Crier Profile - Barb and Dave
A double profile this month: Barb & Dave - Swaffham Prior's resident US visitors
B: I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN GLOBE, Arizona, north-east of Phoenix. My parents still live in the house next to where I was raised. We'd been married for a year when we left Globe. It's a small town, maybe 10000 people. It's not small in the way the villages are here. Copper mines, is the industry there, but they've become automated , so the number working there is less. It's the heart of copper country, Arizona. It's about 3500 feet elevation, so it's not in the mountains but it's cooler than Phoenix and Tucson, in the desert.
D: It's really sort of a dusty place. There's really not much grass to mention.
B: It's one of the first things you notice driving up from Heathrow or Gatwick, it's so green!
D: It's very beautiful here. It's hard to go back and look at that.
B: I didn't move as a child; I've moved 12 times in the 25 years since. Because it's a small town, everyone knew I was the minister's daughter. There was a certain expectation of behaviour, that was (or was not) met at any given moment! There are some great stories about things the minister's kids did - I have three brothers... (laughs)
D: ...And they'd be examples in church on the sermon!
B: Yes. we were the examples on the sermon quite often...we were raised in what you would call the vicarage. We called it the Manse. When my dad retired they bought the house next door to where they'd lived for thirty-five years. We usually touch base with family about once a year. The rest of our families are spread all over.
D: I was born in Montana. Very different. There's copper country in Montana
too. That's the common tie here. But when I was five years old we moved to
south America, from '58 to '62. I've always moved since. We went to
Chile, the Atacama desert. Some good copper there. I was about five years old -
it was an adventure. We had to take the train from Montana to New York, and the
trip down to Chile was on a cargo ship with some cabins, and it took 21 days,
stopping at all the little ports, loading and unloading goods. I remember them
loading bananas Šthey would pull up next to our ship in smaller native boats
and they would carry them up by hand, huge loads of bananas. We'd go
through the Panama canal each time, which was exciting. They were starting the
mines and there weren't any roads, so from the port we took a car that was
modified to run on railroad tracks. It would derail, and all the men would have
to get out and lift it back on the tracks. From there to Arizona - our common
starting point! I'm from a mining engineering family - my father was an
engineer too. I deviated from the family path and studied architecture, but now
I'm a project manager.
B: We were both working for the Forest Service, which is a federal program -
fighting forest fires and taking care of camp grounds - that was my side of the
piece. He was out of school by the time I went to work there, I came in as a
summer employee. According to a good friend, he looked out of the window and
saw me and said "That's the girl I'm going to marry".
Actually, the guy that told me, he and I dated for about three months... mine
was just a summer job. I knew I was going back to college 2500 miles away. The
guy I was going out with was just someone to go dancing with on a Friday night,
you know(laughs). But he finally said, you know, you really ought to start
paying for these dates...and I said "Hmm, don't think so. Hey Dave,
d'you want to take me out?" And Dave said yes. So actually I asked him
out. When I went back to college, we would talk on the phone, and by Christmas
we had decided we were too far apart: I would come home, and we got married in
April. Not quite a year! So what did I do about college? I completed two weeks
ago - 25 years. Not the same college. I was doing elementary education in
Illinois. Now I've just finished computer studies. The University of
Maryland (US equivalent to the Open University) didn't offer elementary
education so I had to choose something else.
D: We don't live on base. Some bases have enough room for civilians, but typically not.
B: Even if we were allowed to, we wouldn't choose to.
D: There's not the exposure to the culture that you're living in. It would be sort of pointless, and you don't really get away from work if you live on base. They may move us back in a year or so. My base is in Colorado Springs.
B: It's a temporary contract, for three years. We don't travel very much - we just move!
D: From Globe our first move was to Pinetop, Arizona - I had a full- time job with the Forest service. High in the mountains Šthat was a really beautiful place. About 8600 feet. Lots of snow in winter. But as a firefighter I wasn't using my education. It was an adventure. We had quite a lot of fires - when you're away a lot of the time from family, it's not so adventurous. So I got a job as an architect with the military. We moved to Texas for a couple of years, as civilians. Then I got a job with the Air Force in California, right on the ocean, just north of Santa Barbara, a flower-growing area. The fields of of sweet peas are like the fields of daffodils here but with the mountains behind. Then to ....(Thinks hard) ....Denver! Really an exciting job - to bed down F-16 fighters transferred being from Spain back to the States, when the political climate changed, after Franco. Colorado was good, we spent three years there...
B: But Dave gets itchy feet after about three years.
D: I have a three-year attention span, so...from Colorado my next job was Aviano, Italy.
B: It was supposed to be a sleepy little base...then after two weeks he came home and said "we don't know whether they're going to close this base and we go right back home, or they'll bring the F-16s in here". They gave the okay on the F-16s, and suddenly life got really busy!
D: So that turned into a five-year job.
B: We spent most of our travel time in Italy. We went to France, and Germany,
but we didn't do England that time. I used to say I could do almost anything in
Italy - find something to eat, shop - because Visa's a universal word! And I
could do orthodonture because our oldest had braces and our orthodontist was
Italian. We were the first Americans in his office, and he didn't speak any
English at all. I had to go and translate every week - Urgh! Because we were
the only Americans in our neighbourhood and we were there for five years, we
got to know our neighbours, which was good.
B: After Italy we went to Germany for three years. How was that after Italy? It was cold...
D: Schnitzel and pasta.
B: Beer versus wine...But because we were living near the largest base in Germany, even though we were off the base, the people that surrounded us were all Americans. It was hard to get out and find the culture.
D: Italy had the village markets, which was fun; Germany didn't have that. Christmas markets and things, but it was different...Italian ice cream was good too, Gelato...
B: It was different in Germany because they were still struggling with their economy after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They were happy to have us rent property, but they were worried about people coming and taking jobs, because unemployment was already so high.
D: but we had some good trips, World War Two history - we went to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, and we saw the basement of Hitler's house there, that was all that was left of it. We got to go in there - it was blown up later. And we got to go in part of the bunker system there.
B: But we had to go home after that - the American Government won't allow you to stay abroad longer, so we went back for five years, just south of Denver, but higher up. A good time to take the kids back, with the stages they were at, the little one just starting high school. We thought we would stay there but his attention span was gone, so he needed a new job...
D: But that was an interesting assignment b ecause I manage construction, and even though I was in Colorado, I had projects in Wyoming and Montana, so that was fun! But once my major ones got done, well... (laughs)
B: So this job came up. We checked with Katie, our daughter, because she was halfway through high school, and it can be hard on kids doing a major move at 15-16. But she said no, it was fine. I said - I don't trust this! But it was ok. But was a good time too, because I was looking to go back to college, and it's hard to get out of your life commitments. But when you move, suddenly they all go away! You aren't sitting on the board of the church, you aren't doing all that volunteer work: so it was easy to come over here and start a degree programme. How do we manage friends? We have the christmas card list! And we have a few friends we've kept over the 25 years, but it's probably less than a handful, because we don't see each other. We send christmas cards, and that's about it. But the Air Force makes the world a smaller place. Sometimes we've actually been back stationed with people we knew previously, like those who were having children when we were having our children, in Colorado Springs - so they were back together when they were graduating from school! But friends we started with...there aren't very many.
D: It's a matter of who's going to move first in this industry, really.
B: We still have our house in Colorado Springs, and in a lot of ways I would be happy going back and living in that house another fifty years. But...I don't think he'll be happy doing that!
D: It's hard to say, you know - the moving bug maybe it'll...(trails off)
B: Maybe we'll get a travel trailer, a caravan...(laughs)
D: Time will tell, but actually, it really goes back to the family. Of my dad's family, he was the only one born in the United States. Everybody else was directly from Scotland. So I think there's moving in the blood.
B: That's why the Scottie (points to small black rug-like object sprawled on the floor here).
D: He's from Montana. A Montanan scottish terrier. It adds a whole dimension to moving. Our vet in Colorado springs was trying to figure out how to move the dog. He says, believe it or not, there is a large dog that comes over to the UK once a year, back and forth between two houses - the dog just flies, on his passport. So they knew about doing the blood tests and paperwork. It was real science. But living in England has always been on the list, because Barb's dad as a Presbyterian minister came over to Scotland on a pulpit exchange.
B: He spent about four months, but we didn't get a chance to visit. And there was no language to learn! It has been fun, from the first day we walked out on the patio, Dee was sitting out, and it wasn't "okay, how do I say hello"! What do we have to do before we go back? I've got to go to Norway. I've always wanted to do a cruise and see the fjords, so that has to be done.
D: And we have to get down to Portmouth and see the Victory (Points out his bust of Nelson) So that's on the list. And the Naval Museum in Greenwich, that has to be done.
B: and we have to go to Aberdeen, because that's where the family's from...
D: and we've got to catch Ireland, Wales...Not much to do, then! But I have this book, A Hundred Best Museums...
B:And he's going to check them all off.
D: I probably won't get them all done. There's never a lack of things to do. And you never have to go very far. There's plenty on the list... You know, Denver has a really good art museum, but it's not like you can pick and choose - you've got one in the whole state. There are some galleries but there's just not the classical art in the US. But close by, I don't think there's anything we haven't done...
B: Oh, but we haven't done Strawberry Fair, we haven't done punting on the Cam...
D: And we would like to go to the races. We've walked to the racecourse, but we haven't been to the races! And then the shows - we've only been to a couple...there's no lack of things we can do here.
B: We were told, in briefings on base, that once you get to know the Brits, they're really very nice people but they're a little stand-offish to most Americans when you first arrive...and we thought, actually, we've already had coffee with the neighbours, and we'd been invited to go and see Andrew (Noyes) play some place by the time we'd been given that briefing. So we thought, really? We haven't seen that at all, you know.