Photo of the Week

Feeling homesick for the wonderful Christmas's we used to have back in the Canal Zone, I was digging through one of my many boxes of old photos that I snapped back then and dug these two out. Our family always decorated our houses with a passion. Pretty much all the decorations we made out of plywood and hand painted. These photos were taken at the last house in Gamboa that we lived in until we left in 1996. The candy canes, lollypops, toy soldiers and Santa being attacked by our dog still decorate our house here in Florida. We brought most of our decorations with us when we left. They have been re-painted and touched up over the past 20 years and still look great! One of the favorites is the Santa and dog decoration. We had a big white dog at the time and we always considered this wooded dog an image of our dog. This house was house 103 on the end of Murwin Pl. on the hill overlooking McGrath Field, tennis courts, swimming pool and dredging division. We had several very large avocado trees growing at the base of the hill which made the tops of them eye and reachable level from our house. Those were the best avocados I have ever eaten and we had plenty to eat. I have never found another avocado that is worth eating since. What great memories from back home in the Canal Zone. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Another note is a reference to the two white bollards that are on each side of the side walk. These two bollards were original construction day tie-up bollards from the Miraflores Locks. They were installed along the locks for ships to tie up to if needed. Well after many years, it was decided they were not needed anymore and were removed from their concrete mount space and dumped into the swamp between the locks and the Rio Grande river. My father-in-law had a hobby shop next to the swamp and found all these old bollards. He pulled a bunch of them out of the swamp and put them around our houses, somewhat like some used the old round concrete balls from the locks lamp posts for decoration. Well believe it or not, we shipped these with our household goods which probably put us over the limit and had to pay, but so what. These two bollards are now on each side of my driveway here where we live. These are made of heavy cast-iron and are very hard to move.