When I was hired by Shell while I was still in school the salary offered was $160/month. Even before I started to work I was notified that the pay would be $170/month and at the end of the year it was increased to $185/month. I can see myself even now seated at the desk in the analytical lab after the end of the graveyard shift, getting the call from Bob Cole, who was in charge of the Wilmington group, about the increase in pay. It wasn’t too long after that that the six-day work week went into effect which meant another day’s pay each week at time and a half.
At the end of my first year of employment I was permitted to enroll in Shell’s Provident Fund. Under the plan an employee could contribute 10% of his pay and the company would match the contribution. Since I was of modest spending habits as the result of my upbringing and further because of the limited opportunities for spending money under the wartime conditions, I was soon saving $56.25 in savings bonds each month plus 20% of my salary which I suppose was upwards of 40% of my pay.
By the end of the year I had accumulated enough so that I could have purchase 40 acres of land in Iowa which I thought would be enough for me as a single person to live on. I don’t know how seriously I considered this possibility but it did cross my mind. Had I pursued this course and bought the 40 acres that Annie and Will Lines owned (a logical alternative assuming that it was available). I suppose that I would have ended up eventually taking over the Peterson farm entirely.
I kept the savings bonds for a long time — in fact some of them were included in the HH/H bonds that they were converted to and that Jean and I owned until they were redeemed by the government. What I should have done of course at the end of the war was to cash them in and invest the proceeds in common stocks. But I was ill-prepared by training and experience to have the vision and foresight that would have led to such a decision. Actually it was not until after Jean and I were married that we made our first stock purchase (long since sold). It was fittingly enough from my background — Corn Products.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
Leisure Time
When I lived in San Pedro, the Palos Verdes hills behind it were completely undeveloped. During the war they were simply open grassland and I don’t think they were used for anything. Before the war they had been used by the Japanese for dry land vegetable farming, but that of course ceased when the Japanese were interned. Since then the hills have been covered with residential developments. The road along the coast leaving San Pedro, rounding Point Fermin and ending up in Palos Verdes Estates, now passes such places as the Wayfarer’s Chapel, Marineland, and of course many houses.
During the first months I lived in San Pedro, the five-day week was still in effect and many a time on a weekend afternoon I would walk out to Cabrillo Beach near to Point Fermin. Growing up in the land-locked Midwest as I had, I was entranced by the beach and the ocean. I still am for that matter.
Another Saturday activity was to attend the double feature movie at a small theater not too distant from where I was rooming. Here it was that I became acquainted and enjoyed the Boston Blackie movies (which were the second half of the double bill). Other movies that I saw there that have stuck in my mind are “Laura” with Clifton Webb and Gene Tierney and “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby. The latter was certainly a producer of nostalgia in me for a clime far different from the southern California scene.
I remember a few other spots that were familiar to me at the time such as the Thrifty drug store which had a lunch and dinner counter. Here it was that Dwight Johnston and I had numerous dinners together on the way home from work. Oddly enough it kept operating all during the war when getting meat was difficult but ceased operation shortly after the war stopped.
I have been back to San Pedro a few times since I left in the fall of 1946. Once was after I was married and Jean and I had at least the older two of our daughters — I remember we took them to Marineland for the show with dolphins etc.
Another restaurant that I remember well was just outside the gate to the Wilmington refinery. Many times as an analyst or pilot plant operator on the graveyard shift I would stop there for breakfast. There were several pinball machines in the restaurant and these would be quite often used by the office staff from the Richfield refinery just across the road from Shell while I would be having breakfast. These characters were real addicts and had the technique of bumping the machine to direct the pinball without having the machine register a tilt down to a T. Although legally the machines could only pay off in free games, I think the restaurant paid these players off in cash. I tried the machines a few times but I was not nearly as successful as the Richfield personnel.
During the first months I lived in San Pedro, the five-day week was still in effect and many a time on a weekend afternoon I would walk out to Cabrillo Beach near to Point Fermin. Growing up in the land-locked Midwest as I had, I was entranced by the beach and the ocean. I still am for that matter.
Another Saturday activity was to attend the double feature movie at a small theater not too distant from where I was rooming. Here it was that I became acquainted and enjoyed the Boston Blackie movies (which were the second half of the double bill). Other movies that I saw there that have stuck in my mind are “Laura” with Clifton Webb and Gene Tierney and “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby. The latter was certainly a producer of nostalgia in me for a clime far different from the southern California scene.
I remember a few other spots that were familiar to me at the time such as the Thrifty drug store which had a lunch and dinner counter. Here it was that Dwight Johnston and I had numerous dinners together on the way home from work. Oddly enough it kept operating all during the war when getting meat was difficult but ceased operation shortly after the war stopped.
I have been back to San Pedro a few times since I left in the fall of 1946. Once was after I was married and Jean and I had at least the older two of our daughters — I remember we took them to Marineland for the show with dolphins etc.
Another restaurant that I remember well was just outside the gate to the Wilmington refinery. Many times as an analyst or pilot plant operator on the graveyard shift I would stop there for breakfast. There were several pinball machines in the restaurant and these would be quite often used by the office staff from the Richfield refinery just across the road from Shell while I would be having breakfast. These characters were real addicts and had the technique of bumping the machine to direct the pinball without having the machine register a tilt down to a T. Although legally the machines could only pay off in free games, I think the restaurant paid these players off in cash. I tried the machines a few times but I was not nearly as successful as the Richfield personnel.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
The Johnsons and the Wellingtons
I had some contact with the Johnsons after I left San Pedro. I think there was an exchange of Christmas cards for a few years, which eventually dwindled and then stopped. Once, a few years after I had left, I was in the Los Angeles area for some reason, maybe a technical meeting, I went down to San Pedro and visited them briefly. They had moved out of their home and were living in an apartment. Mr. Johnson was still alive but I believe he was more or less bed-ridden. Later on I found out in some way that their son-in-law had returned as pastor for the congregation. Whether he remained, or for how long, I don’t know but I seem to have heard that he died not long after. He was a large, rather overweight man, so he was a candidate for an early demise.
Mrs. Johnson in a way lives on in my life since we named our second daughter Palma. That she was given that name was only partly due to Mrs. Johnson having that name but when I hear Palma’s name it often generates thoughts of Mrs. Johnson in me.
The Wellingtons dropped out of my life after they transferred back to Manhattan, Kansas. They surfaced briefly several years ago when my brother Verner chanced to encounter Maynard at some church meeting and for some reason the conversation between them turned up the acquaintance between me and Wellington. There were a few letters between us, and perhaps a few Christmas cards, but these presently ceased.
I have tried to recall what Mrs. Wellington’s first name was but with my poor memory for names I haven’t succeeded. I remember them with a feeling of appreciation for the company they gave me in that period of my life when I was in a new and strange place with no persons that I had known before to provide social contact.
They were [two] of the few people I’ve run into in my life who gave names to their family cars. When I first knew them they had a coupe, dubbed Eloise — I think it was a Chrysler product. Later they traded for a secondhand Ford sedan, a pre-war car but in good condition. This they named Henrietta and indeed it was a comparatively lively sort of car. After the war was over he bought one of the new-styled Studebakers. It was green in color and it became the Green Hornet. When he traded it in for a new blue Studebaker, that one became the Blue-Tail Fly. I wonder if that name didn’t originate with Betty Guthrie, Hugh’s wife, who was from the south.
Mrs. Johnson in a way lives on in my life since we named our second daughter Palma. That she was given that name was only partly due to Mrs. Johnson having that name but when I hear Palma’s name it often generates thoughts of Mrs. Johnson in me.
The Wellingtons dropped out of my life after they transferred back to Manhattan, Kansas. They surfaced briefly several years ago when my brother Verner chanced to encounter Maynard at some church meeting and for some reason the conversation between them turned up the acquaintance between me and Wellington. There were a few letters between us, and perhaps a few Christmas cards, but these presently ceased.
I have tried to recall what Mrs. Wellington’s first name was but with my poor memory for names I haven’t succeeded. I remember them with a feeling of appreciation for the company they gave me in that period of my life when I was in a new and strange place with no persons that I had known before to provide social contact.
They were [two] of the few people I’ve run into in my life who gave names to their family cars. When I first knew them they had a coupe, dubbed Eloise — I think it was a Chrysler product. Later they traded for a secondhand Ford sedan, a pre-war car but in good condition. This they named Henrietta and indeed it was a comparatively lively sort of car. After the war was over he bought one of the new-styled Studebakers. It was green in color and it became the Green Hornet. When he traded it in for a new blue Studebaker, that one became the Blue-Tail Fly. I wonder if that name didn’t originate with Betty Guthrie, Hugh’s wife, who was from the south.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Pastors and Religious Politics
Quite early after I arrived in San Pedro I started to attend a small mission congregation — it happened to be on the way between where I was rooming at the time and the Pacific Electric station, There were two Lutheran churches in San Pedro and I remember looking them over from the outside before I joined the mission congregation. I suppose it was because it was in the Augustana Synod that I made the choice I did.
The other congregation was Norwegian Lutheran. I’m sure that had I chosen the latter that I would have been less involved in church activities. One factor for the choice I made was that the minister at the Norwegian church was an older more aloof person and the church was better off financially so there wasn’t the urge there to acquire new members.
At the mission congregation (called that because it needed support from the church at large to continue existing) the pastor was Maynard Wellington and I became good friends with him and his wife. I became involved in the church activities, being at time a teacher in the Sunday school, deacon, usher, and what have you. I attended the Luther League as well as the Sunday services. I guess I spent early Christmases and Thanksgivings with the Wellingtons and I recall going to Knott’s Berry Farm (for their chicken dinners) with them. The two of them were transplants from the Midwest and I think I felt a little far from home out in the west.
The maintenance financially and otherwise was a struggle. The situation was not helped buy the fact that preceding Wellington the pastor had been one Lester Peterson. He was there as an intern in his seminary training and had become very popular with the members although he was to me a rather unattractive individual. He was supposed to stay only one year but actually stayed two in order to court and marry the Johnsons’ only daughter. So there were family ties as well.
So the Wellingtons had a difficult time of it and when the war was over, or nearing its end, they accepted a call to a congregation back in Kansas. By then their oldest child, a girl, had been born.
When it became necessary to arrange for a new pastor, the feeling in the congregation was strongly in favor of calling Lester Peterson but this was in conflict with the rules prescribed by the mission board, which were to the effect that the new pastor have no ties, family-wise, in the congregation. Somehow or other the mission board came up with the idea that they would accept Peterson as the pastor if he were called unanimously. This would have been all right except that they then proceeded to arrange that the vote would not be unanimous. Two people were to vote negative, one of them being me. I went along with the scheme, I suppose at the suggestion or urging of Wellington.
As it turned out the other individual who was to vote no didn’t show up so I was the only no vote. Several votes were taken, and I surmise as there were only a few members at the meeting (after all the congregation was small and meetings such as this were not well attended) that those present soon sensed who was voting no. Mrs. Johnson who was my landlady at the time was really hurt in her feelings to me by what she decided I had done, though later her composure returned to its normal tenor. As a consequence, Peterson was not called to be the pastor.
The whole procedure, in retrospect, left a very unsatisfactory opinion in me of church officials at an administrative level, and it was sort of a black mark even against Wellington whom I had rather liked and respected. I didn’t think much about it at the time but it was yet another development in my attitude toward the church and to officials in it whether they were pastors or higher-up officials.
With the passage of time, it served to emphasize in me a complete distrust in what persons in the religious field do or say. The excuse is doubtless that they are only human and make mistakes but that part of what they say remains untouched by human frailty. I’m afraid that to me all they do and say if touched not only by human frailty, but also by a subtle form of personal egotism that they have the correct picture of the cosmos and the human condition. Since then I have not seen anything in the conduct of church personnel to counteract this opinion on my part, which has only strengthened with time.
I think the Wellingtons left San Pedro about the beginning of the summer of 1946 and that summer the church was served by a student pastor by the name of Roderick Johnson. Since he was approximately my age I had some contact with him outside of church doings — a nice enough person but at the end of the summer he passed out of my life forever.
The replacement pastor came at the end of the summer and he was really a sad case. He was physically unprepossessing (his facial expression was heavy-lidded and ostentatiously pious). He tended to be on the fundamentalistic side which for me was an increasingly negative characteristic. Since I left for the San Francisco area later that year, I did not have a long period of contact with him, happily.
The other congregation was Norwegian Lutheran. I’m sure that had I chosen the latter that I would have been less involved in church activities. One factor for the choice I made was that the minister at the Norwegian church was an older more aloof person and the church was better off financially so there wasn’t the urge there to acquire new members.
At the mission congregation (called that because it needed support from the church at large to continue existing) the pastor was Maynard Wellington and I became good friends with him and his wife. I became involved in the church activities, being at time a teacher in the Sunday school, deacon, usher, and what have you. I attended the Luther League as well as the Sunday services. I guess I spent early Christmases and Thanksgivings with the Wellingtons and I recall going to Knott’s Berry Farm (for their chicken dinners) with them. The two of them were transplants from the Midwest and I think I felt a little far from home out in the west.
The maintenance financially and otherwise was a struggle. The situation was not helped buy the fact that preceding Wellington the pastor had been one Lester Peterson. He was there as an intern in his seminary training and had become very popular with the members although he was to me a rather unattractive individual. He was supposed to stay only one year but actually stayed two in order to court and marry the Johnsons’ only daughter. So there were family ties as well.
So the Wellingtons had a difficult time of it and when the war was over, or nearing its end, they accepted a call to a congregation back in Kansas. By then their oldest child, a girl, had been born.
When it became necessary to arrange for a new pastor, the feeling in the congregation was strongly in favor of calling Lester Peterson but this was in conflict with the rules prescribed by the mission board, which were to the effect that the new pastor have no ties, family-wise, in the congregation. Somehow or other the mission board came up with the idea that they would accept Peterson as the pastor if he were called unanimously. This would have been all right except that they then proceeded to arrange that the vote would not be unanimous. Two people were to vote negative, one of them being me. I went along with the scheme, I suppose at the suggestion or urging of Wellington.
As it turned out the other individual who was to vote no didn’t show up so I was the only no vote. Several votes were taken, and I surmise as there were only a few members at the meeting (after all the congregation was small and meetings such as this were not well attended) that those present soon sensed who was voting no. Mrs. Johnson who was my landlady at the time was really hurt in her feelings to me by what she decided I had done, though later her composure returned to its normal tenor. As a consequence, Peterson was not called to be the pastor.
The whole procedure, in retrospect, left a very unsatisfactory opinion in me of church officials at an administrative level, and it was sort of a black mark even against Wellington whom I had rather liked and respected. I didn’t think much about it at the time but it was yet another development in my attitude toward the church and to officials in it whether they were pastors or higher-up officials.
With the passage of time, it served to emphasize in me a complete distrust in what persons in the religious field do or say. The excuse is doubtless that they are only human and make mistakes but that part of what they say remains untouched by human frailty. I’m afraid that to me all they do and say if touched not only by human frailty, but also by a subtle form of personal egotism that they have the correct picture of the cosmos and the human condition. Since then I have not seen anything in the conduct of church personnel to counteract this opinion on my part, which has only strengthened with time.
I think the Wellingtons left San Pedro about the beginning of the summer of 1946 and that summer the church was served by a student pastor by the name of Roderick Johnson. Since he was approximately my age I had some contact with him outside of church doings — a nice enough person but at the end of the summer he passed out of my life forever.
The replacement pastor came at the end of the summer and he was really a sad case. He was physically unprepossessing (his facial expression was heavy-lidded and ostentatiously pious). He tended to be on the fundamentalistic side which for me was an increasingly negative characteristic. Since I left for the San Francisco area later that year, I did not have a long period of contact with him, happily.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Southern California Residences
The first year or so I was in San Pedro (where I resided most of the time I was in southern California) I roomed with a family next door to the home where Dwight Johnston had a room. Actually I believe that both houses were owned by his landlady. The place was about a mile or so up the hill from the Pacific Electric station, so it was quite convenient for transportation to and from work (there was about a mile walk at the other end from the train stop to the refinery gate).
San Pedro had a local bus service but I seldom if ever used it. Pacific Electric with its ubiquitous red cars was the public transportation “backbone” of the Los Angeles area at the time, with lines connecting LA proper with San Pedro and Long Beach and I think extending to other communities northward with which I was unfamiliar. Had it not been for Pacific Electric I don’t know what I would have dome for transportation. In fact it, like locating a place to room (in the housing-short situation due to the wartime activity in the shipyards) were aspects of living that I was completely unaware of when I left Iowa for California.
I have some indelible memories of Pacific Electric — waiting for it on a rainy night on the way to the graveyard shift, seeing an Italian eating a pomegranate (and leaving the seeds strewn around him on the floor of the train), bouncing on the alternative route it followed around instead of through the shipyards. I recall after the war what a delight it was when the trains resumed the pre-war route through the shipyard, which was better track and shorter.
My next residence was actually a small apartment I noticed for rent as I walked to the train station but I wasn’t there long. Finding linen, soap, etc. was a problem and when a room was offered to me by an elderly couple from the church I had started to attend I moved again. This was really a good arrangement for me, though it was farther from the P.E. station. The room I had had an outside entrance and the whole home was nicely furnished.
The owners were Hugo and Palma Johnson both of whom were Swedish immigrants. Hugo had been a contractor but had developed Parkinson’s disease, so when I knew him he was no longer the quick active person I was told he had been. He had built the house they were living in. In addition to providing me with a room Mrs. Johnson also gave me breakfast (once my days on shift work were past) which was a delight. She also provided other meals on Sundays (by then the work week was 6 days so I was always gone on Saturdays).
I liked Mrs. Johnson, she was surely a kindly, generous soul. Amongst other things she introduced me to persimmons, which I have liked ever since. I guess I continued to live with the Johnsons until the war was over — in fact I’m sure of it now that I come to think of it. It was while Vincent came c=for a short visit with me (he was stationed in Malibu at the time) that the first of the atom bombs was dropped in Japan and I was still at the Johnsons’ at the time.
For some reason I moved out of the Johnsons’ later that year and during the rest of the time I was in the south of California I lived either at the YMCA over in Long Beach (sharing a room with Jim Cosgrave) or at one of two residences in San Pedro. The last place I roomed at was really a congenial place — the landlady had a large house and several roomers. It was while I was there that Vivian and my aunt Laurine visited California and Vivian came down to San Pedro for an overnight visit with me.
San Pedro had a local bus service but I seldom if ever used it. Pacific Electric with its ubiquitous red cars was the public transportation “backbone” of the Los Angeles area at the time, with lines connecting LA proper with San Pedro and Long Beach and I think extending to other communities northward with which I was unfamiliar. Had it not been for Pacific Electric I don’t know what I would have dome for transportation. In fact it, like locating a place to room (in the housing-short situation due to the wartime activity in the shipyards) were aspects of living that I was completely unaware of when I left Iowa for California.
I have some indelible memories of Pacific Electric — waiting for it on a rainy night on the way to the graveyard shift, seeing an Italian eating a pomegranate (and leaving the seeds strewn around him on the floor of the train), bouncing on the alternative route it followed around instead of through the shipyards. I recall after the war what a delight it was when the trains resumed the pre-war route through the shipyard, which was better track and shorter.
My next residence was actually a small apartment I noticed for rent as I walked to the train station but I wasn’t there long. Finding linen, soap, etc. was a problem and when a room was offered to me by an elderly couple from the church I had started to attend I moved again. This was really a good arrangement for me, though it was farther from the P.E. station. The room I had had an outside entrance and the whole home was nicely furnished.
The owners were Hugo and Palma Johnson both of whom were Swedish immigrants. Hugo had been a contractor but had developed Parkinson’s disease, so when I knew him he was no longer the quick active person I was told he had been. He had built the house they were living in. In addition to providing me with a room Mrs. Johnson also gave me breakfast (once my days on shift work were past) which was a delight. She also provided other meals on Sundays (by then the work week was 6 days so I was always gone on Saturdays).
I liked Mrs. Johnson, she was surely a kindly, generous soul. Amongst other things she introduced me to persimmons, which I have liked ever since. I guess I continued to live with the Johnsons until the war was over — in fact I’m sure of it now that I come to think of it. It was while Vincent came c=for a short visit with me (he was stationed in Malibu at the time) that the first of the atom bombs was dropped in Japan and I was still at the Johnsons’ at the time.
For some reason I moved out of the Johnsons’ later that year and during the rest of the time I was in the south of California I lived either at the YMCA over in Long Beach (sharing a room with Jim Cosgrave) or at one of two residences in San Pedro. The last place I roomed at was really a congenial place — the landlady had a large house and several roomers. It was while I was there that Vivian and my aunt Laurine visited California and Vivian came down to San Pedro for an overnight visit with me.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Draft and Deferments
All during the time I worked at Wilmington, or rather until the end of the war, which was somewhat more than a year before I was transferred to San Francisco, I was in continuing contact with my draft board which was the one in Webster county. Wherever you initially registered was the place that determined your draft status.
I was first deferred as a student, and while I was working I was periodically re-classified, the usual sequence being 1-A by the draft board, an appeal by Shell for deferment, then an altered 2-A or some other classification. The process would recur every six months or so.
When the war ended, or maybe it was even later on, I was again ordered to appear for a pre-induction physical but this time it was canceled. From that time on I had no further contact with the draft board. I kept all the classification notices I received during the war — it must have been a couple of dozen or so — and I have them somewhere. Mementoes of a period of uncertainty.
I was just a little older than the age limit below which even Shell’s asking for a deferment would not have been effective. Several of the younger engineers ended up in military service — either by being drafted or by enlisting and perhaps getting a commission. There were times during the Wilmington years when I wondered if I would have been wiser to go in the navy as I had considered.
I was first deferred as a student, and while I was working I was periodically re-classified, the usual sequence being 1-A by the draft board, an appeal by Shell for deferment, then an altered 2-A or some other classification. The process would recur every six months or so.
When the war ended, or maybe it was even later on, I was again ordered to appear for a pre-induction physical but this time it was canceled. From that time on I had no further contact with the draft board. I kept all the classification notices I received during the war — it must have been a couple of dozen or so — and I have them somewhere. Mementoes of a period of uncertainty.
I was just a little older than the age limit below which even Shell’s asking for a deferment would not have been effective. Several of the younger engineers ended up in military service — either by being drafted or by enlisting and perhaps getting a commission. There were times during the Wilmington years when I wondered if I would have been wiser to go in the navy as I had considered.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Social Life
The people I worked with provided some social contact outside the work environment but not a great deal. The individual in charge of the group when I arrived, Bob Cole, one evening had a group of the young engineers to his home for an evening of playing poker. I had never played the game and I have no recollection on how I fared. I also don’t know how I got to his house as I had no car at that point.
There were a couple of evening parties at a home on the waterfront in Long Beach that a group of the young engineers had rented together as a residence. I can also remember a weekend foray to the Huntington library in Pasadena where the famous “Blue Boy” picture was on display. I seem, to remember there was also a companion portrait of a young girl in a pink dress.
This excursion was made either with Frank (Jim) Cosgrove as a companion or it might have been with one Henry Harold Bulkowski. Henry left Shell after the war and I never heard his name again until I saw it in CEP either in an obituary or as a 50-year member of AIChE. With Frank I had a longer and more significant continuing contact that included the time I worked in San Francisco and Emeryville. Frank was a chemist, not an engineer so he worked only as an analyst and never in the pilot plant. He was a graduate of Fresno State. Frank and I became well acquainted and I believe I’ve mentioned that it was he who introduced me to philosophy and Biblical criticism. Thus he was certainly one of the influential persons in my life.
For a long time I lost track of him — he gradually did not respond to Christmas cards and eventually one was returned as “wrong address.” One time when Jean and I were visiting Muriel in Sacramento I mentioned that I had lost track of Frank but that he was a member of the California bar and I wondered if he could be tracked down that way. Muriel immediately went to the telephone and soon established that he had died some time before. I felt saddened that I had not made the attempt sooner to try to locate him.
There were also some social contacts at work during the noon hour. There was inevitably a session of the game of Hearts which was played along with the eating of lunches. I participated in these games at least occasionally — this must have been after I was working alone on various projects. I seem to recall that I held the record in these noontime games for the lowest score — in Hearts the low score winds and once I had the jack of diamonds but no other tricks so I had the lowest score possible.
Once Zene Jasaitis asked me for an overnight stay in his home — Zene preceded me in charge of the analytical work. I’d almost forgotten about that.
There were a couple of evening parties at a home on the waterfront in Long Beach that a group of the young engineers had rented together as a residence. I can also remember a weekend foray to the Huntington library in Pasadena where the famous “Blue Boy” picture was on display. I seem, to remember there was also a companion portrait of a young girl in a pink dress.
This excursion was made either with Frank (Jim) Cosgrove as a companion or it might have been with one Henry Harold Bulkowski. Henry left Shell after the war and I never heard his name again until I saw it in CEP either in an obituary or as a 50-year member of AIChE. With Frank I had a longer and more significant continuing contact that included the time I worked in San Francisco and Emeryville. Frank was a chemist, not an engineer so he worked only as an analyst and never in the pilot plant. He was a graduate of Fresno State. Frank and I became well acquainted and I believe I’ve mentioned that it was he who introduced me to philosophy and Biblical criticism. Thus he was certainly one of the influential persons in my life.
For a long time I lost track of him — he gradually did not respond to Christmas cards and eventually one was returned as “wrong address.” One time when Jean and I were visiting Muriel in Sacramento I mentioned that I had lost track of Frank but that he was a member of the California bar and I wondered if he could be tracked down that way. Muriel immediately went to the telephone and soon established that he had died some time before. I felt saddened that I had not made the attempt sooner to try to locate him.
There were also some social contacts at work during the noon hour. There was inevitably a session of the game of Hearts which was played along with the eating of lunches. I participated in these games at least occasionally — this must have been after I was working alone on various projects. I seem to recall that I held the record in these noontime games for the lowest score — in Hearts the low score winds and once I had the jack of diamonds but no other tricks so I had the lowest score possible.
Once Zene Jasaitis asked me for an overnight stay in his home — Zene preceded me in charge of the analytical work. I’d almost forgotten about that.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Occupational Safety
Safety practices were in those days quite lax by present day standards and personnel were exposed regularly to chemicals and conditions that would not be tolerated nowadays. For example, carbon tetrachloride was a common laboratory solvent and more than once I’ve had it in my mouth from the use of a pipette. Nowadays I doubt you could but it without a special dispensation.
Benzene, toluene and xylene vapors were common. Acetone was used actually as a rinse in washing chemical glassware which was then vaporized into the laboratory environs by use of an air jet. Between the pilot plant and the refinery entrance was the Edeleanu plant for solvent extraction to make motor oils and there was always a fog of sulfur dioxide hovering around the plant. Asbestos was used without any particular precaution in and around the plant and I’m sure I was exposed to it as much as some of the present day plaintiffs.
During the time I was working at the Wilmington pilot plant there was one fatal accident in the unit. There was a fire and one of the young engineers was burned so badly that he died. He was an individual who wasn’t as cautious as he might have been but the accident could have been unavoidable on his part. I recall the scene when he was carried from the pilot plant and laid down on the laboratory floor. It was a pretty sobering experience.
Benzene, toluene and xylene vapors were common. Acetone was used actually as a rinse in washing chemical glassware which was then vaporized into the laboratory environs by use of an air jet. Between the pilot plant and the refinery entrance was the Edeleanu plant for solvent extraction to make motor oils and there was always a fog of sulfur dioxide hovering around the plant. Asbestos was used without any particular precaution in and around the plant and I’m sure I was exposed to it as much as some of the present day plaintiffs.
During the time I was working at the Wilmington pilot plant there was one fatal accident in the unit. There was a fire and one of the young engineers was burned so badly that he died. He was an individual who wasn’t as cautious as he might have been but the accident could have been unavoidable on his part. I recall the scene when he was carried from the pilot plant and laid down on the laboratory floor. It was a pretty sobering experience.
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