THE AMERICAN CANAL IN PANAMA (ePub)

William Drummond was born on the south west side of Philadelphia in 1938. He was the youngest of six children born to Anna Boggs and Donaldson Drummond. Philadelphia had not yet recovered from the great depression. The sounds, sights, and smells were replete with cobble-stoned streets, and horse -drawn carts, honeypots swinging from the rear, and drivers hawking their wares. Most families owned Ice boxes. The row houses were heated by potbellied coal burning heaters located in the cellar. There was no such thing as air conditioning. In 1945, his parents divorced soon after his father was discharged from the navy.

Although, getting custody of four of the children, their father was a ghost, spending time at home only when forced to do so. The author and his older brother James were left to their own devices and avoided their father whenever possible. They became the terror of their neighborhood. Ironically, they were never arrested. Their father's strap, at the slightest provocation, was their discipline.

School was an afterthought and also avoided. At age 15, the author worked as a dishwasher, and busboy in the morning and as a pinsetter at a bowling alley at night. At 16, he worked at a bookbinding company on front street in Philadelphia.

At age 17, he joined the Marine corps, spent several tours of duty in the Mediterranean with the 6th fleet, obtained the rank of corporal, obtained a GED education, and was discharged in early 1960.

Returning to his previous employment, the author soon decided to move to Chicago, later Los Angeles, and eventually returned to Philadelphia. Unable to find work, he joined the Army Airborne, obtained the rank of Sargent and was discharged in 1964.

In 1964, after being discharged, the author began working as a policeman for the United States Government within the Canal Zone. He became the president of a local A.F.G.E. union 1798, a legislative representative of most of the local U.S. Unions in the canal Zone, the

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