The RIde Group

During all this period of marrying Jean, having a family and doing the things associated with that, I was of course working at Shell. Living where we did I had an easy commute to work — the distance was not more than six to seven miles and there were several alternative routes, so that if the freeway was slow because of the traffic problems, there were several city-street paths to reach Emeryville.

When we were first married I simply was a paying member of the group that rode in Elmer Anderson’s old green Chevrolet. The Andersons lived up the hill back of us somewhere so he just picjked me up on the way. Later it became a ride share group which, after a period in which there was a frequent turnover of membership, settled down to four people, myself in chemical, later process engineering, John Illman a couple of blocks away from 411 Bonnie Drive, and John Pezzaglia, farther away down by the El Cerrito high school, who were both chemists in product of Process development, and Hank Gillette, who was a technician in instrumentation.

This four-member group was in existence for a long time; all the members had been “typed” I think as to their potentiality in the Shell organization and weren’t likely to be transferred away from Emeryville — I think there was a tacit recognition of this by the four individuals. Because it was a four-member group one of use would have to drive twice eery fourth week, but riht now I can’t recall what day of the week this extra day fell on. I do remember that Pezzaglia always wanted to drive on payday — he always went to the bank with his paycheck. So sometimes there was some switching of driving days.

The Pezzaglias were sort of nominal members at Epworth; Jean and I sort of joked that Phil might show up a couple of times a year like at Easter and Christmas. When Shell moved to Houston, I lost touch for the most part with the ride group; the three other members did not go to Houston. I guess they were all old enough to qualify for retirement and Shell didn’t regard them as worth the transfer expense.

I’ve completely lost touch with John Illman — he had been in detergent research and went with Shaklee. Pezzaglia was close to 60 years of age and stayed on at Emeryville, helping to attend to the last details of closing out the place. He probably continued working for Shell a year or so after the move to Houston. We’ve seen them infrequently over the years at such events as the Shell Christmas party.

Similarly with Hank Gillette. Hank never married; during much of the time I knew him his mother lived with him in a small house down on Everett Street. He had ridden with me to work when I lived at 931 Seaview, so I knew him for a long time. A rather quiet personality, a quite capable worker in his way. He walked with sort of halting step — not really a limp — as he had injured a foot sometime and I think the gait he adopted to accommodate the hurt persisted after it had healed. He would usually come to the Shell Christmas party so I would see him there when we changed to attend; we also saw him once when we house-sat the Art Sanford house on one occasion when they were off on a trip.

Art was the janitor at Epworth and we knew him and his wife from Epworth. How we happened to set up the house-sitting I don’t recall. Their home was in the same vicinity as Hank’s house and we saw him when we were out for a walk.

The Sanfords had a dog that we were supposed to take for a walk, and that is the reason we were out walking. Taking the dog for a walk at the Sanfords was quite an experience. During most of the time the dog was confined either to the house or then fenced-in backyard. He liked to be out for a walk and when he detected the least movement toward someone taking down his leash he would come bounding. How he would detect this when he was asleep on the rug several rooms away is beyond my understanding.

Church Affiliation

I sort of became sidetracked in writing about Jean’s and my life together — but of course the association we had with her parents was an important part of that. I believe I have indicated earlier that Jean and I sort of compromised on a church affiliation to provide a religious background for the rearing of our daughters. Jean had been a quite committed member of the Christian Science church,and she continued this after our marriage, and indeed Muriel attended Sunday School at the church in Berkeley for a short while.

When she felt that some sort of common agreement between us was needed we decided (after inspecting various area churches and denominations) to affiliate with Epworth Methodist church in north Berkeley. The attraction there was the pastor, one Don Getty, who actually moved on, à la Methodist practice, after a couple of years when a building program was finished. By that time our association had sort of become established and we have continued attending Methodist churches, both in Houston and here in Ashland.

Jean dropped her membership as a Christian Scientist, but had never formally joined the Methodist church. I transferred my membership from the Lutheran church, and have maintained it. Actually I think Jean retains some elements of her faith from her childhood and early adult years — I’ve lost virtually all of whatever commitments in thinking I ever had. Occasionally when we lived in El Cerrito, Jean would attend some Christian Science function such as a lecture and here in Ashland similarly.

Currently with our custom of attending the Methodist church on my once-a-month ushering day, Jean will sometimes attend the local Christian Science church. Over the years I have accompanied Jean a couple of times to a Christian Science Sunday service. I felt singularly unmoved by the experiences as I now react to almost any religious function I attend.

Our attendance at Epworth, aside from it providing social contact of an agreeable nature, had some additional facets that were interesting and useful. Among these were the adult classes on Sunday mornings which often had instructors from the Pacific School of Religion as teachers. Indeed several of the faculty from the school were members at Epworth. These provided discussion on a more intellectual and thought-provoking level than the usual Sunday morning discourse or service.

During the years we attended Epworth there was one other pastor whom I really liked, one Max Brown. I don’t know just what the attraction was since I do not recall his sermons for any particular level of interest or intellectual insight, but his kindly personality was certainly appealing.

We had all of our children baptized at Epworth, I guess this was, for me at least, sort of tradition retained from my early life and church association. Whether I would provide an impetus for this now is hard to say, certainly any real significance to the rite has long since departed from my thinking. Each time the child wore the baptismal dress that Jean had which had been made I recall by her mother sometime in her youth. Jean was not baptized in it — she remembers when she and her sisters were baptized well beyond their infant years. This was at the instigation of her mother whose family had a Methodist background in San Francisco.

Jean’s dad never had any religious affiliation, though further back in his family on both sides there were strong elements of religious belief. As Jean remarked, the Masonic Lodge was his religion. I think the primary years in the Sunday School at Epworth were instructive and worthwhile years for our daughters — I can’t really say beyond that. There was one primary teacher, of long standing and experience, at Epworth whom I thought to be an effective and worthwhile part of our daughters’ upbringing.

Looking back, I get the impression I used the church for what it could give me, without returning any real personal commitment, except for monetary contribution.

Some Ribley History

As I mentioned Jean’s dad had a character that was almost schizophrenic — being utterly charming at times and curt and impolite at others. My personal opinion is that this is in part at least the instability of his childhood. I’m not sure I know just where he was born but it may have been in Tennessee where the family was for awhile living in some sort of commune. Then later the family spent time in San Marcial, New Mexico.

Checking with Jean, I find that her dad was actually born in San Marcial and the experience with the commune occurred after the move back east from San Marcial.

His sister Alta, older than he, was born in Tennessee before the residence at San Marcial. One time Jean’s dad related a strange, somewhat disjointed account of some sort of incident between him and his sister at San Marcial. There appeared to have been some sort of physical squabble between the two, and from the account, Jean’s dad seemed to indicate that he had had the impression that this spat or quarrel, whatever it was, had some sort of connection with his sister’s death, which occurred at San Marcial.

I felt vaguely uncomfortable during his telling of it and didn’t pursue the subject by some questions, to try to clarify the indefiniteness of the story. Jean had never heard the story at all, and her understanding was that Alta had died form “brain” fever, whatever that was.

The family experience at the commune turned out unsatisfactorily. I don’t know if the idea of joining the commune came from Jean’s grandfather or grandmother — I would suspect the latter. Apparently the investment the family made in joining was lost either in whole or in part. The family then moved to Denver.

Jean’s dad at times related incidents of his childhood there, such as his days as a newsboy. Presumably his dad worked on the Moffatt tunnel, although I think when we tried to investigate this it turned out there were two projects by this name. I think he was injured when working on the tunnel, also he was somewhere employed as a strike breaker and had some difficulty subsequently in finding employment.

The family eventually ended up in Richmond [California] for a few years prior to the San Francisco earthquake, with Jean’s grandfather working (I believe) for Santa Fe railroad. Here it was that he was drenched when a water tank broke at the time of the quake, he went to work anyway, contracted pneumonia and died.

Whereas Jean always knew a fair amount about her grandmother’s past history (perhaps because she lived on for quite some time after her husband’s death) she, and her father for that matter, knew surprisingly little about her grandfather’s life. It wasn’t until after Jean’s dad died that Jean’s research into genealogy developed what she now [h]as ascertained about his early life in Baltimore and later in Ohio.

There were a few garbled pieces of information that Jean’s dad had about this period but contact with the rather numerous Ribley relatives in Ohio had been completely lost. Despite Jean’s success in turning up information about her grandfather’s youth and history up until the age of 20 or so, there is a gap from then until he married her grandmother, when he was about 40. Jean hasn’t been able to pin down anything in this period.

There was a family rumor that her grandfather had a sawmill in the Truckee area which burned down, also that he had a considerable sum saved either before or after the event. In 1990 Jean and I spent a couple of days around the Truckee area trying to investigate these rumors but we developed absolutely no information or leads.

I think that prior to Jean’s grandfather’s death he had arranged for her dad to start the apprentice program at Santa Fe railroad. He was probably in his early to mid-teens when this occurred, thus he had rather limited formal schooling. During the year or so he went to school at Richmond, the principal of the school was a man by the name of Walter Helms who was a longtime acquaintance and mentor of Jean’s dad. Helms sponsored Jean’s dad when he joined the Masons, which he was active in during most of his life. Jean’s dad did well in his apprenticeship and later in his work at Santa Fe, where he fairly early reached the status of night shift foreman — a position he held when he was married.

Because of personality conflicts with a superior he quit Santa Fe and during the 1920s and early to mid 1930s, he suffered from under-employment or lack thereof. I have come to the opinion that Jean’s dad needed more than anything else a competent and trusted advisor or experienced person that he could turn to for advice and consultation. He should never have left Santa Fe, and if he had not, the family experience would have been entirely different and much better.

Model T

The P-38, which Jean used at times when she was still living at home, was preceded by a Model T Ford, and this was the car that Jean felt ashamded of whem she was a child. It was also the car that Jean’s dad took heron driving trips as a child. Jean was always ready for such an outing, whereas her sisters were typically reluctat to accompany their father.

It was on one of these trips north up into the Sacramento valley that the Model T burned out a bearing. It was typical of Jean’s dad (and a tribute to his capability as a mechanic) to fix it himself on the spot. With the equipment he had along he poured a new bearing, installed it and they proceeded on their way. The event is indelibly etched in Jean’s memory as the day was a hot one in summertime.

There were also such trips to the top of Mt. Diablo, in late afternoon or early evening and Jean recalls the panorama of lights that could be viewed from the mountain top.

The Model T also ended up by being dismembered. Portions ended up as a sort of collapsible trailer that Jean’s dad would use when he went off alone on camping trips. After he died we found the two headlights tucked away in the cupboards in the downstairs at 1613 Stuart and I still have them.

Prior to the Model T Jean’s dad had at time such vehicles as the Stevens-Duryea automobile (the details of which I know nothing) and at one time a motorcycle. I think he had that at the time of his marriage and I remember hearing of the rides he took Jean’s mother on, on it.

Jean's Dad

In the period right after Jean and were married we would fairly often be at her parents for an evening meal — sometimes around the table in the kitchen, or on more notable occasions around the dining room table. What I remember most about these meals were the leg-of-lamb repasts; lamb was a meat that we never had when I was growing up in the Midwest, and after I was introduced to it in Jean’s mother’s suppers it became one of my favorites. I still feel that the well rendered fat portions of the leg of lamb, like the outer crust or the “tail” are about the tastiest meat items that I have ever encountered.

During the meals, in the wintertime, there would often be a fire in the fireplace, tended of course by Jean’s dad (who also did the carving of the leg of lamb or roast as the case might be). My recollection was that he usually burned coal in the fireplace — I remember the sack he had it in, down in the lower floor of the house. Where he got it I don’t know — by the time I was aware of it, it was proscribed as a fuel in the Bay Area. He had modified the fireplace to make a smaller fire easier and more effective, by the insertion of some fire bricks.

Jean’s mother was a placid person, at least on the surface, and as I got to know here there developed a warm relationship between her and me. In some aspects of her personality and habits she was much like me, and that may have contributed to our regard for each other.

Jean’s father on the other hand tended to be a crusty, rather morose individual who would often act in a curt, abrupt manner even with his old-time friends such as Al Flint. When he was so disposed he could be absolutely charming in demeanor, and I really think on those occasions he was just as much himself as when he was unsmiling and dour. I suppose you could say he had a sort of split personality.

He tended to be dilatory in maintenance around the house, but when he undertook a task he did it with extreme attention to detail and the quality of work he did. During the years I knew him he did some painting inside the house, and I think he took out the old plaster and replaced it with sheet rock in one of the rooms. But my recollection is that he never complete the entire house.

At one time we had some pieces of linoleum which I had recovered from some use we had made of them (perhaps from the girls’ bedrooms) and I finally cut them to fit the kitchen floor at Stuart Street and laid them down (either to cover the old linoleum or the bare floor — I can’t recall which). Jean’s mother at some time in the past had purchase some linoleum from a door-to-door salesman and the two linoleum rolls stood in the back porch all the time I can remember. To my knowledge the linoleum was finally disposed of after Jean’s dad’s death; during all the years the linoleum stood on the back porch he had never gotten around to putting it down on the kitchen floor.

He was still working when Jean and I were married (he had retired from the navy yard at Vallejo but we was working for an old friend of his, Fred Staddelhofer [sp?] who had some sort of pump or machining business in south Berkeley) but he stopped that fairly shortly. He then turned his attention to some upkeep jobs on the residence, one of which had never been done in all the years the family lived there. Before he could start this though he decided he needed to replace the outside back steps and this project took a couple of years at least.

At this time he also did some work on the laundry room window. He started painting on the back of the house and he did complete this in its entirety. Next he turned his attention to the sides and front of the house, but his attention was diverted from painting to filling in the little holes alongside the framing of the front doors, formed by the grooves in the house siding. He made little triangular pieces of wood to fit in these holes and proceeded to fill them — at least he started, I don’t know if he ever finished.

Sometime in his later years he finally decided that he would never finish painting the outside of the house and he hired Ray to do the job — which was then done quite expeditiously. During one of his trips for hospitalization he was absent from the house for awhile and I painted the front porch and steps with porch and deck paint. He would have used some concocted mixture of his own which I daresay would have lasted a short while, while the porch and deck paint was I believe still serviceable when the house was sold after his death.

On occasion Jean’s dad would do something that appeared to be utterly irrational. The most notable of these incidents related to the old P-38, the Plymouth coupe that he hd at the time Jean and I were married. This was certainly a serviceable car, but I think he had the practice of using some old motor oil he had saved somewhere long the line and this may had contributed to its “throwing” a connecting rod. This happened I believe as he and Jean’s mother were returning to Berkeley from a visit to the Rosels.

Anyway he limped on to Stuart Street with it and subsequently he bought the 4-door Chrysler that he had the rest of his life, and which he was driving when he had the accident that resulted in his dying. The Plymouth he proceeded for some reason to dismember, piling the pieces in the back yard where they lay for a long time. Why he did this is quite incomprehensible to me. Eventually I think Ray disposed of the pieces, or helped dispose of them. He, like me, regarded this action by Jean’s dad with amazement and astonishment.

Owning 411 Bonnie Drive

My mother had voiced the opinion that my house at 931 Seaview was no place to bring a new bride. So Jean and I spent several months I guess in looking for a house in which to set up our life together. In conjunction with this search I sold 931 Seaview and during the process the house was advertised to sale, I guess in the Berkeley Gazette and the advertisement was noticed by my erstwhile landlady at 411 Bonnie Drive.

The Wilsons were wanting to sell 411 Bonnie Drive I think because their son-in-law who was in the navy was being transferred and his family, who had been living with the Wilsons, would be leaving. The house had been bought by the Wilsons at least partly on the financial standing of the son-in-law so they needed to sell. In the end we bought the house, although it would not have been my choice — there were a couple of other houses that I would have preferred at the time, one of which was nearby on Colusa Avenue, hardly a stone’s throw away. In the end though the house at 411 Bonnie Drive served us well and perhaps it was the best alternative.

It had been constructed early in WWII by John Weston who lived a couple of houses away on Bonnie Drive. Weston was a competent and able builder but rather unimaginative in his house plans. The Wilsons had added a downstairs bathroom, which I had used during the time I roomed there. During the time we lived at 411 Bonnie Drive we did several things to make the house more suitable for our needs and wants. I finished off an unfinished area under the house that Mr. Wilson had excavated and this was my workshop area. Ray and I refinished the floors in the dining and living rooms — I can well remember the evening and night that we devoted to this undertaking.

After Laurel was born I constructed the extension to the house, providing two additional bedrooms, one downstairs off the rumpus room and one upstairs. Ray and Deryl helped me pour the foundation, I contracted the stucco work and roofing and I hired the electrical foreman at Emeryville to do the wiring. In conjunction with the work we replaced one floor furnace with a circulating air furnace and there were minor changes such as the sliging glass doors off the rumpus room, some window replacements and making a hallway alongside an existing bedroom upstairs. This latter change resulted in a rather small bedroom, but adequate for one person.

The whole project took about a year of my spare time and as Jean said later I did little else than work at Shell, work on the changes and eat and sleep. This left Jean with the major part of the housework at a time when Laurel was still an infant. We had off and on looked around for another residence but couldn’t find one that suited us, which is the reason we went ahead with the extension.

For me it was an interesting project and a challenge, but I wonder in retrospect if we wouldn’t have been wiser to have hired a builder to do the work. We had also contemplated a second extension of the house to increase the size of the dining room with a room below it back of the garage but this never materialized.

Outside the house, I replaced the backyard fence and terrace the backyard to make it more usable. I also constructed a patio with a fence around it, making sort of a large outdoor play area where the girls could be confined. Here it was that we had the sand table (which Ray gave us after Deryl and Ralph outgrew it) and where the girls would play endlessly. We also had a couple of swing and glider sets on which the girls played — I can’t really remember there they came from originally.

It proved to be a livable house, close to schools and public transportation and shopping while still giving the impression of being in a strictly residential area. Muriel I think was the one of us most closely attached emotionally to the house — I don’t think Jean or I ever regarded it that way and I don’t recall the other girls commenting on their feelings about it.

As I look back and think about the years from 1953 to 1972 that we lived at 411 Bonnie Drive I have the feeling that it was a very satisfying part of our lives. We enjoyed our three daughters as they were born and grew up, with Muriel finishing high school before the move to Houston. During the earlier part of the period, Jean’s folks were still quite active and able, and there were frequent visits between the home on Stuart Street and 411 Bonnie Drive. During part of the time I had a garden in the backyard at Stuart Street, as there was rather limited area for such activity at our home. We were also frequent visitors out at Jean’s sister’s home in Walnut Creek. And while Jean’s parents were still living, the Ritchies would often be up at Christmastime and we saw them on other occasions when we visited them in their home in Ontario.

Christian Science

During the late winter or early spring of 1953, I drove with my folks down to San Diego for a visit with Marold and Jeanne. After their marriage, Marold was in the navy and stationed there for awhile. I guess I showed my folks such places as Muir Woods, and of course there were visits with the Gust Knocks and the Uddens. But I have a rather poor recollection of sightseeing or visiting beyond that.

It was during my parents’ stay with me that my association with Jean began. When it developed that Jean was a Christian Scientist, my parents were distressed, particularly my mother. Her traditional and conventional viewpoint of Christianity placed Christian Science outside the pale of acceptable doctrine. I guess at the time my viewpoint still retained enough of my childhood training and indoctrination that I felt there was some basis for this opinion. In a way the confrontation (if it was as strong as that between my parents and me) only served in the long run to further weaken my regard for traditional Christianity.

My attitude toward Christian Science has softened I guess since my feelings during this period, but I still regard the basic teaching as unfounded. As for the founder, Mrs. Eddy, what little I have read of her writings stamps her as a rather befuddled elderly female with a proclivity for reading material that she was incapable of fathoming and building on this a fanciful dogma, unsupported by the real world.

I have attended a few Christian Science services and to me they have an aura of unreality — that thinking humans could take what was being read or said seriously. In a way my reaction now extends to the conventional protestant services I now attend on a limited schedule. So I suppose that Christian Science has served to direct my thinking although largely in sort of negative way.

There is one aspect of Christian Science that appeals to me, and that is the implicit acceptance of natural processes in the realm of living or dying. This is not the way a Christian Scientist would describe his beliefs, but that is what they fundamentally are. During my lifetime I have had three major surgeries, two of which were critical in determining life or death. Actually the last surgery was corrective, the medical procedure which determine life or death was the emergency procedure before it.

In retrospect I rather feel that the prolonging of my life, particularly in the ruptured appendix occurrence, was not necessarily the best outcome, either for me or others involved. In many respects life is a burden, not a gift, and it is a condition imposed will-nilly on individuals who never have any way in the matter. Once in existence a person is dominated by the instinct to live and survive. It is a mistake I think to attribute any basic goodness to this feeling of the intrinsic worth of live and living. You simply “are,” and that is about all that can be said.

When one is alive, one appreciates the physical environment, relatives, friends, occurrences, but underneath this facade of enjoyment and acceptance there is the underlying reality of the real meaningless of existence. This is not what Christian Scientists would say they believe but I think their conduct has elements of it.

Be that as it may, my association with Jean was interrupted during much of the summer of 1953 by a feeling of mutual disagreement in the field of religion. In Jean’s case it was a holding to a way of life that had served her well; in my case it was a feeling that Christian Science had so little obvious reality and was basically at odds with conventional Christianity that it was an inseparable barrier between us.

In the end the breach was subordinated to the attractions we felt between us and we resumed our earlier relationship. We were married in November of that year. As the Lutheran church of which I was a member (Bethany, on University Avenue in Berkeley) had some church function on that day we had selected, we used a church on Durant (?) for the site of the marriage.

This church no longer stands — it was later torn down for some reason. The pastor of the church (Ross Hidy?) was of the feeling that marriage services in the edifice should be conducted by the resident pastor; in the end he capitulated to the extent that Gust Knock was the minister really conducting the marriage, although Hidy was in attendance. I think one reason that he consented was that he knew the Knock family quite well. Since we knew the Knock family and appreciated them in man ways we were happy that the compromise was reached. In a way the incident further diminished my regard for church officialdom, with its attitude of parochialism.