Confession of an Overseas Brat

December 20, 2018

Ronald Walker grew up in Europe as an Overseas Military Brat. This is his story of how he went from boyhood to manhood living in a most unusual time and place: Madrid, Spain during the 1960s and early 70s. For anyone who was there during that very magical time and place, his story will be a wonderful and nostalgic trip to the past. For those not lucky enough to have that experience, his tales will enlighten, inform and reveal what his experiences were really like living in one of the most exciting cities in Europe, at a time when the entire world was going through such turbulent and profound cultural changes.

Part travelogue, part coming-of-age story, and part personal confessions, his stories not only include his travels and adventures all around Spain, but also across the Straits of Gibraltar into Morocco, and then later his unusual experiences while traveling and working in Holland and Germany. Afterward, he explains in detail the many difficulties and challenges of trying to adapt to life in the United States after living overseas most of his life.

Being set in the 1960s and early 70s, sex, drugs and rock and roll all play at a big part in his stories. He explores all three in detail, from his first time getting to third base, to smoking kif with the locals in Morocco, to watching the Beatles perform live at the Bullring in Madrid when he was only 12 years old and how that experience changed his life forever.

His honesty, humor, and openness about his adventures and experiences leaves the reader with not only a better understanding of the places and times he explains so well, but also what it was like to be a “Stranger in a Strange Land” (both in Europe as well as in his own country) and what it was like growing up as an Overseas Military Brat.