Two Characters

There were several colorful individuals in the group at Wilmington. On the maintenance side there were two people in particular. They were “Shorty” Coe (given first name Douglas) and A.B. Cox. I don’t think I ever knew what the initials stood for. He was always called A.B.

Shorty was the maintenance foreman and thus had more contact with the fledgling engineers. His father had been a political boss in some eastern citiy and Shorty had acquired a dislike for such activity and had gravitated into a rather adventuresome life. In World War I he had spent time in Russia with some kind of Allied force — my knowledge of the history in Russia directly preceding the revolution is kind of vague, anyway it was the period between the armistice that ended the war and the takeover by the red faction.

Shorty, as the name implies, was short in stature, but of a husky build. He was sandy-haired, rather bald and one eye had been injured ( in a barroom brawl?) so he viewed the world at an odd angle. An individual in every sense of the word, he did not deign to wear a hard hay, though that was prescribed attire for persons working in the plant even at that early time.

At the start of the war he tried to enlist but was turned down, I suppose because of his age and his damaged eye. Physically he would have been a match for any draftee or enlistee regardless of age. His vacation pursuit was to go cross-country skiing, I suppose in the Sierra. On these occasions he would often go alone, though I think on one of these trips one of the engineers working up in the office went with him.

He was always needling the young engineers, one of his favorite comments when one of them would come to him with what they considered a problem but which he thought they could easily handle themselves was “Wave your sheepskin at it.” I guess diplomas were on sheepskin in his background.

I always got along well with Shorty. During the war he inveigled me into a wager on when the war would be over. It was one of the few times I have made a bet that way. I did participate in the football pools when working in the San Francisco office and I recall winning $10 once. I bet Shorty that the war would be over by June 1945 and so I lost though not by much.

The last time I saw Shorty was one time when I was on a business trip to the Los Angeles area. I called him up and we had dinner together — I guess he drove in from wherever he resided. About the only thing I recall about that dinner was that he ordered borscht (beet soup); I wonder if this was because of his Russian experience in WWI.

A.B. Cox was a very different kettle of fish. When I knew him he was probably nearing 60 years of age and I think he retired not long after the war ended. He had started out as a machinist, like Jean’s father, and in many ways he resembled her father. He was fairly tall, thin, balding though what remained of his hair was still pretty dark. He also resembled Jean’s father in disposition though he wasn’t quite as crusty and uncivil. But he could be pretty acerbic at times.

When I knew him he was classified as a mechanical engineer having arrived at that designation without any formal training. At work he did such things as design small pumps for laboratory scale pilot plant units capable of outputs of ml/hr with discharge pressures of up to 1000 lb/sq. in.

One thing I remember about Shorty or A.B., I don’t recall which. They had the definition of a machinist as a workman who could make a piece of metal-working correctly the first time — any person reasonably acquainted with metal-working could make it eventually but not necessarily the first time.

Early Days at Shell

The work that the new engineering recruits did at Wilmington was not really chemical engineering, though it did provide an exposure to the refinery environment. A good part of it could have been done by persons of less training and skills — I guess this was the real reason why I decided Shell was “stockpiling” engineering personnel for availability at a later time.

After a week’s orientation a new engineer first spent a year or so as an analyst doing various analyses related to the process being investigation on a pilot plant scale. This was following by a period as a pilot plant operator, and then a gradual transition to report writing, data workup etc.

The work as an analyst and pilot plant operator involved shift work which was a new experience for me. I was through the analyst period and in the pilot plant operator period when I was offered the post of coordinating the analytical work. I accepted but this was a mistake for me I realize now as I wasn’t by temperament, or perhaps more importantly by experience and breadth of outlook suitable at the time for the assignment.

At this time in my career I did not have the background of contact with the world beyond the home, farm, church and school environment that I had grown up on to enable me to estimate my future better. This was in part the result of the community environment and the restricted traveling that our family had done, but it was also influenced un a more subtle way by the lack of a broader experiential background on the part of my parents and the tendency of my mother in particular to shield her children from influences strange or alien to home, church and family. In retrospect I’;m sure that this lack of sociological background influenced my future at Shell — not that I would want to have it any different.

The difficulty for me in supervising the analytical work that the analysts did was that they were of the mind that the character of the work was beneath them. They were graduate engineers and it was not the kind of work they thought they should be doing. In other wordsI did not have the personality and experience to tell them to shape up.

In the work I had done for my uncle Carl I had exerted no independent judgment. I had just done what he told me to do. I certainly had not been in a position where I was responsible for the work of others. Had this not been the case things might have turned out differently and I might have drifted into a management position along the way. Not that I would have wanted in the end for things to have turned out differently, but they could have been quite different.

As a result of my dissatisfaction with the position I was in I decided that I would leave the Shell company and take whatever developed with the draft board. I left a note to that effect on the manager’s desk when I left after finishing my day’s work, but the manager talked me out of quitting. I was given other work to do which was in the area of individual research projects. It was during this phase that I began to use some of the chemical engineering knowledge I had gained in school. I recall purchasing the first copy I had of McGraw-Hill’s Chemical Engineering Handbook. I later disposed of it but it was followed by several subsequent editions of the manual. I believe that I still have the last edition I bought.

Draft Deferments

The experimental unit at the refinery served two purposes I think. The ostensible (and certainly a real) reason was to develop a process for producing toluene, which was needed for the war effort. This was done early on in the time I spent in Wilmington. Later on the work was carried out for processes to make high octane gasoline for aircraft.

However a longer range and perhaps more important objective as far as the Shell organization was concerned (this is my opinion in retrospect) was to provide training for a group of young engineers who would be available for more significant engineering activities once the was was over. Both the ostensible objective and the longer range were in large measure achieved. By using the group of young engineers on these projects there was a good possibility that a substantial fraction would be draft-deferred and would still be available when the war was over.

The processes were developed and a considerable number of young engineers who arrived to work at Wilmington did escape the draft. Including me. I was repeatedly classified One-A by the local board in Fort Dodge, the company would appeal the classification and I would be deferred for another six months.

I kept the draft notices and I have them somewhere — there must be a couple of dozen of them. One time I had to appear up in Los Angeles for a pre-induction physical exam. At the end of the war I had received a second notice to have a pre-induction physical, then I got a notice from the draft board to ignore the notice to appear. That was the last I ever heard from the board.

Going to California

Well I have sort of strayed back into reminiscences about our life on the farm. So back to where I was.

After two weeks of idling away some time, I boarded the train in Boone for the trip to California. The train I took was called the Challenger, the cheapest of the Pullman trains that the railroad operated. It ran on the Chicago Northwestern tracks as far as Omaha, then on Union Pacific tracks to Ogden, Utah and then I believe on Southern Pacific tracks to Los Angeles.

My belongings I carried in two suitcases — the old-fashioned Gladstone bag (which I think I purchased with some gift money before going off the school at Iowa). And another, somewhat larger, suitcase that had sort of metallic outer surface. They were the same suitcases that I had used going to and from school.

I had never been on a Pullman car before so I had to sort of feel my way as to what the procedure was. Three levels of Pullman service were provided with the lower being the Challenger. It also followed I think the slowest schedule. The Challenger and the next level train ran every day both ways but the top flight City of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, etc. ran only three times a week.

Naturally I took the Challenger because it was the cheapest. Actually getting on the other two was more difficult because of military travel at the time.

The Challenger took 2-1/2 or three days to get from Boone to Los Angeles so it was a long trip. Looking out of the windows of the train, I saw aspects of the country that were completely new to me. Long stretches of plains, mountains, sagebrush country, desert, etc. I sort of remember eating in the dining car with the train swaying as it inevitably did but I have no specific recollection. When I at last arrived in Los Angeles, I had the expectation that California would be a green paradise. Of course it wasn’t as August was the dry part of the year and everything was sort of dun-colored.

I arrived of course at the railroad stations in downtown Los Angeles and that left me still at some distance from my destination which was in the Wilmington area (actually Wilmington was part of the gerrymandered city of Los Angeles). I might point out here that when I was offered employment at Shell it was to have been at the Emeryville laboratory in the San Francisco area. Sometime later I was informed to report instead to the Wilmington refinery where Shell Development had a small experimental operation going on. So I had to find my way from downtown Los Angeles to Wilmington.

I assume that I took the ubiquitous “red” train from Los Angeles to Wilmington but now I have no recollection of the trip. Nor do I have much recollection of my first few days in California. I do recall staying in a hotel in Wilmington for a few days. During those days I appeared at the refinery and found out that I was to reimbursed for the cost of my journey. Did I expect that? I don’t know, inexperienced as I was.

Sometime during those first few days I encountered Dwight Johnston (who had been in my class at Iowa and who had also been hired by Shell). He was working for Shell at Wilmington and through him I found a room for rent in San Pedro which I took. San Pedro was south of Wilmington and the Pacific Electric (the “red” train) ran between San Pedro and the refinery which took care of my commute problem.

I had located a place to stay in Wilmington which I abandoned as the room in San Pedro was much more to my liking. I was half a dozen blocks from the red train terminal in San Pedro which ran near the Wilmington refinery so it was convenient transportation for getting to and from work.

Of Cows and Pigs

Before leaving for California, I gave myself a two-week vacation at home. I don’t know just what I did, probably just loafed around. Although it was summer and there was farm work to do, I doubt I did any. Don’t even know if I tried my hand at milking a cow — it was probably the last time there was much likelihood of that happening to me. In fact by that time the number of cows may have dwindled so that only one or two remained, simply as a source of milk for the family.

Originally there were four or more, starting after we moved to the farm, as sort of a supplemental source of income for the family (i.e. from the sale of cream). We had had a cow at the little brown house and she (Spotty) along with the cow uncle Carl had (Brownie, mostly Swiss with some admixture) formed the nucleus of the herd.

Spotty was a Holstein. Other cows were acquired either by calving or purchase. Among the more distinctive cows were Dairy Maid (a daughter of Brownie, by one of the neighbor’s Swiss bulls), Buttercup (a purchased Jersey) and Ruby, sort of scruffy cow of nondescript parentage.

Cows are relatively fractious creatures, at least the ones we milked were, and the use of a kicking chain was fairly common. Brownie and Dairy Maid were most likely to kick when being milked but for me it was only Spotty who ever got her back foot into the milk pail.

Several years ago at an antique show at the Medford armory I spotted an old rusty kicking chain. Since it was priced at only $2 I bought it and I think I gave it to Vincent as a joke. I’m sure he appreciated it.

To get the cream required a cream separator and uncle Carl bought an old small-sized De Laval cream separator. After the milk was strained it was run through the separator (which was operated manually and the cream was accumulated in a 5-gallon cream can. About twice a week this was lugged out to the side of the road where it was picked up by the cream hauler and taken to the creamery in Gowrie. There were two cream routes, one of which was run by Vernoon Telleen, a member of my high school class and who grew up on a farm about a quarter of a mile to the east of the Peterson farm.

For payment for the cream we received butter plus cash for the remainder. Butter was of course a much used staple in our house. The skim milk went several ways, the most of it going to feed one or two hogs (also purchased by uncle Carl for that purpose). My mother used to make cottage cheese, whether it was from skim milk or whole milk I don’t recall. On occasion we would churn some butter by hand — whether this was when there was not enough cream to warrant a stop buy the cream hauler or not I don’t remember. I also don’t know where the hand church came from — it just arrived on the scene. I’m sure my mother did not have it, perhaps it had been used by my grandmother and had been stored away somewhere in the house in town. But I remember sitting on the screened back porch on the farm turning the handle and waiting for the butter to coagulate.

We always had names for the cows and calves. One really superb cow was called Susan —like Dairy Maid an offspring of Brownie by a neighbor’ brown Swiss bull. Then there were the twin calves John Deere and Farmall and such other calves as Edna St. Vincent Millay. Quite a few of the calves were sold for meat and never made it to the milking stage. Of course about half were bull calves.

Sometime after I left the farm for good there was an accident and most of the cows did not survive. Adjacent to the barnyard where the cows roamed freely was the old granary and at one time there were soybeans stored in the side facing the barnyard. The granary was old and decrepit and it developed a leak so that soybeans were spilled into the barnyard. The cows ate them to excess and I guess their digestive systems couldn’t handle the rich fare. My impression was that this accident sort of ended keeping more than just a cow or two to keep a supply of milk for the family.

I’ve often thought about the standards of cleanliness when we were milking cows and selling cream. It certainly wasn’t at a level that would be tolerated nowadays. We would only wash the cows’ udders before milking if they really needed it and I remember seeing little bits of straw etc. floating in the milk before it was strained. Actually with proper cleanliness sit shouldn’t be necessary to strain the milk at all but it was part of the procedure all the time we had a cow or cows, from the time we lived in Gowrie on through the days on the farm.

At least some of the pigs to which the skim milk was fes received names and in particular I recall one old sow whom we called Dracula. I remember her getting loose from the pig pen and the chase to get her corralled again. I suppose that some of these pigs were slaughtered for family use, but I remember only one specific case. Uncle Carl did the butchering. I steered clear of the whole operation because of my innate squeamishness at the sight of blood. I think I was supposed to assist but I just sort of drifted off and as there appeared to be sufficient help from other persons I wasn’t looked for.

I think my friend John Woodard was present (his uncle Will Lines was also there) and John described to me afterward in somewhat graphic terms what had transpired. I was glad that I had not been on the scene. On this occasion I can’t recall my mother canning meat or making salt pork as she had done once in the little brown house (I suppose when the Depression had really affected the family). But it was a time for making such meat items as gryn with the availability of pig’s liver.

I have the impression that the slaughter of a pig periodically was probably the practice in the Peterson household as my mother was growing up. But I also have the impression that the slaughter of a steer was not done though I’m sure that other farmers in the community did. I don’t know for sure though if my impression was correct or not.

College Graduation

The summer I spent at Iowa in 1942 finishing up my college career was like Fort Dodge JC days some of the more pleasant times I spent at school. During summer school there were fewer students around and generally there was a more relaxed tempo on the part of the instructors etc. Added to this feeling was the situation as to my immediate future which was more or less fixed at that point as to its course. So I “could live for the day” as it were.

Summertime in Iowa City was much like it was in Webster county with warm days, thundershowers, and the inimitable feel of a countryside lush with green vegetation, abounding with the sounds of insects and the songs of meadowlarks (though the latter were seldom encountered in a city environment).

The courses I took were to complete such long-delayed requirements as the first semester of physical chemistry, but I also had a math course in differential equations and a course in meteorology (both of which were replacements for various beginning engineering courses I had missed out on). The latter two were chosen on my personal predilections largely — the course of meteorology I’d selected since at the time I had not made a firm commitment between Shell and the navy.

So I came to the end of my school days. Graduation was at the end of July and my parents came to Iowa City for the event. Vincent came along but I think I was not able to get him a ticket. I have the feeling that he had to sit out the hour or so outside the hall in Memorial Union where the graduation exercises were held. After the event we drove back to the farm, along with my belongings — we must have arrived rather late. Vincent drove; my father had developed one of his sick headaches.

I’ve been back to Iowa City perhaps three or four times since, most recently I think in the year of Laurel and Mike’s wedding in 1985. As I’ve mentioned earlier the campus had changed, becoming more congested and to me at least a less lovely place. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of my graduation. I doubt I’ll make the effort to attend. I never established close relations with any of my classmates — perhaps the closest was Dwight Johnston, but this relationship developed not at Iowa but in later years at Shell. This may have been the result of my having spent my first two years at Fort Dodge junior college.

The professors and instructors I knew are probably mostly dead by now and such colorful figures as old Doc Raiford, the organic chemistry prof, exist only in my memory now. Dr. Arnold with his acerbic personality eventually came into conflict with the administration at Iowa and left. He actually moved to Albany, California (near to El Cerrito) and purchased a home there. He worked for Chevron for awhile but after that was apparently unemployed. There must have been some personality defect or quirk that kept him from getting along with people and society in general. It was sad since after I got used to him I thought he was a very good teacher. His marriage fell apart and eventually he was divorced — I don’t know where the family went, there were several children — but Arnold stayed on in Albany.

Somewhere along the line, shortly after his family arrived in California I had a Christmas card from them — really a nice, interesting looking family. Anyway he would probably be the only teacher still to be alive to be at the reunion (and from his experience not likely to be) and he would be the only one I would still be interested in seeing.

I receive from time to time a publication put out by the Iowa engineering department, and I’ve noticed from time to time the obituary of some professor or instructor I had. Not long ago there was an article about Mary Sheedy — a longtime departmental secretary and general factotum. Even when I was in school she was a fixture, and regarded by students and faculty alike with fondness. By now I’d suppose she would be approaching 90 years of age, but the article described her as still alert and active.

A Fork in the Road

During the late winter or early spring of my second year at the university, the Shell company came to the university on a recruiting trip. At that time my plan was still to take another complete year at Iowa to complete the requirements for my degree (picking up various introductory freshman and sophomore courses that I had missed), so I did not expect to be looking for work for a year or more.

Perhaps it was Dr. Arnold who suggested that I schedule an appointment and interview with the Shell representative. At any rate I did sign up for an interview and it went very well indeed. This was partly happenstance as the course in chemical engineering principles I was taking at the time happened to had fractionation as an upcoming subject. For some reason I had read ahead so I was, as it were, primed on a unit operation of major importance to any oil company.

The interview did drift to distillation and mostly I was prepared for the questions that were posed. There were two questions that I was relatively unprepared for — one was as to the technique for measuring equilibrium data and my spur of the moment reasoning was satisfactory; the other question was on tray efficiency and when I was asked what tray efficiency I would suggest, I demurred saying that a selection depended too much on the particular service (certainly true). When pressed for a number I said 50% which at that time was an often used value.

In retrospect I think this was a key point in the interview and I suspect at that point the interviewer (a Dr. Millar) had made up his mind to offer me a job. He sort of leaned back as if to say I’m satisfied as to this student. There were two men on the interview team and at this point the second man (a Dr. Vaughan) took over and from that point on the interview was mostly a sales pitch, describing the research establishment at Emeryville.

I received a job offer several days later via a telegram (which I still have somewhere) and (I think) after a discussion with Dr. Arnold decided to accept, noting that it might be over a year before I would appear in California. Actually since the exigency of the draft situation grew steadily more pressing, I decided to go to school the following summer so as to graduate a half year (or more) early. This decision involved getting the university to accept various junior college credits (such as European history which I took the second year I was there) in place of some freshman and sophomore engineering courses (like surveying). The university seemed to accept this quite readily — I suppose it had been urged to speed up their instructional schedule.

I don’t recall if it was prior to the Shell interview, I guess it must have been, that I had been accepted for summer employment with General Electric in Rochester, New York. My memory on this is rather uncertain, I think that was the case but I’m not absolutely sure. GE had quite regularly hired some of the undergraduate Iowa engineers for such employment. Or whether I just intended to apply. This never developed when I decided to go to summer school so I could finish my schooling sooner.

Later on I also explored the possibility of enlisting in the U.S. navy in a meteorological program they were offering. I would have gone in as the lowest officer rank (ensign). I would have gone through a training program. I had the paperwork done but I never submitted it. Had I gone ahead and been accepted for this I don’t know for sure what I would have done. I mentioned the possibility to Dr. Arnold and I can still see him in his office in the chemistry building, stout as he was and projecting sort of an aggressive stance and hear him saying “What would you want to do that for?”

It like the chance interview with Shell, was one of the key moments in my life, since I’m quite sure that Arnold’s comment steered me toward going with Shell. My life would certainly have been different had I gone in the navy. I would have probably ended up in the Pacific theater of operations and been involved in some of the naval encounters there. Maybe I would not have survived. Had I come through the war, would I have used the G.I. bill to get an advanced degree in engineering, or would I have retreated to farming in Iowa? Who knows?