An Accidental Immigrant

By Andrew Sherwood

This book describes the author's accidental and unintended immigration to America. After arriving in the USA, he spent thirty years traveling the globe for a new scientific employer before finally settling down with the love of his life to enjoy a happy and peaceful retirement. Despite an almost total lack of scientific education, he was fascinated by the science and scientists he became involved with, as well as by the sometimes strange and exotic places he found them in. His childhood dream was to travel the world and he certainly did that. If there is a moral to the story, it is simply this: never give up!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Sherwood
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201147754

Andrew Sherwood

Andrew Sherwood, UK native, US resident, spent fifty years traveling the world as an international business manager for advanced technology companies. He was involved in projects that included the Concorde supersonic airliner, the catalytic converter in your car, the clothes you wear, even the money in your wallet. After running cross-country at school Andrew took up the sport again in middle age and has enjoyed almost forty years as a distance runner at local, regional and national levels. He has competed with the Atlanta Track Club team in marathons, long-distance relays and national track meets. Andrew is married, has a thriving bunch of children and grandchildren, and lives in Atlanta, GA.

Book preview

An Accidental Immigrant

by Andrew Sherwood

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1: Bumpy Landings

Chapter 2: World of Tiny Things

Chapter 3: Lessons in Legislation

Chapter 4: Night Train to Benares

Chapter 5: The Golden Quadrilateral

Chapter 6: The Importance of Cooperation

Chapter 7: Across the Sub-Continent

Chapter 8: Realm of Star and Crescent

Chapter 9: Land of the Pharaohs

Chapter 10: Classical Echoes

Chapter 11: Malicious Magpies of Adelaide

Chapter 12: More Sheep than People

Chapter 13: Descendants of the Dragon

Chapter 14: Turmoil in the Orient

Chapter 15: Temple of Wisdom

Chapter 16: Gent Wearing a Suit

Chapter 17: Peninsula Stories

Chapter 18: Nobel Prizewinners and the Pig

Chapter 19: European Interludes

Chapter 20: Path of the Philosophers

Chapter 21: Life’s Little Ups and Downs

Chapter 22: Love from the Land of Smiles

Foreword

This book is the third and final part of my autobiography and describes my accidental and unintended immigration to America, where I have now lived for more than half my life.

My story began with a very sheltered childhood in the UK during and after the Second World War, as described in my first book, A Drift in the Deer Park. It continued with twenty years traveling around Europe, much of that in the countries of the former Sino-Soviet Bloc. That part was described in my second book, Cold War Road Warrior.

After arriving in the USA, I spent thirty years traveling the globe for my new scientific employer before finally settling down with the love of my life to enjoy a happy and peaceful retirement. Despite an almost total lack of scientific education, I was fascinated by the science and scientists I became involved with, as well as by the sometimes strange and exotic places I found them in. My childhood dream was to travel the world and I certainly did that. If there is a moral to the story, it is simply this: never give up!

Along the way I married more than once, fathered three handsome children and now have five at least equally handsome grandchildren. To protect their privacy their lives are mentioned only briefly, but you can be sure that I am immensely proud of them all. This story is principally about the places I saw and the people I met. I hope you will find them as fascinating as I did.

This book is dedicated with love and gratitude to my wife Pen, who has filled my life with so much love and happiness for the past many years. May we share many more!

Chapter 1: Bumpy Landings

Haunt of otters

How unpredictable life is! Arriving in the New World in August 1981, I had absolutely no intention of staying there. My German employers had sent me over on a six-month assignment to set up a subsidiary company in the USA.  I looked forward to the experience but fully intended to go back to Germany at the end of it.

Indeed, so did they! The Veit Company, manufacturers of equipment for the apparel industry, expected that after setting up the subsidiary in Atlanta I would come back to their headquarters in Landsberg, Bavaria to manage international sales. With my German wife Solveig, I planned to buy a plot of land beside one of the beautiful lakes in the nearby Alpine foothills, build a house and settle down. Fate, however, decided otherwise!

We initially landed in Los Angeles, where our US adventure began with a few days of vacation with friends in nearby San Pedro. The friends were Jack, an underwater archeologist - in his words, the perfect job for a committed beach bum - and Jeri, a flight attendant with United Airlines. We enjoyed their cozy little neighborhood, including daily gatherings, drinks in hand, to watch sunset over the Pacific from the tree-shaded park beside Point Fermin lighthouse. Just below the lighthouse our wire-haired dachshund puppy Maxi enjoyed her own moment of fame by appearing on local television riding a surfboard at Cabrillo Beach.

After a couple of days in San Pedro Jack and Jeri took us up the coast for an overnight stay with two teachers, who had left the hustle of Los Angeles for the quiet seaside village of Cayucos set in a sunlit cove. After a delicious home-cooked dinner, our hosts produced a breadboard bearing neatly arranged rows of white powder, handed round small straws and invited everyone to take a sniff. This was our first sight of cocaine and we were wary about experimenting with it. Thankfully another guest, Bob, a marine biologist who became a good friend, sympathized and took us out for drinks in a nearby bar instead.

Next day we continued up the coast and watched sunset over the Pacific while sipping wine in a hot tub on the deck of a rented cabin. We swam in San Simeon Bay in sight of the pseudo-Spanish towers of Hearst Castle looming on a nearby hilltop. The kelp-wreathed bay was a haunt of sea otters; they eagerly surrounded Maxi as she swam with us, diving under and round her repeatedly. At times it was hard to make out her whiskered brown head among theirs. She was about the same size as the otters and clearly enjoyed playing with them, except that to their and her bewilderment she could not follow them underwater.

A Confederate Officer

All too soon it was time to leave the hedonistic environment of California and head to our new home in Atlanta, Georgia. We had chosen Atlanta as the base for the new operation because it was close to many of our customers in the apparel industry, benefited from a welcoming Georgia state government and provided a major transportation hub for both people and cargo. Based on my recommendation, Veit had purchased a modern duplex house overlooking what was then a forest in the suburb of Tucker. The first container of company goods and household effects arrived on our second day there, so we moved in quickly.

Our German colleagues Michael and Elvira Holzapfel with their two Afghan hounds arrived a few days later. They were to continue running the company in Atlanta after we left, so they occupied the larger half of the house while we took the smaller. The finished basement served as office space, while the garage became a warehouse for the company’s electronic steam irons and pressing tables.

Michael was young, blond, athletic and - as some of his colleagues had warned me - ruthlessly ambitious. Nevertheless, he seemed friendly and cooperative at the start and I was glad to help him learn the ropes of doing business in America. Slim, dark-haired Elvira was rather shy with very limited English and seemed totally under the thumb of her ambitious husband. She and Solveig were employed to organize the office. Having a better grasp of English, Solveig handled customer service while Elvira dealt with our German head office.

Our next-door neighbors were a friendly young couple who had recently moved south from Pennsylvania. When they asked us how we were enjoying Atlanta, we told them we were overwhelmed by all the help and hospitality we had received. The couple looked at us a little sourly and said: That’s all right for you. You’re Europeans, you’re interesting. We’re just the dam’ Yankees and nobody invites us anywhere!  Indeed a few months later they moved back to Pennsylvania.

Their point was made clearer when our helpful realtor, the exuberant redhead Jo Steed and her tall, straight-backed husband Jim, both native Southerners, invited us to dinner at their elegant home near Stone Mountain. Then a director of the Georgia Department of Industry & Trade, in his younger days Jim had held the rank of Commander in the US Marines. As you entered the imposing front lobby of his home, you came face to face with a full-length portrait of him in military uniform.

He was not, however, painted as a US Marine but as a Confederate officer. His wife told us that, growing up in Tennessee, she was fourteen before she realized the phrase Dam’ Yankee contains two separate words. We had definitely landed in Dixie!

An alarming Halloween

Our first business venture was exhibiting at Atlanta’s Bobbin Show, the largest textile industry exhibition in the US, held annually in September. Our boss, the tall and very forthright Rolf Schöneberger, whose father was a major shareholder in the company, flew over for the event to see how the new operation was progressing and expressed himself satisfied. He and Holzapfel then flew to New York to appoint a company to represent us in the Northeast, while Solveig and I traveled by car to visit a company in North Carolina. With its owner Jerry, I visited several nearby apparel factories. In comparison to the modern, well-run plants I had seen in Europe, most of these looked run-down, dirty and inefficient.

Over dinner in his handsome log home overlooking a large lake Jerry and I discussed how to introduce our technology to modernize these run-down operations. He seemed capable and enthusiastic, so we appointed him as our distributor covering Virginia and the Carolinas. Later I flew to Texas for a day to interview a potential distributor in Fort Worth, which also proved a good choice. This was my first experience of Texas, where my hosts took me to lunch in a cowboy-themed restaurant serving enormous steaks.

In late October I flew to California to call on prospective West Coast distributors, taking Solveig with me at my expense. The companies we visited were located in dingy garment districts, with atmospheres that were distinctly Mexican in Los Angeles, Chinese in San Francisco. Their customers also appeared shabby compared to their European and Asian competitors. The US apparel industry was clearly in need of modern technology, presenting good opportunities for our business, or so we thought.

After finishing work in Los Angeles, we spent the night of Halloween in a small motel in Santa Monica. As the main building was full, we slept in an annex, in which we seemed to be the only occupants. That night we were kept awake for hours by men shouting and fighting on the flat roof above us and up and down the metal staircase outside our door. They eventually disappeared, leaving us in an uneasy peace. Since the walls were flimsy and the staircase our only escape route, it was a thoroughly alarming experience.

Next day we drove up the Pacific Highway under a layer of dense coastal fog to Santa Barbara for lunch, then over the mountains to spend the night with a customer we had met at the Bobbin Show. He had a spacious ranch home overlooking the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley and gave us an excellent dinner accompanied by excellent local wine, my first taste of Zinfandel.

The following day we continued along the dramatic coast road to Big Sur, where we stopped in a small motel and ate dinner in a rustic wayside diner high above the surf. On Monday we headed to the first of several meetings in the San Francisco area before finding a motel in the funky South of Market district. After a busy day of meetings, we took the cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf where we joined locals watching the sunset while sipping Irish coffee on the quayside. 

Stolen designs

Shortly after our return to Atlanta Holzapfel called on Solveig one evening while I was away on another sales trip. Over the course of a few drinks, they chatted about family and work matters, until to her surprise Holzapfel told her he planned to set up his own business in the USA, manufacturing what he claimed would be improved versions of Veit products under his own name.

Whether he was deliberately trying to impress her or blurted it out by mistake under the influence of alcohol we never knew, but it certainly put us in a quandary. Holzapfel would have denied the story if we had reported it. Moreover, given his much longer connections with the company, they would have probably believed him rather than me, as indeed was to happen. So we decided to say nothing, although it soon became clear that once sober Holzapfel remembered and regretted what he had said.

Almost immediately his attitude towards Solveig and me stopped being friendly and cooperative and rapidly became cold and withdrawn. Up to then he and I as joint vice-presidents had jointly prepared and signed the weekly business report mailed to our head office in Germany, but starting that week he decided to handle it alone and began referring to himself as executive vice-president. In December he announced that he and Elvira would take a vacation in Germany over the holidays and would meet our management to discuss future plans for the business.

These were ominous signs, but Solveig and I decided simply to carry on doing our jobs. The distributors I had appointed were doing well and seemed happy with our support. That is, except for a couple of cases where Holzapfel had gone behind their backs and taken business directly from their customers contrary to our distributorship agreement. This may have been part of a long-term strategy to push me out of the company so that he could prepare his private venture unobserved, but at the time I naively thought he was just muddle-headed.

On his return soon after New Year Holzapfel informed Solveig and me that the company was dissatisfied with our performance. Solveig was asked to resign immediately. I was to be considered on probation and not to undertake further sales trips until our boss Schöneberger arrived later that month to decide future action. I tried to contact Schöneberger but was told to wait for his arrival in person.

When he did arrive a couple of weeks later, it was clear that his mind was fully made up based on whatever false stories Holzapfel had fed to him. He was not willing to listen to my version of events, but simply insisted that I resign and vacate the duplex within a month. We managed to find an apartment and moved out with anger in our hearts and no intention of any further contact with the company.

However, a couple of years later an Atlanta attorney phoned to ask if I would be willing to testify in the case of Veit versus Michael Holzapfel. With a laugh I replied: Don’t tell me Holzapfel has stolen the company’s designs and is competing against them! The attorney confirmed that was indeed the case. The matter was eventually settled out of court and our testimony was never needed, but it was an altogether dirty experience and we were glad to be rid of it.

Drumming on the tin roof

Apart from our problems with Veit, life in Atlanta had proved much more pleasant and convenient than we expected. So rather than go back to Germany we decided to settle down in Georgia. While I hunted for a permanent job, Solveig found temporary work to pay the bills. Jo Steed put her in touch with a cosmetic salon, which gave her part-time work, while Jim Steed’s connections brought her more part-time work at the Atlanta World Trade Club.

With evidence of steady income, we were able to lease an apartment in a pleasant North Atlanta neighborhood. Across the street was shady Blackburn Park, where we walked Maxi and picked baskets of chanterelle mushrooms. The apartment complex looked good from the outside but was rather sloppily built, leading us to become frequent customers of the maintenance supervisor, Estes Wilson.

A large and jovial Georgian native, Estes proved a skilled handyman as well as a kind and generous friend. He welcomed us to the rustic cottage he had built on the side of a mountain near Ellijay, where his wife Lou served up enormous home-cooked breakfasts featuring thick-cut bacon, buttermilk biscuits and red-eye gravy.

Estes allowed us to use his family’s roomy cabin on a quiet arm of Blue Ridge Lake in the nearby Appalachian Mountains on weekends and holidays. The loudest sounds there came from rain drumming on the tin roof, frogs croaking at the edge of the lake or crickets chirping in the undergrowth. We swam in the lake, picked mushrooms in the woods and explored the beautiful surroundings. Estes also lent me his ancient Volkswagen Beetle for commuting to my new job. We remained friends for many years until he sadly passed away.

Itching all over

Luckily, I managed to find a permanent job within a couple of months. Having full-time work qualified me for a mortgage, so we started house-hunting. Jo Steed found us a newly built town house, just fifteen minutes’ drive from my new workplace. We chose it for its quiet surroundings backing on to a mostly empty graveyard as well as its convenient location close to shops and buses.

The house stood on a large corner lot. I spent many evenings and weekends happily digging a vegetable plot and clearing a patch of scrubby woodland at the back of the house. That included pulling up tough green weeds as well as brushwood, which I heaped into a large pile. As I would have done back in England, one windless day in fall I set fire to the pile and stood back ready to keep it under control, unaware that bonfires were not allowed in our county.

A neighbor spotted the smoke and called the fire department; they arrived in minutes and quickly extinguished the fire. Solveig served them coffee and cookies in our kitchen and explained we were just ignorant foreigners, while I kept out of sight in the unfinished basement, which served as our toolshed. The firemen cheerfully thanked her for the refreshments and let us off with a warning.

The tough green weeds, however, exacted a sterner revenge. They were poison ivy, a plant hitherto unknown to me. It was a hot and humid day when I pulled them up, so I removed my shirt and wiped sweaty hands many times over my face and body. The poison took effect within hours, causing me to spend the next two weeks coated with kaolin lotion while itching mightily all over until the impressive rash subsided.

Spoke my language

My search for a job had been highly discouraging at first. There seemed no suitable openings in the area, but I liked Atlanta and did not relish the idea of another long-distance move. One morning, while waiting to be interviewed in a headhunter’s office, I read an article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle by one Michael McDaniel, describing his work as export manager for a local manufacturer of scientific instruments. When I phoned him from the apartment later that day, he invited me to lunch.

We ate in a small Chinese restaurant and had what seemed a very positive discussion. Despite that, I heard no more from him for several weeks and presumed he had lost interest. Then he invited me to another lunch at the same spot, where this time I met his boss, the VP of Marketing. We had another seemingly positive discussion followed by a brief visit to the factory. I was introduced to their President and CEO who grunted at me, but again I heard nothing for weeks and continued trying to find openings elsewhere.

Then quite unexpectedly Mike phoned to ask if I could start work next Monday. I told him we still needed to discuss basic details such as salary, to which he gave an estimate but promised nothing. Having no better alternative in sight, I took the gamble, showed up on Monday and reached agreement on a position as international area manager starting the same day. The salary and benefits were considerably less than I had earned with Veit. On the other hand, the job was back in my familiar field of scientific instruments, while in contrast to Veit my new colleagues seemed honest and above board. They also spoke my language - well, almost!

So, on the first Monday of May, 1982, I joined Micromeritics Instruments as a trainee international area manager. If anyone had told me I would be doing essentially the same job for the next thirty years, I would have been horrified. In fact, those thirty years were to prove the most rewarding of my career and I look back on them with pleasure. At the time I was simply thankful to have a decent job.

As it turned