North to San Francisco

During the four years that I spent in southern California, I still had strong feelings of nostalgia and longing for the more familiar Midwest scene and each year I would use my two-week vacation for a trip back to Iowa. The trip on the Challenger going and returning would take up perhaps five or six days so I would end up with not much more than a week back on the farm but I felt that it was worth it. It really wasn’t until my being transferred to the San Francisco area that my feelingss started to detach reall from the Midwest.

Shortly after the was was over the transfer of the young engineers to San Francisco was started. During the discussion of my future within Shell with Mr. “Bill” Johnson, who was the manager of the engineering department, the possibility of a transfer to the Wood River Refinery was discussed and he said he would investigate if this could be arranged. Anyway, I was not transferred to San Francisco at that time, as were a considerable contingent of the Wilmington crew.

My thinking back of the request for a transfer to Wood River was that I could develop a farming enterprise as a part-time activity while still working as an engineer. I was not familiar with farm land in southern Illinois where the refinery was located but Illinois is generally regarded as good agricultural land and I am reasonably sure that I could have located something good in the area.

As it turned out during the additional year I spent at Wilmington, the possible transfer to Wood River did not develop. I have no idea why, perhaps it was the evaluation Shell made of my potential in the company (including my quitting of my position as straw boss of the analytical laboratory). At the end of 1946 there were additional transfers of some of the remaining young engineers to San Francisco and this time when the possibility of a transfer developed I took it. I guess I felt that if nothing had transpired in a year as to Wood River that nothing in that direction would be forthcoming.

So it was in the late fall of 1946 that I arrived in San Francisco. I guess I took the train north — I don’t think I had my first airplane trip with Shell until several years later. My one memory of that first flight was that it was in the old standby aircraft, the DC-3. I watched with some sense of trepidation the formation of ice on the leading edge of the wing that I could see.

I had arrived in California with two suitcases. By the end of 1946 I needed in addition a small foot locker (like a small trunk) to contain my increased stock of worldly goods. It was not exactly a propitious time to arrive in the Bay Area as for several days or maybe a week there was sort of a general strike. This included the Key System, which operated the trains connecting San Francisco with the outlying parts of the Bay Area. Actually the strike didn’t develop until I had been in the Bay Area for a week or so.

Shell put me up at a place called the Maurice Hotel (I found out later that this was a rather classy accommodation comparing very favorably with the St. Francis, the Palace, etc.). Much later on, after I was married I found out that Jean’s brother-in-law, Ray Rosel, had oce worked there as a janitor.

By the time the strike started I’d located a room on Shattuck Avenue next to LiveOak Park. It was a room with a bath, sort of substandard that had been a maid’s quarters at one time. But the landlady and her husband were congenial people and I guess I stayed there for a couple of years. The location was convenient to the F train by which I commuted to the city as long as I worked there. The strike was of short duration and I recall that I was in a carpool with some other Shell employees until it was over.