The Neighborhood

Dhahran Diary

Dick Palmer and the author in the front yard at 1049-A. Dick's dad and uncle worked for ARAMCO. Dick left Dhahran before I did. We corresponded and met for an afternoon in Paris. He became a true continental but we lost track of each other along the way. (rcc)

Title: The Neighborhood

DD13

I think we lived in Skunk Hollow, the Flats, or the Sticks. I could never keep it straight. You'd have to ask Steve Furman, who was Dhahran's resident historian youngster. He lived there throughout the early development of Dhahran. The town was unofficially divided into quaint areas depending on geography or house colors. As an example, Easter Egg Row was to the west of Kings Road in the oldest part of camp.

Tenth Street was T-boned by Seventh Street at our house. This was my domain. I patrolled the north end of Seventh Street and Norm Gray had the south end. He lived in the cul-de-sac down there. Between us lived Doug Brice; Dee White; Wally (?); Linda Lee Killian; Bob and Lloyd Hardy; Kay, Terry, and Bruce Landis; Trevlyn and Sherlyn Cruise; Dave Taylor and his sister; Billy Brown; Mike and Brian Kolenda; Cliff, Jerry, and Myrna Johnson; and Sharon and Terry McMullen.

The blocks east of Eighth Street were basically empty when we moved there in February of 1949, so I was able to watch the growth. In the first months, we were the only family. Bare desert and rocky jebel elevated to the east and dropped away to the south.

On my second day in camp, I went to the mail center, about three or four blocks away. I was alone and this was my first test. If this had been Wilmington, I would be looking out for someone to give me a good pounding or at least chase me with that as a threat. I was glad I was a fast runner! The route from my house to the mail center was well established with rock homes and yards with hedges or heavy rock walls. A bunch of kids were playing baseball in Rule Cochran's yard and Steve Furman was sitting on their wall. We said hi and that was the beginning of a long friendship.

Steve Furman was a good representative for ARAMCO kids. He was a natural leader and not interested in causing trouble or being a part of that kind of behavior. Camp management and other adults trusted Steve and he was able to help in many situations where the rest of us did not know the whole story. There was probably a lot of pressure on Steve to do the right thing since he was the first ARAMCO boy in the field. Still, he liked to have a good time, and you could usually find Steve right in the middle of any activity. He liked his independence too.

When Steve went off to school at Campion in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, for all four years of high school, it was a real blow to the community. No student in Dhahran knew a day of their existence in Arabia without Steve Furman's presence.

Starting ninth grade and going through graduation in July of 1953 was almost anticlimactic without Steve to lead the class. He was a returning student and we were all able to rekindle relationships over the summer. (rcc)

Heading over for summer vacation, friends usually tried to get on the same flights. Here Bill Baldwin, DT Gray, the author, and Steve Furman leave the ARAMCO aircraft at Amsterdam. (anon)

As the homes were completed around our portable, we played in the structures and met the new families that fleshed out the neighborhood. Hathaways came and left. Mike and Leann Furman, Steve's cousins, moved in. The Collinses with Betty, Tori, and Billy moved in next to them at 1053-B. Storms, childless, went off to Ireland and came back with adopted twins, Michael and Suzy. Howleys brought Tom, Ann, and Joey. Tedsens moved in with Baird and Douglas (we called him Tuffy). John Horn came, Redmonds moved into 1049-B with Frank and his sister, and we finally moved next door into 1049-A. Halls moved into our old house with Shirley. Also in these three blocks were two apartments of bachelorettes and a family seven unit.

As employees accrued housing points, they qualified for better housing. They lived in portables to start, then moved to better digs later. Management did not start life in Dhahran living in a portable. Norman Hardy, ARAMCO's president, lived down the street. They moved right into their home which was staffed with at least three houseboys. Mr. Hardy and his family had fled the Japanese advance into southeast Asia in December 1941 and had spent time in Venezuela before coming to Dhahran. Mr. Hardy was a quiet gentleman from Brooklyn. He was a good listener, and he used to kid us a lot. He told stories of Brooklyn and would mimic the Brooklyn accent by saying the poiple toikey boid gets the woim. I'd visit in the early evening from time to time. Mr. Hardy would sit in his wing-backed chair, kind of pressed into its corner. He had a soft, leather-tooled briefcase and a bunch of papers on which he would practice written Arabic. He wrote Arabic and sucked on his pipe (Edgeworth tobacco). That's one way he relaxed. He also played catch with us in the yard, showing us how to hold the baseball for a curve and how to release the pitch. Hardys came to Dhahran about the time Les Paul and Mary Ford recorded How High the Moon. They brought the 45 rpm record with them. I loved it and got Bob to play it over and over. One day I came to visit and the record had been misplaced. I suppose I drove everyone nuts wanting to hear that song repeatedly. They were a good family--unpretentious and trustworthy.

Billy Brown became a close friend. He was a good-natured, gentle redhead from Oregon and had some university football gear that everyone wanted. He was also a good student and liked photography. His uncle gave him photographic print paper and chemicals which he taught me to mix and use. This influence and my father's interest in photography as a hobby took me down that road to many satisfying years of pictures and darkrooms. Billy liked science too. He bought a small transmitter and we broadcast from his bedroom to the family radio in the living room. Most families had a big receiver like a Helicrafter to pull in BBC or the Voice of America, our lifeline to news if we wanted to know about breaking stories.

Steve Furman was another good friend. He lived at 1151-B, a stone's throw from the mail center. He was a lefty and the first American boy in Dhahran. By the time I got to Dhahran, he already had three-and-a-half years under his belt. He had a red desk and after we had known each other for a few years, he gave me that desk. It became the center of my world. I kept everything important in it and made models on its big, flat top. I wrote my first story at that desk using my Mom's portable Royal.

Dick Palmer was another friend. He lived a few blocks away, and we used to ring door bells together. He learned to play trombone and gave me an appreciation of music. One night on stage he played a solo, Blue Moon, and brought the house down.

I think most of the families in ARAMCO didn't have much in common except the company. We were of different religions, from different parts of America, and of different socioeconomic plateaus. It took some doing for these individuals to come together into a community. A few never joined, keeping their shades drawn and seldom leaving their houses. But, it was such a small town that no matter how withdrawn someone was, everyone knew the husband as a professional. We knew where he worked, what he did, how he did it, and how he treated those around him. The dinner party was an important social occasion where this kind of information was traded and where people got to know of and about each other.

We did have some things in common. Everyone had two parents in the household. Almost everyone was Caucasian, including a few Europeans. There was ethnic diversity as some parents were Hispanic and others had Native American blood, but there were no African Americans employed on the Senior Staff, as ARAMCO referred to its American population. ARAMCO's Dhahran in 1949 was basically a Caucasian American community surrounded by a fence. This would change, but it would take a few years for the first initiatives to start the Arab community and then other ethnic groups flowing into Dhahran.

We came to accept people sleeping in our yard over the noon hour. Laborers would jump the fence and eat in the shade, then roll over and take a snooze until the whistle warned them it was time to get back to the job. Most Arabs ate dates. They spit out the pits and these were constantly sprouting in the yard, little palm trees. I mowed'em down week after week.

Tedsens lived directly behind us. I used to baby-sit Baird and Tuffy. Somehow all three of us survived. They were good kids and usually went to bed early. I would get them drinks and read a story and finally they would be down and I would go sit on the front stoop of their portable which faced north. There was no fence then and their house was at the bitter edge of a jebel shelf. The Arab police station was just over the rise. One night I was reading the Sun and Flare; it must have been a Wednesday, the day the paper was published. It was getting dark fast and I had the paper close to my face, with my forearms braced on my thighs. Some inner sense told me something unusual was near. I slowly raised the paper, fully expecting to see one of the kids sneaking up on me after slipping out the back door and coming through the side yard. Just a few inches from my toe was a fox! Its tail was as big around as its body and it was stretched out for a sniff. Tension! The sight was too much of a shock. Although I tried to hold still, I must have jerked, because the paper cracked and the fox just disappeared into the dusk. Animals came into camp all the time, probably attracted there by food and water.

I also baby-sat for Storms; he was a geologist. Michael and Suzy were very easy to be around. The family had a phonograph and I played Oooooooo-k! lahoma until I memorized the words. The song made it sound like a beautiful place. Many ARAMCONs were from Oklahoma due to its oil connections. However, I think Storms were from California, since that's where they settled (Walnut Creek).

Rocks were everywhere in my part of town. The dirt street was covered with petroleum and then bladed back and forth with heavy equipment. Rocks and stones were along the curbing. We were always tracking the oily sand into the house. One night after dinner the kids were out on the block playing. Someone had a sling (David's weapon of choice), and we were taking turns chucking rocks down the street. Someone was leaning into the window of an ARAMCO vehicle down at 1053-A about the time one of the bigger kids let fly with a huge rock. It sailed east, down the street in a high arc, and right into the windshield of the vehicle. The pane cracked and caught the stone like a net. Just a few small shards fell inside on the dash. Neither the driver nor the person leaning into the vehicle thought anything about it! They said something like be a little more careful next time. That is a good example of the low-key way life was handled in camp. If that had happened in the States, there would have been hell to pay. But in Dhahran in the late Forties, it was just a little mistake, another detail paid for by ARAMCO.

If something in or around your house didn't work, you called maintenance. They'd trudge out and swap out or repair the problem. A bill never came. Another benefit was Housing. When new furnishings came in, Mom always used her contacts to trade in our old stuff for something new. Sometimes the things they brought could be quite humorous. The humor was frequently cloaked in a piece of furniture which had to be assembled. The crew might put it together several times until Mom thought they had it right. It was a local joke. The laborers had never seen some of these pieces and this led to their unfamiliarity.

The main gate was frequently called to obtain everything from advice about the inter-district bus schedule, to driving conditions, to more personal information such as had so-and-so signed in or out. In the early days personnel signed the clipboard as to time out and destination. If the individual did not sign back in, sometimes a search was conducted. Eventually this idea was dropped. The main gate fielded many calls and frequently your home telephone would ring and someone would say Hello, Main Gate? This is one of the few jokes that was chuckled about in the late Forties and still brought a chuckle in 1983.

We had a land tortoise that was about the size of a ham and egg platter. It's a reach to say the turtle was ours, since it used to show up every few months. I would finish mowing and next was clipping the weeds around the oleanders and at the base of the privet. Every now and then I'd find it among the the privet canes. It had a domed shell and was always pulled in. I'd roll it around a little, wash it off with the hose, and put it in the center of the center of the yard. I'd watch for it to move but there it would sit for hours. Then I'd look out the window and it would be gone. I saw a few big lizards too. After the fence went around the camp, those passages seemed to stop.

Saluki dogs were in the camp a lot. We tried to make them pets, but they would take our handouts and leave. We even tried to tie them, but they always got away. I grew up with a dog in California and wanted one of these desert dogs. Very few people in camp had a dog; I think management was afraid of rabies. There was also the high cost of bringing the family pet from the States. Once the fence surrounded the camp, Security went out and hunted the Salukis down. They were digging under the fence and coming in at night. One afternoon I was on the east jebel and watched Security shoot at them. There were six or eight of them running in a pack. Security maneuvered them into the northeast corner of the perimeter fence. The dogs realized there was no escape there and bolted to the south. The pump-action shotguns were barking and the shell casings flew. The Salukis were so fast, but one fell while the rest got under the fence and fled. It made me sick to watch that animal try to drag itself away before it died.

Many of the blocks had alleyways, including ours. Just behind our house was an electric pole with a transformer and a telephone line beneath. There was a telephone box mounted on the pole; it was free. The telephone numbers were just four digits. When I wanted to talk to someone and I didn't want my parents to hear, I'd go out back. These telephone boxes were all over camp. If you were out and it was too hot to finish walking, you could hop into the alley and call a cab to take you the rest of the way. I think the boxes were enumerated.

Because Dhahran had few streetlights, the night skies were spectacular. There were seldom clouds. After dark, you could lay on the warm sidewalk and stare into a starry sky choked with twinkling bodies. Meteors were almost always in evidence. They produced short little streaks that disappeared quickly. One night I was walking home and a huge one lighted the eastern sky. I looked up and saw the orange tongue with a long trailing tail. It slowly disintegrated, but it was the biggest streamer I ever saw.

One night some kids were camping on the east jebel. They called themselves the GCs for Galloping Cruds. (It was a secret name.) From up there one could see a thin strand of twinkling lights from Manama on Bahrain, and the Dhahran airport was easily distinguished. The watertower had a green and white rotating beacon. This particular night, the group noticed a plane taking off. They watched the progress and they listened to the roar of the engines. The aircraft trundled down the runway, pulled up, rolled over to one side, and crashed in a ball of fire. The person who told me of the incident said the sound of the explosion came after the light of the fireball. I do not recall that this tragedy was published in the Sun and Flare.

When the five o'clock evening whistle blew, the Arabs and contract labor made a mass exodus. They streamed to the main gate and the awaiting buses. By five-thirty the only Arabs left in camp were cab drivers and employees who worked at evening jobs. Most of the cab drivers were from Somalia then. They were very dark and they had tribal scars on their cheeks. One driver told us these designs were done at an early age; ashes were placed in the wound to cause exaggerated scarring.

There were no strangers in our neighborhood. No vagrants, no robbers, no door to door salesmen. There was no postman, no iceman, and no ice cream man. The only thing that went door to door were students soliciting for cakes to raise money for bake sales or just outright donations to help a cause.

Such was life in and around my neighborhood in the early Fifties. It was quiet, secure, and above all, it was not the real world.

END of VOLUME ONE.

Copyright ©1999-2006 Rolf A. Christophersen
All Rights Reserved.

Email


I think we lived in Skunk Hollow, the Flats, or the Sticks. I could never keep it straight. You'd have to ask Steve Furman, who was Dhahran's resident historian youngster. He lived there throughout the early development of Dhahran. The town was unofficially divided into quaint areas depending on geography or house colors. As an example, Easter Egg Row was to the west of Kings Road in the oldest part of camp. Tenth Street was T-boned by Seventh Street at our house. This was my domain. I patrolled the north end of Seventh Street and Norm Gray had the south end. He lived in the cul-de-sac down there. Between us lived Doug Brice; Dee White; Wally (?); Linda Lee Killian; Bob and Lloyd Hardy; Kay, Terry, and Bruce Landis; Trevlyn and Sherlyn Cruise; Dave Taylor and his sister; Billy Brown; Mike and Brian Kolenda; Cliff, Jerry, and Myrna Johnson; and Sharon and Terry McMullen. The blocks east of Eighth Street were basically empty when we moved there in February of 1949, so I was able to watch the growth. In the first months, we were the only family. Bare desert and rocky jebel elevated to the east and dropped away to the south. On my second day in camp, I went to the mail center, about three or four blocks away. I was alone and this was my first test. If this had been Wilmington, I would be looking out for someone to give me a good pounding or at least chase me with that as a threat. I was glad I was a fast runner! The route from my house to the mail center was well established with rock homes and yards with hedges or heavy rock walls. A bunch of kids were playing baseball in Rule Cochran's yard and Steve Furman was sitting on their wall. We said hi and that was the beginning of a long friendship.
	Steve Furman was a good representative for ARAMCO kids. He was a natural leader and not interested in causing trouble or being a part of that kind of behavior. Camp management and other adults trusted Steve and he was able to help in many situations where the rest of us did not know the whole story. There was probably a lot of pressure on Steve to do the right thing since he was the first ARAMCO boy in the field. Still, he liked to have a good time, and you could usually find Steve right in the middle of any activity. He liked his independence too. When Steve went off to school at Campion in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, for all four years of high school, it was a real blow to the community. No student in Dhahran knew a day of their existence in Arabia without Steve Furman's presence. Starting ninth grade and going through graduation in July of 1953 was almost anticlimactic without Steve to lead the class. He was a returning student and we were all able to rekindle relationships over the summer. (rcc)

		Heading over for summer vacation, friends usually tried to get on the same flights. Here Bill Baldwin, DT Gray, the author, and Steve Furman leave the ARAMCO aircraft at Amsterdam. (anon)
As the homes were completed around our portable, we played in the structures and met the new families that fleshed out the neighborhood. Hathaways came and left. Mike and Leann Furman, Steve's cousins, moved in. The Collinses with Betty, Tori, and Billy moved in next to them at 1053-B. Storms, childless, went off to Ireland and came back with adopted twins, Michael and Suzy. Howleys brought Tom, Ann, and Joey. Tedsens moved in with Baird and Douglas (we called him Tuffy). John Horn came, Redmonds moved into 1049-B with Frank and his sister, and we finally moved next door into 1049-A. Halls moved into our old house with Shirley. Also in these three blocks were two apartments of bachelorettes and a family seven unit. As employees accrued housing points, they qualified for better housing. They lived in portables to start, then moved to better digs later. Management did not start life in Dhahran living in a portable. Norman Hardy, ARAMCO's president, lived down the street. They moved right into their home which was staffed with at least three houseboys. Mr. Hardy and his family had fled the Japanese advance into southeast Asia in December 1941 and had spent time in Venezuela before coming to Dhahran. Mr. Hardy was a quiet gentleman from Brooklyn. He was a good listener, and he used to kid us a lot. He told stories of Brooklyn and would mimic the Brooklyn accent by saying the poiple toikey boid gets the woim. I'd visit in the early evening from time to time. Mr. Hardy would sit in his wing-backed chair, kind of pressed into its corner. He had a soft, leather-tooled briefcase and a bunch of papers on which he would practice written Arabic. He wrote Arabic and sucked on his pipe (Edgeworth tobacco). That's one way he relaxed. He also played catch with us in the yard, showing us how to hold the baseball for a curve and how to release the pitch. Hardys came to Dhahran about the time Les Paul and Mary Ford recorded How High the Moon. They brought the 45 rpm record with them. I loved it and got Bob to play it over and over. One day I came to visit and the record had been misplaced. I suppose I drove everyone nuts wanting to hear that song repeatedly. They were a good family--unpretentious and trustworthy. Billy Brown became a close friend. He was a good-natured, gentle redhead from Oregon and had some university football gear that everyone wanted. He was also a good student and liked photography. His uncle gave him photographic print paper and chemicals which he taught me to mix and use. This influence and my father's interest in photography as a hobby took me down that road to many satisfying years of pictures and darkrooms. Billy liked science too. He bought a small transmitter and we broadcast from his bedroom to the family radio in the living room. Most families had a big receiver like a Helicrafter to pull in BBC or the Voice of America, our lifeline to news if we wanted to know about breaking stories. Steve Furman was another good friend. He lived at 1151-B, a stone's throw from the mail center. He was a lefty and the first American boy in Dhahran. By the time I got to Dhahran, he already had three-and-a-half years under his belt. He had a red desk and after we had known each other for a few years, he gave me that desk. It became the center of my world. I kept everything important in it and made models on its big, flat top. I wrote my first story at that desk using my Mom's portable Royal. Dick Palmer was another friend. He lived a few blocks away, and we used to ring door bells together. He learned to play trombone and gave me an appreciation of music. One night on stage he played a solo, Blue Moon, and brought the house down. I think most of the families in ARAMCO didn't have much in common except the company. We were of different religions, from different parts of America, and of different socioeconomic plateaus. It took some doing for these individuals to come together into a community. A few never joined, keeping their shades drawn and seldom leaving their houses. But, it was such a small town that no matter how withdrawn someone was, everyone knew the husband as a professional. We knew where he worked, what he did, how he did it, and how he treated those around him. The dinner party was an important social occasion where this kind of information was traded and where people got to know of and about each other. We did have some things in common. Everyone had two parents in the household. Almost everyone was Caucasian, including a few Europeans. There was ethnic diversity as some parents were Hispanic and others had Native American blood, but there were no African Americans employed on the Senior Staff, as ARAMCO referred to its American population. ARAMCO's Dhahran in 1949 was basically a Caucasian American community surrounded by a fence. This would change, but it would take a few years for the first initiatives to start the Arab community and then other ethnic groups flowing into Dhahran. We came to accept people sleeping in our yard over the noon hour. Laborers would jump the fence and eat in the shade, then roll over and take a snooze until the whistle warned them it was time to get back to the job. Most Arabs ate dates. They spit out the pits and these were constantly sprouting in the yard, little palm trees. I mowed'em down week after week. Tedsens lived directly behind us. I used to baby-sit Baird and Tuffy. Somehow all three of us survived. They were good kids and usually went to bed early. I would get them drinks and read a story and finally they would be down and I would go sit on the front stoop of their portable which faced north. There was no fence then and their house was at the bitter edge of a jebel shelf. The Arab police station was just over the rise. One night I was reading the Sun and Flare; it must have been a Wednesday, the day the paper was published. It was getting dark fast and I had the paper close to my face, with my forearms braced on my thighs. Some inner sense told me something unusual was near. I slowly raised the paper, fully expecting to see one of the kids sneaking up on me after slipping out the back door and coming through the side yard. Just a few inches from my toe was a fox! Its tail was as big around as its body and it was stretched out for a sniff. Tension! The sight was too much of a shock. Although I tried to hold still, I must have jerked, because the paper cracked and the fox just disappeared into the dusk. Animals came into camp all the time, probably attracted there by food and water. I also baby-sat for Storms; he was a geologist. Michael and Suzy were very easy to be around. The family had a phonograph and I played Oooooooo-k! lahoma until I memorized the words. The song made it sound like a beautiful place. Many ARAMCONs were from Oklahoma due to its oil connections. However, I think Storms were from California, since that's where they settled (Walnut Creek). Rocks were everywhere in my part of town. The dirt street was covered with petroleum and then bladed back and forth with heavy equipment. Rocks and stones were along the curbing. We were always tracking the oily sand into the house. One night after dinner the kids were out on the block playing. Someone had a sling (David's weapon of choice), and we were taking turns chucking rocks down the street. Someone was leaning into the window of an ARAMCO vehicle down at 1053-A about the time one of the bigger kids let fly with a huge rock. It sailed east, down the street in a high arc, and right into the windshield of the vehicle. The pane cracked and caught the stone like a net. Just a few small shards fell inside on the dash. Neither the driver nor the person leaning into the vehicle thought anything about it! They said something like be a little more careful next time. That is a good example of the low-key way life was handled in camp. If that had happened in the States, there would have been hell to pay. But in Dhahran in the late Forties, it was just a little mistake, another detail paid for by ARAMCO. If something in or around your house didn't work, you called maintenance. They'd trudge out and swap out or repair the problem. A bill never came. Another benefit was Housing. When new furnishings came in, Mom always used her contacts to trade in our old stuff for something new. Sometimes the things they brought could be quite humorous. The humor was frequently cloaked in a piece of furniture which had to be assembled. The crew might put it together several times until Mom thought they had it right. It was a local joke. The laborers had never seen some of these pieces and this led to their unfamiliarity. The main gate was frequently called to obtain everything from advice about the inter-district bus schedule, to driving conditions, to more personal information such as had so-and-so signed in or out. In the early days personnel signed the clipboard as to time out and destination. If the individual did not sign back in, sometimes a search was conducted. Eventually this idea was dropped. The main gate fielded many calls and frequently your home telephone would ring and someone would say Hello, Main Gate? This is one of the few jokes that was chuckled about in the late Forties and still brought a chuckle in 1983. We had a land tortoise that was about the size of a ham and egg platter. It's a reach to say the turtle was ours, since it used to show up every few months. I would finish mowing and next was clipping the weeds around the oleanders and at the base of the privet. Every now and then I'd find it among the the privet canes. It had a domed shell and was always pulled in. I'd roll it around a little, wash it off with the hose, and put it in the center of the center of the yard. I'd watch for it to move but there it would sit for hours. Then I'd look out the window and it would be gone. I saw a few big lizards too. After the fence went around the camp, those passages seemed to stop. Saluki dogs were in the camp a lot. We tried to make them pets, but they would take our handouts and leave. We even tried to tie them, but they always got away. I grew up with a dog in California and wanted one of these desert dogs. Very few people in camp had a dog; I think management was afraid of rabies. There was also the high cost of bringing the family pet from the States. Once the fence surrounded the camp, Security went out and hunted the Salukis down. They were digging under the fence and coming in at night. One afternoon I was on the east jebel and watched Security shoot at them. There were six or eight of them running in a pack. Security maneuvered them into the northeast corner of the perimeter fence. The dogs realized there was no escape there and bolted to the south. The pump-action shotguns were barking and the shell casings flew. The Salukis were so fast, but one fell while the rest got under the fence and fled. It made me sick to watch that animal try to drag itself away before it died. Many of the blocks had alleyways, including ours. Just behind our house was an electric pole with a transformer and a telephone line beneath. There was a telephone box mounted on the pole; it was free. The telephone numbers were just four digits. When I wanted to talk to someone and I didn't want my parents to hear, I'd go out back. These telephone boxes were all over camp. If you were out and it was too hot to finish walking, you could hop into the alley and call a cab to take you the rest of the way. I think the boxes were enumerated. Because Dhahran had few streetlights, the night skies were spectacular. There were seldom clouds. After dark, you could lay on the warm sidewalk and stare into a starry sky choked with twinkling bodies. Meteors were almost always in evidence. They produced short little streaks that disappeared quickly. One night I was walking home and a huge one lighted the eastern sky. I looked up and saw the orange tongue with a long trailing tail. It slowly disintegrated, but it was the biggest streamer I ever saw. One night some kids were camping on the east jebel. They called themselves the GCs for Galloping Cruds. (It was a secret name.) From up there one could see a thin strand of twinkling lights from Manama on Bahrain, and the Dhahran airport was easily distinguished. The watertower had a green and white rotating beacon. This particular night, the group noticed a plane taking off. They watched the progress and they listened to the roar of the engines. The aircraft trundled down the runway, pulled up, rolled over to one side, and crashed in a ball of fire. The person who told me of the incident said the sound of the explosion came after the light of the fireball. I do not recall that this tragedy was published in the Sun and Flare. When the five o'clock evening whistle blew, the Arabs and contract labor made a mass exodus. They streamed to the main gate and the awaiting buses. By five-thirty the only Arabs left in camp were cab drivers and employees who worked at evening jobs. Most of the cab drivers were from Somalia then. They were very dark and they had tribal scars on their cheeks. One driver told us these designs were done at an early age; ashes were placed in the wound to cause exaggerated scarring. There were no strangers in our neighborhood. No vagrants, no robbers, no door to door salesmen. There was no postman, no iceman, and no ice cream man. The only thing that went door to door were students soliciting for cakes to raise money for bake sales or just outright donations to help a cause. Such was life in and around my neighborhood in the early Fifties. It was quiet, secure, and above all, it was not the real world. END of VOLUME ONE.
		Copyright ©1999-2006 Rolf A. Christophersen All Rights Reserved. Email