Detroit – Christmas 1978

I was 19 years old and the shadow of Geoff’s suicide 3 years earlier was hanging over me. It was hanging over all of us. My mother, Georgie, Mike, and me. Yes, it was over all of us, but without me hardly even noticing, it was hanging over me and weighing me down. But we didn’t talk about those sort of things, so how was I to know?

Oh, but a part of me knew, and it acted out. I had struggled through my O’ Levels with the help of my sister. I remember very little of the summer holidays after that except meeting my first ‘proper’ girlfriend. Michelle Harms. This turned out to be a nightmare relationship where I was emotionally abused and pushed into losing my virginity before I was ready, in very traumatic circumstances. It left it scars for many years to come. I then slipped into the lower-sixth in the autumn just because… what else was I going to do?

I had no interest in school anymore, feeling eternally lost, bored and disillusioned, and soon began to play truant, commit acts of petty vandalism and be generally belligerent and uncooperative with my teachers, very rarely handing in any homework. I staggered through the winter term being tolerated by the school hierarchy, even the fearsome deputy headmaster, Mr. Stokes, went easy on me. No doubt they felt sorry for me. But nobody thought about actually talking to me about what might be going on.

The only good thing that came out of that term was meeting Jon Medlam. His family had just moved to the area from Solihull and he joined Merchant Taylors’ School that autumn and was in my class. We quickly became friends, we seemed to ‘get each other’ and remained close friends until his very sad death from lung cancer at the age of 61. Thank heavens we remain blissfully unaware of the tragedies up ahead.

Eventually the Christmas holidays came around and after receiving very discouraging school reports, my mother sat me down and it was agreed that if I could come up with a good alternative plan, it was time for me to leave school.

So, all I needed was an alternative plan, great. I did some research. I decided “I want to train as a Formula One racing driver”. “No” says mother. Oh. “Well how about a professional golfer, you being a more than keen golfer yourself?” “No says mother”. Hmm.

I spotted an advert in the Dail Mail “Train to Become a Computer Programmer, the Thing of the Future!”. My mother thought it over.  “Yes” says mother. So the die was cast and I signed up at the School of Computer Technology in Oxford Street. I was 17 years old, free of school and on my way.

I excelled at the course. It was all very exciting. Commuting up to London every day and no longer having to endure the petty tyranny of an English public school. My friends envied me. Computers. Wow! This was 1977, and nobody knew anything much about computers except from what they saw on Tomorrow’s World. This was exciting stuff. It was almost as good as becoming an astronaut.

I got a distinction in my City & Guilds in Computer Programming and started to look around for what to do next. In those days the next step was an HND in Computer Studies, so I applied to Hatfield College, but then I spotted a recruitment advert for the trainee computer programmer program at the London Borough of Camden. My computer programming tutor advised me to apply, saying now I had the basics, hands on experience was worth more than any college course.

I’d had enough of classrooms and wanted to get into the real world; I applied. They had two positions available and the selection process was by competition: an exam followed by an interview for those who scored high enough. There were about two hundred people in the exam hall. I passed the exam. I had the interview. I got one of the spots. So shortly after my 18^th birthday I started at the London Borough of Camden as a Trainee Computer Programmer along with the other successful candidate, Jan, a lad from Poland, whose family had fled the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union.

I told my mum I wanted to leave home, and she helped me find a house to rent that I ended up sharing with another school friend who had left to go into the world of work, and his two brothers. That was a life lesson. My mate Frank was grand, we’d always got on, but his brothers were a pain. His older brother, Tim, was a tyrant who decided he had to be in charge of us younger folk, and his younger brother Simon, was an arrogant nuisance of a toe rag who being only 16 was still at school. Frank’s father was a doctor and  working in Switzerland at the time and saw this as a great opportunity to offload the kids so his wife could join him out there. I was outnumbered.

What a year it was. I worked away at the London Borough of Camden and after six months graduated from Trainee Programmer to Junior Programmer. Life at the council was easy going and the path ahead was clearly laid out with structured pay increases and promotions all overseen by the union. Closed shops still existed in pre-Thatcher 1977 so my future was assured. But I was restless, which was to become a hallmark of my life.

I started to cast around for opportunities in the more volatile but what appeared to be more rewarding and lucrative private sector. So, very much to the chagrin of some of my more stalwart council colleagues, shortly after getting my Junior Programmer wings I landed a job with a merchant bank in the City of London. I was now a Programmer, no Trainee or Junior attached.

Meanwhile I was partying away and leading the generally raucous life style of an 18 year old with money to burn, and doing my best to torment Frank’s older brother who clearly found us insufferable. This was all only two years after Geoff’s suicide and I was doing my utmost to bury that trauma under a haze of parties, booze and my new friend, marijuana. Add into this heady mix the discovery on amphetamines, French Speckled Blues they were called, and I was flying it.

Still, I made it to work most days and was doing well, but it was not long before I became restless again, and started to look around for an opportunity to move on. This was not so easy in the London of the seventies as most careers then required a long term commitment to one employer, many people staying with the same firm for life. Then I spotted an advert in Computer Weekly.

An American firm called PMI was recruiting bright and promising young professionals to come and work in the USA. For the successful candidates there was the promise of unlimited opportunity, with all expenses paid for the move to the States. I was very excited and sent in my application, after several rounds of interviews I was offered a job. Wow, I was going to work in the USA! I could not believe my luck.

So as October became November in 1978, my mum and sister took me to Heathrow, me in my brand new dark blue wool overcoat, the height of the mature man, my mother and sister sobbing their eyes out. I couldn’t wait to get through to departures. I was 19 years old.

I flew to New York, and was collected and taken to a hotel and then joined the rest of the new bright eyed recruits for orientation where we were assigned our missions.

It turned out that PMI was a cowboy outfit hiring gullible foreigners and American misfits who were then rented out to various corporations as contractors who paid a fortune for us. We were paid a pittance but were tied into iron-clad punitive contracts, so there was no escape. PMI, Programming Methods Incorporated, or as we, their luckless employees came to call it, PMI, Piranha Methods Incorporated.

I was going to be sent to Detroit, Murder City as it was known as in 1978. I was assigned to Ford Motor Company in Dearborn Michigan. I was flown to Detroit and met at the airport by a PMI representative who took me to a motel in Dearborn, walking distance from the car plant. She informed me that she would take me to meet the programming department manager the next day, and presented me with a copy of my CV, which I was informed was referred to as a  Resume, to familiarise myself with. I looked through it and was surprised to find that I was fully experienced in working with machines I’d never seen before and with software I’d never heard of, and I was now apparently 25 years old! I would then have a week to find a place to live and get myself a car, as living in Detroit without a car was not an option. It was November, Detroit is cold, very cold and a long way from home. I had to grow up fast.

But hey, at least I was away from home, and the darkness that lingered in my family. I soon found a new family, or maybe they found me, the PMI family. We’d all been taken advantage of and so we had to take care of each other. None of us worked in the same companies but we all came together for beers and pool and dope smoking. Graham, an English guy who was a sort of local supervisor took me under his wing. I remember sobbing my eyes out with homesickness and him hugging me to comfort me. When I see the image of that memory I see my brother Geoff. Geoff, my brother who I missed so much, but I did not even realise it.

I got an apartment in Taylor ‘Tucky, thus called because most of those who lived in Taylor had originated from poor areas in Kentucky during the Great Depression, and had come to work in the car plants of Detroit. My apartment complex was government subsidised and only eligible to people who were officially classified as low-income workers in an area known as ‘the projects’. Being a PMI employee, my salary was low enough to qualify.

Another PMI er moved in with me, Bob Monaco, a recovering alcoholic with a predilection for gambling, from Queens in New York. 12 years my elder, yet we became good friends.

What a place it was that I was living. I met some scary people, Vietnam vets, who like my father were totally fucked by their experiences. There was plenty of beer, whisky, marijuana, and guns. Wow! Welcome to the USA.

I was protected by Carl. An enormous black guy who approached me one day, wearing a shell suit and chunky gold chains. I was nervous. He could see I was nervous. He then smiled and put out his hand. He saw my innocence and vulnerability, declared I was now officially his friend. It made me feel safe.

I realised I would survive.

I mean Detroit, 1978. What a buzz! A little middle-class, innocent white boy in the birth place of Motown, I tell you, it was a gas.

I worked the night shift at Ford’s along with mostly black guys. The coolest dudes a 19 years old English boy could ever meet. The black guys and white guys didn’t really hang out together, but for me it was different. I became known as ‘The English Man’ and was totally welcomed and made part of the crew, going to parties and cruising round in large cars, drinking Bacardi and smoking weed, Dad’s bonhomie shing through. These guys were so cool. Wide lapelled suits and Afros. Wow! And they loved my London suits, especially the tweed. Can you imagine? How innocent. I was 19, going to the States, so I bought a tweed suit. My goodness, I love that 19 year old David.

My first Christmas  away from home came around and I spent it with Vicky and her cousin Wayne and his wife Marylou. Vicky was part Japanese and part Cherokee, about my age and pretty wild. I had a bit of a crush on her but nothing ever came of it, which was probably for the best, however we did become firm friends. She and her family hailed from Tennessee, and her cousin Wayne was a truck driver, the real deal, just like in the movies; if it were a movie he would have been played by Johnny Depp. We arrived at their house and were warmly welcomed, good old Southern hospitality. That evening Wayne had some of his buddies around for a Christmas eve poker session. We sat around the kitchen table and bottles of Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey were put in front of each of us and off we went. I had no idea how to play poker, but apparently I knew how to drink, which seemed to impress these good old boys. After the game most of them left apart from Wayne’s cousin who stayed on to keep drinking and to drunkenly wail along to Dwayne Eddie songs while twirling a loaded 6 shooter from the holster on his hip – I kid you not. Then he and Wayne had a falling out and stumbled out into the snow and started to beat the hell out of each other while Marylou lamented “not on Christmas eve Wayne!”. They eventually collapsed into the blood spattered snow in hugs and tears and vows of everlasting loyalty. What a night, certainly not like any Christmas eve I’d ever experienced in the middle-class north-western London suburbs, but probably an evening my dad may have been more familiar with back in his war days.

Is this what it means to be a man dad?  God help me!

I slept, passed out, on a mattress under the Christmas tree. I was woken up the next morning by Wayne handing me a cigarette and a bottle of beer. “Merry Christmas Dave”. That was December 25^th 1978.

I’d survived once again.

Now I look back upon it, I more than survived. I had overcome adversity and homesickness and found the resolve to  get through my first Christmas without my family around me, and what a Christmas. Not only my first Christmas away from home, but it was a Christmas without Geoff, and now, after all these years I realise how much I missed him. He had died in April 1975 and his absence at the following three Christmases was profound, but never spoken about, and there I was in the cold snows of Detroit drinking whiskey and playing poker, with gun toting, fist fighting Tennessee good ol’ boys for the fourth.

Oh, Geoff, how you would have loved to hear that story.

My brother and my father live on in me, and now I am able to see the strength and resilience that I inherited from them. I am also able to see I am not them and I no longer need to fear the road ahead. Their lives were their lives, their troubles, their burdens theirs alone. After all these years I finally see, and lay down what was never mine.

Birth Right

Hello,

Hello all of you,

Singing down through the ages,

Gusts of wind from long gone times

Playing harp strings on mountain tops 

Drenched in the sun

Of memories that should be gone.

I sing to you.

A song of now,

And what is to come,

I sing of you,

With love and honour,

And I sing what is done is done.

Hear my song and know of

My love, my honour,

And know now

That I leave you where you belong,

And leave with you all you have endured.

My inheritance is love and freedom,

And I turn now to the new day’s rising sun,

Lay down the burden that was never mine,

And with a warm heart embrace the new love I have found.