Rota Fish Taxi (ca. 1988)

Back when I was a Navy journalist (1986-1990) in Spain [learn more], I liked to produce music videos - nothing fancy, just a chance to practice my editing. Sometimes these packages would find their ways onto Rota Today or Weekend Hot Pix. I had a great job: a chance to learn my craft in some fascinating environments.

One morning I borrowed the station's video camera and joined Jenny at the Rota docks. We'd seen "taxis" row fishers to their boats and figured it might be fun to get a closer look. Jenny captured still-images while I concentrated on video. Little by little, we both realized that we'd stumbled onto something special.

Actually I remember being a little nervous, lugging a pricey video camera onto a wobbly rowboat. In addition, I spoke almost no Spanish. But the taxi driver was pretty cool; he didn't mind a guest. So we rode from shore to those anchored boats a couple times, and I imagined how nice this scene would be set to Genesis's "Blood on the Rooftops."

Given the years and generation loss (copying from tape to video to archive to digital), the project suffers from age. Nonetheless, this was one of my favorite videos: an early morning with Jenny, joining the Rota fish taxi driver on one of his runs.