Show NEWS FROM ABROAD gibraltar dear 0 al wont you be surprised when I 1 tell you that I 1 have a copy of your morgan county news dated january 2 23 1 MIS 1918 19 18 I 1 just resist the urge to send you this little note maybe you will be interested to know what this part of the globe is like many people think of the british empire as a collection of wide open spaces but the rock of gibraltar is so narrow that you can cross it on foot in a quarter of an hour can from one end to the other in a bus for ad sc it is the smallest the nearest and perhaps the oddest colony belonging to england there is no water except what they catch when it rains there are no fields and no hedges and the only cow in the colony died last august the cow belonged to the admiral in charge of the dockyard he had a parrot once but dead too come to think of it the navy itself look any too strong in these parts nowadays the frontier between gibraltar and spain is 1300 yards long yet franco keeps 2000 troops there to guard it this works out to about one man to every two feet it is not quite so crowded on the rock itself but there are i i people living in its one and seven eighth square miles most of them in a very small compact area beffie the war people were living six to a room then when it looked as if gibraltar might be besieged for the fifteenth time in its history of its inhabitants were evacuated to britain maderia aderia Al and jamaica about 2700 of them are still in exile the government wont allow them back because there is nowhere for them to sleep new homes are being built but they are arc taking just as rong long to materialize as in america five blocks of apartments to house families are planned they will cost and the first of them will not be ready for another year to help pay for all this the gov ment has organized a there are three draws every month and the top prize is i s fifteen thousand dollars the alternative was the introduction of income tax which Gibraltar ians have so far escaped they hope the system will continue because buying the lottery ticket is more fun than filling in income tax forms gibraltar became british in 1704 when an admiral captured it as an afterthought he had been sent to take barcelona and having failed he thought he had better do 10 something so he took gibraltar in instead the people here like to get a round and for that purpose they have 1100 1101 privately owned cars As they can drive around the colony in a few minutes they do mos most t of their motoring in spain just lately this activity has been cut down because it is illegal now to drive a car in spain between midday on saturday and eight on monday morning if your car is more than 18 h b p you arent allowed to use it on wednesdays either there is a law against tooting yur horn in gibraltar if someone gets in your way you have to yell or bang on the side of the car with ith your hand you may not use headlights either but to off offset this no one seems to mind if yo you go in the wrong direction up a one way street providing you do it backwards centipedes here are six inches long at sunset they fire a gun which scares the life out of you and because it is so far kouth there is very little twilight I 1 leave gibraltar within th the next few days and maybe ill III drop you a line from england it if I 1 see anything worth while to write about some day I 1 may be in utah till then goodbye I 1 barney steed |