Yes its all pretty commonplace in america. A comfortable home we live in cars parked at the door of. The park mechanical got to top all cars. School for every child has a right to expect an education. Satisfying recreation for everybody. American you are. Here 10 a day to be a. Woman every. Time. I came from georgia my dad had a branch had a pump a shot and under still cool a major movie called back marketplace. Taking years old im designing. Just walking downtown and thats all the sign says sam wants you to put me. Aviation council maybe they should thank dan i dont know but man he needed good grades. But we dont have a decent pass along. That we have one really this is a dam on the beach so he gave me a check. In order to notice. And thats why i havent ever seen. On october 14th 953. 00 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 live and i. Told her 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 and 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 wrote. What we had already read in the newspaper. That spain had signed a treaty with the United States and what it was all about. Is 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. Great. Youre. Looking. At a foreign country attacked the base would have to defend it and defend the american. Led light but listen if you have the most impressive firepower in the world and aircraft and 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 free to. Anyone out of my father at a place on a plot of land near a computer. Be used to store 4 or 5 girls of one there to sell every year my eyes were swollen from crying when they drove me off our land and 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. Out of me. Where 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 realised there were alternatives that only came later you know they put. It would be media i remember. In the day i saw the 1st american jeep when i started surveying the area you know i was looking out my columns and watched the monster drive into a pond and sink if you need anything to do. About it im not a man my friends used to catch mackerel for a living. 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. After wed finished a dutch engineer id met asked me that they mean 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 iraq to the war ships in codis. This was during the draft sell the draft and if you werent doing well in school heres a potential to be drafted theres a combination of the missing girl for losing my job and flunking School Source that i have to do something and i dont want to go to vietnam so i was Walking AroundDowntown Portland oregon and the recruiters had a place in the Old Post Office and a Staff Sergeant set up from his desk. He looked at me and he said you want to join the marine corps right son i sure do he said and you want to join for 4 years right and i said i sure do and it was one time all day cuba London England name course and here was green berets rota spain are going to spain. So 2 times that i really. Did not have to go to vietnam during the sixtys. 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 into Spanish Air Force sergeants told me just go to spain where there are a lot of pretty girls there by news by which of my head eboni them which are bonita so i said ok then ill go to spain as luck would have it us where i was assigned to kano post 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. There were only main streets. Way downtown from the base and Everything Else would you think feel like. Special because it was like back home they remind me of. Primitive people only different times notice that when i went to town back in america i would i would always back hamburgers but over here. They hate cops you look at all the secret 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. And they were about 10000. 00 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 a base 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 wondering here 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 some of the better ill. 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 americans in the street we ask them for money to set up a center. And they say the same person said. Give us koreans are. Candy or something because i could imagine that this was the tactic the americans used to build good relations with the spanish people and influence i mean they also. Represent more. Than all right you by all the forces of world war 2 we can strike anything. Less. Than any time you want you know. True love us or that wrote the road to the 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 any silent mobility to use in the list of missile submarines the most survivable element in our nations. Palermos Nuclear Submarines can carry up to 16 missiles with a maximum range of approximately 424500 kilometers that was part of this little system from the usa it would have been too far to retaliate if the soviet union attacked. City and pushed the stationing these submarines in wrote and later in scotland made it possible they got them in and discussed the bush. I think it may have been considering it was a place where those ships could come at a place where they could store whatever they want to store i dont know what theyre storing their. Weapons. Have a good air force theres a place where they could do the populations for. If. A submarine tender there were stationed there. Its just like a a transition in 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 jobs 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 and 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 part of me. I did it out of love for my hometown with us to have 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 hey did you see that the plumber with the car its a feel my father said it was propaganda the way he said it was simply could not comprehend that a plumber could have a car. And then go fundamentally with a known question. Was. 1960 wonderful new. Cars started appearing in town everyone believed that the americans were all 1000000 and so they got. 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 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 that 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 they hugged and kissed me like it was their wedding day. That you guys are going to be. I was born a village california my dad was in the navy and we moved from base to base to base and then we ended up in 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 base. But i got here in 1989 i remember we had a pet and a donkey and her name 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 bite us. When getting off base was just how Different Things were so there was a lot of places to explore and things to do but the people too i think they 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 reaching 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 in schiff we felt like we were all want you know she would come in pension 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. Sing when the benefit of the day came into direct contact with american women. That broke the local moral code. All these women had their income something almost unimaginable for the girls from delta were talking about the early 1960 s. 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. Op market lady everything up of the dictatorship that took place in the late seventys began him much earlier. And he said the little woman in your group. What. I barely last 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 on the road so when i actually arrived in new york i was so impressed where am i am i in a theater id never let roger before. We were only one evening the anita van we went to northwood massachusetts in massachusetts. You can fit into their world wide roads and i thought why dont they build roads like this and spank. The excess humanity i looked at her parents house and went to high school. To do it every week her mother gave me money but i didnt spend it i saved it all. Yet all the time i was i know what i mean here they say i want to thank you. I wasnt aware 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 her. Nirvana recorded my brother was a famous bullfighter back then. When he had bought a cadillac and organized a party and you know going to be there i mean i never imagined id meet an american so when i saw this guy that i liked him immediately he was well built women dont miss that kind of thing and. We had a very nice wedding we were very well known because of my brother so a lot of people came a bullfight to systematise an american a black man he got a lot of compliments. And i do that if you dont go for it on friday. Saturday. I decided to bring a new thermos look. At your pay because i want you guys he was a nice friendly person but he was coming near. As we moved intensified investigation obscene amount like so anyway he finally got down to what you want to know how much money do you make a month. Pay was so happy for him even to take a pay cut he said yes well you know you cant can you promise me you take a very. Quick look at the own up to the i remember a part of the golf course was almost in the village so we kids used to go there i dont know there was a barbed wire fence there but there was 30 centimeters between the wires so we could slip through and. No. Loss. And 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 its not without miley that. It was a whole different world for us back then but there was a big gap between the backwardness in spain at that time in the American Standard of living at school around the. Planet thats now when we went on banks it was like being in an american movie because what we saw in the navy is really wants their way of life. 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. Difficulty and we would have a 4th of july we should have forces here 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 the slice of americana with us just as they would share 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 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 grew out of you severely in front of the base did. They checked us like they were running a customs checkpoint to come and. They had magazines like penthouse and so on which we didnt have and sports magazines 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. If. There was some American Products that you can buy everywhere today but at the Time Chocolate bars and cookies as well as rape 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 illinois indiana name. Though i always asked 1st i did get a lot of things from the base here. 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. 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 will that work theyll see the packaging authentic i told him just put it there because im going to tell them the truth as i drove to 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. Him in. Think. The amount of the my brother at a record player there was very rare in spain back then it came from the base. Philco the american brand of philips i loved music bonnie are now mostly good. 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 chases 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 and all this other new music. He told us i mostly. Really used to look after the soldiers overseas to make them feel at home records went on sale there at the same time as they did in stores in new york or chicago or london. And my friends used to buy them and then go home and listen to them until the cows came home. Because like a look at my home of. 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 toda