Arabian Son: 21 Stories

Tim Barger’s collection of stories about his years growing up in Aramco are a study in impaired judgment and poor impulse control - yet they are entirely recognizable to any of us who lived in a place where you woke up to the muezzin and went to  lunch at the whistle.

Living in a house very much like this one on 11th Street in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Tim Barger grew up in the 1950s thinking that blinding heat, humidity and howling dust-storms were normal. By seven he had already experienced several locust plagues and was looking forward to the next one.

Arabian Son is a collection of stories about Barger and his friends’ misguided attempts to amuse themselves in an oil camp lean on amenities and devoid of movies and TV. Crawling through hedges frosted with DDT, climbing hundred-foot radio towers, spelunking through a subterranean maze of air conditioning vents, ten-year-olds, they made the most of the world they had.

  Neither they nor their parents had the vaguest idea that Aramco would soon become the anchor of the global petroleum economy. The boys riding their bikes off of rooftops into dense hedges only knew that they were laughing themselves silly. They could not have realized just how soon their Dhahran would recede into the rear-view mirror to vanish into progress.

A Few Excerpts

My second day hanging around the job site, a plasterer took me aside and using some plaster on a shingle swiftly shaped a fish and then deftly transformed it into a bird as if he were some primitive Saudi Picasso.

     Hooky

We were all stunned into silence – for about ten seconds – then we erupted in convulsions of laughter.

     Scott Miller’s Invention

We made our way up the AC ducting to the grill work and could see everybody on the other side raptly watching the movie. All the front row seats were occupied by kids we knew, the reflected light from the screen flickering across them in different colors and shades, the soundtrack blaring. They didn't know that we were there - just 10 feet away.

     Rites of Passage

Then the feature would burst on to that beautiful, big screen and all of us, adults and kids, would step into a world so far away from Dhahran that you couldn’t measure it.

     Dhahran’s Palace of Dreams

The frontal lobe comes up with marvelous ideas like wouldn’t it be fun to ride a skateboard down a steep hill that crosses a busy intersection? Or my favorite that actually happened – wouldn’t it be a kick to grab one of those deadly poisonous sea snakes at Half Moon Bay and handle it until it bit you?

     Think Ahead

Well, the money was for emergencies and being absolutely ignorant we had no idea what “two-drink minimum” meant but behind that beaded curtain was Lana, so we pulled out the cash and were ushered in.

     Looking for Lana

After a few minutes, backlit by the rising sun, a Russian wolfhound comes running down the surf line followed by a tall, beautiful young girl with blonde hair to her waist wearing a yellow bikini. She is gracefully skipping along like a gazelle on helium.

     Walking to Ras Tanura

Somewhat concerned, we approach Milt’s lifeless form sprawled out under the streetlight.

     Kangaroo Bikes

Half a dozen kids were bunched together like a stalk of asparagus with their arms up in the air undulating like a gigantic sea anemone. Strange James was in an air guitar paroxysm and everyone else was just flailing it up.

     The Double-Shot Solution

Find a couple of fluorescent tubes and we would instantly have a dramatic and very brief sword fight that ended in a burst of shattered glass and a faint cloud of super-carcinogenic mist.

     The Rule of Life

ARABIAN SON: 21 Stories

By Tim Barger

E-book: $4.95

Paperback: 142 pages ~ $12.95

ISBN: 978-098820505-5

The Double-Shot Solution

THE DOUBLE -SHOT SOLUTION

     With Lou Reed’s passing and so many people discussing his impact on the contemporary culture of the 60s I can’t help but to remember the first time I ever heard the Velvet Underground. It was in Dhahran when I was 19. This very wonderful but basically quiet girl, I’ll call Sharon, who I had known my whole life finally had convinced her parents to allow a small party for only her college-age friends – as if that was more respectable than the usual horde of returning students. 

     The day before the party she asked me if I would be the bar tender. This was obviously the worst decision possible but I was touched that she thought I was worthy of such a responsibility and of course I was at her service. So the next night I arrived early in a clean shirt, perfectly happy to be a proper bar tender, and she showed me her parents’ bar set-up and put out the ingredients, the shot glass and the glasses.

      Well this wasn’t my first cocktail party but my problem with the previous ones was that after waiting in line, you’d get your one shot and it wasn’t long before you’d have to wait in line again. My insight was that I’d give each drinker a double shot and then I wouldn’t have to see him or her for twice as long. It was a great idea. There were about 30 college-age kids and things were boiling along when some guy came rushing through the front door with the Velvet Underground album, the one with the banana on the cover. “This is so cool.” he says. And it was.

     The Stones LP comes off the record player and the Velvet vinyl starts playing for about the first time in Arabia. The party was already cooking but when the cacophonous Velvets started up, dead pan Nico singing and then Lou Reed began his hypnotic droning that somehow became so urgent, everybody started dancing wilder and chanting lyrics that they had never heard before. By the time that Waiting for the Man started playing the whole room was a writhing bacchanalia of frenzied dancers that quickly crashed when the record finished.

     A new album went on the record player but people seemed listless, worn out, they started to leave and barely three hours later, inexplicably, this party was just about over. An old friend of mine who I’d known since second grade, came up for a drink. I poured her the usual double-shots I’d been serving all night long, when she said, “Do you know that is a double-shot glass?”

     Yikes! I had been pouring quadruple shots. Can’t say if that had something to do with the enthusiasm for the Velvet Underground but it was directly responsible for the short half-life of the party. I closed the bar and fled. The next day Sharon called to thank me for my help. She couldn’t stop talking about the Velvets. To her the party was a fabulous success and thanks to Lou Reed I guess it was.

Hiatus

I've been pretty much a human billiard ball bouncing around doing a variety of projects and have neglected Arabian Son. I've been on hiatus as they say in Hollywood. But for 14 I'm going to spend more time with those memories that started at Half Moon Bay and ended in humid nights dancing like there was no tomorrow - Mafi Bukra.

Here's the links to some of my newer stories at AramcoExpats.com - they are way more competent than I am at presenting these stories properly.

Special Techniques

Abu Hamid

Welcome to Riyadh

Aramco Holiday Bundle

These three classic books chronicle the first ten years of the company that is now Saudi Aramco. From the original negotiations for the concession in 1934, through the difficulties of desert exploration and drilling in a harsh, hostile environment to the elation of discovery - soon to be dampened by World War II and the travails experienced by the hundred Americans that remained in the field. Now available for a limited time only through December 18th.

For details and more information about the Holiday Bundle

First Steps

The Flying Camel with an Aramco stewardess- 1952

It’s amazing how far the attitude towards smoking has changed in 50 years. In the 1950s I remember going with my mother to the doctor and after my exam the two of them smoking like fiends while they discussed my current affliction. On those spectacular New York to Dhahran flights on the Flying Camel or Flying Oryx, once the plane was in the air, a great cocktail party would begin, especially on the departing flights. The cabin would be filled with people in the aisles, sitting on the arm-rests chattering away with each other, drinking and smoking like it was a wild Christmas party in Dhahran.
     Smoking on the plane was always a little close but so acceptable that it was barely noticed. Except for my highly allergenic friend Dave who just resigned himself to being covered with hives by time he got to Shannon airport in Ireland. With the advent of the 707 the Aramco airline shut down and we all flew commercial. So it was about 1963 and Smith and I were flying on BOAC out of Athens back to high school in the States when we witnessed an all-time first in air travel. 

Lockheed Constellation

     Once the plane was airborne the stewardess came on and announced that BOAC had just started a no smoking policy. If you objected to smoking you should switch seats now. And then she said, “For the duration of the flight smoking will only be allowed on the left side of the plane.”

     Smith and I laughed so hard that people started looking at us. “On the left side of the… (fill in your lame joke) became our tagline for the flight. I guess even a child has to crawl before it walks, we were there for baby’s first steps.

Dhahran's Palace of Dreams

Growing up in Dhahran in the 1950s without television and barely radio the movies were everything. Our only link with the outside world. Three movies a week with a rerun on Thursday, as kids we’d go to pretty much anything that was playing. Even if the feature was some unfathomable drama about thwarted love, boundless ambition or existential trauma in 1950s America, we’d go just for the pre-show filler.

     There would always be two cartoons. Glorious big screen, lovingly made animated stories, the likes of which today’s children will never see. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, the incredibly violent Tom and Jerry or Woody Woodpecker, another particularly vicious character whose antics couldn’t be shown these days without a PG-13 restriction. Once in a while Mr. Magoo or Droopy would wander across the screen as marvelously clueless as we were. In the later years we had the pleasure of watching the Road Runner duel Wiley Coyote on the big screen.

Looking for Lana

Since when we were in Fourth grade, we all knew that we would be sent away after Ninth grade to high school - somewhere. By Sixth grade it was an accepted fact of life. By Eighth grade it was in our faces. Some kids welcomed it and others were uncertain about their fate, but we generally agreed that the kids whose parents couldn’t bear to separate with their kids and resigned were doomed as they could never experience the joys of being a returning student.

Now anyone in their right mind would do everything possible to avoid being in Arabia in the summer, but we weren’t even close to being rational at that age. Like almost every Aramco kid, I’d rather have ten root canals in a row than miss out on being a returning student. Many kids went to Rome or Beirut or Switzerland, but I was brainwashed into going to the Benito Mussolini School for destroying social graces in the dying town of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin –a Jesuit boy's school on the edge of Hell. I must admit that there was a certain fascination to going to a school in America. I knew more about Rome and Beirut than I did the USA and thought that it might be interesting to sample the real American lifestyle – mistake number one.

So 1962 I showed up on the banks of the Mississippi with a windbreaker and desert boots. No one told me that it’d be ten below with three feet of fresh snow in a few months. Somehow I acquired a parka, sat on radiators all winter long and was finally released. For some odd reason I flew back by myself though my brother and a couple of friends went to the same correctional facility. I flew into the Rome airport and was wandering around waiting for the next flight when I bumped into the famous Jimmy R. who I had known since before Kindergarten. He was the kid who got caught by his foot upside down in the ficus tree by the swimming pool.