Monday, March 12, 1951

March 12, 1951

411 Bonnie Dr

El Cerrito, Calif.

Dear Brothers & Sisters,

What a beautiful day it was today! How I wanted to be outside loafing in the bright sunshine! How nice it was to walk around the block at noon, even for a few brief moments, and breathe the warm balmy air! What a beautiful Sunday was, and Saturday also! I certainly felt sorry for all of you up to your knees in snow with the cold, cold wind whistling past you and chilling the marrow in your bones. It is true that some vagrant tag-ends of weather originally scheduled for the middle west got shunted this way some weeks ago, but this is all gone now, the weather lanes having finally gotten straightened out.

All this nice spring weather brings with it a restlessness tho which makes one view work with a certain jaundiced eye. Saturday afternoon having other things that could well have been done, I decided to go instead for a ride in the country. It was very beautiful — the hills were green, peaceful cows & sheep dotted the hillsides, all nature seemed to be busting out with spring. The road I took was out past Walnut Creek and around the other side of Mt. Diablo and then back on the near side of the mountain. Today altho I felt restless again, there wasn’t much that could be done about it; however I did manage to spend some time inspecting a new layout in the column which in order for a comprehensive inspection to be made necessitated spending quite some time there. This excursion revitalized me however so I was able to labor the rest of the afternoon.

Since I wrote my contribution to the round robin letter I have finished the book case and bedside stand I was working on. I bought a small radio for the latter with which to lay in bed on summer evenings & listed to the ballgames. Also I decided that I would make a small lamp for it, which is not well on its way toward completion. These objects have been made with various tools I have bought in the last several months; since they are taking up space in my drawers I decided to manufacture a chest for them — this project is also in an intermediate state.

I have in the interim purchased two books — one on how to build houses out of concrete blocks which attracted my attention because I figured that sometime I might be building a house & perchance this info would be useful; also I bought a book called “Tales ofthe Uncanny & Supernatural” by Blackwood which Time mag recommended & which I am happy to say is well worth the recommendation. I also washed my car a week ago & polished it, some rain has since spotted it a little but I can still see my reflection in it at 50 paces so you see it is still quite bright & shiny.

The Gustafsons left for San Diego last week so now things are quite quiet & peaceful, overhead. This will not last however since in May the Wilsons’ missionary son is due from Japan; they have I understand several children also with associated capacity for much ado. This remains to be seen however.

This is all for now.

With love

C.P.

Manual Training Class

I find that the class as a freshman that I remember best is manual training, perhaps the variety of things we did led to this greater recollection. Wood-working projects probably occupied more time than any of the other topics covered and amongst these I did were an oak table, a short bookshelf that could sit on a desk etc., several rubber guns, and a toolbox. I also adapted some black walnut wood that I got from an old sewing machine of my grandmother Peterson, which I ran across in the loft of the old granary.

Black walnut box

The oak table ended up with a non-oak top as I was never able to get the flat oak boards I had planned to use to fit smoothly. As I recall it was gum wood. All the wood-working in the class was with manual tools — there were no machine-powered items, such as saws, planes, lathes etc. A far cry from the shop at the high school here in Ashland, where I took some evening classes. Here there was virtually every powered wood-working tool. What happened to this table I have no idea.

The small bookshelf I retrieved at some time from my parents’ home. It had suffered in the years since it was made and I repaired and refinished it. I think one of our daughters now has it, from the down-sizing we did on moving to Mountain View Retirement Residence. The rubber guns are gone, we had them when I and the Woodard boys plated the game, using as missiles rubber sections cut form old inner tubes. A game that I daresay is no longer in the repertoire of schoolboys.

Bookends

The toolbox I also retrieved and it now serves as a place where I keep nails, screws, etc. It is substantially as I completed it in manual training but I did add a couple of finishing touches that I omitted then. When I found it one when when I was visiting my parents in Gowrie — it was in the old hay loft in the small barn at the rear of the property — it contained a few remnants of the toy farm machines that I and my brothers had made and played with during the early years on the Peterson farm. 

Toolbox exterior

Toolbox interior

Wooden toys

I think it was I who made most of this machinery, using some hand woodworking tools that my father got at the Johnson lumberyard. I recall I kept them in an old cabinet in a small room off the back hall of the house. My father had apparently picked up the few remaining pieces when my parents moved back to the little brown house after WWII ended; probably for sentimental reasons. At the peak of the toy farm activity we had tractors, plows, harrows and an assortment of buildings. For me I think it represented an underlying liking for farming as an activity and a potential livelihood.

Other areas of instruction in farm shop were learning of various knots and rope splicing, harness repair, working on small gas engines, tool sharpening. Most of the tying of knots has left me except for the simple square knot and perhaps the bowline. The rope splicing involved both “short” and “long” splices. At my grandmother’s house the dumb-waiter was operated by a long continuous rope loop that could be pulled to raise or lower it. My uncle Carl had made the long splice in this rope and one he challenged me to detect where the spice was. From my experience in manual training I knew what to look for and I think he was a bit nonplused when I pointed out where the splice was.

Harness repair involved sewing the leather pieces together. When this subject came up in farm shop I visualized it as the simple use of riveting that Uncle Carl always used in repairing the old harness still in use on the farm. A sort of makeshift kind of repair typical of my uncle. I don’t think I actually repaired any of the harness in use on the farm. Much of it was beyond repair through neglect over the years. What remained in use was the better items (such as the harness used when driving to town etc.) but even this was in pretty sad shape

Some of the members of the class brought in some small gas engines to work on but I had none to furnish so my part in this aspect of farm shop was minimal. I can remember them sitting outside the back side of the shop room.

Tool sharpening involved saw filing, and sharpening of plan and auger bits. Over the years I have sharpened my saws occasionally but in recent years I have hired it done.

Toward the end of the school year there was a manual training competition sponsored by Iowa State College. Mr. Millard chose three members from the class to represent the Gowrie school — Vernon Telleen, Dale Coffin and myself. I’m not sure why I was selected as I didn’t consider myself one of the more competent members of the class.

One item in the test at Iowa State had not been covered in the instruction we had in Gowrie — namely the preparation and placement of concrete. So Mr. Millard gave us some oral instructions but no actual experience. The test item on this was to make a form for a home plate, and to mix, place, and finish the concrete to fill it. One criterion to be met was to prepared enough concrete but only with a small excess. My vague recollection is that Vernon, Dale and I had to “fudge” a bit at the end to have enough concrete. Despite our lack of experience in concrete preparation we received a good rating on the overall test. Somewhere I think I still have the little certificate we received.

The Tray Test Column

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For a good part of the time I was in chemical engineering research, the experimental facilities were situated at various places — the tray test column for example was in the pilot plant area at Emeryville while other experiments and tests were done at the Berkeley lab — a facility that Shell rented for several years in the 1950s. When Shell purchased the old Western Electric building across the street from the original Shell N building, they converted the building into labs and offices and the chemical engineering department was allotted unified and improved facilities.

At considerable expense the tray test column was moved to a location outside the new lab facilities, but to my recollection it was never actually operated again in its new location. By then fractionation research had progressed to the point that any further simulator tests were passé. I have a few mementoes of the column which had played such an important part in my work.

The original column was rectangular in cross section (about 3 feet by 5 feet) and had glass panels for the sides of three trays so that a clear visual picture of the air/water contact and flow could be observed. These panels, then, were as large as slightly less than 3 feet by 5 feet. They were thick plate glass, polished etc on each side so that the image viewed through them would be clear for photography of the operating tray. Although the pressure in the column was not high (max perhaps 12 inches to 18 inches of water column) it was high enough that a material such as glass the size of the panels needed to be rather thick to withstand the pressure and the panels were 3/4 inch thick. I wasn’t in on the planning of the column construction but the glass panels must have cost a mint.

The panels were sealed against the flat sides of the column by a gasket between the panel and the column with external pressure applied along the panel edges by a heavy metal strip. The strip was of course also gasketed against the glass and the pressure was applied by bolts attached to the column and passing through the metal strip. Even though every effort had been made to have the sides of the column flat and the use of the gaskets softened minor irregularities on the column sides, the process of tighetning the hold down metal strips was a tricky process. It was easy to apply uneven pressure via the hold down bolts so that a torque would be applied on the glass panel and it would crack.

Eventually, they were replaced in whole or in part by 1/2-inch thick Plexiglas panels which worked well. One of the broken glass panels had an end broken so that a recoverable piece approximately 3 feet by 4 feet could be cut from it and, since the panel was unusable in its broken state and since the use of the Plexiglas panels had been adopted, I asked for the broken panel and was given it. Eventually I converted it into a glass top coffee table. To do this I had to have the broken edge repaired and Ray knew someone who would attempt the task; the repair wasn’t totally perfect but it was quite good and so it is now part of the coffee table downstairs here. The glass piece is heavy; I doubt that I could ever lift it by myself and certainly not at this stage in my life.

The other memento I have of the column is a stainless steel bubble cap which presently sits on the fireplace mantel downstairs. When the research on the column started the caps were standard devices placed on the trays in most fractionation columns. They varied in size and design and the one I have is a design that Shell developed for its own use. Eventually the research led into other types of contacting trays and trays with bubble caps fell into disuse, except for very special applications. The unit at Emeryville had enough of these caps for three test trays and when they became obsolete I acquired one of them as a memento.

When I wrote about the coffee table, I was reminded that the wood in it was also salvaged material. When we lived at 411 Bonnie Drive we had as next door neighbors Claude and Grace Weeks; Grace was one of the D’Addiego clan, one member of which was in the house razing business. Claude mentioned to me that this latter individual was tearing down an old house in Berkeley, where the Baptist(?) divinity school was expanding and that the living/dining area in this old house was oak paneled, and anyone who wanted to could go there and take whatever wood was desired. So I went and the room was indeed a treasure trove to a salvage-minded person.

I think I was one of the first scroungers to investigate the room, but I made the mistake of limiting my attention to the ornate moulding. After I was home and had reflected for a day or so, I realized that I should have taken a supply of the paneling itself — which consisted of 3/4-inch thick oak pieces, about 10 to 12 inches wide and maybe 5 to 6 feet long. So I went back but most of the paneling have been taken; I did gather up from what was left and the supply I got has served me well over the years — I still have oddments left. It was from this second visit lumber that I made the legs and frame for the coffee table.

I have also used this oak lumber for making an extension of the sides of the Victorian bedroom set that Jean acquired from her folks, so that the bed was long enough for a mattress of queen size length (but of course, not queen size width) and, most recently for the legs of he sane table I made for when both Palma’s and Laurel’s were visiting here over the Fourth of July a couple of years back. The moulding has largely been used up for various picture frames.

The tray test column was also the basis for my becoming involved with an individual from the service engineering department, who came to be known as “Machinist Brown.” He was a portly, faintly obnoxious character who was assigned to do some mechanical work on the column. The column had been in use for some [time] when this work was being done and in various places in the column there were small accumulations of liquid mercury [soot?]. This mercury had its source from the various mercury manometers attached to the column for pressure difference measurements; these had been on occasion out-ranged so that the manometers had “blown” thus discharging the mercury into the column.

I suppose an effort was made to recover what could be recovered but inevitably some remained. I suppose that environmental regulations would now require a thorough de-contamination of the apparatus, but in those days a much more tolerant policy and attitude was in effect, both as far as Shell and the government was concerned. Liquid mercury is pretty harmless in my opinion, but I suppose in a poorly ventilated place the vapor pressure might be enough to result in possible injurious air concentrations.

Anyway, Machinist Brown was wearing an ornate gold ring when he was working on the column and the ring chanced to come in contact with some of the residual mercury, and of course the mercury immediately amalgamated with the gold and the ring turned white. Why he was wearing such a valuable ring when he was engaged in mechanical work is beyond me, but it was probably a clue to his character. When he saw what had happened to his ring he complained loudly and the event came noticeably to the attention of the chemical engineering personnel. I don’t know what the eventual outcome of the affair was, but we had no further relations with Machinist Brown, both at his and our instigation.

Woodworking Projects

As a freshman I took farm shop, algebra, English and general science. Farm shop was the first class of the day (home ec for the girls) and the class period was for one-and-a-half hours, as compared to one hour for my other classes, perhaps because there was never any outside studying to do. The name “farm shop” was sort of misnomer as the things we did and learned to do related only in part to farm activities. Now that I think of it I was exposed to shop instruction in the elementary grades.

The superintendent, Mr. Leistra, in addition to a few calisthenic activities, also gave the boys a few beginning lessons in woodworking. I can still picture him, a thin intent figure, with a gray sweatshirt instead of his normal suit coat, planing away on the flat surface of his sample piece of wood. Do one face first, then an edge, then an end, and repeat in reverse, ending up with the second face.

Woodworking was a significant part of farm shop in the ninth grade and I still have several of the items I made there. One item I made was a toolbox — my father gave me various woodworking tools (he got them through the Johnson lumber yard where he was the part-time bookkeeper), and I made a box to hold them.

Toolbox


Once when I was back in Gowrie, either on vacation or on a stopover on a Shell trip, my mother must have mentioned that it was up in the hayloft of the barn back of the little brown house along with the remnants of the toy farm machinery that I had made while we were living on the Peterson farm. I found it and the toy remnants and sent them to California by railway express, I wonder if it wasn’t after my father died that it happened. He it was who gathered up the toy remnants when my parents left the farm after the war was over. Now it no longer has my tools in it, rather my stock of nails, screws etc.

Wooden toys


My present toolbox I began while I was rooming at the Wilsons’ on 411 Bonnie Drive while I was still unmarried. I bought the tools I now have off and on, most were purchased before my marriage, at least the large tools.

I guess this liking for tools and woodworking developed from my farm shop experience. On the farm there was a small room at the northeast corner of the house, just off the back hall. Here it was that I kept my toolbox and tools, and where I often worked making the toy tractors, other implements and the buildings for our model farms. In the room was a large cabinet that I seem to recall my parents having purchased when the old church building and its accoutrements were disposed of when the new church was built. It housed my toolbox with my tools.

Several years ago, Vincent gave me a small book shelf or bookends (the whole thing was in one piece) which he had saved from when my mother’s furniture was disposed of after she had died. It had been with them until they cleaned out their belongings after they sold the farm acreage they owned. Or maybe Vincent did not send it but rather gave it to me and I packed it up and mailed it to Oregon.

Bookends


Since then I have refinished it, correcting some of the inadequacies of my youthful efforts and repairing a place where it had been broken and glued back together again unevenly. I’d made the bookends of oak, which was the wood ai also used for a table I made — the last time I saw it it was standing in the boys’ room on the farm near the east window. What happened to it I have no idea.

While we were on the farm I found in the loft of the old granary the old sewing machine that my grandmother had had in the early days on the farm. The wooden parts were black walnut. There was a sort of cover that was placed over the machine when it wasn’t being used and I used this to make a sewing box for my grandmother. This was one of my farm shop woodworking projects. Later after my grandmother died, my mother had it, I think she used it to store photos in etc. I reacquired it when she too died. I refinished it, put on some better hinges and I use it for storing various odds and ends. It sits on my dresser in our bedroom.

Wooden box