When I was 27 years old, I was a senior engineer at an aluminium rolling mill in Birmingham which had been taken over by Kaiser Aluminium of the USA. They were to invest 20 million pounds in a major upgrade of the factory equipment – the equivalent of about £350 million today. This was to include a hot rolling mill able to make huge plates up to 12 ft wide x 10 inches thick x 30 feet long of aircraft grade aluminium alloy for the airliners and various military aircraft of the day. In those days the wings and other highly stressed parts were machined from solid plates of metal to allow complex shapes and avoid the metal fatigue problems that had beset the De Havilland Comet.
A team of 11 young engineering, metallurgy and production managers were chosen, which included me (engineer), to spend a few months in the USA working in 6 Kaiser factories for 2 or 3 weeks at each plant to familiarise ourselves with the Kaiser working and technical practices. We spent time in Washington State, California, Texas, West Virginia, S. Carolina and New York, in that order.
Especially in the Southern States, English people were such a rare sight that Kaiser colleagues wanted us to spend evenings and week-ends at their homes to be shown off to their families. I never refused an invitation. I still have great memories of that time.
One of the things I will never forget was being with a family in S Carolina. We were sitting round their pool on a balmy Saturday having “refreshments” when the lady of the house said to me “are you familiar with shagging back home. If so, you are welcome to join us this evening”. I was mortified and it must have shown. After a cough and splutter and a lot of confusion and embarrassment all was revealed. They explained that the shag was (and perhaps still is), a popular type of dance in some southern states accompanied by swing or jazz music. They were highly amused when I explained the slang meaning of the word back in Britain and the cause for my confusion. It had no such meaning there.
This isn’t one of my jokes – it is absolutely true.
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