overseas to make them feel at home the records went on sale there at the same time as they did in stores in new york or chicago or london. That you go by and my friends used to buy them and then go home and listen to them until the cows came home. One of the 1st took a look at my home. The Radio Station to which we still have today if r. T. S. Back then they actually played great music trout in that was picked up throughout the area that could be received just this is as it is today and i believe thats the same thing that happened when england played music from the bases and it was heard throughout back in the fiftys back in the sixtys that ever