Automobile Ownership

After I finished in the fractionation group, I started in the research group headed up by Dick Olney as supervisor which gradually developed into the group doing chemical engineering research along several different lines. The experimental work was done either at the Emeryville laboratories (where the test column for investigating tray hydraulics was located) or at the Berkeley lab. The latter was involved both in instrumentation research and in chemical engineering research. As the testing program developed, I spent less and less time in San Francisco and eventually, when the whole engineering department was transferred to Emeryville my contact with the San Francisco scene ended. But I remember with nostalgia those days which were marked as I’ve mentioned with a kind of youthful exuberance.

It was during the time I started spending more time in Emeryville that I made a change in residence from Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley to Grove Street in Oakland. My new room was close enough to the Emeryville lab that I could walk to it — I suppose the distance was a mile or two. The accommodation I had was really two rooms — an inside bedroom and an unheated outside sun room. It was a very pleasant accommodation but I shared the bathroom with two sons of the family (both post-college age) and another roomer who like me worked for Shell.

The family’s name was Reymann. Mr. Reymann’s first wife had died and he had remarried, a plump, cheerful widow. I’m not sure after all these years but I think I had breakfasts there at the house. Some of these were ones that I prepared for myself but on weekends Mrs. Reymann may have made them for me. I know for sure that I would often have suppers with the family on weekends. It was during one of the Friday evening suppers that I first encountered cracked crab — the Reymann family was Catholic and observed the old-time restriction of no red meat on Fridays.

It was what I have come to regard as a typical run-of-the-mill Catholic family. Fairly strict attendance at mass, not eating meat on Fridays, some sort of special penitence during Lent (but only outwardly) but a far from punctilious attention to personal behavior and honesty. The usual church-sponsored attitude of lenience on behavior on a social scale and emphasis on church-dictated dogma and conduct even if only in a superficial way. A sort of pro forma life regime that could be and often was a church-approved lack of real commitment on a personal level.

It was during my residence at the Reymanns’ that I really started to have a car continuously. While I was living in San Pedro I actually had at one time or another the ownership of two cars. The order in which I had them I can’t recall now. My ownership of the two may have overlapped. One was an old sedan (I don’t remember the make now) that had been the Johnson family car but which had been sitting in the garage unused to a long time, ever since Mr. Johnson could no longer drive because of his Parkinson’s. For some reason it was offered to me and I bought it, but I was never able to get it started and of course never drove it. I seem to recall getting a new battery, all to no avail. I finally disposed of it tp another young engineer at Shell — he came and towed it away. Whatever he did with it I have no idea.

The other car was a Model A Ford coupe which I had I suppose for a year or so until I had an accident with it and disposed of it to a junkyard. I suppose that I could have had it repaired but I think it would have been rather expensive and not worth it. The accident occurred while I was driving to work. At one point I had to make a left turn against the oncoming traffic at a signal. Usually I could wait until the traffic coming just stopped as the signal changed and I’d complete the turn that I had started. On this occasion the other car tried to get through just as the light was turning red for them and ran into me as I was turning.

Anyway sometime in 1948 I bought a maroon 4-door Chevrolet at a used car lot in Berkeley. New cars even then were hard to come by. As it turned out the car had had really hard usage and was a “lemon” and I traded it in on a green 4-door Chevrolet, a new car this time and I had it for quite some time (actually I had it for two periods, at an intermediate I had sold it to the Rosels who used it as a school commute car for Ralph and Deryl and I bought it back when they no longer had a use for it).

This car had the misfortune of being run into when it was parked outside the Bethany Lutheran Church on University Avenue in Berkeley one evening. It was a hit-and-run accident and I never found out who was involved. The left rear fender was rather badly crumpled and I think the trunk was slightly sprung though still usable. I decided to fix the car myself and I enrolled in a body-shop class at Berkeley High School The result was certainly not professional but it passed muster during the rest of the time I owned the car. During the time I lived at the Reymanns’ I arranged to park it in the one-car garage that the Reymanns had. The driveway was occasionally used by the sons of the family for parking their cars which made it a little inconvenient for me.

Alongside the Reymanns’ lot was a vacant lot, belonging I think to the Children’s hospital which was located just back of the Reymanns’ house. Somewhere I picked up some Indian corn seeds and I dug up a little patch of ground in the vacant lot and grew some Indian corn. As I recall my effort was not particularly successful and the ears I grew were not very colorful. I suppose my doing so showed my continuing interest in things horticultural and agricultural.