My name is Gilbert B. Brook, Jr. I was born on March 29, 1923, in Shreveport, Louisiana. My father, Gilbert B., Sr., was from Texas, but he moved to Louisiana and held many different jobs before he finally came to Aruba.
My mother, Margaret Webb, a Tennessean, came to Shreveport with her father, a painting contractor. My parents married in 1922. A newspaper clipping from a Shreveport News issue in May of 1922 tells of a shower given to the bride and groom on the week following their marriage, and states their home was on Stoner Ave.
In 1929, my daddy got a job in Aruba as a second class helper in the stills, and he worked on one of those labor gangs called "clean out crews" who ran those machines that cleaned the coke out of the crude furnace tubes. After he had been there for three months, the Chief Watchman got into some kind of trouble and the company shipped him back to the States the next day. That was what was done with people who got into trouble--you cause trouble one minute, and you're gone the next.
My daddy was 6 foot 4-3/4" tall, weighed about 250 pounds, and he was big and ugly. At that time there were a lot of construction people down there building tanks, stills, this, that and the other. Those ole boys often played pretty rough. So they asked my daddy to take the Chief Watchman's job until they could find somebody else. Twenty-seven years later he retired from that same position. I guess they still hadn't found anyone better for the job!
As I said before, my daddy was the Chief Watchman and he had a warrant from Queen Wilhelmina which certified him as a Dutch police "agent", she sent him a ceremonial saber, which I still have.
He must have done a pretty good job because the Queen gave him the gold medal of the Orange Nassau after WWII. Nobody ever got into the refinery and messed anything up. The O.S.S. and the naval intelligence tried to penetrate the refinery to see how good of a job he was doing, and none of them were successful. He got along pretty good with everybody, and he knew everybody. When they got in trouble, people didn't mind talking to him. He would help them if he could. If he couldn't, he just put them on an ocean going oil tanker and sent them back to the States.
After my daddy had been there for six months or so he sent for us. We left Louisiana to catch a ship in New York. I rode on the train for the first time -actually, one of the few times I ever rode on a train. We stayed at the Lincoln Hotel in New York. I think it was about in 1936 or 1937 when the company employees started staying at the Abby Hotel. We were there two days before they sent us to the ship.
The ship was the ocean going oil tanker, the S/S Paul Harwood. It was in ballast, having previously unloaded its cargo of oil from Aruba. It was laying out in the "roadstead" as they used to say. We were taken out to it in a tug boat. That ship, the first one I had ever seen, looked like it was about 400 feet tall. It was empty and it stuck a way up out of the water, baring its Plimsoll markers (lines placed on the hull of a merchant vessel to indicate the legal depth to which the vessel may be loaded) almost to the bottom. They put a Jacobs ladder (a rope ladder with wooden steps) over the side and I climbed it. It was in December of 1929, too cold for us southerners, and there was ice all over the place. The Paul Harwood lowered a cargo box in a net, and strapped my mother and my year and a half old sister, Elizabeth, in it, along with our baggage, and hoisted them up.
That was a completely new experience for me, but then six-yearold's haven't had too many experiences anyway. I started learning about ships right away. For a short while, they let me steer the ship. We left that night, and about two days later we were out in the Gulf-stream where it was warmer. Those of you who have lived in Aruba know about that because you have probably made as many or more of those trips than I have.
In Aruba, my daddy met us and took us to our new home. He hadn't gotten a bungalow in the colony yet so he had rented a native house on the outskirts of San Nicholas. What a house! It was made of woven sticks plastered with mud, and it had a dirt floor and a straw roof. I don't recall my mama getting too upset, she was too busy soaking in the sights. It didn't bother me; dirt and young boys go together like horses and horseshoes. My mama used to tell about sitting in a chair at night, when my daddy wasn't home, with a pistol in her lap and a pump for pumping up the gas lantern when it grew dim. We lived there for about five months, but the only thing about that house that I remember is that dirt floor and that there were plenty of centipedes and scorpions and all of that kind of bugs. My mama found one of those centipedes that must have measured all of a foot in length. And when she cut that rascal in two, both ends ran off in opposite directions! I never will forget how she hollered!
The company brought fresh water by truck every day. An ice truck came daily, bringing ice for the ice box. The kerosene truck came by once in a while and filled up the small barrel for the kerosene stove. We had gasoline lanterns, the kind you pump up, because there wasn't any electricity. We even had a bakery truck come by every other day delivering fresh bread. We weren't the only Esso employees; several others lived in the village like we did. I don't remember who all they were because none of them lived nearby. I started to learn Papiamento because all of my playmates were Aruban kids. That's the best way to learn I guess.
Then we got a bungalow in the colony, number 125, or maybe it was 127, I'm not sure which. Anyway it was right across from the school yard on the road that came from the refinery gate, straight up the hill past the post office and by our house. I think the Griffith family with Mary, Donnie, and Phyllis lived right behind us. I don't think they lived there right away. After they left, I believe the parents of Carl Patterson moved into that house. He now lives in California.
After we moved into the colony I started school, and I graduated from there. Our class was the first one to go through the school system. Some of the teachers were: Miss Maybell Parham, Margarite Fassler. I remember on one vacation we went through the Panama Canal to San Diego on a tanker and Ms. Fassler was my roommate. Of course I was too young to do any good, but she was my roommate. Not too many "fellers" can say that they have bunked with their teacher. I don't know what time she got in every night because I was already asleep.
The first elementary school building was one story, and later on they built that second story which contained the auditorium. It had an enclosed metal tubular fire escape which made a dandy slide and we used to climb up it and slide back down on waxed paper.
Then they built the first high school building. We lived right across the street there for several years while they were building it.
The high school was on the edge of the cliff above the three rows of housing which was built along the lower road. One row was right next to the cliff and faced towards the sea. The middle row also faced towards the houses on the cliff. The third row was along the edge of the lower cliff. These houses faced the street and the other houses across the road to the south.
The company kept up the buildings and the equipment and the teachers were all New York certified. I think we got as good an education as you could get anywhere.
My younger brother, Russell, was born in the Aruba hospital in 1935. My mother came down with phlebitis and stayed in the hospital for seven months -that's when we moved from bungalow 127 to 277. Bungalow 127 was a two-bedroom and 277 was a three-bedroom bungalow. We had a garage, but the car never got in it. That's where the washing machine, the work bench and all the tools were.My daddy was in a play one time, and I remember he played the part of Fu Manchu. He had his eyes all painted up and he was dressed like a Chinaman.
I was in the Cub Scouts in 1935. In fact, my daddy started the first Cub Scout troop because he wanted me to be in it. I was in the Boy Scouts when I got old enough.
I used to be one of those boys who loaded the clay "birds" on the gizmo that fired them off for the skeet shooters at the Skeet Club. They didn't allow us kids to shoot much, and I didn't stick with it.
When I was eight years old, I got the shoe shine concession at the Barber Shop and the Clubhouse. After school and on weekends, I shined shoes in the Barber Shop, and at the Club House by the pool tables. That's where I learned how to play poker. I've seen $5000 in a pot several times. I remember I shined some old boy's shoes several times the same night because he won a pot every time I shined his shoes--you know how some poker players are!
Along about that time I started delivering the Pan Aruban on Saturday mornings. Ole Bob Schlageter used to move me around from route to route so I could sell subscriptions. You made more money by selling subscriptions than by just selling the paper. You made your money right then because they paid you up front. The route that I liked best was down at the Mess Hall (Dining Hall). You could go down there and sell all of those bachelors a Pan Aruban on Saturday morning and the mess hall fed you breakfast. It was all right, I liked that!
In 1937, when I was 15, I got my first car. Ole Fred Switzer sold me a Model A touring car for $25! I didn't have a regular driver's license. Of course, my daddy being chief of police, made me pass the Dutch driver's test. He brought up a Dutch sergeant from the San Nicholas driver's license section to give me my driving test, and that son-of-a-buck really worked me over. He had me stop on a hill, and start up again, parallel park, and he asked me all kinds of questions, just like he did everybody else. I passed.
Then about two or three months before I turned 16, they passed a rule that you had to be 16 years old and had to have a license to drive in the colony. My car was stored for a couple or three months.
All of this time I was delivering the Pan Aruban and doing this, that, and the other. Bill Ziemann and I made a truck out of my Model A, and we used to go out to the cliff on the windward side beyond the sea grape groves, where the goats lived in caves. In some of those caves the goat manure was 12 and 14 feet deep! We took a pick and shovel and potato sacks that we bought at the commissary for a nickel apiece. We filled the sacks with manure and lugged them for a pretty good way back out to the truck, because the sand kept us from backing the truck very close to the cave. That was hard work. And we would go around selling them to people for fertilizing their gardens and flower beds. We even had a contract to supply the hospital for their flower beds. I think we were getting a guilder and a half a bag. In those days 2-1/2 guilders made a US dollar. To us, we had plenty of spending money.
We would get together a skillet, some eggs, some bacon, some potatoes and go out to one of the beaches and build a fire and cook and swim. And we would roll up in a blanket behind a bush when it was bedtime. In the morning, we cooked up bacon and eggs and hash browns for breakfast. I'm sure we went to every beach on the island at one time or another, walking most everywhere we went, because there weren't many roads in those days.
When we were in high school, the company decided they had to give us kids something to do during our summer school vacations to keep us out of mischief. The boys got jobs in different locations in the refinery, and the girls usually got some kind of office job. Of course, us kids were not allowed to work in what were considered to be dangerous locations or jobs.
During our summer vacations, I worked in the welding department under Jim Bluejacket. I have a time card dated September 28, 1938. My rating shown as a mechanic apprentice, my payroll number is 5009, my rate of pay is 22 Dutch cents an hour. At the time, the rate of exchange was 2-1/2 guilders to the American dollar, so that meant I was making not quite nine cents an hour! That's what they paid the apprentice boys. The second summer, I got a raise to 33 cents, and the fourth summer, I got 1.25 guilders an hour. That was before I left to go to college in the States.
Nineteen thirty-nine was an exciting year for us. When Germany invaded Holland, the Germans and Italians in Aruba were rounded up and sent over to Bonaire for internment. Just before Germany invaded Holland, there were four German ships anchored off Palm Beach, west of Oranjestad. One of the ships tried to get away and a British destroyer got him somewhere north of Aruba. The Attilla was scuttled right off Palm Beach north of Oranjestad.
I understand they have hotels along the Palm Beach area now, but at that time there wasn't anything there, just the beach. You could walk nearly 3/4 of a mile west out from the beach before it got over your head, if you were fairly tall. It was just pure white sand all of the way out, and a right pretty beach, but it didn't have any surf because it was on the lee side of the island.
I did "caddy" at the Lago golf course a few times, but that didn't seem fun to me. Some boys did caddy fairly regularly, and some of them even learned to play golf, but I always figured I wasn't old enough to play golf. But then, I still ain't.
A few days after the Germans had declared war on France, at the beginning of World War II, they sent some French marines from Martinique to help guard the island. We used to go out and swap cigarettes for that cheap French wine the guards drank. They weren't much for drinking water, and they didn't seem to have a liking for bathing either.
One night, Harry Shannon, the younger Harry Shannon, and one of the girls drove out towards the surf near where the rifle range was located. They went past one of the French guard posts. The guard hollered at them, but they didn't hear him over the noise of the surf, so he shot the back end of Harry's daddy's '37 Chevrolet full of bullets. Didn't hurt either of them, but it sure scared the hell out of them!
I saw Harry Shannon in Balboa, Panama in 1956. He was working for the Panama Canal Company, but I don't exactly know what his job was.
France fell, and they moved those marines out real quick. I don't think we had anyone guarding us for a while until we got the Cameroon Highlanders who had been evacuated from Dunkirk. The Highlanders and the Dutch were sharing guard duty when I left Aruba in 1941 to go to college in the States.
Eighteen of us graduated from high school in 1941; nine boys and nine girls. We were the largest class ever to graduate from Lago High School, some of us being the first ones to go from the first grade to the 12th there. One of us, Igor Broz, went to work for the company after he graduated from Houston's Rice Institute. He managed to escape being drafted because he had an extra set of ribs. I saw him in 1942 while I was in Houston.
Most of our graduating class went to the States for our college education. I came to Louisiana to go to Poly Tech in Resler, Louisiana. Terry Bradshaw from the Pittsburgh Steelers graduated from there.
I had just started college when the United States declared war on Germany. The next day, I went down to New Orleans. I intended to enlist in the Navy because I figured, what the hell, I had grown up on an island and I had been around boats and water most of my life.
You know, I wore glasses ever since I was seven, and those rascals wouldn't let me in the navy because I couldn't pass their eye test. They still had their peace time requirements. If I had waited a couple of weeks I could have probably gotten in, but they made me so mad. They had us running around in this old, cold, building all day long, stark naked, and my eyes were the last thing they checked. They could have checked them first and spared me the misery.
I piffled around until my daddy wouldn't send me any more money, then I joined the Army.
Well, a funny thing happened to me in the Army. While I was in Aruba in the Boy Scouts, Jim Farris, our scoutmaster, put us through a lot of infantry drill. He was a WWI veteran and he felt like we should know how to drill and look a little organized when we marched in parades or having formal ceremonies. In the army outfit I belonged to, I was the only one who knew anything about right face, left face, about face, to the rear march, double time, column right, and things like that. I have to give credit to ole Jim Farris, because the first stripes I earned were for my proficiency in close order drill.
Since I didn't like the infantry very much, it was fortunate my scores were high enough for me to be able to put in a request for a transfer. The Air Corps took me and they sent me to Randolph Field, where I became a Flight Instrument Training Instructor.
In 1944 I got a 30 day furlough and came back to Aruba. I hitchhiked from Sherman Field, at Sherman, Texas by military airplanes to Miami, and then Puerto Rico, and then to Aruba. I spent the rest of the 30 days with my folks. Manuel Viana sent up a Packard automobile with four new tires on it for me to use while I was home, and I thought that was pretty nice of him. There was no rationing on gasoline, but they did take away everybody's spare tire. And when you ran out of tires, there were no more. I really enjoyed that vacation, I went swimming and laid around.
I spent most of the war in Texas teaching because once you got tabbed as an instructor, it was tough to get out of it.
