Sunday, May 4, 1947

May 4, 1947

1317 Shattuck

Berkeley, Calif

Dear Father, Mother and the rest of the folks at home,

I was very sorry to hear that your side was troubling you so mother. Perhaps you should go to the doctor and find out what’s wrong; even if it isn’t much you’ll know that it is that and not something to be concerned about. Anyway I hope it gets better quickly. As you mentioned in your last letter, Clarice is also probably having a difficult time keeping her household running. Will her knee get better with a little rest so that she can get along if she is careful or will it require more than that? I believe you mentioned something about an operation; it would be hard for her, & them, if that were the case.

Today has been a very nice day, as was also yesterday. Both were fairly cool but nice and sunshiny after being cloudy for awhile in the morning. Yesterday afternoon I got in my two hours of sitting in the sun in the park and this time it really looks like I was out in it a little. I thought when I left after 2 hours that I might have stayed out a little longer but I am glad now that I didn’t. May 1 was a record warm day here in San Francisco, both for all of the May 1’s on record and for this year. I didn’t mind it as much tho as the other warm spell. May 2 started out hot but cooled off suddenly about 10 or 11 and it has been cool since.

I didn’t get around to writing Thursday evening which makes it twice recently that I have missed the usual mid-week letter. I’ll endeavour to do better hereafter. Monday night I worked on the distillation problem; Tuesday I went to the class. As I expected I didn’t do very good in the test; however, a lot of other people didn’t either so I ended up slightly above the average. The longer I attend the less enthusiastic I get about the class. last Tuesday’s lecture was very dull and I almost went to sleep. This week three problems were assigned and altho I have spent considerable time on them they still aren’t complete, requiring at least two hours more work. Whether it’s me or the class I don’t know.

Last night, or rather Friday night, we had dinner at a place called the Ritz Cafe or something like that. This one was located very conveniently in downtown S.F. This makes the second in a row that was a very good place. I had a broiled salmon steak and it was really good; much better than the one I had at Fisherman’s Wharf. Afterward we went to see Blackstone the magician. I wasn’t very keen on going but the others wanted to so I went along. It was interesting enough but whether it was worth the price of admission or not I don’t know.

Yesterday morning I got my laundry and a suit from the cleaners, had breakfast and worked on the distillation assignment till noon, completing 2 of the problems. Then I went downtown, completed some errands, came back, went to the park, afterward read & practiced till suppertime. I went to bed early after the usual Saturday night bath since I was still sleepy from the night before, despite the fact that I didn’t get up till 7:30. Today I got up about seven and working on my scrapbooks till 9:30 when I got dressed and went down to breakfast & to church. This afternoon, till Fred Allen came on, I spent again on the distillation assignment, get about 2/3+ of the way thru the last problem. Fred Allen wasn’t very good this afternoon. I went downtown for a little supper, came back and practice for awhile but didn;t feel in the mood for it so stopped pretty soon. After I get this finished I guess I’ll go to bed & listen to the Ford Sunday Evening Hour or whatever program it is that has the music on it and comes on about 8:30.

As I wrote to you awhile ago I was very undecided what to do about my church membership. Well, this morning I thought I might as well transfer it here even if the church didn’t seem too desirable. However, by the time the service was over I was certainly not in the mood again, so I didn’t do anything about it. I don’t know what’s wrong but practically all the time recently I feel when I come out of church that I have been gypped. I get up in the morning feeling nice and peaceful and after breakfast take a nice little walk to church and see the nice day and the cute flowers in people’s yards, all the time feeling like I’m glad it’s Sunday & I am going to church. Then, boom!. as soon as I get in there and the service stats I feel like a big wet blanket has been thrown over my nice happy state of mind and I wish I were anyplace but there. This is the case for almost any church service, not only the one I usually go to, so your suggestion about visiting some others isn’t too useful. Anyway, it leaves the whole situation up in the air.

Roughly the possible alternatives are, as far as I came make out: a) I can leave my membership indefinitely in San Pedro. This I refuse to do absolutely. b) Transfer it to come church here. This also I refuse absolutely to do. My experience so far with any of them and an examination of the rest of them convinces me that I certainly do not desire to be affiliated with them. c) Transfer it back to Gowrie. This is acceptable to me, since altho I have no illusions about Pastor Walfrid, nevertheless it is at a safe enough distance so that it can’t make me unhappy. If you have any other suggestions to offer I would be glad to hear them.

Since I have come to S.F., I have in general been happier, than I have been at almost any previous time in my life, except perhaps when I was going to Jr. College at Ft. Dodge. There have been times when I haven’t liked it so well like the time I got all wet walking home from the distillation class but mostly I have liked it. I like the work I am doing, the place I stay, and the things I do. I am most certainly not going to allow any generally unsatisfactory church affiliation like I had in San Pedro mar the possibility of such a state of mind & being continuing. Perhaps I am wrong but that is certainly the way I feel.

With love

C.P.

Eating Out in San Francisco

I mentioned that my friend Jim Cosgrave worked for McGraw-Hill in their San Francisco office. He it was that started the Friday evening habit if three young Shell engineers having dinner together with him at some notable San Francisco restaurant, after which the four of us would take in a move if there was one to our liking. The Shell engineers besides me were Steve Figg and Bob Overcashier. They had been transferred to San Francisco from Wilmington at the same time as I.

Steve is long deceased — he came from a family troubled with congenital heart malfunction. But he had left Shell by the time of his death and was I believe working at Richland, Washington in atomic energy. Bob continued at Shell and has been a life-long friend.

This Friday evening out continued as long as we were still working on San Francisco, but of course stopped when I started to spend most of my time either at Emeryville of the Berkeley lab. And I suppose it was not every Friday evening, though I have no recollection of ho often the evenings out occurred. I suppose we visited most San Francisco restaurants of note but I can’t recall most of them now. The Shadows on Nob Hill, the Blue Fox, Cairo’s, the Cliff House,  the Palace Hotel, Lupo’s Pizzeria (the first place I ever had pizza, long before it became common in the fast food area). And I remember the ornate splendor of the Fox Theater on Market Street now unhappily torn down.

Other work days I would often have my supper at Foster’s, just across the street from the Key terminal. This was sort of an “order at the counter” place which was at the time a chain of shops throughout the Bay Area. Or I might have a hamburger and hot apple pie at the Ground Cow in Berkeley. I don’t know how many hamburger suppers I had there but it was many. The Ground Cow later moved to a different location on Shattuck Square but it never prospered there and sometime after Jean and I were married it went out of business (though I still recall being there with Jean and some of our daughters before its demise).

San Francisco

My initial work for Shell in the Bay Area was at the Shell Building in San Francisco — my recollection is that it was on the fourth, or perhaps the fifth floor. The building was really a distinctive piece of architecture and right after WWII its 25-odd stories made it a tall building and it really stood out prominently in the San Francisco skyline. Now it is dwared and hidden by the newer and taller buildings around it.

I suppose that the first six months or so was a training period, first in the preparation of basic data and then in the fractionation design group. In both of these the training involved doing various projects and calculations of interest and value to Shell. After the training period was over the young engineers went in different directions — for example into process engineering groups for Shell Development (either oil or chemical) or perchance to a transfer to an operating company. In my case the direction was toward chemical engineering research and this was conducted either at a small laboratory in south Berkeley or at a test unit at Emeryville.

The latter was for the study of the hydrodynamics of distillation type contact trays and was part of a larger program the included an actual distillation column at the Houston refinery. The work in my case include conducting or supervising experiments and the analysis of the data. So I spent an increasing amount of time either at the large Emeryville site of Shell Development or at the smaller laboratory at Berkeley. Eventually sometime in the late 1940s the entire engineering group at San Francisco was moved from there into a new office building at Emeryville. Actually it was an extension of an existing building.

But back to San Francisco days at Shell. In retrospect it was a period for me marked by a condition of few or no personal responsibilities outside of work and a congenial and not very demanding atmosphere at work. Unlike at Wilmington where the work being done was often repetitious or mundane, at San Francisco the work really related to chemical engineering as I had envisioned in college courses and atmosphere.

I was exposed to individuals of unusual character, education and capability. It was a stimulating environment. Indirectly the atmosphere was also infected by the tenor of the industry at the time — the war was over, a bright vision of the future or the oil and chemical business was in the air, new plants and processes were being developed and implemented. Further, working in a metropolitan situation like San Francisco was a new experience — certainly it wasn’t like New York but it was a far cry from anything I had experienced up until then.

There was always the commute, getting a seat, reading the Chronicle on the morning trip across the bay, crossing the bay on the Bay Bridge, smelling the delicious coffee-roasting smell from the plant near the western terminus of the bridge, the short walk from the Key Terminal to the Shell Building. Noontimes were a time for having lunch at one of the many places near the Shell Building but within walking distance.

Perhaps the most picturesque to me at least was Adolf Wilke’s Business Men’s Lunch — it was just across the street from the Shell Building. The line of potential eaters (for the cafeteria-style lunch) might be extending out of the entrance for some distance, but rest assured, you would be paying Adolf Wilke himself inside of five minutes. Wilke could make change faster than any other cashier I have ever seen, but it was a messy operation. The floor around the till was always littered with stray coins that he had dropped in his rapid dispersing of change. There was a stack of bills in proper amount to make change for whatever bill was offered for payment and the amount of the tab. He only served lunch (perhaps breakfast, I don’t know) but he closed up by the early afternoon. When the building he was in was taken over for the construction of a new building he went out of business. I never encountered his restaurant again.

Noontimes were also a time for such activities as browsing in Stacey’s bookstore on the other side of Market Street up a block or so from the Shell Building, and exploring other businesses in the area. It was on a noontime walk that I once saw Dean Acheson while he was secretary of state (for Truman?) as big as life on a street corner. He was as elegant in life as in any of the published pictures of him.

North to San Francisco

During the four years that I spent in southern California, I still had strong feelings of nostalgia and longing for the more familiar Midwest scene and each year I would use my two-week vacation for a trip back to Iowa. The trip on the Challenger going and returning would take up perhaps five or six days so I would end up with not much more than a week back on the farm but I felt that it was worth it. It really wasn’t until my being transferred to the San Francisco area that my feelingss started to detach reall from the Midwest.

Shortly after the was was over the transfer of the young engineers to San Francisco was started. During the discussion of my future within Shell with Mr. “Bill” Johnson, who was the manager of the engineering department, the possibility of a transfer to the Wood River Refinery was discussed and he said he would investigate if this could be arranged. Anyway, I was not transferred to San Francisco at that time, as were a considerable contingent of the Wilmington crew.

My thinking back of the request for a transfer to Wood River was that I could develop a farming enterprise as a part-time activity while still working as an engineer. I was not familiar with farm land in southern Illinois where the refinery was located but Illinois is generally regarded as good agricultural land and I am reasonably sure that I could have located something good in the area.

As it turned out during the additional year I spent at Wilmington, the possible transfer to Wood River did not develop. I have no idea why, perhaps it was the evaluation Shell made of my potential in the company (including my quitting of my position as straw boss of the analytical laboratory). At the end of 1946 there were additional transfers of some of the remaining young engineers to San Francisco and this time when the possibility of a transfer developed I took it. I guess I felt that if nothing had transpired in a year as to Wood River that nothing in that direction would be forthcoming.

So it was in the late fall of 1946 that I arrived in San Francisco. I guess I took the train north — I don’t think I had my first airplane trip with Shell until several years later. My one memory of that first flight was that it was in the old standby aircraft, the DC-3. I watched with some sense of trepidation the formation of ice on the leading edge of the wing that I could see.

I had arrived in California with two suitcases. By the end of 1946 I needed in addition a small foot locker (like a small trunk) to contain my increased stock of worldly goods. It was not exactly a propitious time to arrive in the Bay Area as for several days or maybe a week there was sort of a general strike. This included the Key System, which operated the trains connecting San Francisco with the outlying parts of the Bay Area. Actually the strike didn’t develop until I had been in the Bay Area for a week or so.

Shell put me up at a place called the Maurice Hotel (I found out later that this was a rather classy accommodation comparing very favorably with the St. Francis, the Palace, etc.). Much later on, after I was married I found out that Jean’s brother-in-law, Ray Rosel, had oce worked there as a janitor.

By the time the strike started I’d located a room on Shattuck Avenue next to LiveOak Park. It was a room with a bath, sort of substandard that had been a maid’s quarters at one time. But the landlady and her husband were congenial people and I guess I stayed there for a couple of years. The location was convenient to the F train by which I commuted to the city as long as I worked there. The strike was of short duration and I recall that I was in a carpool with some other Shell employees until it was over.