III.              On Visa to the U.S.A.

I was granted a six-month Visitors Visa to the U.S.A. and in December of 1953 left England and the home I had there, newly and fully furnished, to join my sister in Orick, California. I had been in England almost five years to the day.

I had admired the English as a people, for their habit of understatement and their sense of humour. I had emulated the teachers I had taught with, who set high standards of professionalism. I had appreciated the countryside of the South Downs, seen an English robin there and heard a nightingale. I had watched the magnificent action of Ray Lindwall, the Australian, at the Hove county cricket ground. I had seen first-rate theatre and ballet and listened to the London Symphony Orchestra. It had been a rich life and a time of learning. Some of the lessons I learned went deep: now at the age of thirty I knew much more about myself as a man and as an Anglo-Indian, both of which I aspired to be in a good sense. However, my desires to have a better life than I had had in England, domestic, professional and social, were strong enough for me to leave the country.

My self-esteem was low for a number of reasons: I felt a sense of personal failure that my relationship with Olive was foundering; I knew my education was not up to the par of the staff of Shoreham Grammar, who had degrees from British universities – I was most surprised when one of the senior masters commented that from what he heard from an adjoining classroom to mine, he thought I was a good teacher. I was constantly aware that the English in general, overtly but not impolitely, considered me less favoured than they by virtue of their being English and my being something else. Going to my sister was a seeking for refuge.

In Orick I got work in a saw mill, pulling lumber off a green chain. I was able to send Olive money, which she used in part to acquire things for the already well furnished house she and I had in Shoreham-by-Sea. My work environment in the U.S. came as a pleasant surprise. A week after I was hired at the saw mill I came down with jaundice. I went to the office and told the boss I had to leave work. He asked one of the office staff to take me home and handed the young fellow his car keys. When I returned to work my job was waiting for me.

Some of my fellow-workers on the Green Chain commanded my admiration. To a man they took pride in their work, considering it a mark of inadequacy just short of failure when the green chain was stopped because lumber had piled up instead of being pulled off ; this sometimes happened when there were too many pieces of lumber for one station to deal with, even though the worker at that station always had a volunteer from another less busy station to help him. This was unlike the workers I was with in England when I was employed at the power station that was being built in Port Slade, near Brighton, where the unwritten code was never to hurry and to make the job last as long as possible. On the other hand, English foremen were polite in addressing the men who worked under them while the Americans were abrupt in giving orders and appeared rude. Dignity for labourers was part of the English work ethic whereas dignity was earned by individual effort in America. One man on the Green Chain was seemingly undersized and he was a hunchback. To see him struggle with and master lumber that was 12” x 12” x 20’ was to enjoy a victory of the human spirit. By some twist of fate he had the station with the largest lumber, yet he never sought help. Another of the men had missing fingers and one had a hook prosthesis on one hand. These men had had accidents with saws, where there was danger, before they came to the Green Chain. The song of the Green Chain was a proud one, or a Walt Whitman poem.

The best part of life in Orick was being with my sister and her three children; it was a haven after the tensions with Olive in Shoreham-by-Sea. I did miss teaching and the Grammar School in Sussex and the English newspapers and the BBC, but the warm temperatures in Northern California were luxurious in comparison with weather conditions in England. By the time my six month visa expired, I had been accepted to apply for a teaching position in British Columbia, Canada.