Going to California

Well I have sort of strayed back into reminiscences about our life on the farm. So back to where I was.

After two weeks of idling away some time, I boarded the train in Boone for the trip to California. The train I took was called the Challenger, the cheapest of the Pullman trains that the railroad operated. It ran on the Chicago Northwestern tracks as far as Omaha, then on Union Pacific tracks to Ogden, Utah and then I believe on Southern Pacific tracks to Los Angeles.

My belongings I carried in two suitcases — the old-fashioned Gladstone bag (which I think I purchased with some gift money before going off the school at Iowa). And another, somewhat larger, suitcase that had sort of metallic outer surface. They were the same suitcases that I had used going to and from school.

I had never been on a Pullman car before so I had to sort of feel my way as to what the procedure was. Three levels of Pullman service were provided with the lower being the Challenger. It also followed I think the slowest schedule. The Challenger and the next level train ran every day both ways but the top flight City of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, etc. ran only three times a week.

Naturally I took the Challenger because it was the cheapest. Actually getting on the other two was more difficult because of military travel at the time.

The Challenger took 2-1/2 or three days to get from Boone to Los Angeles so it was a long trip. Looking out of the windows of the train, I saw aspects of the country that were completely new to me. Long stretches of plains, mountains, sagebrush country, desert, etc. I sort of remember eating in the dining car with the train swaying as it inevitably did but I have no specific recollection. When I at last arrived in Los Angeles, I had the expectation that California would be a green paradise. Of course it wasn’t as August was the dry part of the year and everything was sort of dun-colored.

I arrived of course at the railroad stations in downtown Los Angeles and that left me still at some distance from my destination which was in the Wilmington area (actually Wilmington was part of the gerrymandered city of Los Angeles). I might point out here that when I was offered employment at Shell it was to have been at the Emeryville laboratory in the San Francisco area. Sometime later I was informed to report instead to the Wilmington refinery where Shell Development had a small experimental operation going on. So I had to find my way from downtown Los Angeles to Wilmington.

I assume that I took the ubiquitous “red” train from Los Angeles to Wilmington but now I have no recollection of the trip. Nor do I have much recollection of my first few days in California. I do recall staying in a hotel in Wilmington for a few days. During those days I appeared at the refinery and found out that I was to reimbursed for the cost of my journey. Did I expect that? I don’t know, inexperienced as I was.

Sometime during those first few days I encountered Dwight Johnston (who had been in my class at Iowa and who had also been hired by Shell). He was working for Shell at Wilmington and through him I found a room for rent in San Pedro which I took. San Pedro was south of Wilmington and the Pacific Electric (the “red” train) ran between San Pedro and the refinery which took care of my commute problem.

I had located a place to stay in Wilmington which I abandoned as the room in San Pedro was much more to my liking. I was half a dozen blocks from the red train terminal in San Pedro which ran near the Wilmington refinery so it was convenient transportation for getting to and from work.