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Coming To Live In The New World

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By THELMA de WAAL-THOMPSON

Special to the Tribune

Published: November 23, 2008

In Memory of Emma de Waal, Aug. 17, 1916 - Nov. 16, 2008

Orangeburg, S.C., Friday, Nov. 24, 1950. "Allies Launch Offense" blares the headline on the front page of The Times and Democrat.

In a picture just below, a group of smiling faces surround a turkey dinner.

"First American Thanksgiving," reads the caption beneath the photograph of our family and our sponsors, The Brownings, gathered around the dinner table admiring a large stuffed turkey.

"Too bad the newspaper spelled our name wrong," we later grumbled.

I, my parents, sister Winnie, and our dog Marja arrived in New York City just weeks before after traveling from Rotterdam, Holland, across the Atlantic Ocean on the SS Europa.

Our benefactor, Gus Browning - a well-known character in the radio world - and my dad had a common interest. Both were ham radio operators.

We settled into a second-story garage apartment over the Brownings' home on a farm outside of Orangeburg. The main room - a combination living and dining room - and kitchen with wood stove for heat were sparsely furnished with a large wooden picnic table.

Two small bedrooms came equipped with beds and a small dresser. After a few weeks of work at Gus' radio and television store, my dad bought a sewing machine for mom and an easy chair for himself.

Mom immediately put the Singer to use, sewing a red flowered table cloth with matching bench cushions for the picnic table and curtains for the windows.

My sister and I enrolled at Cordova School, Winnie in fourth grade and me in second not knowing one word of English. But we adapted quickly.

"Repeat after me," my teacher instructed. "Clo-ase tha doah."

We soon spoke the language - and the deep Southern drawl.

The Little Dutch Girls were showered with attention and at a school show, I stood on stage in native dress, cap and wooden shoes reveling in my celebrity while a teacher narrated a story about my home country.

Our new home was foreign to us in every way. Instead of a city with cobblestone streets, we lived on a farm where peanuts grew in the ground, cotton puffed out of spiky plants, and boggy swampland grew thick with vines.

Screaming piglets scrambled through the mud. Chickens, dogs and cats ran about the yard. I witnessed an angry white pit bull shake a puppy to death. Weeks later, I watched horrified as a kitten ran under a car backing out of the driveway.

One afternoon along a dusty farm road, a colorful snake with bands of black, yellow and red slithered across our path. We later found the snake's picture in an encyclopedia: poisonous coral snake.

Still, this did not keep the Browning kids - Joan, Sonny and Sandra - or Winnie and me out of the swamp, where we swung from the vines playing Tarzan.

One evening, we piled into the Brownings' almost-new Packard and drove to a large field with rows and rows of metal posts. Front and center was a large white screen; underneath, a playground with swings, slide and merry-go-round.

We kids ran to a small building selling popcorn, candy and sodas. Coming attractions flashed onto the screen.

A strange apparatus that turned out to be a speaker hung from a partially open car window and when "Cinderella" appeared on the screen, it was pure magic.

The heat and humidity that first summer hit us hard, especially living in an upstairs apartment without air conditioning. I spent dog-day afternoons in my bedroom talking into a fan while it blew hair away from my sweaty face.

As a last resort, I drew a tub of cold water, filled it with bubbles and listened to music on my new prized possession - a portable record player abandoned at the radio shop. I played my favorite singing cowboys, Rex Allen and Roy Rogers, and I quickly learned that taking a bath while playing records can be quite shocking.

Sunday mornings we accompany the Brownings to church. Astounded, I watch as the pastor and a parishioner, a woman dressed in a robe, step into a tub of water.

When he dunks her, the lady chokes and coughs. The choir sings and I leave church with a hauntingly beautiful melody running through my head:

"Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. See on the portal he's waiting and watching, watching for you and for me. Come home, come home. Ye who are weary come home. ..."

The following Sunday I fall in love with another song, "Amazing Grace."

But in the end, the culture shock was too much for mom. South Carolina in the 1950s was not the land of milk and honey she had envisioned.

In the spring of 1952, when my father's radio contact in Colorado agreed to help him open a business, we packed our belongings into an old Hudson and set out for Denver.

This Southern Belle was going to be a cowgirl.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thelma de Waal-Thompson, 65, lives in Tampa with her husband, Ted. She's the mother of three adult children and a grandmother of two. She belongs to a writer's group and enjoys working on her memoirs.

Do You Have a Story to Tell?

I Remember It Well is a feature of the Prime Time page. E-mail submissions to baylife@ tampatrib.com or send typewritten stories by mail to Penny Carnathan, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa FL 33606. Submissions cannot be returned. Please be sure to include a telephone number so that we can reach you.

Tribune researcher Stephanie Pincus contributed to this report.

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