1950s: Nostalgic for ‘dear old Derby’ from the US of A

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David Patterson came to Derby in the 1950s as a trainee draughtsman at Rolls-Royce. Now living in Lantana, USA, he is still nostalgic about his life in ‘dear old Derby’ as he recalls in this concluding part of his memoirs which we have carried in Bygones this week.

IT wasn’t all work, night school, pubs, and movies, during my time at Rolls-Royce.

I spent many an evening at the Trocadero, the Assembly Rooms (Syd Arkell and his music) and at the Locarno (Ray McVay and his excellent band).

And there was an expresso coffee house, the Boccacio, in one corner of the market place and a pretty good jazz club in a basement somewhere that we used to go to, but I can’t remember where that was.

There was plenty of entertainment to be had in the town. I was rarely bored.

The Peak District was also a big attraction. I did quite a bit of hiking and camping and youth hostelling up around Dovedale, Edale Moor, Kinder Scout, Mam Tor, and Snake Pass, etc.

It is a wonderfully rugged and scenic area and I still have photos of the landscape on the walls of my computer den here in the heart of Texas.

I have lived in the USA for more than 26 years and I still miss that glorious Peak District scenery.

Toward the end of 1963, I began to feel time catching up with me.

I was almost 27, totally unready for marriage, working more or less mandatory overtime two nights a week and weekends, going to Derby Tech three nights a week studying for the first year of the HNC, gradually starving to death from eating too many meals of beans on toast, and wondering about the future.

My chums were falling by the wayside (i.e. getting married) one by one with alarming frequency, and I had become increasingly restless. Drinking Worthington 'E' on my own was not an option. I drank beer strictly for social reasons.

Arriving early one October night in 1966 at Derby Tech, I sat at my desk before class started reading the Derby Evening Telegraph.

As I worked my way through the usual run of motorbike accidents, reports of people committing nuisances in shop doorways, R-R news, etc, I came across an advertisement that immediately seemed to offer a window of escape from my aimless existence. The Bahrain Petroleum Company needed my services – and I needed theirs.

After the usual hiring procedure, I was offered a job and flew out to Bahrain on Valentine’s Day 1964, travelling by DH Comet, powered, of course, by R-R Avon engines.

But it wasn't quite the same job I had applied for. I found myself training to be an oil tanker loading master, which meant I was responsible for inspecting tankers at sea (often far out to sea, in the middle of the night when they were still moving) and loading refined oils on to the massive vessels when they came alongside the wharf – a structure built in deep water at the end of a three-mile causeway and trestle arrangement.

It was a job far different from my work experience at R-R. But that is another story.

As readers may realise from this memoir, I am very nostalgic about my life in dear old Derby.

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