We lived in Bondy until the house was sold in late summer 1951, then moved back to my grandmothers home in St Jean de Luz, in the southwestern part of France, near the Pyrenees Mountain range. It was primarily Basque, with a mix of French, Spanish and Basque residents, and had a beautiful bay, protected by a man-made barrier which dampened the raging forces of nature coming in from the west. My grandfather had left his wife and children years earlier, heading into the night to drink and gamble, as he was known to do, and never returned. His surname was Aznarez, and he was a hot-tempered Spaniard born in Aragon, who lived in the southern Pyrenees region in a Basque town called Artieda in Navarre, Spain, which is not actually Spanish but Basque territory. If you don't know the history of the Basque people, it would take a long and tiring effort for me to explain, but suffice it to say that the Spanish government has control over the Basque territories and won't give them their independence. That is the reason there has been unrest in that region for such a long time, and the Spanish know that they'd lose a rich and valuable asset if they conceeded the region to the Basques. They also know that as long as they do not, there will never be a true peace between the two peoples.
The Basques are a very strong willed people, and have the oldest history in Europe among all countries there, and actually have resided in their present region longer than any Spaniards or French, even long before the Roman conquests of Europe and Great Britain. There are many myths and legends of their beginnings, even hundreds of years before Christ, and it is said that they were the original inhabitants of Atlantis. For a further in depth study of the Basque people, I highly recommend that you find and read a book titled "The Basque History of the World", by Mark Kurlansky. It is truly the best, and most accurate record of the Basque people I have found to date, and it is written in English.
We stayed at my grandmothers home with my mother, while my father took a train to Italy in September 1951, then boarding a ship for the states. The plan was for him to return to the states and arrange for our arrival later on. Once there, he secured a home for us in New York on Long Island. My mother, sisters and I took a train on June 19, 1952 to Brest, a coastal city in Brittany on the northwestern coast of France, and from there boarded a French passenger ship named Liberte, and sailed to America. From my mothers accounts it was a harrowing experience and we almost never left France, and were the very last passengers to board the ship. We arrived at the Statue of Liberty six days later, and were delayed by customs and immigration officials, who decided not to let us leave the ship since my sister Anna had contracted measels enroute, and was covered in them when we arrived. Finally, days later, we were allowed to enter once a health official granted us entry. We joined my father and moved into our new home in the town of Jamaica, Long Island, New York. We lived there a while, then moved to Baldwin, Long Island where we lived until a couple of months before I turned six years old.
In November 1957 we moved to Cocoa, Florida since my father had received a job offer at the Cape (Canaveral), working for RCA as a cameraman on the Eastern Test Range during the early missile years. We moved to the town of Cape Canaveral a couple of years later. This was to become my stomping grounds for the remainder of my developing years. It became what I now perceive as the best place to grow up, and my childhood was filled with freedoms a child would hope to have. It was a very happy childhood indeed. We lived in a nice home about four blocks from the beach, in a newly developed area that still had dirt roads, which were later paved with sewers added. I went to Cocoa Beach Elementary School, until Junior High, where I was bussed to Merrit Island to Edgewood Junior High for the seventh grade. Cocoa Beach High School was brand new during my eighth grade year, so I started there on day one of their opening. What a wild bunch of years that turned out to be! That school suffered from rebellious students like myself, but only because the teachers were so snooty that they almost begged for our disruptions. It was dreadfully boring, but I made the best of it. The teachers and administrators were like clay in my hands, and I made changes to their school policies through my own personal sacrifices.
