August 14, 1943

Postmark Aug 14, 1943

626 W. 5th St

San Pedro, Calif.

Dear Father and Mother and the folks at home,

I am beginning to walk around in sort of a coma, pausing about once per day to mentally tick it off the list of the days still to go till my vacation starts. I am afraid that I do my work, eating and sleeping almost mechanically. I used to like to see a day of work close because then I could relax and fool around for awhile. Now as soon as one day’s work is finished, I wish it were time to start another because that would only mean that the time when I can get home again will be nearer. Boy, I can hardly wait. It surely is not very long at that. Only nine days till I start back east and twelve till I’ll be there. Only seven more days of going to work. Yippee!

My favorite occupation now is day-dreaming. I wonder if I walk around with a slightly bemused look on my face. At least that is the way I feel. Just to be more concrete I guess I’ll say again, in case anything happened to my last letter that I will be getting into Boone about 12:30 am on Wednesday morning, August 25. That’s my red letter day and am I looking forward to it! Oh, mama, I’ll be seeing you again! Oh, papa, I’ll be seeing you again! Oh, Snooty Poot, and all the rest, I’ll be seeing you again!

That’s all I can think about. And it’s all I care to think about.

My work has been going along more or less as usual as far as I can make out. The three new men still aren’t too well acquainted with things so I still do quite a bit of work in the lab. One of them, Art Stearns, is a pretty good guy I think. Shell Development didn’t get gypped when they hired him. Another, Bill Hauser is a fairish sort of worker. The third, Joe Winter is a dud as far as I am concerned. he seems to be a very slow, pokey worker. The last two have both been working for the company longer than I have but Art has been working only 3 or 4 months. He is the cream, the others are sort of skim-milky.

I can’t understand this Joe Winter. Today I was running a vacuum distillation on some high boiling stuff that contains some possibly slightly explosive stuff at the very tail end of the distillation curve (maybe 1% or so). I was getting a big kick out of it because I had never done anything before. However there were some sulfurs to run and I thought I’d better get them done so I asked him if he wanted to take care of the distillation. Oh no, he wouldn’t dream of doing that. It might explode. Bah! The chance is about one in a million under the conditions used. And besides you could wear a face shield to protect your face (which of course I was doing since there is no point in running needless risks). That stuff had been up to 350°F on an oil bath in several steam distillations we had run and everything was ok. And under the vacuum on the system I’ll bet the distillation flask was a good deal cooler than that, certainly not more than 250°F or so.

Boy! You should have seen that stuff boiling with a still head temperature of 180–190°F when under atmospheric conditions it wouldn’t boil much below 500°F. And he didn’t want to fool with it. He’s rather run Westphal densities all day. Well, he could for all I cared. They had to be done and if he wanted to do that rather than some very interesting stuff, which I really wanted to do myself but out of the goodness of my heart was going to let him do, he could. But he sure gave himself a big black mark as far as I am concerned.

As far as I can see, the main trouble with which all of them suffer somewhat is that they cannot see where it is o.k. to take a few shortcuts and simplifications (that is, take liberties and disregard some rather cardinal principles in analysis etc) and where deviations from theoretically correct procedure would actually introduce errors of greater than allowable magnitude. I suppose they’ll catch on quick enough tho. I wonder if I was as green as they are in many respects. Sometimes their questions amaze me. It is a funny thing. Usually when I first meet a new individual I am impressed by their knowledge etc but in about one or two weeks my opinion changes and I honestly believe that I know more than they do. I suppose that sounds priggish but I certainly feel that way.

By the way, I got paid $5 for preaching that Sunday I told you about. I was not expecting and I certainly shall not keep it for myself but I got a thrill out of getting it nonetheless. I guess, since Pastor Wellington was an official at the camp he went to, the camp gave him $5 to help pay for his substitute, and so he gave it to me.

The weather has been so-so lately. Sometimes it has been rather warm in the afternoons but usually it has been reasonably cool.

I think this will be my last real letter before I come home myself. I may send a little note next week sometime but it won’t be much.

With love,

C.P.