Working & Living Around the World: A Memoir

By Jim Stephenson and Judy Berns Stephenson

Jim writes about his childhood during World War II, his time in the British Navy, his work on oil refineries and pipelines around the world, and facing the results of political upheaval in Africa and the Middle East. Judy concentrates on her memories of building and maintaining a home in diverse places, such as the American Virgin Islands, Brazil, Iran, Clinton, Iowa, Saudi Arabia, and Newburgh, Scotland. Together, they dealt with everything, from an attack of sea urchins in Aruba to being caught in one of the worlds most unexpected revolutions in Iran.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532023910

Jim Stephenson

Jim Stephenson was born in Sunderland, England in 1930 and grew up during the German bombings of World War II. Judy Berns Stephenson was born in 1945 and grew up in a conservative Jewish family in Akron, Ohio. She met Jim while hitchhiking around England in 1966, during her time as an exchange student at Cambridge Univertsity. They have one daughter, Betsy, who traveled with them as a child.

Book preview

chapter 1

PEACE TO WAR

Jim’s Story

1930-1939

1935 was in the middle of the Great Depression and I was five years old. We lived in the northeast of England in the town of Sunderland, an important coal mining center. My father was laid off from Wearmouth Colliery, where he had been a coal miner. The coal mines and shipyards had closed two year earlier, and there were thousands of unemployed. My father received a little money from the government called dole, but it was not much. After the rent had been paid, there was little left for food. I had been born into these poverty stricken times on September 20, 1930. I had one older sister, Peggy, born in 1928. My younger brother, Leslie, was born in 1932, and Sheila in 1935.

Our family of six lived in a house with one bedroom, a front room, and a back kitchen. It was about 250 square feet. We all slept in the one bedroom with my parents. There was a gas light in the front room, but candles were used in the other rooms. A fireplace in the front room held a coal fire. An oven, attached to the fireplace, was used to heat the house and to cook the food. The front room faced the busy back lane. Outside there were two wooden shutters which were closed by putting a string through a hole and wrapping it around a nail on the inside.

There was no running water, toilet, or bathroom in the house. A flush toilet was in the back yard, along with a place to store coal and wash clothes. The tap and toilet were shared with one other family. My job was to carry a white enamel pail of water from the tap into the back kitchen. My brother Leslie carried buckets of coal from the coal house in the back yard to fill the coal box seats at each end of the fender. My sister Peg helped keep the house clean and ran errands. She went to the store daily.

There was a front street and a back lane. Various venders used the front street. The milk man dispensed whole milk with a pint measure to the women who would bring out their own milk jugs. The Rington Tea man rode up in his ornate two wheel cart pulled by a horse. He sold loose tea. There was no such thing as tea bags then. The knife and scissors sharpener blew his shrill whistle, as he turned the wheeled grindstone with his feet. The Spanish onion sellers, with strings of onion around their shoulders and draped over their bicycle handles, called from the street.

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Spanish onion seller

The coal deliverymen and the fishmonger were two of the back lane vendors. The rag and bone man announced his arrival by blowing his bugle. He collected jam jars, old clothing, toys, pots and pans, broken furniture, or anything of use you wished to discard. One day my mother took her jam jars, bottles, and other items to the rag and bone man. She spotted a man’s suit on the cart.

After haggling with the rag and bone man, she exchanged her donation for the suit. She took it home, washed and pressed it, and put it on a hanger. Then she took it to Goldsmith, the pawnbroker. She told him it was my father’s best suit, and she would pick it up before Sunday. She got five shillings for it. That was a princely sum in those days. Needless to say, the suit was never picked up.

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rag and bone man

The vendors could not use the back lane on Mondays because it was the designated wash day. Clotheslines were strung across the street and washing hung out to dry. If it was raining on that day, the wash had to be dried indoors. Every house had a wash house in the backyard with a poss tub, poss stick, and mangle. A poss tub is a cut off barrel. A poss stick is about four feet long with a block at the end. This was used to pound the washing in the tub. The mangle squeezed out the water. A crescendo of poss sticks pounding in your ears told you it was Monday.

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poss tub washing day

Being children, we did not appreciate the effort my mother spent to keep nutritious food on the table. Mother was very resourceful. She sent me to her friend Mary, who ran a vegetable shop. For two pence I bought one bag of bruised fruit and another of broken carrots, potatoes, cabbage leaves, and anything else she could not sell. I went to Mr Stacy, the butcher, and for another two pence I bought meat scraps, bacon bones, and cow heels. If I was lucky, he threw in a sheep’s tongue or head. From this assortment of scraps and vegetables, Mother made healthy meals.

No food was wasted. For example, Mother baked bread but we children would not eat bread crusts. So she saved the crusts, added water, condensed milk, and currants to make a delicious bread pudding. I suppose when you are young your tastebuds are sharper, but nothing since has tasted or smelled like the food my mother made in those days.

My father was just as enterprising. For over a hundred years the collieries had disposed of their waste material by loading it onto barges, towing the barges out to sea, and dumping slag, slate, and a small amount of coal on the sea bed. The coal, being the lightest, would wash up onto the beach. That’s what we called sea coal. Father rode his bike three miles to Roker Beach and filled two sacks, each weighing about a hundred pounds, with this coal. He put one through the frame of the cycle and the other across the handle bars. Then he pushed the bike home, about 3 miles.

Dad would take my brother and me to pick mushrooms in the fields, and to Roker Beach where, at low tide, we went on the rocks and tidal pools to pick whelks, a small sea snail. We boiled the whelks in salt water then ate them, using a pin to pull them out of the shell.

When I was five years old my mother walked me to Diamond Hall School, which was about a hundred yards from our house. Each student was given a slate board, a slate pencil, and a piece of rag. We copied the letters of the alphabet from the blackboard. After the teacher checked our work, we spit on the slate, and wiped it clean with the rag. Mid-morning we were each given a gill of milk. One day at noon I decided that was enough for the day so I walked home. I was promptly returned to continue my education.

Children in our neighborhood were all dressed the same way: short trousers, a thin sweater, and a cap. We had no winter clothing. When it was bitter cold, we would all gather in a corner out of the wind. We all scrunched in the corner chanting, Scrunch in the corner keep yourself warmer.

One day we filed into the main hall, our feet were measured, and each student was given a pair of new boots. We called these school boots. My brother, who had not started school, was visibly upset. However, a few days later, the British Legion women came to our house and supplied my brother and younger sister with boots and shoes.

Once a year we had to go to the school dentist. Children would be lined up in a row along the corridor waiting their turn to go inside. There was no Novocain to deaden the nerves and they did not do fillings. You opened your mouth, in went the pliers, a quick tug, and out came the rotten tooth. The dentist gave you a clean rag to cover your mouth and then you went back out into the hallway. You smiled to show how tough you were. If you were to cry out or show any sign of fear, you would be teased mercilessly.

The Salvation Army Band, which we kids called the salty bacon army, played in the street on Sunday mornings. When they were finished, they marched back to the their temple. We would follow. After listening to the preacher, we received an apple or an orange.

We collected cigarette cards. Each brand would have its own series. We traded duplicates with each other to try and get a full set of fifty. How did we get the cards? We stood on the main street asking all the men passing by Any cigarette cards, mister? On a good day I could collect 30.

We could buy an all day tram car ticket (all day ticket child’s fare was 3 pence) and visit the beaches and all parts of the town. I sometimes took the tram to visit Grandpa and Grandma Stephenson, who lived next to the North dock where grandpa’s boat was moored. Although I could understand my grandpa when he spoke, grandma had such a strong Scottish accent I could not decipher a word she said.

Grandpa Stephenson was my father’s father. He was a brass molder by trade, but he gave that up early in his life and earned his living as a fisherman. He put to sea every morning, baiting and replacing his lobster and crab pots, and catching fish with hand lines. Returning in the afternoon, he cleaned the fish and boiled the lobsters and crabs in the copper washtub in the backyard. Grandma Stephenson had a large wicker basket which she filled with the day’s catch. She sat outside the Clipper Ship Pub, two doors from their house, and sold the fish. When she had sold everything, she would go into the women’s section of the pub called The Snug where she drank beer, pinched snuff, and gossiped with friends.

When I was seven years old, our family went down to the quayside at Deptford, a mile from our house. The plan was to meet Grandpa Stephenson, who was coming up river from the dock about two miles away, with his motorboat. Onboard were six of my cousins and two aunts. My family climbed aboard and set off for Hylton Woods where we were going to picnic. We had traveled about two miles when a police launch pulled alongside the boat. They told my grandad that he had to turn back because the children had no life jackets and that was unsafe. Grandpa was an ornery and determined old man. He said to the police, If it’s unsafe, where are your life jackets? If I have to take them back, it’s three miles. If we carry on, it is only one mile to Hylton. The police decided not to argue and let us proceed. That incident I will never forget.

My mother’s father, Bartell Postuma, was born in Friesland, a part of the Netherlands. When he was twenty, he and his cousin purchased a small trading ship. They did very well taking wood pit props from Finland to the mines in Sunderland and returning with a cargo of coal. On one of these trips, he met my grandmother and they soon married. One year later my mother was born on the boat. My grandfather sold his share of the boat then, and settled in Sunderland. As he was a seaman, he signed onto a coaster taking coal from Sunderland to London.

When England went to war with Germany in 1914, my grandfather was arrested because he was a foreigner. The authorities quickly found out he was married and lived in Sunderland. There was no problem, provided that he enlist in the Army. This he quickly did. When they learned that he spoke English, German, and Dutch fluently, he was transferred to the Army Intelligence Corp. His job was to decipher messages and to interrogate German prisoners. He was at the Somme on the western front in July, 1916 when the Germans started using mustard gas. He was badly infected and sent home. In 1923 he died. Grandfather was given a military funeral with his casket placed on a gun carriage pulled by horses. He was buried in the military section of World War I in Bishopwearmouth Cemetery in Sunderland.

Two years later, grandma married Duncan McIntosh, who was the best man at her first wedding. He worked at Vaux Brewery as head horse keeper. Sometimes Grandpa McIntosh drove a Vaux’s beer delivery wagon pulled by four Clydesdale horses. When he did this, he dropped off empty wooden beer crates at our house. My brother and I chopped them up for firewood.

The reason Grandpa McIntosh held such a plum job was that he had served in India and later at the siege of Mafeking in South Africa under the command of Colonel Vaux and Major Baden Powell. His job in both places was head horse keeper.

Colonel Vaux knew that his friend Baden Powell taught scouting in the Army. As Sunderland had so many poor children, he asked Powell to help the local Orphan and Waif Institute. As a result, Baden Powell founded the first Boy Scout troop. He named it Vaux Number One Troop and it is still active to this day. Baden Powell received a knighthood in 1910 for his work with the Boy Scouts. He became Lord Baden Powell. Two years later his wife, Lady Baden Powell, founded the Girl Guides Number One Troop.

In those days there was no money to spare for toys. You created your own. The boys had boolers a metal hoop or an old tire. We used to bool them down the street. We also had itchy quoits which was a piece of wood about one and a half inches thick, and four inches long. We would taper the ends to a point. We also had a short stick. The object of the game was to strike the tapered end causing it to jump up. Then we hit it with the short stick to see who could hit it the longest distance. We also made catapults, matchstick guns, and bows and arrows. Everything was made from wood elastic bands and mothers’ hairpins. If we could find some old pram wheels and a wood box, we made a cart.

If I was lucky and somehow earned a penny, I went to the corner store to buy a gobstopper. This was a large candy ball. It would take a long time to suck it down to the end. There was a small piece of paper left with a printed message. It could entitle you to go back to the store and get a free gobstopper, a fizzy drink, or, my favorite, a chance at the progger board. Receiving the lucky message, I went to the proper board, took the progger, pushed it into one of the paper covered holes, and received a printed script telling me what prize I had won. It ranged from one of the aforementioned listed prizes or, if lucky, money ranging from a penny to sixpence. That was a small fortune for me.

We swapped boys’ comic books. There were the Hotspur, the Dandy, and the Beano. We followed our comic book characters Desperate Dan, Flash Gordon, Biggles, Tom Mix, and the Cisco Kid.

The girls played hopscotch and had ropes for skipping or for tying to the lampposts and swinging around the lamp. The ropes had to be removed by dusk so that the bike riding lamplighter with a pole over his shoulder could turn on the gaslight. He returned the next morning to turn it off.

Every Saturday my brother Les and I went to the Millfield Cinema, which we all called the Milly. We lined up at the rear of the building with about two hundred other children. The entry fee was two pence or three jam jars. It was complete bedlam inside. We cheered for the good guys and booed the villains. We saw Flash Gordon, The Tin Men, Tom Mix, and the Lone Ranger. The films always ended with the hero in desperate peril. When the movie was finished there was complete silence as everyone stood to attention as the organ player played God Save the King.

After seven year of closure, the collieries reopened in 1937, and my father went back to work. Things were looking up. In addition to his wages, he was entitled to a ton of coal once a month. This was dumped in the back street. My brother and I shoveled it into buckets and carried it to the coal house in the backyard.

My father had to cycle to and from work because, when his shift was over, he was black with coal dust and not allowed on the tramcars. When he got home, mother had pans of hot water ready. A tin tub was brought in from the backyard and he bathed in front of the fire. The water was quite dirty by then. In those days the children would bathe in the same water. By the time the baby was bathed, the water was so dirty that nobody could see the bottom. Hence the proverb, Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Late in 1937 the pit baths were opened. That meant my father now came home in clean clothes and could ride the tramcar.

Life was a lot better for us. Now we had pocket money, which opened a new world. We went to Salter’s Pork Shop where my Uncle Jack’s friend worked. We bought delicious pork pies, saveloys, and faggots. Another favorite place was the fish and chip shop around the corner from our house. We called it Peggie’s as the owner lost his leg in the First World War and had a wooden peg leg. He also had a coal fired fish fryer. It was fascinating to watch him work. He put potatoes in an electric potato peeler, placed each one on an iron grid, pulled down the heavy handle, and chips fell into a white enamel pail. The fish was dipped into his own recipe batter and then into the fryer.

The men had extra money too. On the weekends they went to Roker Park, which is the Sunderland football ground, to cheer the top football team. Sunderland won the FA Cup and the league championship, in 1937. It had the two top rated football players-Reich Carter and Bobby Gurney.

The men also enjoyed going to the pubs on weekends. Just up the street from our house was The Willow Pond. I would listen to the men singing in the street after the pub closed at 10 PM. They sang Down By the Old Mill Stream and Nellie Dean.

My father joined the Territorial Army (similar to the National Guard) in early 1939. Then he was able to go to Whitley Bay on weekends to socialize with his friends. Joining the Territorial Army, however, turned out to be a major mistake. On September 3, 1939, England declared war on Germany. The first men to go to war were the men of the Territorial Army. If my father had not joined the Territorials, he might have been able to stay home, because coal mining was considered an essential industry that women could not do.

He was told to report to Garrison Field where he enlisted in Sunderland’s own 125 anti tank corps. He spent the next weeks stringing barbed wire along the coastline of the North Sea. The Corps. built concrete barricades at strategic locations in Sunderland. The one near us was on the South side of Millfield Railway Station. This left just enough room for the tramcars to pass. In case of invasion, concrete barrels filled the gap. The men removed all the signposts as well as the railway station names. My father was then transferred to Liverpool to help locate air raid survivors and clear streets. After Liverpool, we had no more communications with him until the war was over.

Soon after my father left for war, my mother got a two bedroom upstairs flat above where my grandmother lived. We rented two pushcarts and it took us four trips to move everything about a mile away to the new flat at 14 Hedley Street. It was a two story brick house with a slate roof. I lived upstairs with my younger brother, Leslie, my two sisters, Peg and Sheila, and my mother. Downstairs lived my Grandma and Grandpa McIntosh, and two of my mother’s married sisters, Margery and Molly. Both their husbands were away in the Army. My mother’s two brothers, Jim and Jack, were also in the Army. There were few men between the ages of eighteen and fifty living in the town. Like my father, most men were away at war.

Shortly after we moved, the air raids began. Sunderland had shipyards, power plants, glass factories, and munition works, making it a prime target for German raids. It was one of the most heavily bombed cities of the war.

The daylight raids did not last long. The German bombers would be attacked by our fighter planes. We stood outside and watched the dogfights in the sky. I saw, over a few days, three German fighter planes, two Hienkles and a Dornier bomber, shot down. Some of the crew bailed out and were taken prisoner.

The night raids lasted much longer because we had no night fighters. The night sky would be penetrated by very bright searchlights. If an enemy bomber was caught in their beams, the other searchlights would zero in on it. Then the anti aircraft guns opened fire.

At the beginning of the war the raids were sporadic. Six or seven bombers at a time would fly over. The bombers included the Stuka dive bomber which was meant to instill terror. It had a siren mounted under the fuselage which would make a loud screaming sound before it released its bomb load as it went into a vertical dive.

People got so used to the raids they did not go to the shelters. If you were in a cinema, for example, a message would be shown on the screen saying There is an air raid in progress. You may leave or stay in the theatre.

One evening I was at the Ritz Theater watching the Disney film Bambi. The movie was nearly over, so I decided to stay to the end. Thirty minutes later, when the film was over, I emerged. It was dark outside and the raid was in full progress. I ran all the way home, knowing I was going to get an earful when I arrived. My mother, grandmother, and my mother’s two sisters gave me hell. They said I could have been killed or seriously injured by falling shrapnel from the anti aircraft guns. They were right of course.

chapter 2

EVACUATION TO OSMOTHERLY

1940

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evacuation of English school children

1940 was a bleak year for England. Our troops were stranded in Dunkirk in France. Crossing the English Channel to rescue them from the beaches were thousands of rowboats, tugs, sail boats, ferries, along with navy ships. Most of the soldiers’ equipment was lost.

At home, the schools were closed until air raid shelters could be built. Bombing was becoming heavier. It was decided to evacuate the children to the countryside and safety. My older sister Peg, my brother Les, and I walked to the Millfield Railway Station with my mother. We joined hundreds of children carrying their gas masks in small cardboard boxes. Luggage tags were attached to our clothing with our names and pertinent medical information. Our little sister, Sheila was too young to be evacuated. She stayed home with my mother.

We boarded the train. It was completely full and made no stops until we arrived in Pocklington Station in Yorkshire. Set up on the platform were lots of tables and chairs from the WVS (Women’s Volunteer Services). They served the children sandwiches, tea, and cakes. It was well organized. We then boarded smaller trains going in all directions. We three were put on a train to Northallerton in West Riding, Yorkshire. Once there, we were put onto small buses destined for various locations. The three of us and 15 other children were taken to the village of Osmotherley, population 800. We were then escorted to the village church hall where refreshments were served.

We were taken, two at a time, to families who had volunteered to take care of an evacuee. I was taken to Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson who lived in the first house in the back lane. There was no electricity in the house. We used oil lamps and the rooms were heated by radiators. I was given an upstairs bedroom, the first time in my life I had my own room. Mr. Atkinson was over military age so he wasn’t in the Army. He rode his motorcycle 25 miles to Stockton where he worked as a bricklayer. The family was wonderful and very kind to me. They had a son in the Royal Air Force. My brother and sister were also happy with the families they were staying with.

After a weekend of rest, I got ready for the village school. The teacher introduced me to the local children who were very friendly. At morning recess I was in the schoolyard when someone came from behind and knocked me to the ground. Without thinking twice, I jumped up, spun around, and punched the boy squarely on the point of his nose, which started to bleed profusely. It was pure instinct. That would have been the response of any boy back where I came from. After recess I was told to report to the headmaster’s office. I slowly walked to his office with a heavy heart. I felt terrible because everyone had been so kind to me and here I was in big trouble on my first day at school. How was I going to explain this to the kind woman who was housing me? Was I going to be expelled on my first day at school? The headmaster asked me to sit down. He sat quietly and did not speak. I felt the sweat running down my back. It seemed like an eternity before he spoke. Then he said, Please give me your explanation of what happened in the school yard.

I gave him my version of the incident and apologized. I told him that where I came from you never attacked anyone from behind, and you must defend yourself to avoid being picked on. After a while he said he had talked to all of the teachers and several of the local children who had verified my side of the story. He did not approve of my actions, however justified they were. The other boy had a record of bullying small children and was probably letting the new boy know he was top dog. Then the headmaster said, Welcome to our school and do not worry. I don’t think he will try that again, but please do not punch anyone.

My steps back to the classroom were much lighter. I felt as though a ton of weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I never had another problem and was very popular with my new classmates, but was often teased about my accent which was a lot different from the local Yorkshire brogue.

I was introduced to one of the Atkinsons’ friends whose husband was a farmer named Cirelle. He asked if I would like to help out on the farm. I replied that I had never been on a farm, but I would love to help out. Every afternoon after school and on weekends I would walk to the farm. Cirelle taught me how to milk a cow, but I was never very good at it. I would feed the chickens, collect the eggs, and place the eggs carefully in a basket. I had to search for them because they could be anywhere in the farmyard, in the barn, the loft, or the haystacks. Cirelle filled two big churns with milk, poured them into two containers attached to a wooden shoulder yoke that he carried back to the farmhouse. His wife then poured the milk into a separator, turned the handle that spun the machine, and out came the separated milk, which was used to feed the calves. She then transferred the butterfat to a churn. She operated the churn with a foot pedal which shook the churn up and down so as to solidify the butterfat and remove the rest of the skimmed milk. Taking the butter to a cold table, she used