I had my farewell party and was presented with a ‘I survived Detroit t-shirt’. The next day I loaded up my car and headed off for the long drive to Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Detroit had been a culture and climate shock for a middle-class white boy from the London suburbs, and my goodness, Rock Hill was then another. Firstly it was hot, very hot. Secondly it was the south, and racism abounded. The black people of South Carolina were very much second-class citizens.

I moved into an apartment with another PMI guy, Jesse Puentes, a young Cuban, a real lad about town. As with so many other of the American employees of PMI, Jesse was given a job because nobody else would hire him. He had hardly any relevant experience and struggled at work every day. I tried my best to cover for him, but after about 3 months Lowenstein’s complained about his performance and he was let go and fired by PMI. He then returned to LA where he was originally from.

I immediately advertised for a flatmate. I got a call from a guy named Rick who after chatting with me on the phone for a bit declared “one thing I should tell you is that I am black”. Okay, and so? Well he realised I had no idea of the significance of this where I was living and agreed to pop round so we could meet. We got on and I invited him to move in… “…well if you’re sure”. I was sure but also naïve. During the previous 3 months when I was sharing with Jesse, I had not noticed that there were no other black people living in this apartment complex. Rick told me there was no way that someone like him would normally be able to get a place here. What the hell I thought. It all worked out fine but I did get hostility from other residents and there were people at work who gave me the cold shoulder because I was sharing with a black guy.

Blacks and whites in Rock Hill, South Carolina did not mix.

Unlike my friends in Detroit, Rick was absolutely adamant that he could not take me to the bars and clubs he frequented as he would not be able to be responsible for my safety, and no way would he come with me to the places I went.

Then everywhere I looked I saw, the segregation. This was a world away from Detroit.

I made some good friends and had some mad times. There were guns everywhere, you were allowed to carry a gun openly so long as it wasn’t concealed. I even bought a gun myself, more for the novelty of it than for any other reason. At weekends we would occasionally go in pickup trucks into the woods to drink beer and shoot up beer cans. Hey life is just like the telly sometimes.

I worked away at M Lowenstein and Sons until I was free of PMI’s financial penalty clauses, I’d done my time, 12 months, it was now time to plan my escape. I quietly looked for another job and was finally offered a position with a firm based in San Francisco. Now, it was well known that PMI were sharks and very few people could leave without forfeiting their last pay check, the company would just simply not pay up. So, I negotiated with my line manager, Bud Becker, a job with them back in London  and got them to ensure I would receive my final pay promptly which I would need to finance my return to the UK.

My last day working for them finally rolled around, I duly received my final pay check and after much farewell partying got into my car and headed west to San Francisco via LA. It was Christmas 1979. Margaret Thatcher had just become Britain’s first woman Prime Minister and I was free of PMI.

I arrived in San Francisco on New Year’s day 1980. On my way there I had stopped in LA to meet up with my old flat mate from Rock Hill, Jesse Puentes, the one prior to Rick. I had phoned him during my drive across the states and he had invited me to a New Year’s Eve party. Now Jesse, was a wild character and I found his friends, the party and LA too much so I slipped away and drove north until I was outside of the city limits and pulled up in a motel for the night.

On New Year’s Day I headed north on R101, the Pacific Highway, a magnificent drive, the awesome Pacific Ocean to my left, and through the giant Redwood forest and up to San Francisco.

I was looking forward to seeing and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge but the bay was thick with one Frisco’s famous fogs and I wasn’t even sure whether I was on the bridge or not. I crawled through the fog following the signs to downtown, becoming more and more disorientated. Eventually I gave up and pulled into a parking garage, and phoned my new boss. He had given me his home number as he knew I would be arriving during the holidays, but not realising it would be New Year’s Day. I found out where I was and he came to collect me and took me to his house.

Now this company were a world away from PMI, they were paying me 80% more for a start. He and his boyfriend were very chilled and welcoming. They offered me food, wine, beer, coke and some organic weed from Oregan. These guys hailed from Oregan and assured me that they could supply me with whatever I needed. Was this a test I wondered? But no, they were straight up, very chilled San Francisco heads. This was 1980s San Francisco after all, even the cops had long hair.

I stayed with them a couple of nights and then they moved me into a company apartment on Telegraph Hill, downtown. Telegraph Hill, ow this was a sought after area. I had really landed on my feet.

The only drawback, they explained, was that due to the fact that my US visa was no longer valid for employment, it was tied to PMI,  that during the time it would take to process my Canadian visa application I could not be seen to be working. Well, for a 20 year old in San Francisco in 1980 on a good salary, free accommodation and a limitless supply of organic weed this was not a problem.

All they asked of me was that I call into the office 2 or 3 times a week to help out with a few admin chores. This I managed admirably.

It was during this time that I fell in with Doug Longstreth. It’s funny the names you remember and the ones you don’t.

He lived out in Oakland, the other side of the bay, and we used to smoke and drink and drink and smoke, Jack Daniels being our poison of choice. One night we had been drinking downtown and I was driving us home. What the fuck did I think I was doing? Going too fast over the brow of one San Francisco’s famous hills, my car rose above the road. When it came back down I lost control of the vehicle and slewed into several parked cars. It was very late at night and by a miracle nobody was hurt. We both panicked and I drove off heading back to Doug’s apartment in Oakland, parked the car in the apartment block’s garage and very shaken, dashed upstairs, to his apartment and his awaiting girlfriend. We were shook. After calming down all 3 of us headed to the parking area to inspect the damage to my car. I opened the door from the stairwell and stopped in my tracks, Doug and his girlfriend stumbling into the back of me a la the Three Stooges. Standing by my car were 2 cops, notebooks out.

They looked up. “Is this your car?” one of them asked.

I went over and confessed that it was indeed my car, and yes I had been in an accident on the said street, I had fled the scene in a panic, and I was very, very sorry.

Naturally they were quite severe. Three other vehicles had been badly damaged. A witness had taken down my license plate and they had traced me back to here where my car was now registered. As I did not have a permanent address, this was at Doug’s.

They instructed me to stay right where I was until they had confirmation of whether there was anyone injured or not. My blood ran cold. Finally to my great relief it was confirmed there were no injuries. They asked if I had been drinking, which clearly I had. I told them that, yes, I had, but not until after arriving back at Doug’s where I had a few shots of whiskey to steady my nerves. Doug and his girlfriend corroborated my story. The cops accepted it, gave me a stern lecture and headed off instructing me to contact the insurance companies of the owners of the cars I had damaged.  They would follow up to make sure I had. Then they got back in their squad car and drove off. I never heard from the police again. I couldn’t believe it.

A demon inside me had very much put me in harm’s way once again, and once again I had survived.

However, the demon still lived on.

My San Francisco life continued to happily unfold. My car insurance company decided to write off my car and issued me with a cheque for far more than I would have been able to sell it for, even undamaged, an astonishing windfall. I was enjoying life, but finally homesickness got to me.

My brother Mike was due to get married and I was heading towards my 21st birthday.

As the spring of 1980 unfurled I made plans for returning home. The company I was working for was Canadian. They were planning to send me to Vancouver to work once all the paperwork was sorted. In the meantime I would need to earn my keep but working in San Francisco without a valid visa was too risky, so I was to go to LA to work under the radar.

I had no desire to go to LA, so when I was taken to the airport to catch my flight to LAX I went over to the standby counter and bought a ticket to London. Sorry guys, you were kind and treated me well.

Farewell USA.