Rota, Spain is a small city on the Mediterranean Sea along the southern coast of Spain. The climate along the Mediterranean Sea is mild all year round. Warm days and cool nights. The California coast, the coast of Chile, Perth, Australia, and the southern coast of South Africa also have a Mediterranean climate. Not many parts of the world have this desirable climate.
Spain's money unit is the peseta. In 1960 it was 10 pesetas to a dollar making it easy to convert dollars to pesetas in your head. The nightclubs in downtown Rota that catered to American sailors were staffed with English speaking bar girls. Not prostitutes, bar girls that you bought drinks for. Drinks that were actually tea not whiskey. They were always up front about that, even the management. Female companionship that spoke English. Drinks for the girls were a dollar. A beer for you was 50 cents. That doesn't sound like much but even in 1959 and 1960, when your paycheck was $155 a month before taxes, it could add up fast.
Many buildings in a Mediterranean climate have flat roofs because there's not a lot of rain. Enterprising business owners put bars on their flat roofs. The bars were open at night because the weather cools dramatically at during the summer months. They became our favorite places, particularly the one where Angie worked. Angie was a big boobed good looking bartender working at Cal's Supper Club. She always shook mixed drinks over her head, amusing us with those boobs bouncing around in the sweaters she always wore. Sailors are easily amused! Many, many years later an American married to a Mexican gal in Mulaje, a small city in Baja, Mexico, owned a pizza place, that didn't do a lot of business. His building had a flat roof. He was talking with me on one of my numerous trips down there about how he wished he could drum up more business. After explaining the nightclub on a flat roof business in Rota to him, next year when I returned he had it up and operating with a packed noisy roof. "Curt, you have free pizza and beer for life!"
The Enlisted Men's club in Rota sold American beer and Spanish beer. Spanish beer has flavor, American is colored water. It was true then and it's pretty much true now. Being in Spain for a year is probably what got me to prefer beer with taste.
It was puzzling to me how difficult it was to get another to go out of Rota and take a bus to the nearby larger Spanish cities. I wound up taking bus trips alone to Cadiz and Seville to see the sites. Just to walk the streets and look in the shops and take in a bullfight. It was interesting to see that they really soften up the bull before the matador gets in the ring. Pretty dangerous for all the participants but fatal for the bull.
My favorite bus trip was to Gibraltar, as in the Rock of Gibraltar. Another guy actually went with me on that trip. It was overnight as it's a long bus ride. Gibraltar and Spain disputed then, and still dispute today, who Gibraltar belongs to. It was fun to be where English is the main language. I also liked the way the houses crept up towards the Rock. You can't comprehend how massive the Rock of Gibraltar is until you actually are there to see it! Beware of the very aggressive monkeys up high on the Rock. Don't get too close!
Ships of many nations port in Gibraltar. Cargo, cruise, and military ships. We stopped in a bar in the main part of the city. The bar was lined with Russian sailors in uniform. We were also in uniform as was required to go on this trip. The Russians welcomed us as soon as we sat down and bought us beer. It was awkward at first but over the next several hours, without them speaking English or us speaking Russian, we got along fine as long as politics didn't come up. We learned they had moms, dads, families, as we did. We were doing our job, they were doing their job. This was during the cold war years. People are the same everywhere. The conflicts aren't from the general population. The conflicts come from the politicians.
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