Continuation of my opening post:
So, I'm now 9 years old.. Now my dad became totally obsessive about all things JW. He got hold of Rutherfords old books and old records. The hissy American voice boomed continuously out of our old radiogram. Dad took me to one side and explained that if I was a good boy I would live forever. He began to criticise my reading of comic books. He berated me daily for not reading the day’s text. He criticised my friends for what they were and worst of all he hated the way I used to kick up about being forced to attend meetings. He was totally, totally obsessed with the witnesses. It dominated everything. Mentally, it was like having a bucked of cold water thrown over me every day. He talked about absolutely nothing else.
One day, when Leslie called to take us to yet another public talk and this time the Watchtower study too – 2 bloody hours!!– I raised merry hell. This time Leslie fixed me with a stare and said:
“Satan is working through that child”
My mother was devastated. She’d been gradually brain-washed by dubbism but her interest was way lower than Dads. I hadn’t a clue who Satan was so I wasn’t troubled overmuch. Mother was still smoking furiously, Dad was puffing his pipe and smoking cigarettes too as well as spending more and more time with witnesses drinking beer in the Load of Hay public house.
Eventually, the time came for us to attend our first circuit assembly at Epsom Baths. My Dad had decided to be baptised at the assembly on the Saturday morning. Mum had decided to attend the Friday night session with just me as Dad was at work. This being our first assembly, Mum didn’t know the ropes and thought it would be OK to smoke.
Dad was duly baptised and immediately asked for a cigarette. He continued to smoke for over a year afterwards although Mum gave it up immediately after her own baptism at Twickenham in 1955. It was no big deal back then, smoking was something mature persons didn’t do, but Dad hung grimly onto his pipe.
Meanwhile, Dad’s obsession with dubbism got worse and worse. I loathed the whole damn thing with a passion, but now, at 10 years old I was finally beginning to accept the idea that it was me who was at fault and that if Armageddon came anytime soon I wasn’t going to make it. I was going down. I accepted the religion as the truth but loathed it too. All the drip drip drip from my Dad and the 5 meetings a week were slowly writing on the blank canvass of my brain. I was no good.
Eventually Dad gave up smoking and qualified as a Ministerial servant. He was then part of the threesome that then formed a judicial committee. Within 3 years -1958 - he would become a PO of his own congregation. The Feltham congregation of Jehovah's witnesses!
And little old me was meanwhile struggling with early adolescent issues and feeling like a total worm amidst all the goodness that was around me.
Maybe I should get baptised..
It’s now 1957 and things are happening fast!
My mum has now adopted the JW religion as her sole raison d’etre and has become quite militant. Bombastic in fact. Now she’s the one who adopts judgementalism and walks around with the hoity-toity air of a dedicated servant of “The Most High God”(her words). Quite frankly, she becomes a total pain in the neck and passes judgemental comments and criticisms of everyone and everything that isn’t connected to dubbism. She also becomes very, very prissy.
Next, my grandmother joins up! She’s considered as a weak sister because she still enjoys the godspot on TV with all of the hymn singing and all. However around this time it’s announced that there’s going to be an International Assembly at Yankee Stadium New York and grandma wants to go there. What’s more she’s intends to take me along too! On a ship to New York!
Hmm..maybe there is some fun in this religion after all..
Autumn 1957, and we have a family meeting. The 3 of us. Jehovah has blessed Mum & Dad with a gift. A baby is on the way. A new brother or sister for yours truly!
So now as well as a trip to America I’m going to be elder brother to a sibling. I’m delighted.
I’m now out of my primary school and attending Longford Secondary school having flunked my 11+ exam. I’m still A-streamed, much to my astonishment, but a couple of our teachers seem to be ex-military psycho drop-outs so I’m caned on a regular basis for cheek and talking when I should be listening. Caned on the hand, not on my derriere. The teachers know that I’m of JW stock so use this fact to demand that I behave in a more suitable fashion. Very embarrassing.
Now my Dad becomes the PO of Feltham congregation and our house becomes the hub of JW activity. No telephone yet, so folk drop in with their problems whenever they feel like it. It’s the group centre and focal point for the ministry work, something that I hate to take part in, but I know that I have to go door-knocking in order to survive the big A. I remember knocking on one door with my Watchtower in hand and finding it being answered by a class mate. That was good for my street cred!
So many conflicts...I’m a social and lively animal that’s being stifled with this religion. I start to have nightmares, and begin ripping at my finger nails. It’s abuse of the worst sort and my parents haven’t got a clue. If I’m unhappy it’s because I’m not doing enough for the religion!
And then...I have a baby brother, Timothy. He’s a bonny little kid and when he yells at meetings I get to take him out from the meetings in his pram – freedom!
As well as being a bouncing baby, Tim is also a Gift From Jehovah, a Reward For Faithfulness and, just like Abraham, My Dad’s very own Joseph, A Child Granted in Old Age (Dad was only 38 but already painfully patriarchal).
So now I’ve got a brother at last and am looking forward to going to America in just a few weeks.
How fitting it would be if I was to be baptised at The Divine Will Assembly in America!
Or not..
July 15, 1958. Grandma and I take the train to Southampton. There we board the TS Arosa Star and set off for the USA. Although the ship has been chartered by the WTBTS, my grandma has paid extra for a first-class cabin for us both.
The ship is full of JW’s, half of them Brits, the other half German. Many of the Britwits seem very poor, their cabin conditions are appalling and some of the kids seem to have mental health issues. I guess that the ship was just a microcosm of witnesses generally. No matter, I enjoy the voyage hugely and am highly amused by the German brother who takes the days text in the ships lounge while puffing on a cigarette.
Once in New York, we are driven to our accommodation in the heart of the Bronx. The whole place seems to be in a state of disrepair. Grandma has £500 stitched into a secret pocket in her corsets - we were only allowed to take £50 sterling out of the UK back then - and generally spoils me rotten. We attend the assembly for 6 of the 8 days. I’m baptised at Orchard Beach and then grandma whisks me off to Coney Island for an afternoon of fun. That part was great!
Now, at age 13, I’m back in England and back at school. I have a general sense of unease which is compounded by a 14 year old girl in our congregation getting a public reprimand for fornication. My dad actually read out her misdoings while the girl just sat and sobbed. Later my dad told me that he knew something was wrong in the congregation because meeting attendance had slipped, a sure sign that Jehovah’s blessing was being restricted because of wrongdoing.
So now I sit at the meetings noting the attendance in case my own fascination with my developing body was also restricting Jehovah’s blessing and affecting the numbers. Oh dear, such guilt to have heaped on a 13 year old kid!
Now I started to confess to anything I could think of that might be restricting the spirit so as I could receive absolution. I confessed to breaking a fence, putting a cricket ball though a window, driving a motor-scooter under-age and a hundred and one things, just to make sure that I am clean and free from Jehovah’s condemnation. Looking back now I can see how this sort of obsessiveness gets implanted into the psyche of young witnesses and might get so entrenched that it can affect them for the rest of their lives.
My dad became frustrated with my anxiety and started to reprimand me for being anxious! Then he went to the pharmacy and bought me Sanatogen nerve tonic, this, BTW, had also been prescribed to my mother in an attempt to calm her down too.
At age 14 I’m a total mess. I’m preparing all my meetings thoroughly, going out in the ministry twice a week, conducting a home Bible study and taking an active roll in the ministry school. I just can’t be happy with myself no matter what I do.
If only this religion wasn’t The Truth.
Then a few things occur that actually raise my self esteem considerably. I discover a penchant for carpentry and shine brightly in our weekly woodwork day at school. My maths teacher, Mr Hawkes, also takes me under his wing and quickly fills in all the blank spots that I missed 7 years earlier when we first moved to London. I also find that I understand trigonometry with ease. Plus, I’m given permission by our art master Mr. Dyson to take the GCE exam in art at 14 instead of 15 because they think that I’m good enough. I pass!
So now I’m 15, 6 feet 1inch tall and extremely interested in girls. I’ve decided to stay on at school – I could have started work then – and become a fifth-former, studying carpentry, physics and French. My mind is so busy that I don’t experience the profound depression that I endured at 14.
Now things get quite weird. I have a JW friend, Brian, who is nuts about motorcycles and I catch the bug too. Then the 2 of us meet up with a couple of girls in the local chip shop and get invited back to their house. It’s all very innocent. Later we discover that the girls are Pentecostals, so I get cold feet but Brian hangs in there!
As my first term as a fifth-former comes to an end, Dad says that he’s been chatting to "brother" Darnell who is a section leader in a local engineering firm, Elliotts. So says dad, armageddon’s just around the corner, no point in furthering my education, why not go to work and have bro Darnell as my boss? Added to which, every worker in bro Darnell’s section is also a JW, and guess what? They spend their break time studying the day’s Bible text!
So, in January, following many protestations from my school teachers who are concerned about me not completing my education, I start full time work for which I receive the princely sum of five pounds two shillings and sixpence per week. I give my parents £3 per week and keep the rest.
I get to 16 and I’m now allowed to stay out until 9:30. After much nagging I finally convince my parents that I must have a motorcycle and purchase an old BSA 500. I’m still best mates with Brian and we go to the meetings together on our bikes and then sometimes ride out to The Old Manor in Camberley. It was like we switched hats every few hours from JW’s to young desperados. By this time I’ve kissed a few girls –old world girls!–and thrive on the intrigue and romance. Most non-meeting nights we hang out around Bedfont Green chatting to the likes of Terry Bryant whom we envied for his BSA Road Rocket..
But there’s a cloud on the horizon. Dad’s restless, he’s looking for something else and decides we need to move “where the need is great” as a sort of UK missionary and thus please the mighty Jehovah who looked down and saw everything.. Oh dear here we go again..
So. He gives up being Presiding Minister of the Feltham Congregation. Then he resigns as an air-traffic controller and gives up any rights to a pension in return for a 1-off payment of 1 years salary. We are going to live in Yeovil, Somerset in a caravan, on a trailer park!!! Oh boy.
The move was a disaster. It was awful. We were cold, broke, friendless and unemployed much of the time. Mum was ratty as hell, Timothy got ill and the local congregation were like a bunch of territorial savages. I’ve turned 17 and JFK has just been shot. Then, within a few months, Dad receives enlightenment!
We were unhappy because the Watchtower society had originally wanted us to move to Weston super Mare but my parents had preferred the trailer park in Yeovil. We’d not done as Jehovah had wanted and that’s why it wasn’t working out in Yeovil.
So, we were now going to move to Weston super Mare to put things right!
The next weekend we drove up to WSM to check the place out. Mum loved it and so did I. Dad liked it too, so we decided to stay a little longer and visit the local congregation in time for the Watchtower study.
It was the biggest Kingdom hall that I had ever been in and the congregation was almost 200 strong. I sat down with my parents and tried to put on a suitably spiritual air. I glanced to the left of me across the centre aisle and found myself looking into the eyes of the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen in my life..gosh - a real Claudia Cardinale type. Absolutely stunning. Oh boy was she ever going to be trouble...........
