July 14, 1951
411 Bonnie Dr
El Cerrito, Calif.
Dear Brothers & Sisters
Last round robin letter I related
to you the typical morning schedule of C.P. Strand. This time I shall
describe the usual working day. As you may recall my early morning
activity ends after finishing reading the Chronicle and gazing out
the window for awhile viewing the Calif Container Corp using the
street as a loading zone for their trucks. This company regularly
using ½ of the street to park trucks while they load cardboard
containers (unassembled) on them. They have little fork lift trucks
that cart the containers out to the regular trucks. When everything
goes smoothly, there is usually room for one-way traffic along the
street. When, however, trucks are being loaded, other trucks are
being unloaded, little fork lift trucks are beetling around, the mail
truck is stopping at the mail box, various & misc passenger cars
& other trucks are trying to get by, some real classy jams
develop. So far all the minions of law have done is give tickets to
passenger cars who are double parked; I guess since Emeryville is an
industrial town, the police don’t want to tread on any tender
industrial toes so they don’t do much. Now, if I were a cop things
would be different. . . .
One thing has changed since my
last letter and that is that I now have 3 morning passengers whom I
charge bus for; this about keeps me in gasoline.
Well, to resume my account of the
working day. The first thing I usually do is formulate my work for
the day. In general my responsibility consists of:
a) Supervision of experimental
work on the expt’l column
b) Working up and keeping a
running summary of the data as it comes in; establishing correlations
of data
c) Formulating & suggesting
the best direction of further tests, and when approved, arranging for
equipment etc.
d) Writing reports
e) Giving advice on column design
proposals etc
Having outlined the program for
the day I proceed to follow it more or less; routine items can be
disposed of on some kind of a schedule, but other items are apt
either to be prolonged or shorter than anticipated. Occasionally
there is a pressure to get some work done by a given time, but in
general time limits are very flexible so that things can be worked on
whenever opportunity affords.
Naturally all this work is very
tiring and requires a cup of coffee in the middle of the morning &
the afternoon which I brew every morning & take along with me in
a thermos bottle. Also I find that reading magazines, keeping a
weather eye out the window to see how the gardener is doing etc helps
keep me from getting exhausted; unfortunately these latter are at
times a somewhat curtailed activity despite their beneficial effects.
Noontime is spent in eating at the Shell cafeteria, in the building
her and watching the bridge game in the next room, or in taking a
walk. I shall describe this further the next letter (including the
story of how R. Shiras went down 7 tricks at 4 clubs doubled).
With love
C.P.
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