CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME!

My life changed forever when my eyes beheld a sign in the window of an employment agency back in 1951. Read this yarn and discover how it lead me to move in California. 02/29/2016

CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME!

In April 1951, a sign in the window of an employment agency caught my eye. The Foster Wheeler Corporation (FWC), whose offices were located directly across the street, wished to hire a mechanical engineer to fill a vacancy in their Cooling Tower Department. I dashed into the agency and said, “I’d like to apply for that job.”  The person said, “Can you interview right now?”

“Yes.”

The employment fellow phoned Ed Pfieffer, Assistant Department Manager who said, “Send him right up.” An hour later, Ed hired me to fill the position of Sales Proposal Engineer starting April 30 at a monthly salary of $300/month.

I went home feeling downright giddy.

It saddened me to leave Fairbanks, Morse & Co. after nine months of employment. I enjoyed my job. My co-workers wished me well, most of whom were surprised to learn of my new starting salary. They couldn’t blame me for quitting.           

I couldn’t to tell them that on June 1, 1951, hardly a month after starting my new job, FWC raised the salaries of its entire work force ten percent. My new salary, $330 per month, was almost doubled that of my starting pay with Fairbanks, Morse & Co. a year earlier.                 

FWC held a prominent place in industry. It manufactured all manner of heat transfer products for utility, marine and process plant customers. Cooling towers represented just a fraction of their business. As a comedian might say, “It may have been small, but at least it didn’t produce a profit.” Over a period of a dozen years, it always operated in the red.

Organizationally, the Cooling Tower Department found its niche as part of the Condenser Division headed by Archie Goodrich, Vice President, who shared his office with Executive Secretary, Angelina Sammarco. They formed a great team.

John Brown, a Princeton graduate and a kin of the company’s founding family, managed the Cooling Tower Department. He arranged for me to obtain a $500 interest-free loan from the company to help pay for my first new car, a 1951 Studebaker Champion. This acquisition made it possible for me to date girls who lived in far away places like The Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens. Later on, my list included Angelina Sammarco.

In 1952, the company sent me to Birmingham, Alabama, my first business trip. This prompted me to buy my first hat, a fedora, in order to look the part of a seasoned businessman. It didn’t help much. At age 25, I faced the world essentially beardless.

A new job, a new car and now, a new hat, all in the space of one year! Wow!

On my way to Birmingham, I stayed overnight at a hotel in Atlanta that featured an ice-skating rink in its supper-club setting.

An elderly waiter asked, “What will you have to drink?”

“I’ll have Four Roses and ginger ale.”

“What’s Four Roses?”

“Rye whiskey.”

The waiter appeared perplexed. Obviously, no one south of Richmond had ever heard of rye whiskey. He returned with a drink consisting of bourbon and club soda that soured my mouth and riled up my disposition. Never again did bourbon cross my lips.

I visited the U. S. Steel facility in Birmingham with Wilson Pais, our Houston office sales manager. Inside the main office numerous men hunched over engineering drawing boards, inking and splattering away. I did not envy them.

In 1953, John Brown moved to Philadelphia after being promoted to sales manager. Leonard Swenson became the new Cooling Tower Department manager. Shortly afterwards, I accepted his offer to work in the capacity of Contract Administrator. My new duties were entirely clerical in nature. My engineering days had ended.

As I had never seen a cooling tower under construction or in operation, Leonard sent me on a six-week-long trip to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There, at a former secret plutonium plant, our field superintendent, Eb Brazelton, directed a crew of carpenters making repairs to a tower whose redwood structure had been damaged by excessively hot water. I planned to drive there on a Sunday morning in my relatively new Studebaker.

It had become my practice common to join my office pals after work on Friday evening at a local pub. I reasoned it would be prudent to withdraw my travel funds on Thursday morning in order to safeguard the cash. After drawing out the money that morning, I unexpectedly found myself at a nearby cocktail lounge toasting someone’s birthday. I never drank so early in the day. At noon, I had another cocktail or two at lunch with a sales representative, and yet another cocktail that afternoon for some other happy occasion. On the way to the subway, feeling mellow, some pals corralled me into the local bar where I drank a very large number of Manhattans, completely forgetting about the travel dough wadded in my wallet. I lost track of time and went home in a complete state of intoxication. When I awoke in the morning, a dread chill came over me. The expense money! My heart pounded while searching my wallet. Fortunately, I still had every penny of it. I thanked my lucky stars.

At work that Friday morning my head spun and my tummy churned. No one commented on my profound and obvious hangover.  Saying I had to prepare for my trip, I left the office at noon, went home and slept for 24 hours. Still feeling terribly ill, I set off on my two day drive at noon on Saturday. For the next three months the very thought of alcohol made me feel sick.

My stay in Oak Ridge turned out to be a wonderful vacation. Eb and his wife, Jobie, toured me all over the Great Smoky Mountains and took me to see many Tennessee Valley Authority lakes. We became the best of friends. Eb taught me to fish and to appreciate classical music. He had a large record collection which we listened to at night in his travel trailer. Jobie taught me how to eat four slices of her Key Lime pie and ask for more. Their black miniature poodle, Character, came to realize her dander made me sneeze, and would remain in their bedroom when ever I visited.

After my six-weeks of observation ended, I left my car with the Eb and flew to Miami to enjoy a week’s vacation. The tourist spots were empty. No one goes there in the summer. Two highlights of that week included a side trip to Key West and the opportunity to see a performance of Blythe Spirit in a seedy stage/bar emporium from which I fled after being approached by a patron who wanted to discuss certain anatomical matters with me. 

When the repair work at Oak Ridge ended, Eb joined the staff in our Manhattan office, in charge of all field construction personnel.  He and Maurice Tarplee, a newly hired structural engineer, set about redesigning FWC’s cooling towers, utilizing criteria that Swenson had determined to be effective in promoting heat transfer. Tarplee had an engineering college degree; Eb had something better, a working man’s smarts. The company banked on them to make its cooling towers more competitive in price and profitable.

At the same time, my office romance with Angie began to pick up speed. Dating her required me to drive from Hoboken to Forest Hills by way of the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels. Our dates often took us to some rustic dance places in New Jersey, thus necessitating me to make this drive four times in one evening. You can see why marriage began to appeal to me. Who could afford all those tolls? 

   FWC's Cooling Tower Division continued to lose money and my pay raises minimal. Rumors surfaced indicating a change in management might occur. In late 1954, I began looking for another position.

   A Connecticut-based manufacturer of plastic containers and similar products made me a tempting job offer. One restriction concerned me. The plant manager made it clear that no one could smoke on site. This mandate would test my resolve to continue my effort to quit the habit formed in my early childhood.

“Let me think about it for a few days.” I spent a week weighing all the pros and cons. Connecticut seemed like a far piece from Hoboken, where I still resided with my parents. While twisting in the wind, a breeze of sorts blew me across the country.

It began when FWC appointed Dennis O’Neil to manage the Cooling Tower Department in late October 1954. Dennis, an Annapolis graduate and a no-nonsense sort of fellow, had accepted the job after the company approved his plan to transfer the cooling tower work force to San Francisco in two stages. The first group would move before the end of the year to Arcata, California, site of the company’s redwood manufacturing mill. Here, they would complete the work of designing a new cooling tower structure in a period of about six to eight months. In early 1955, the remaining New York City staff would move to the Bay area, after which the Arcata office would close and its employees rejoin the others in San Francisco.

Dennis called me into his office and asked if I would be willing to accept an immediate transfer to Arcata. He knew of my office romance with Angie, but cut me no slack. I had to move to Arcata before the Christmas holidays or lose out on the opportunity to relocate.

“Yes, I’ll accept the offer.”

As part of the inducement, Dennis arranged for me to handle all of the purchasing requirements formerly performed by the main NYC office. They bristled, but relented. In addition, I could drive my car cross country to reach Arcata.

The prospect of moving to the Golden State fired up my psyche, and I accepted without weighing any of the consequences. I had not been this excited about anything since joining the army. It seemed like a dream opportunity to get a fresh start in life.

My decision meant that I had to defer marrying Angie until the following year. She agreed to wait. Her boss, Archie Goodrich, cautioned me about moving west. “Never leave headquarters, Joe. The executives here will forget about you.” I respected his advice, but chose to ignore it.

My decision shocked my parents. There had been no forewarning. My brother had remained at home until he married at age thirty five. They thought I would do the same. I had just turned twenty seven at the time and could not explain to them, or even to myself, why this opportunity seemed heaven-sent. I just knew in my heart it I had to relocate, even if it meant deferring marriage and cutting my ties with my family.

A few days later, I would leave Hoboken, never to move back. However, if you look closely, you’ll discover my heart is still there.

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