Surfing down the drain

Searching for Alzheimer (story of being human)

CHAPTER ONE ONE

I used to fall asleep in the cupboard under the stairs by buckets of sand labeled FIRE and WATER. Listening to the drone of the Merlin engined Lancasters (my dad later spoke of building their cockpits from wood under the direction of Barnes Wallace at Vickers Armstrong) assembling overhead provided a secure buffer to the reality of fearful parents listening to staccato voices on the radio. Sometimes the monotone prupraprupraprup of doodlebugs would swell in unison before snapping into silence as they began their ballistic dives on London. Spitfires screaming flat out would occasionally catch them and use their wingtips to tip them over. There were barrage balloons flying overhead anchored on lorries across the street as I held my breath waiting for the whompahumph and the waft of dust and cordite. I always have recalled climbing a tree across the road, noticing a body lying at the bottom of the river to the park where I would later learn to swim and celebrating in street parties with flags and brass bands when I was five which allowed my memory to morph into a complete disregard for authority, a fascination with airplanes and a propensity to act like there was no tomorrow.

The 1950 eleven plus exam, a peculiar British concoction used in conjunction with short trousers to determine appropriate educational paths for British youth, took place without me. An untimely move had deprived me of the prerequisite Grammar School ticket to a University education. Bouncing off the walls in technical school, not knowing what I didn’t know, I found myself believing I could build a working model of the pulse jet used to power the now ‘old tech’ of flying bombs. It didn’t work of course. Simply went phfutt, but my meticulous drawings elicited serious adult attention when I presented them in support of mediocre grades to the white coats at Bristol Aero Engines busy building 18 radial engines. An offer of apprenticeship provided the opportunity to move away from home where my dad found it difficult to embrace a son who arrived weeks after Chamberlain declared England at war which also extinguished his dream of soccer stardom. (He wore number five as the primary goal scorer for the Cardinals, the Woking soccer team.

Arriving in Bristol at 15, I could not quite understand why I felt ill at ease among secondary schoolers aspiring to a factory career as it dawned on me that “management” was populated with old school ties sporting beards and jumpers. I started one cold wet day in itchy overalls and whole head ear plugs, my lungs vibrating to the whine of an Olympus Turbine at full military power waiting for the white coats to give me a signal. They charged me with pulling the trigger on a cold gas gun which I had loaded with a chicken which had made the journey from Covent Garden. My adrenalin jumped as the trigger clicked, producing a Whompahumpha that confirmed my successful addition to subphylum vertebrata heaven. Bird ingestion was my first “tech” mind puzzle I thought as I hoofed it back full of excitement to an two assignment in Britain’s premier high altitude test tunnel. Eager to learn, I pondered how a cylinder, rather like a roll of mints, could ignite a supersonic ramjet at twice the speed that Yeager achieved a few years earlier. With a hacksaw in hand and unauthorized questions in my head I produced my own whompahumpha

accompanied with the clanging of metal bells and a fog of Hallon. Ah… that’s how it works… a pyrotechnic mixture triggers a controlled explosion which fires up the Thor ramjet at 10,000 feet. Not a very good question to verify in a bench vise however.

Demoted now to the manometer racks of a test cell for axial compressors which smelled of damp railroad sleepers, I was quick to spot the pressure rising in the first tubes instead of the last. Learning from experience I knew to hold my tongue. An alarmed boffin voice lept from the Tannoy:  “HOW MANY INCHES ON ONE?”… my “MINUS SIX AND FALLING SIR” was completely drowned out by the wumperwappawumpper of a compressor stall. The white coats were running the 

damn thing backwards! Without a shred of culpability on my part I found myself double demoted to the “Rodney Metal Works”.

I enjoyed my two weeks learning the then ‘high tech’ of metal forming until a general strike left us green overalls free to smoke and talk about girls. It was by then, 1958 and we were all male. I was determined to show my smarts this time by producing combustion chambers for Olympus turbine engines at twice the “piece rate” that had funded union workers’ beers and motorcycles. Nobody was impressed. The ‘piece part brigade’ sent me to Coventry where nobody talks to you while pointing to the shirts and jumpers, who pointed to the school ties, who pointed north to Outward Bound. The purpose of this exemplary program, I quickly realized, was to modify undesirable apprentice behavior amongst the ferns and sheep of lake Ullswater.

After five years accruing such valuable experiences my “good old days” came to an end as the heavy authority, slide rules and “I’m alright Jack” attitude that produced the Concord and ‘Beatles’ had failed to successfully graduate me in conformance art. 

Opportunity knocked however in the form of a recruiter wearing a ‘Go Wolverines’ button from Michigan University which prompted Marriage, a visit to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square and, with the assist of a benevolent uncle, occupancy of cabin 206 on the North German LLoyd Bremen sailing for New York. My choice of boat I thought was an appropriate departing gesture.

While gaining 20 pounds at sea I was pleasantly surprised to find I was not alone. The exodus of unappreciated engineers was growing into a tidal wave of ex union jacks as we called ourselves. We were better known as the ‘Brain Drain’ or simply “THE DRAIN”.

I departed England with a profound leg up on my compatriots having learned that the sooner I made a decision the more likely it was that I would be the first to know if it was right or wrong. To my surprise I came to realize that mistakes in the USA (circa 

1960) were considered a measure of creativity. I knew right away that I had made the right decision as I had a proven record of making mistakes.