Morocco as a Child in the 50's

Morocco as a Child in the 1950s – Dale Weir My parents firmly believed that seeing the world and experiencing different cultures was a very important part of raising us. I was born in 1953. When I was about a year old, my mother gathered up her 3 little girls and her father and moved us to Nouasseur Air Base, Morocco to join my father, who was in the military there. We lived there during the 1956 Moroccan Revolution (In 1912, France and Spain divided Morocco between them. In 1956, the Arabs won their freedom from France, then after that they got their freedom from Spain). We lived in both Casablanca and Rabat while we were there. For awhile, we were across from the palace in town and could see the soldiers on their big white horses with their scimitars come out of the gates, while the French in their little cars evacuated the city in one direction and the Arabs on foot, donkey and other animals evacuated in the opposite direction, then we moved out of the city to a farm on the outskirts, where we could raise some of our own food. It was an interesting time. I don’t know how much I remember because I remember it and how much I remember from being told about it so often. Initially, after arriving, my father having gone on a mission and not back yet, my mother took us to the market to get food. As she was driving along, she saw a car with US military license plates and stopped since she didn’t know any other Americans in town yet. The woman pulled us into the house and asked my mother, what in Heaven’s Name she was doing out on the streets during the curfew. My mother, being new to the area, had no idea that there was a curfew and we were all supposed to stay inside our homes for safety, she just knew that she needed food to feed her little girls. It was a very troubled time. The head of the American School, his wife and a teacher were driving home one day after a school meeting, when they encountered a roadblock by the local police, who were essentially paid mercenaries. They stopped their car as directed. The police opened the door and started firing their weapons into it. The superintendent/ principal was killed immediately. One of the women grabbed the steering wheel, the other stomped on the gas pedal and they managed to escape with their lives. Even in those troubled times, though, my parents took us to places to show us the world around us, as best they could. In one town that we visited, the local guide insisted that either he or my father carry me, which as an independent small child I didn’t like very much. It wasn’t until after we had finished seeing the town and were leaving, that the guide told my father that my red hair was considered a very “special” symbol and he was afraid I would be kidnapped if one of the men wasn’t carrying me. My mother was thought of very highly by the local people after there was a bus accident in front of our house one day. My mother, without thinking twice, took her car and started ferrying the injured to the hospital. She said later that she drank so much coffee to keep going that day, that she had a coffee hangover the next day. My grandfather died while we were over there. He drank the water from the well and it made him sick. He decided that he must have cancer and when my mother wasn’t home, he shot himself. My older sister, Lida, is the one who found him. She was the one who had to deal with the rest of us as we got off the school bus and keep us away from him. She was the one who went outside the gates around our compound and stopped my mother as she got home, to tell her what had happened. My mother was pregnant with my younger sister, Nissa, at the time. Nissa was born prematurely at Thanksgiving and didin’t come home from the hospital till Christmas. My parents put her under the Christmas tree like a present for us. As a preemie, she had many health issues, and had to be kept upright in a special chair at all times, because her esophagus wasn’t fully developed and anything she ate would “ flow right back out” if she was laid down flat. The Navy had the best of the US facilities. My father use to joke that when the Navy ran out of money for building their base and told Congress they needed more money, Congress initially said NO, until the Navy explained that they had built their housing and clubs and infrastructure first, but their hadn’t built the operational side of the base yet. Then Congress had to say Yes. We use to go to the Navy Club. The band, when it saw the children, would play our favorite songs – Davy Crocket was a big favorite and they were quite good at playing it. Vice President Nixon came to Nouasseur Air Base, Morocco in Mar 1957, and we all lined up to see him. (Photo from Gene Bane ©Stars and Stripes). I don’t think my sisters and I are in this picture, but we have some family pictures of that day that are similar. Coming back from Morocco, my parents showed us the world. We traveled in a Karmen Ghia across Europe, seeing Spain, France, Portugal, Germany, England, and many other countries along the way. Because there was a heat wave going on at the time, my father often drove at night, while the rest of us slept. My baby sister at my mother’s feet. Then the back seat was laid down and Lida slept next to my parents because she was the tallest, then Pat, then I was at the very end by the tailgate. I have been to more countries than states because of that trip. Consider, that this was a time period, without telephones, the internet, any way of communicating, (other than by letters that took a long time to go back and forth) and very seldom did we find someone along the way that spoke English (and my parents didn’t speak anything but English and a smattering of French and Arabic they had learned in Morocco). My father kept a very interesting log of the trip – how much cash money he had, where we stopped along the way, what it cost for gas, etc. We didn’t have reservations, we would stop and ask. My older sister Lida has the most memories of the trip since she was the oldest.