Jo Remembers
- Pipeline
- In Search Of Oil
- Looking Back
Author: Collection
Released 25 September 2007
Bob, Jo, Susan and Bobby - 1959
Photograph Contributed by Bob Waters
Jo Waters proclaimed in a 1987 Christmas newsletter that she was “working towards a black belt in luncheons.” Those who knew Jo know that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
As soon as family housing became available and two years following her husband Bob’s departure to work in Arabia, Jo Waters left the United States in June of 1951 with her two children, Susan and Robert, to begin life in Saudi Arabia.
It was a different world then,” said Jo, who, having served her first presidency of the Abqaiq Women’s Group in the early 1950s, has since regaled many women’s groups with tales of walking down unpaved roads to formal tea parties, wearing a hat, white gloves, and carrying her high-heeled shoes.
Al-Hasa Cookbook Committee
Front Row: Teresa Spray, Jo Waters, Jerry Knurbein
Back Row: 2nd from left, Lois Robertson, 3rd from left, Karen Shepard
Other members included: Jean Coleson, Charlene Cowherd, Jackie Detwiler, Jenny Emery, Edna Green, Kathy Hamlyn, Maggie Norton
(Jo Waters had an) effervescent sense of community (which) encouraged her to accept, at different times, several group presidencies – of the Dhahran Women’s Group, the Abqaiq Art, Craft and Hobby Group, the Abqaiq Players Group, and the Abqaiq Bridge group. Even more memorable in her view, was her work in spearheading the publication of the Al-Hasa Cookbook, of which 10,000 copies are now in print,’ (The Arabian Sun, “Bob (Mr. Workover) Waters Retires to Nevada”, August 19, 1981).
Jo was well known for her rendition of the Stuffed Camel recipe which she shared in the Al-Hasa Cookbook and sold many wall hangings of the recipe at the craft fairs.
Craft Fair - Abqaiq
Photograph contributed by Bob Waters
Jo had many “hobbies” to which she dedicated her time and energy for many years. As an avid Bridge player, Jo organized numerous Marathon Bridge Groups and participated in the Women Club’s activities and leadership. She was particularly talented at craftwork whether making Christmas ornament souvenirs from Arabia, designing programs, or heading up the decorations committee for a host of reunions, celebrations and special events. After retiring from Aramco, she was Chairwoman of the Mesquite Memorial Fund, as well as the Endowment Fund.
The following is an excerpt from The Arabian Sun, “Bob (Mr. Workover) Waters Retires to Nevada”, August 19, 1981:
Jo Waters Remembers
On June 13, 1951, the stenciled pages of the Sun and Flare (as this publication was then named), took note amid the list of birthday, Health Center patients and departees, of the arrival of Mrs. R. G. (Jo) Waters and family. Jo’s introduction to Saudi Arabia was simultaneously a homecoming; her husband, Bob, had come two years earlier on bachelor status as was the custom, until family housing could be provided. Now, 30 years later, a new wave of expatriates has come, many of them curious about that epoch and some have plied Jo Waters with so many questions that a lecture of sorts, based mainly on her recollections of Abqaiq in the fifties, was inevitable, given her memory and the jovial cut of her character.
Jo is at pains to declare that others have been here longer and doubtless have more to tell. She has no wish to assert herself as lecturer or as expert, especially since she was elsewhere during most of the sixties. Still, as her talks to women’s groups unfold from jottings, each time a little differently, it is clear that Jo forges a valuable link with that past.
She can also be funny, as when she tells her “romaine Lettuce” anecdote. “I had been here about a week,” she relates, “when we were invited to a party held after work. When the talk got around to food, I said to the group, ‘Don’t you people ever get anything around here besides romaine lettuce?’ A hushed silence fell over the room, then someone shouted, ‘Romaine lettuce!’, and everyone jumped up and dashed out the door headed for the commissary. “What did I do?” I asked Bob, “What did I say?”
In 1951, much was happening within Aramco. The world’s largest offshore oil field, Safaniya, had just been discovered, the world’s longest pipeline had recently been completed and the 360-mile railroad between Dammam and Riyadh, an Aramco-sponsored project, would be inaugurated before the year was out. Daily production averaged upwards of 800,000 barrels. Saudi Arab employees increased to almost 14,000 and Americans topped off at roughly 3,200.
But the landscape itself remained much as it had been for hundreds of years, open desert, in essence, pastoral. Roads were narrow and for the most part unpaved; traffic, if not Aramco vehicles, was likely to be four legged. The open stalls along the main streets of the fishing villages of al-Khobar and Dammam could not begin to meet the new consumer needs. At times, it seemed that anything you could think of was unavailable or in short supply.
On the other hand, some aspects of life in the camps were quite convenient. “The houses – mostly flat-topped, grassless portables laid out in rows with the telephone in the alley – were furnished right down to crockery and linens,” Jo explains, “so that only personal decorative objects, and of course, clothing, needed to be shipped. But when long leave rolled around after two years,” she goes on, “you had to pack your personal stuff in one room so another family could move in while your were gone.”
Food was a perpetual challenge for the homemaker, and every wife was a full-time homemaker. Powdered milk, mixed with water, lay on top in clumps. Eggs (from Australia about three months old) either floated in a pan of water and had to be discarded for gas content or they sank and might have to be discarded for other reasons.
Fresh fruits and vegetables were a rarity in the earlier years, and when they did arrive, by air from Asmara or trucked from points in the Middle East over dirt roads for several days, they looked, according to Jo, as if they had been dragged behind the truck all the way. Flour wiggled, and in spite of specially fabricated fine mesh sieves, some of the little creatures slipped through. One concerned nurse sent a sample off for analysis and in due course, the report came back. “Don’t worry,” it read, “your flour contains plenty of protein.”
Out-of-Kingdom trips, apart from the dhow to Bahrain, were unheard of and with no place to go, people turned to one another for entertainment. Teas, coffee, even bake sales abounded. Parties materialized on the thinnest of pretexts: Groundhog Day, the second of February, became a day of celebration for reasons no one quite understood or cared to question.
Daytime functions saw women dressed at the height of fashion for San Francisco or New York: hats, high heels and, of course, white gloves. For evening wear, women’s attire frequently was formal, even if the occasion was not.
The standard work uniform for all male employees, office or field, was a khaki shirt and khaki pants. The chairman of the board wore a khaki shirt and khaki pants. For informal evening wear, it was clean khakis, starched in the Ras Tanura laundry, although white shirts cropped up here and there. Formal attire consisted of a white shirt and white duck pants, set off, under certain prescribed conditions, by a cummerbund, sometimes red, but most often black.
Dear Ruth starring Jo Waters
Photograph Contributed by Bob Waters
Many social functions were held out-of-doors, the Thursday night patio dances (to which everyone was invited) being among the most popular. The hit play Dear Ruth, featuring Jo Waters, was presented under the stars on the Abqaiq Tennis court.
“People were more family then,” Jo believes, citing, as an example, expectant mothers who, for lack of full facilities in Ras Tanura and Abqaiq, had to check in, ahead of schedule, at the ‘Mother House,’ a portable at the top of the hill by the Dhahran Health Center. If their timing happened to be off, they could be gone for weeks, but no matter – the kids would be kept and the meals sent in.
That generous spirit proved out for Jo when the family was transferred to Umm ‘Unaiq, a desert outpost located south of ‘Ain Dar, about an hour-and-a-half out of Abqaiq. The camp boasted 12 families but no school and the Waters were obliged to leave their daughter with friends during the week, collecting her on the Thursday grocery run to Abqaiq. Memories of packing frozen foods in the back of a pickup equipped with sand tires but only two-wheel drive, then gunning it across the dunes, still evokes Jo’s hearty laughter. “If you went too slow, you’d get stuck in the sand. If that happened, you’d have very little to eat that week.”
The sweep and magnitude of the changes that have occurred in the Kingdom since Jo’s arrival spurred her to seek photographs that would better illustrate her remarks. Her letter in the annuitant magazine Al-Ayyam Al-Jamila produced a remarkable photo-historical record of the era. Some photographs reflect moments of high drama such as fires, floods and locust invasions, while others bear witness to ordinary places and people such as shopkeepers, workmen and, as agriculture expanded, the door-to-door vendors of provisions. No less appealing are the comments which accompany the letters. One old-timer, here in the forties, told of moments etched on in memory, such as the spectacles of 2,000 camels taking on water at al-Hani, the first watering hole out of Abqaiq, in preparation for the five-day trek to Riyadh. He concludes with this statement: “I met many fine men, Arab and American, and I can truthfully say that period of my life was one of happiness and fulfillment.”
Jo reminds her audience that if history was being made then, so it is today. “If you play it right,” she cheerfully states, “In the year 2011, you might be here telling a new group what it was like back in the good old eighties.”
Before retiring to Nevada, Jo presented the Abqaiq Women's Group with a photo album of the 1940's and 1950's for future generations.