As you probably recall, the motto painted on all the rolling stock was “Ferrocarril Panama - El Commercio en Marche” The switching yard just east of Balboa was full of equipment that never moved. In our pidgin Spanish we called it “El Commercio en Oxido”. That seemed much more apt.
Pre-COVID I was getting down there about one night every couple of months and had enough off-time time to rent a car and go sightseeing in my old haunts or just explore the newly built areas of the city. A tremendous amount of course has changed in not quite 40 years. But, as expected, a lot of the old Zonian and military base infrastructure has not been well-maintained and has not aged all that well. Though as you say the railroad seems to be a major exception. As is the functional part of the canal itself.
Then again, it’s important to judge these now private and commercial facilities by Panamanian standards of middle class wealth, not US Government standards. Definitely not falling apart; just that jauntily raucous level of raggedy that characterizes so much of Latin America.
By the time I came back in the late 1980s much of the rolling stock had small trees and grass growing on the roofs. I really wish I had gotten a photo of one of the cars like that with “World Commerce on the Move” on the side.
The best conversion of a base that Panama made was changing the former Fort Clayton into the Ciudad de Saber/City of Knowledge, basically an “industrial park” type development but for international and national non-governmental organizations, scientific and cultural organizations, and tech companies.
I think I’ve still got a few of those around. We used them to write my (now late) uncle in Italy. I don’t know whether the post office still takes them; these days my out-of-country communications are generally by email.
From what I recall of international phone calls in the early 1980’s (that’s when I went to France) and the rough distance between Toronto and Buffalo… yeah, they might have actually saved money. Especially if it was a long letter/phone call.
Back in the late 60’s we had an exchange student from Peru living with us for a few weeks. He asked to send a telegram to tell his parents that he arrived and my father offered to telephone. And the above is exactly what happened. My father had to call the operator, then ask for the international operator. He gave the country and phone number, hung up, and the operator called back in a few minutes and made the connection.
Getting or making a long-distance phone call was expensive and IMPORTANT. If you called someone long-distance and the said “please hold” you would say “no, I’m calling long-distance”. You didn’t want to wait on hold and rack up the $$$. If your parent made an international call it was exciting and was something you told your friends about in school the next day
A few years ago I was on a job site in Tennessee and with a cell phone was speaking to another engineer about the job and he was in a car travelling from Poland to Romania. It was only afterwards that I was gobsmacked about being able to do this.
Sometime during the mid 80’s, I realized that I could call interstate and talk to my brother for the cost of a Big Mac. I wasn’t in Canada in the 1970’s, but I don’t think they could have got much of an international call for $20, let alone $5.
I remember (vaguely) aerograms. Not the same as onionskin (as I understand onionskin anyway) – the texture and “feel” is different. But anyway, nearly tissue-thin paper, pre-printed with all the relevant postal air-mail markings, that you folded up and glued shut with a pre-glued tab. Here’s an image search showing what a bunch looked like:
Note that some of them have the appropriate air-mail stamp pre-printed on them; others you have to buy the stamp separately and stick it on. Any you weren’t allowed to enclose anything in the folded-up envelope. Or maybe you could but you’d have to pay extra for that.
My freshman year of college was at LaCrosse in '82 and we were asked at some point during orientation or during move in if we wanted our room’s phone turned on. You could receive non-collect calls and maybe make local calls if you said no. We said no.
I got quite the concerned call from dad when I sent him a letter letting him know that the EKG and X-Ray charges on the insurance were legit. (It was nothing serious…as far as they could ever figure out)
I have a couple of shoeboxes full of “aerogram” letters that my parents-to-be sent to/from each other and to/from their parents during WW2 when they were based in the UK. (the odd one has a “PASSED BY CENSOR” stamp on it). I’m busy typing them into my computer and learning how people lived in London during WW2. My father actually volunteered as a censor for a few months at his Air Force station.
In the late 80’s, I spent a few days in Tbilisi (then in Soviet Georgia). Our hotel was near the main Post Office. On Friday night, the plaza outsize the PO was full of people, and we could see it was full inside as well. It turns out that this was a big social event for everyone to gather there on Friday nights to chat - and make their long-distance phone calls.
I once had a car that had the ashtray right under the air conditioner vent. If the driver or passenger wasn’t careful about reaching to knock an ash off a cigarette, the ash would get blown into the back seat.
My evil dad had a Cadillac. He and his final wife didn’t smoke, so they took out the lighters. Somehow, foil from LifeSavers candy got into the lighter socket, shorting it out. At first, it just drained the battery, but eventually it blew out the car’s computer twice before the mechanics tracked down the problem.
