In 1986, I received a lead on a project from my associates at Lummus. A refinery in Pakistan, Attock Oil Refinery, had a problem with the composition of its feedstock. The crude oil they processed from a local oil field was changing over time; getting heavier and more difficult to process. They needed someone with experience with this problem to help develop a solution. Lummus recommended me since I previously completed a similar assignment for the Lummus-designed Concepcion refinery in Chile.
I looked into flights from the US to Pakistan and there weren’t many good options. This was an era when there had been quite a few airline hijackings around the world and I was especially cautious. I finally decided to fly on a Pakistani airliner because I reasoned it was unlikely that they would hijack or blow up their own airliner. The lesser of evils, if you will. So, I booked a flight from New York to Rawalpindi Pakistan on PIA, Pakistan International Airways. I contacted the client before I left the US and informed them of my flight and arrival time so they could arrange transportation from the airport to my hotel in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, just 30 minutes south of Islamabad, Pakistan.
The flight left LaGuardia in New York, then onto Istanbul, Turkey, and finally to Islamabad, Pakistan, just north of Rawalpindi. When I finally landed, I was a little apprehensive, to say the least. This trip took place about two weeks after President Regan had US Forces bomb Muammar Gaddafi’s Tripoli residence and one of Gaddafi’s young children was killed. I didn’t think Americans were going to be welcomed with open arms in the Middle East. Nevertheless, the deal with Attock was already signed and I felt obliged to honor my commitment.
I arrived at the airport on schedule, disembarked, and entered the queue to get through customs and immigration. As I was standing in line, I was approached by a military official in uniform and he didn’t speak to me, but took a piece of chalk and put a large X on my luggage, and moved on. Oh, oh, bad start. After he walked away, I turned the suitcase around so no one could see the X. I didn’t know what the X meant but I was the only one that had one and I was also the only westerner on the flight. I was just hoping I didn’t somehow inadvertently insult Mohammed.
Eventually, I got through customs & immigration and proceeded to the street side outside of the airport. Hot, humid, and rife with the odor that’s unique in all tropical third-world countries. There were at least a thousand people crowded outside the airport waiting to meet disembarking passengers. All were dressed in the local garb, including the rags wrapped around their head. None looked very sociable. I stood just outside the exit door for a long time waiting for someone to show up with a sign with my name, or Attock Oil, or something that identified them as my ride. No one showed up.
Eventually, the crowd dispersed and I was alone, on the street corner, and no ride from Attock had arrived. I found the room in the airport where the phones were located and called my contact at Attock. He said he was in Karachi waiting for me at the Airport. Karachi is almost a thousand miles south of Rawalpindi! WTF?
He said he would contact someone in Rawalpindi to pick me up and take me to the hotel where they had booked a hotel room. In due time, someone did show up, however, I was then within an “inch” of turning around and getting on the next flight the Hell out of there. Not a very auspicious start for this assignment.
The following day, I arrived at the refinery, met the top management, the engineers, the plant operators, and started solving the problem. An older gentleman who worked his entire career at the refinery but was now semi-retired was assigned to be my guide & mentor. His name was Mohammed Hanif Khan. He was about seventy years old, a PhD Chemical Engineer who worked his entire career at the Attock refinery and was very knowledgeable about the current refinery, as well as its history.
I was in Rawalpindi for nine weeks working on the solution to their crude oil problem and Mohammed was my constant companion and source of information. We worked well together and over the nine weeks that I was there we developed a close friendship. In fact, he invited me to his home after work on several occasions to meet his wife and his oldest daughter, a medical doctor in Karachi. After dinner, he and I would relax in his den/library often discussing the project, as well as other common engineering and technical interests. I wondered how we became so close in such a short time and one night he told me a story that explained it.
He said he “took his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1949”. He further told me that “He was very apprehensive about attending graduate school in the US as he didn’t speak English very well, he was a brown guy and didn’t know whether he would fit in”. He took a rented room in a small rooming house near the campus and the house was owned by a family named Larson. Despite his reservations, he told me that the Larsons’ took him in like a son and helped him immensely in every way. He opined that “he thought the Scandinavian people were the best example of mankind.” I then realized that Mohammed, by helping me as he did, was paying back a fifty-year-old debt. Since I have a Scandinavian surname (Gunardson), he immediately imagined, in his mind, that I was sent there for a reason. I understood that at the time but now at the age of seventy-two, I can fully appreciate it.
Trip to the Northern Frontier – The Khyber Pass
On the weekends, which are Friday and Saturday in the Middle East, the company would provide a car and driver to take me to a hill station, as they called it, to relax and recharge. The Hill Station was an impressive old stone building at about 3,500 feet elevation, part way up the Spin Ghar Mountains that separate Pakistan from Afghanistan. The range connects directly with the Shandūr offshoot of the Hindu Kush mountain range. It’s located about three miles from the Afghan border near Landi Kotal.
The Khyber Pass, one of the oldest passes in the world, is part of the Silk Road which throughout history has been an important trade route between Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent. It has also been and still is a strategic military location.
The accommodations were in an impressive old stone building at the summit of the pass built by the British in the late 1800’s. The Pakistanis aren’t too fastidious about maintenance so the place was a bit worn down, but comfortable enough. My client, Attock Oil, owned the place so it didn’t cost me anything to stay there. As an added bonus, for my amusement, I was able to watch the Russians bomb the Khyber Pass to deter the Afghans from coming through to obtain weapons in Pakistan from the CIA. The Russians were at war with Afghanistan at that time and the US was supporting the Afghan rebels.
The car trip up over the pass and back again was quite an adventure. It was an unpaved road cut into the side of the mountain with a fair amount of traffic in both directions, including trucks of various kinds and buses packed with passengers both inside, atop, and hanging on the outside, as well. The backdrop for this, as I said, was the Russian bombs going off on the Afghan side of the border. This trip through the pass was definitely a unique “white knuckle” experience.
On one incident in particular, the return trip to Rawalpindi became extremely tense. We were already through the pass and somewhere in the city of Islamabad mired in heavy traffic, when we had an automobile accident. The traffic ahead stopped abruptly and my driver ran into the guy in front of him. It was one of those buses full of passengers hanging all over the outside of the bus. The collision was at slow speed, so not much actual damage was done but all traffic stopped in the middle of the road. The drivers each got out in the street and started to argue over who was at fault. In the meanwhile, the bus emptied out and a large mob of passengers and onlookers congregated around the car. And finally, they spotted me, the ‘white guy’ in the back. A large crowd were staring and pointing at me at me and a few started pulling at the door handle. None were smiling and they didn’t look all that that friendly. If ever there was a time that I wished I was invisible, this was it.
Finally, after ten minutes, which seemed like a couple of hours, my driver returned and started to drive away. He and the bus driver apparently reached an agreement about whose fault it was and who was going to pay whom and we proceeded back to Rawalpindi, and my hotel. What an incredible relief. I really thought I was finally screwed! If that crowd yanked me out of the car, not only was there nothing I could do about it, but I was entirely on my own in Pakistan and no one would even come looking for my remains.
When I got back to my hotel and had a bit of time to reflect on the situation, I decided that when this assignment was over I was going to get out of the consulting business and take a job with a company that wasn’t situated in this part of the world. Several previous job offers with Air Products were starting to look pretty attractive.
This occurred in 1986. Years later in 2002, there was an incident in that same part of the world that attracted much media attention. It was the beheading of Daniel Pearl, a journalist with the Wall Street Journal on assignment in Karachi.
“Pearl was kidnapped while working as the South Asia Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal, based in Mumbai, India. He had gone to Pakistan as part of an investigation into the alleged links between American Richard Reid (known as the “shoe bomber”) and Al-Qaeda. Pearl was killed by his captors.
In July 2002, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin, was sentenced to death by hanging for Pearl’s abduction and murder. In March 2007, at a closed military hearing in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a member of Al-Qaeda, claimed that he had personally beheaded Pearl. Researchers have also connected Al-Qaeda member Saif al-Adel with the kidnapping.”
A few years after this tragedy Daniel Pearl’s wife wrote a book about the murder entitled “A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl”. I bought it and read it. It gave me the chills. Daniel Pearl, accompanied by his wife Marianne, spent their days before he was kidnapped traveling and living in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Karachi Pakistan and she gives detailed descriptions of the streets, neighborhoods and tea houses they frequented. I frequented the same venues in 1986 and remembered them well. My experience was almost two decades earlier, but reading her account,I couldn’t help thinking, “There but for the grace of God go I”. The wrong place at the wrong time and “Boom”, that’s it. Game over.
Nuclear disaster at Chernobyl – Apr 26, 1986
I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I flew from London to Istanbul to Islamabad on Pakistan International Airways, the route took us directly over Chernobyl at the exact time the nuclear reactor was in full meltdown. I’m sure we flew right through the nuclear cloud. This consulting assignment was bad news in every way shape and form. It was definitely time to start looking for a better way to make a living.
Lummus was a great place to start a career and learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. It was a good time to be working in the oil and gas industry since the previous downturn was just ending and the inevitable upturn was well underway. I had the opportunity to work for and alongside some great engineers and innovators and really hone my engineering skills. After nearly ten years, however, I started to become somewhat disenchanted with both the company and the corporate environment in general.
Let’s put it this way. When I joined Lummus as a junior engineer there were three slots between myself and Vice President. Nine years later I had been promoted several times but there were now ten slots between myself and the Vice Presidents. The company had four Vice Presidents when I joined. Now there were, unbelievably, fifty-seven Vice Presidents. The main activity was no longer carrying out engineering but rather sitting around in conference rooms telling each other we’re here to make sure “we do this right” whatever that was supposed to mean. You couldn’t even book a conference room. They were all occupied with Lummus guys posturing and bullshitting all day long.
For my first few years at Lummus, I was involved in the engineering and design of lube oil plants. It was a good experience and I learned a lot but it was not an upward career path in Lummus. Lummus prided itself on being a premier technology company. A company with a broad portfolio of proprietary and patented technologies that provided a distinct advantage over its competitors. Lube oil technology was not one of those technologies. The basic technology and know-how were actually owned and licensed by Texaco, not Lummus. We merely executed the process and mechanical designs based on Texaco’s guidelines. My other projects besides lube oils were oil refinery design and engineering assignments. Again, great experience but as with lube oils, these were mainly proprietary processes, usually licensed from UOP.
The principal business of Lummus, the cornerstone technology as it were, was ethylene technology. These were large, expensive facilities that at that time were entering an early stage of massive market growth where Lummus had a distinct proprietary advantage. In the Lummus Company, ethylene was king. In my last couple of years with the company, I had the opportunity to work on a few ethylene projects but these were sporadic catch as catch can situations. By this stage in my career, I was essentially a petroleum refinery expert.
The Lummus ethylene group was large and well-staffed and for me becoming a full-fledged member of that exclusive club would be a long, arduous, and uncertain process. Instead of trying to make the transition, I opted out. I left Lummus without another full-time job. My plan was to set up a small independent consulting company and peddle my skills as a knowledgeable process engineer with experience in process design, start-up, and troubleshooting. I called my one-man company Process Systems International (PSI).
My first contract as an independent agent was with a company located in Philadelphia, Catalytic Construction. It was actually a subsidiary of Air Products and Chemicals in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I had a one-year contract with Catalytic providing process design expertise on a coal liquefaction project for Southern Company Services, a large power generation company in Birmingham, Alabama. Catalytic had a contract to design and build a power plant in Birmingham based on coal liquefaction technology. The incentive for this project was to reduce US dependence on foreign oil which had taken a drastic price escalation in the late 70’s. I was informed of the opportunity and was recommended to the Catalytic engineering team by a headhunter I had known at Lummus. his contract paid quite well and was a substantial premium over my previous salary at Lummus. It was an auspicious beginning for my newly formed enterprise, PSI.
With Jill and Jimmy getting older, the living quarters in Colonia, New Jersey with Joann’s Mom and Dad were getting quite cramped. And since my father-in-law, Herman, had recently retired there was a general consensus among the extended family that a move for all of us was in our best interests. I was strapped for disposable cash but had a large increase in monthly income from my consulting contract with Catalytic Construction so we collectively decided to move to a larger home. After some deliberation, we came up with the idea of buying a larger home in Southern New Jersey within reasonable commuting distance to Philadelphia. Home prices were more reasonable in southern New Jersey and after a bit of shopping around, we found a beautiful property in a small town within proximity to Philadelphia called Tabernacle, New Jersey.
It was a large three-bedroom house with an attached two-and-a-half car garage on several acres adjacent to the New Jersey Pine Barrens. And it featured an in-law apartment on the second floor with its own separate entrance ideal for Herman and Helen. Our plan was Herman and Helen would sell their house in Colonia providing a substantial down payment for the new house and I would carry the mortgage which I could well afford with my new project underway in Philadelphia. We did the deal and moved into our new home on Foxchase-Friendship road in Tabernacle; Joann, the kids, and I on the first floor and Herman and Helen on the second floor in their own in-law apartment.
The house was located on an unpaved road across from a Girl Scout camp, Camp Inawendiwin, and adjacent to a quarter million acres of undeveloped pine forest, the so-called Jersey Pine Barrens. It was an ideal place to raise a young family offering unlimited recreational activities at our doorstep. We could hike, fish, canoe, and let our dogs could run free in the immediate surroundings and we would still be within one hour drive to downtown Philadelphia to the west and the Jersey Shore to the south.
My folks thought I was an idiot. My Dad complained about the unpaved road and mocked the name of the town, thought it sounded like some kind of religious cult – Tabernacle. He was wrong, it was a great place, and moving there was one of the best decisions I made and in many ways one of the happiest and most contented times in my life.
There was a very large partially finished and fully carpeted basement in the house where the kids could play to their hearts’ content. It was an “L” shaped basement, walled off where the utilities including the furnace and well water pump were located. This utility area had a separate entrance from the backyard and I built a sturdy bench and located my workshop there. Eventually, I built another wall which created a sizable room adjacent to the kids’ play area where I located my office. It included a large desk, computer table, file cabinets, and a complete wall of bookcases. It was ideal. Upstairs the house had a sunken living room with a brick fireplace at one end, a small elevated area where we located a piano, and sliding glass doors to a covered porch. There was a large kitchen and adjacent dining area with a floor-to-ceiling “walk-in” fireplace. I installed a cast iron wood stove in the fireplace to warm the dining area without compromising energy efficiency. Overall, it was our “dream house”.
I commuted daily from Tabernacle to downtown Philadelphia working for Catalytic in Center City in a high-rise office building then known as the ARCO Towers in Centre City square. I drove every day from Tabernacle to a small town called Lindenwold, where I would leave the car and take the commuter train into Center City Philadelphia. When the project at Catalytic was concluded I was able to secure contracts with several small firms in the greater Philadelphia and New Jersey area. In fact, my previous employer Lummus also hired me for several small consulting assignments.
One major disadvantage of working independently was that I no longer had access to a mainframe computer to carry out detailed engineering calculations. However, there was a service available at that time called ChemShare. For a subscription fee and a very reasonable online charge, one could use a personal computer and phone modem to run chemical engineering calculations on a remote mainframe computer. So, I purchased my first personal computer, an IBM PC with 64K of memory, a single-sided floppy disk drive, a monitor the size of a small TV, and a telephone modem. The cost for the whole package was about five thousand dollars. I signed up with ChemShare and I was able to do all of my engineering calculations over the landline and effectively compete with the big engineering companies that had huge mainframe computers, the venerable IBM 360’s.
There were some problems however. Cost of the service was one. It could get expensive, especially for multiple runs or especially for mistakes that would not converge quickly. Reliability of the phone modem was another problem. The phone line might drop the connection in the middle of a run and this could run up CPU time for a solution. As a result, after a few months of struggling with ChemShare, I decided to write my own software for basic engineering calculations. I had learned FORTRAN while in Newark College of Engineering and so I started to write a FORTRAN program to carry out a basic chemical engineering calculation known as equilibrium flash calculations.
Eventually, I got a functional program working which I used to rough out calculations that I would later use ChemShare for to make a final confirmation run. This saved considerable CPU time on ChemShare. My home-grown program worked and was accurate but not very user-friendly.
I was having lunch one afternoon in a local restaurant, the Medford Diner, and I overheard a couple of guys in the next booth talking about computers and computer programming. I knew enough about computers to understand that they were accomplished programmers and understood from their conversation they had their own business. I struck up a conversation and eventually mentioned my engineering software. The two fellows were partners in a small software company in Medford Lakes, New Jersey, called Microtek Computer Consultants. Dave Soll was the president and Marc Leslie was the VP. These two guys with a couple other part-time programmers set up computer systems and wrote software for local small businesses in the southern New Jersey area.
[Note: After Hal passed away, Marc Leslie reach out to me about the creation of the software he had Microtech help him build. Marc provided this additional glimpse into my dad’s work with them at the time. David Soll passed away in November 2021 after a courageous 2-year battle with cancer.]
Engineering Software – Creating FLASHCALC
From Marc Leslie – The original project was FlashCalc, which calculated the flash point of petrochemical liquids, and Hal had taught himself to program in BASIC, the result was both funny and amazing. You could see when he learned a certain statement, like a For…. Next loop as the next ten pages of code would all be For… Next loops! But the amazing thing and this is a testament to your Dad’s intellect, is that this incredibly complex bit of programming worked! Now, he understood that the code *really* needed to be cleaned up to be commercial, which is where he contacted us, but I was always impressed with just about everything your Dad did.
Although he didn’t have a lot to do with this humorous story, he once called my wife at her office in Toledo, OH when he was with Air Products. Jeanne wasn’t available and when she returned (and this was a while ago) there was one of those pink “you need to return a call” slips with the name of the caller “Helga Nardson”. Jeanne didn’t know who this was and was very surprised when she called and your Dad and his deep voice answered and it took a while for each of them to figure out who was calling and who the other person was.
It was a sad day at the Johnston House. Today our beloved Annie Girl went over the Rainbow Bridge. It was my hope that my dad, Hal, was waiting for her as she crossed. She had a rough couple of weeks and we could see that she was going to continue to struggle. She would have been 15 years old in July (at least we think so). It’s a long post, so please bear with me as I struggle to figure out how to keep myself together. In a way, I said goodbye to my dad again today, as well. They were so interconnected that when she gave us a look, we could actually hear my dad ‘speaking’ through her. So long, you ‘crazy Dingo’.
So Long – RIP – Salace Saloon
Hal Gunardson’s note from October 5, 2018 (he passed away about 5 weeks later on November 17, 2018 – who knew that Annie would have been with us for ANOTHER 3.5 years after he made this note that I found on his laptop after he passed away.)
Friday morning. I dropped my shipmate, Annie, off at Fernandina Animal Hospital at 8am this morning to be sedated for her biopsy on the tongue lesion she recently developed. The vet told me that it looked like it may be cancerous. Said it is probably 95 percent sure that it is cancerous and located in a spot that would be impossible to surgically remove. I’m waiting for the call.
I’ve had many dogs in my lifetime and all were hard to lose when their time came but this is the worst. She has been aboard with me for the past ten years and in many ways has been the best canine companion I’ve ever had. It’s hard to imagine living aboard without her. Friends have come and gone, shipmates and crew have come and gone, but Annie, my canine alter ego, has been with me through thick and thin. Through fair winds and calm seas, blissful winter days in the Bahamas, a nor’easter off Charleston in late December a few years back. She has also been the best watchdog I’ve ever had. It’s her boat as well as mine. She appointed herself first mate in charge of security right from the beginning and has fulfilled that role with unwavering loyalty from day one.
Yeah, day one. I found Annie in the Broward County Animal Shelter in Fort Lauderdale ten years ago. Broward County Shelter is a large facility. They had four hundred dogs there at that time. It is also a “kill” center. Since they had limited space they kept the dogs for fourteen days and then if they weren’t adopted they were euthanized. On the Sunday morning I showed up Annie was on day twelve. The truth be known she adopted me. When I saw her in her kennel there was an immediate connection. I put her name down and they asked me to sit in a room while they brought her down to sit with me for twenty minutes to see if we bonded. They also told me I needed to know two things about Annie before they brought her down. First, they said she chases livestock, and second that she is totally out of control. I said bring her down. I watched as she yanked and pulled the young fellow who had her on the leash. When she entered the room and they closed the door she sniffed the entire room twice, reconnaissance so to speak. She then laid down at my feet and went to sleep. Twenty minutes later the young fellow returned and asked me, “What do you think?” I said she adopted me and it was a done deal. That was ten years ago and we have been inseparable ever since.
Jill’s Post-Script:
Well, Annie did slow down in the past 3.5 years, quite a bit, but it was not like that when she first came to live with us. She still had her bunk (a twin bed in our spare room) where I placed her beat-up sleeping bag. I always hoped she feel more comfortable if she could smell my dad on this blanket. I don’t think she gave a shit. Over the first couple of months, she continued to get more and more attached to me. To the point that I could not leave a room with her tippy tap nails following me wherever I went, like ALL the time. As the days turned into weeks to months to years, I learned to love that noise, even though it drove me nuts at the same time.
No matter how old she was – she was 100% the alpha dog within our 3-dog household. She could not stand Charlie but learned to tolerate him. She would just stand there and stare at him and he’d get into line immediately. I also think she loved Ajax. When she came to live with us, we got Ajax, our black Lab, as a puppy a few weeks later. She watched him grow up and he could never do any wrong with her. He would frequently try to get her to play with his toys. Rarely did she engage back, but sometimes she did. It would make me laugh and I am sure my dad would have loved to see her do that. He always wanted to get another Caroline Dog as a puppy so Annie could imprint her personality on the pup. Well, she did a bit with Ajax. I know he loved her too. Charlie did not.
She had a ‘dog stroke’ a couple of years ago – I thought that was the end. Apparently not! It took several weeks, and she started to just eat out of my hand only, but slowly but surely she recovered and then had another stroke. I nursed her back to almost 100% a second time, but she slowed down considerably after that event – no more jumping on her bunk after that. These later years, she flatly refused to sleep on any dog bed – she just wouldn’t do it! I did find a couple of small padded rugs that she seemed to like to lay on while constantly grooming her front legs and chewing on her dewclaws.
This dog literally had 9 lives and she lived every single one of them to their absolute fullest. Like she really did. She had absolutely the best life, better than a lot of people I know. As I sit here – she’s been gone about 1 hour, and I really miss her. I really miss almost stepping on her when I get up from any seat in the house. I miss her getting up EVERY time I stand up. I am glad she decided that I was someone she could love – I loved her too.
So long, you crazy Dingo. You will be missed – you and those crooked ears. Those crooked ears…..sigh….
<Jill Gunardson-Johnston Post> The last Long Story Short blog post featured a number of memories on the solar projects my dad was part of. He noted about the crazy solar hippies that they set up next to at a conference. After some research, I was able to find out additional information about this group. Quite an interesting story and turn of events. I was totally sucked in and decided to share it as a follow-up post.
The crazy hippy that my dad was writing about was Michael Zinn. He went on to hold an interesting life, but it was cut tragically short. The following post can be found at http://besicorp.com/legacy.php I am posting it here as well:
Now we call it social impact investing. Not long ago, it was just conscious living: different language, same idea. Michael Zinn understood impact investing long before it had the title. He simply believed in business that also achieved positivity for people and the planet.
From the humble beginnings of working out of his garage, Michael was tenacious in his quest to achieve financial and business success while staying true to his vision: making renewable energy and clean power generation a viable alternative for society. In his own words, Michael said, “It has been my belief that the only way to save the natural environment is through the development of new technologies that are both environmentally sound and economically competitive. Driven by market forces, the economy itself might thus become the means by which we save the natural world.”
To achieve that goal, Bio-Energy Systems, Inc. (BESI) was founded in 1976. Bio-Energy was initially created as a product distribution company based on solar thermal technology. Their first product developed was the “Solar Roll” which was designed as an affordable, lightweight solar collector made of rubber tubing used for residential water heating applications. Business took off when the company was featured in a Popular Science article in June of 1979. The solar roll technology was expanded to include commercial applications and BESI continued in its distribution of solar thermal technologies through the ’80s. During this time, Michael broadened his activities in the development and deployment of alternative energy technologies and began to develop small on sight cogeneration projects for commercial applications. Cogeneration is a process that efficiently produces electricity as well as thermal energy in the form of steam or hot water which can then be used for other applications. These new project development activities required the formation and management of permitting, engineering, construction, and financial services.
Michael continued to develop the company’s project development skills, and with a dedicated executive team and the expertise of joint venture partners, he and the Besicorp team went on to develop six cogeneration plants around New York State.
In 1993 Michael purchased SunWize Energy Systems, a solar electric distribution company based on photovoltaic technology (PV). Over the next 14 years, the company (now under the name SunWize Technologies) was carefully restructured, and a management team and business strategy were created and implemented. Ultimately, the company evolved into a major force in the solar industry with global activities in distribution, project development, and product creation.
In the span of over two decades, Michael’s strength of character, strong vision, business acumen, and environmental ideals led Besicorp and his portfolio of companies to success while bringing its investors a substantial return on their investment. The business activities all operated under the same core principle: create environmentally sound and socially responsible projects that are economically successful while making a positive and sustainable contribution to society.
His foresight to build stable, long-term management teams that operated under a common goal and vision was key to the successful management of his companies. Following his untimely death in 2005, the strength of that common vision propelled the company through the continued successful development and sale of his final development project—a 500 MW power project and the successful marketing and sale of SunWize Technologies. The development and market success of these projects validates Michael’s vision, unwavering attention to core principles, and commitment to long-term value.
Besicorp’s legacy is one of visionary leadership, strategic thinking, and the commitment to projects that are both financially viable as well as good for society—proof that people, profit, and the planet never go out of style—in fact, these principles stand the test of time.
Michael Zinn, founder and former CEO of Besicorp Group, a Kingston, New York-based owner of electric power plants, certainly has seen happier days. So have all his new roommates, also doing time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, New Jersey. On November 12, 1997, Zinn began serving a six-month sentence for federal tax evasion and election fraud in connection with campaign contributions to U.S. Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey, whose congressional district, north of New York City, covers the area in which Besicorp is based. The 44-year-old Zinn had pleaded guilty to the charges in June, a month after a grand jury in the Southern District of New York had indicted him for illegally funneling $27,000 of Besicorp capital to the Saugerties, New York, Democrat’s 1992 election campaign.
According to federal prosecutors, Zinn induced his employees to make smaller contributions to Hinchey’s war chest and then reimbursed the donors with corporate funds. In court papers, the prosecutors also said that Zinn had reimbursed himself with Besicorp money for his own $7,000 gift to the politician, and illegally declared the outlays as “business expenses” on the company’s tax returns.
Zinn, who was Hinchey’s campaign finance manager at the time, allegedly persuaded Ansaldo North America, the American subsidiary of an Italian government-owned power plant contractor, which did business with Besicorp, to kick in $43,000 to Hinchey’s 1992 war chest, too. Of that, prosecutors contended, $40,000 was funneled through Besicorp. Two months before Zinn’s indictment, Ansaldo pleaded guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution and paid the maximum fine of $200,000.
Just before going into prison, Zinn sent a written reply to questions posed by Barron’s. In his statement, he vehemently denies all the civil charges. As for the shareholders’ charges of egregious self-dealing, Zinn states: “In the mid-1980s, the company entered a long period of insolvency, and remained in business for years solely through my own personal financial support.” (According to Besicorp lawyer Nachimson, that “support” included $8.9 million in bank loans between 1985 and 1989, personally guaranteed by Zinn.)
Michael Zinn’s power-industry career was inspired by the 1970s energy crunch and the government’s attempt to spur research into alternative power sources. In 1974, the then 25-year-old Zinn went into the solar-energy business in the garage of his parent’s home in the little Catskill town of Spring Glen. With the help of federal tax credits, the enterprising young man-manufactured solar-collector screens, as well as light-powered gadgets and appliances, including rubber mats for warming up swimming pools. But when the solar craze died by the early ‘Eighties, the promising little operation became virtually insolvent.
Zinn switched his focus from making solar gadgetry to building conventional, mainly gas-fired, electric power plants. And with a federally mandated customer base, plus a state price floor, the necessary capital wasn’t difficult to find. In 1981, his new operation, called Besicorp (an acronym for Biomass Energy Systems), went public, listed on Nasdaq.
Besicorp’s plants were to be state-of-the-art and environmentally friendly. To build them, the company set up a subsidiary called Beta Development, which went into partnership with an experienced electric-plant builder, Kamine Development of Bedminster, New Jersey, and subcontracted with such veteran energy-industry developers as Ansaldo’s subsidiary.
Financed mainly by General Electric Credit, Zinn, over the next decade or so, set out to build six power plants, five of which were running. (The other was shelved before completion.) And, given state and federal mandates, major customers were almost automatically available as the plants came to completion. In the early ‘Nineties, Besicorp signed up Niagara Mohawk Power, whose territory runs 300 miles across upstate New York, from Albany to Buffalo; the deal involved five Besicorp plants. Moreover, in 1990, Besicorp agreed to build a cogeneration facility in Corning, New York, for the sale of electricity to New York State Electric & Gas, a utility in the state’s southwest corner.
The Besicorp saga could take another turn, too. A month before surrendering to his jailers, Zinn announced at the annual shareholders’ meeting that Besicorp had hired PaineWebber to find a buyer or merger partner for the company. The per-share proceeds from any such deal could have been affected by the recently dismissed suit, too.
First oil crisis – October 1973 – Nixon Administration
The first oil crisis was a result of the Arab-Israeli war in 1969. Arab nations refused to export crude oil to nations supporting Israel and by October 1973 the price of crude oil had risen from $10 per barrel to almost $50 per barrel. The shortage caused long backups at filling stations and home heating oil shortages combined with drastic price increases.
Gas Shortage – Hess Gas Station – 1973
The oil crisis, as it was called, sparked a strong interest in fossil fuel alternatives, especially solar energy. On the surface, solar space heating appeared to be a sensible idea and since I was employed by Lummus in the energy industry, I had firsthand knowledge of the impact of the increased price of fossil fuel energy. And so, I became very interested in solar applications. I began to study the possibilities of capturing solar energy for space heating and for the next several years I studied everything I could find on solar developments. At that point, I had no ambition to start a solar energy business but simply followed solar developments as an interesting idea.
Oil Prices – Hal Gunardson – Pulled ~2017Oil Prices – pulled by Jill Johnston (02 Oct 2022)
Second Oil Crisis – 1978-79 Carter Administration Iranian Revolution
The so-called second oil crisis took place in late 1978 and early 1979. Another worldwide crude shortage, this time caused by the Iranian revolution and subsequent curtailment of Iranian oil exports. The price of crude oil escalated from about $50 per barrel to almost $100 per barrel and this event once again caused long “lines” at gas filing stations, as did the first oil shock in 1970, and once again it sparked a general panic among the driving public.
I was already familiar with solar energy fundamentals from the first go-around and my assessment was there might be sufficient economic incentives to justify solar space heating and water heating applications. Despite the obvious drawbacks of low energy density (low energy input) and the intermittent nature of solar energy, the economic equation had now changed significantly with crude oil priced at around $100 per barrel. This reignited my part-time study of alternative energy possibilities. I happened to be in touch with my childhood friend, Dennis Connell, and although he had no technical background in energy and engineering he was excited about the solar energy concept and wanted to start a business to do solar installations. I was also convinced the idea had merit and we formed a small company, Sun Trap Design, located in Princeton Junction, NJ, to pursue potential projects.
Tom Amendola – 1978 – Sun Trap Designs – Solar House in Toms Rover, NJ
Not long after we started the partnership, Dennis called me and asked if I would meet him at the A&W Root Beer stand in Toms River, New Jersey. He had a prospect for a solar project and would meet with us that afternoon to discuss his ideas. Dennis and I drove to the A&W and met with Tom Amendola, a small businessman building custom homes in the Toms River area. He was enthusiastic about the solar phenomena getting a lot of publicity in the media and thought it would enhance his home construction business. We immediately “hit it off” and decided to partner with Tom to build a high-profile custom-house at the Jersey shore in Toms River, NJ. Tom asked if we had an architect that could design the home. One of my colleagues from Lummus, Ari Minkinen, had a good friend, Dave Roth, that was an architect in New York City and he agreed to introduce me.
I met Dave Roth at his apartment in New York. I pitched our idea and he became very interested in the opportunity to tackle a solar project. All of us were in agreement that we would do the first project on a contingency basis. Tom Amendola agreed to put up the waterfront land and bankroll construction of the house. We formed a partnership with Sun Trap Design, Dave Roth Architectural, and Amendola Construction.
Dave Roth immediately started on the design of the house, I began the design of the solar space and water heating systems and Dennis scouted out suppliers for the solar panels, controllers, and balance of the system. The Amendola solar home project was underway. Tom had previously purchased a waterfront lot on Barnegat Bay at a very low cost since half of the lot was actually underwater. Later the State of New Jersey passed a wetlands law that forbid the sale of such lots but at that time it was completely legal. In fact, it was a fairly common practice to purchase these half-submerged lots, construct bulkheads, backfill sand from dredging and essentially build the lot out from solid land to the bulkhead. Dave Roth drew up conceptual designs for a custom solar house. A local dredging company was hired to put in a bulkhead, dredge a channel on the water-side and dump the dredged sand over behind the bulkhead, thereby manufacturing a full and legal sized lot. Can’t do that anymore but it was common practice back then. Dave and I worked together to design a home that met all the requirements of both passive and active solar principals as well as fulfilling Tom’s vision for the house. As Tom expressed it “When customers come into the place and look around their reaction will be WOW!”
Passive solar features are based on orientation (to the sun) and the design of the structure to utilize south-facing windows, walls, and floors to capture solar heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer. In this way, the active solar system, consisting of solar collectors, pumps, blowers, and other mechanical equipment can be made smaller and less expensive. The Amendola house featured a southeast-facing glass wall overlooking the bay, two-story atrium living room, clear-story windows above the glass wall, stepped roof with two levels facing due south and sloped at a forty-degree angle for the solar panels, two by six studs for fully insulated vertical walls, two by twelve rafters for fully insulated ceiling and roof, two by twelve floor joists for a fully insulated floor. In addition. a heavily insulated solar storage space was located below the floor in a four-foot crawl space filled with two-inch diameter river stones.
It was actually a pretty impressive design; modern but not too modern, different but not too different. We all hoped this would be the first of many and wanted to get this one right. A lot of artistic architectural effort and engineering design went into creating that building.
The foundation, sitting as it was on partially manufactured land, was built on a “grade beam” supported by a total of 54 thirty-foot long pilings located around the building’s periphery. The grade beam was a two foot wide by eighteen inch deep reinforced concrete monolith (single pour) of 5000 psi concrete. The first step in building the grade beam, after laying it out on the lot, was to dig a two foot wide by one and a half foot deep trench for the concrete that would form the monolithic grade beam.
A local subcontractor was hired for the excavation and they dug the trench the old-fashioned way; by hand with shovels. There were three men digging, an older guy about 65 years old, and his two sons in their late thirties. I supervised the job. Each man started at a different corner of the layout. The young guys immediately got into the spirit of the job and were digging at a furious, almost frantic pace. The old man, however, seemed to be taking it nice and easy. After about an hour, I noticed that the old man was about twice as far along as the two sons. His trench was also almost perfectly straight and square. The two sons, on the other hand, were considerably behind, and although their trenches were adequate (or in engineers’ parlance, met spec but weren’t pretty). Theirs weren’t nearly as straight and square as the old man’s. Observing the old man work a little longer, I noticed he didn’t move very fast but there was no wasted motion. And unlike the youngsters, he didn’t need to stop to check the level and measure the depth and width from time to time, he just kept digging slow and steady. And yet his line was straight the width was even and the depth was plumb; years of experience were evident in his skill. I reflected on it and thought to myself “now that’s really impressive”. Here’s a job, essentially ditch-digging, most would regard as an unskilled job, but this old man has elevated to an art form.
After the trenches were finished a pile driver was brought in to pound the 54 piles in place. Some went fifteen feet down on the first blow (through the soft built-up areas made of dredge tailings) but then went down solidly from there into compacted earth below. Rebar was placed on saddles and concrete was poured finishing the grade beam making it ready for the concrete block foundation. I had occasion to go back and visit the house nearly forty years later. The cedar siding had been painted over, the solar panels were gone, long since replaced with asphalt shingles, the landscape plantings were full-grown but that house still stood just as solid and square on that grade beam as when it first went up. Do things right the first time and you don’t have to do them over.
As part of the passive solar design, the walls of the building were constructed from two by six studs so that they could accept nearly six inches of insulation rather than the usual four inches. Standard building practice is to lay the subfloor then build the walls on the floor and lift them vertically to fasten them in place. The first wall was nearly fifty feet long, the full length of the house. When the wall was finished eight men tried to lift it to the vertical position. As they say in New Jersey, forgetaboutit. Time to bring in the crane. The lesson learned was building “energy efficient” is higher cost, in both materials and labor. Conventional cost estimating procedures underestimate the actual costs and are largely inapplicable for energy-efficient construction.
In time the project was finished and the solar heating system was started up, its performance was closely monitored to see how well it actually performed relative to design. Surprisingly, the passive features outperformed expectations whereas the active solar system was a disappointment. The passive features increased construction costs but over delivered by substantially reducing the utilities costs for all seasons. On the other hand, claims of high efficiency and superior performance from the suppliers of the active solar components fell far short. Monitoring the energy output and performance of the active solar equipment proved that the manufacturer’s claims didn’t stand up and were highly exaggerated.
When the house was completed and put on the market it didn’t sell. There were a lot of tire kickers but no one willing to invest and take the risk on a solar-heated dwelling, which of course at that time was a radical new concept. Tom and his family moved in and lived in the home themselves for several years. He used it to showcase his building skills. In time he dismantled the solar heating system and installed a heat pump heating and cooling system. He finally sold the house several years later and retired to Florida. Our hope of capitalizing on an increasing demand for solar heated homes wasn’t realized. Without subsidies, the cost was too high and performance was too low and the demand never materialized.
Undaunted, Dennis and I pressed on with Sun Trap Design. Dennis was taking an evening course at the local community college and he heard the school administration was getting interested in the so-called “solar craze” and was considering a demonstration project on campus. President Jimmy Carter recently had two solar panels installed on the White House which garnered a lot of publicity and the solar craze was on full bore. At a chance meeting with the college Dean, Dennis mentioned he was a partner in a local solar company that would be interested in bidding on the project if and when it was implemented. The Dean said they were planning to respond to a DOE grant and if they were to win the award the project would proceed. On that, Dennis pitched that Sun Trap Design could put together the grant application on behalf of the college gratis and if they won the award Sun Trap would design and build the system. The Dean agreed and a contract was signed.
So, we worked out a conceptual design, filled out the application, and sent it to DOE applying for the grant on behalf of the College. A year went by and we hadn’t heard anything. Then one afternoon, I answered my office phone and it was the DOE. I was told Sun Trap Design was awarded the grant for the Mercer County Community College solar project. The project was on and the DOE would sponsor it with a grant for $200,000.
Photovoltaic solar cells were in their infancy then, quite inefficient, and very expensive. So, conventional wisdom was to provide space heating and hot water using flat plate solar panels readily available from several manufacturers. We envisioned the system as an array of solar panels located on the flat roof of a three-story campus building. This building housed the gymnasium, showers, locker rooms, and an indoor Olympic swimming pool. It appeared to be an ideal location for a solar installation.
The building was constructed in the mid -sixties when energy costs were low and the existing heating system was grossly inefficient. The building was electrically heated and air conditioned, as well. To maintain a constant load on the air conditioning compressor, ductwork was fitted with what is known as a terminal reheat system. In this system, cold air from the air conditioning unit was delivered to the interior of the building through a maze of ductwork with an electric heating element at the outlet of each duct. To adjust the temperature, a thermostat was set to the desired temperature and the cold air would be heated with an electrical heating element before it exited the duct. It is hard to envision a more inefficient system. There was a large water storage tank on the roof of the building that was also heated electrically for supplying water for the showers and make-up water for the swimming pool.
It was actually a perfect fit for a solar installation. The flat roof allowed the solar panels to be oriented facing due south at the optimum angle for capturing the maximum amount of solar radiation. The large water tank was located inside a well-insulated mechanical room on the north end of the roof. Water could be pumped from the tank through the solar array where it would be heated by the sun and returned to the tank. The existing tank could be put in service for solar storage, saving considerable cost. New equipment required for the solar system were the solar panels, structural supports for the panels, piping, valves, circulating pump, instruments, and controls.
As it turned out the solar panels were only a minor part of the overall system cost. The highest cost items were the structural supports the panels were mounted on. Not only the supports but the cost of raising them with a crane to the roof and the mounting stanchions that had to penetrate the roof membrane and attach to the structural roof beams beneath. Piping was the next largest cost followed by the pumps and controls. So, without the DOE grant, which covered 50% of the total cost of the system, the installation would have been completely uneconomical. It was only marginally economical with the grant. Nevertheless, the project was approved and went ahead.
Mercer County Community College and the venerable Princeton University
In hindsight. I believe the reason that MCCC desperately wanted the solar project is because they are located just down the road from the prestigious Princeton University. Princeton had publicly announced they were installing a solar demonstration system on their campus. And not to be outdone, MCCC said we’ll see your solar project and raise you a solar project. I don’t think the MCCC administration was really too concerned about the performance of the equipment. It was basically a publicity stunt for the University.
After, the solar installation was operational both MCCC and Princeton offered courses in alternative energy, solar design, and installation. I’m not certain but suspect that they both received local and federal government financial assistance for these programs. Both universities were fully vested in the solar craze.
The Amendola Scale Model and the Solar Exposition
Sun Trap Design had now completed two high-profile solar projects and we were eager to promote our accomplishments to generate further business in the solar design and build field. There was an upcoming solar exposition to be held in New York City which looked like a good venue to advertise our expertise and experience.
Dave Roth built a very impressive scale model of the Amendola solar house he was using to promote his architectural practice. It was an impressive piece of work. Dennis and I were aware of the solar energy exposition in the Coliseum in New York City so the three of us decided to rent display space and set up Dave Roth’s Amendola house model as a centerpiece to promote both Sun Trap Design and Dave Roth Architectural firm. We rented a small booth and set up a table for the model and a rack with our brochures and other promotional material. Dave, Dennis, and I attended the show to meet prospective customers and generally promote our solar design enterprise.
The Hippy Clan from Upstate NY
Sun Trap Design, however, was dwarfed by the large sprawling display set up next to our booth. This space was occupied by a large group of sixties counterculture hippies with an incredible collection of very creative but bizarre solar-inspired stuff. Much of it was actually hard to describe.
One of the interesting items was a large roll of black rubber. It was actually EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer M-class rubber) and it was produced with a series of 1/8 inch diameter tubes every six inches apart connected by a flat surface between each tube. A sign over the roll stated it was “SolarRoll TM”. It was a low-cost solar panel that could be rolled out over a surface to capture solar heat. A PVC pipe could be attached at each end to supply cold water to the inlet and capture heated water at the outlet. At first, Dave and I both thought it was a ridiculous concept. How much heat could you capture with this thing?
After the show closed at 6 pm, exhibitors sat around in our respective booths and chilled out for a while before heading out to dinner. Two of the hippies from the SolarRoll group came over and sat down next to me and started to discuss the day’s events. OK, picture these guys, shoulder-length unwashed hair, scraggily unkempt beards, tie-dyed t-shirts, and sandals. Looked like Woodstock revisited.
I commented on their SolarRoll product and they described the product in technical detail speaking about the heat transfer coefficients, flow patterns, and so forth. It was obvious they were very knowledgeable about the technical details. I commented that the product couldn’t be very efficient compared to a flat plate solar collector and they agreed it wasn’t, but said it didn’t have to be. Its intended use was as a swimming pool heater, it was cheap, easy to install and it did the job. This was absolutely correct! These guys weren’t trying to save the planet, they were just trying to heat some swimming pools.
I then asked them how they came up with the idea. The guy I was sitting near said, “Yeah man, well me and my buddy Zack here, we were sittin around the farmhouse one night smoking some really good Mexican weed, and we just like, came up with it Man”. My response, “Wow, cool beaners.” I asked him what farmhouse and he told me the whole tribe he was hanging with were members of a commune in upstate NY that lived off the grid on an old farm. They played music, smoked weed, grew their own vegetables, and just like “came up with stuff”. He then handed me their SolarRoll brochure which included a reprint of a featured article about SolarRoll in, I couldn’t believe it, Fortune Magazine.
Now I was really intrigued. So, I wandered over to their area to check out what else they “came up with smoking really good weed”. The most unusual and outlandish item was a huge sculpture about fifteen feet tall they called Solar Bird, the World‘s first solar sculpture. It was a metal sculpture of a mythical Thunderbird with the wings outstretched and embedded in the wings were, you guessed it, solar panels. The sculpture was huge, extremely heavy, and mounted on a flatbed trailer. I was wondering how they got the thing into the display area and how they were going to get it out.
Thunderbird Solar Sculpture
That question was answered on the third day when the exposition ended. The guy that created this thing pulled into the display area with and old beat up Chevy pickup truck with a fifth wheel hitch in the bed. He backed the truck up to the trailer that Solar Bird was perched on and unloaded what looked like a very large heavy-duty plastic bag. He placed the large bag near the front end of the flatbed trailer just behind the hitch and hooked up a nozzle from the bag to a hose that led to the exhaust pipe of the truck. He started up the truck and the bag inflated with exhaust slowly lifting the end of the trailer so that he could back up a few feet and line up the fifth wheel hitch. He then disconnected the hose, deflating the bag and the trailer slowly dropped down and engaged the hitch in the truck bed. Well, I’ll be damned! These guys are not to be taken lightly.
He put the bag in the bed of the truck and then slowly drove Solar Bird out of the Coliseum. He pulled that thing through the streets of Manhattan and back to the commune in upstate NY with that old Chevy pickup. I often wonder, whatever eventually became of Solar Bird?
On the other hand, we, in our dark blue suits, button-down shirts, red ties, and wingtip shoes were trying to start a reputable solar company to make an impact on the country’s energy crisis. Those guys were just trying to make a buck to buy some “really good weed”. They were actually way ahead of us!
Post Script
When we started Sun Trap Design we approached solar design from the standpoint of a typical engineering problem. That is, how do we design a system with the highest efficiency and lowest cost? That’s all well and good. However, what we ignored was whether or not it could be a complete replacement for fossil fuels. The idea at the time was to reduce the dependence of the western world on petroleum imports from the Middle East. Global warming had not yet gotten traction. What we did by default is learn first-hand about the imitations of solar energy as a heat or power source.
WARNING – The following is a dispassionate discussion of practical limitations to alternative energy without any influence (emphasis added) from feelings or wishful thinking.
There is a finite limit to the amount of energy input. Solar radiation at the earth’s surface is limited to a certain quantity of energy per unit area. On a cloudless sunny day at any given location, at any specific time, this input is fixed. According to the first law of thermodynamics, the amount of energy falling on the surface cannot be created nor destroyed. It can be only converted from one form into another, albeit with a loss in efficiency, but the quantity or amount cannot be increased beyond what is coming in.
The second limitation is the capture and conversion of solar energy involving a loss due to inefficiency. This is a result of the second law of thermodynamics. The energy output is always less than the energy input. The quality of the useful energy output is degraded and for any system, there is a maximum theoretical efficiency that cannot be exceeded under any circumstances.
What we have then is a limited amount coming in and somewhat less going out based on the laws of nature, before we even consider the nighttime hours, the twelve or so hours that no energy is coming in, and the effect of overcast or cloudy days when the amount coming in during the twelve hours of daylight is greatly reduced.
So for any given location, the maximum theoretical energy output that we can capture and convert is reduced considerably from that which is coming in from the source. This is the useful available energy.
If we compare the available solar energy after capture, conversion, and transport to the energy demand, that is the amount required to heat the house, heat water, or produce electrical power to run an air conditioner, we find that a very large area of solar collectors is needed to satisfy the demand. It becomes apparent that the capture of solar energy from radiation from the sun requires an area for collection that for all intents and purposes is totally impractical. Or conversely to meet the demand, solar can only provide a fraction of the demand with a collection device of a practical size. I wish we would have understood this dilemma before we started. But we didn’t. As a result, the observed performance was unfortunately disappointing. We finally realized that we can’t get there from here. At best, we can only get part-way there from here.
Post – Post Scrip (Jill Johnston addition):
I frequently think about this specific time of our lives together. These days, when my dad worked on Sun Trap Design projects was very influential on me for a number of reasons. The first was I was thrilled that he was focusing on renewal energy (i.e., saving the planet) when his full-time job was involved in petroleum engineering, which to me, was the opposite of saving the planet from my naive point of view at the time. The second was, it was a time in his life that he had a lot of positive energy, he was genuinely happy. He loved spending time with Dennis, Dave, Tom Amendola, at the house in Toms River. Mainly because of this time in his life and me being there on the sidelines (and once in a while take a trip down the shore to see progress on the solar house), it made me take on environmental causes with earnest resulting in me attending SUNY – Environmental Science and Forestry university where I received my B.Sc in Environmental and Science Biology. Most who know me, think I received my degree in Biology, but it is a bit more nuanced than that. I chose that degree because I specifically wanted to be a scientist like my dad, but doing good for the environment. Today, while I have been very successful in my career in Clinical Research (bringing new medicines to market, fast..), I do actually feel like a bit of a fraud because I decided early on that if I was going to make a living, a really good living, it was not going to be taking the environmental route. Today, as I reflect, I chose to take a different route in my schooling in spite of my father’s chosen profession, but ultimately, it was here (with the happiness I say in him during this time) that he ultimately taught me the best lesson of all, following your heart and passions with ultimately lead to happiness.
There were a few incidents during my college career that were truly learning experiences where the lesson went well beyond engineering. They stand out as lessons for business and lessons for life.
The picture above is of my friend, Dennis Connell and I during our initiation into the fraternity, Iota Xi Omega at Union College. I am #5 and Dennis is #6.
A Man Has Got To Know His Limitations
One of my classmates, Stanley Scarrano was a good student, but he was a perpetual whiner. We took a class together with Dr. Wang, a Chinese professor and following every test Stan would approach him to argue for a higher grade. He would already have a pretty good grade but would always argue for extra points.
Stanley Scarrano – 1971
I remember a particular incident where Stan got a 90% on the test but as usual he wasn’t satisfied. There was one problem worth 10 points marked completely wrong. Stan approached Dr. Wang and argued that although he got the wrong numerical answer he had the method right and insisted that he be given full credit for the problem. Dr. Wang responded in broken English, “No, you get wong answer, you lose 10 point, that’s all.” Stan was incessant and wouldn’t let it go, so Dr. Wang took the test paper back and gave him half credit for the correct method, five points. But he didn’t return the paper. He sat down and on the spot re-graded the entire test deducting one point here, two points there and so on until the total was minus ten points. He then handed the test back. This drove Stan crazy and he again started to argue even more vigorously. Dr. Wang calmly told him “No, no, no you no understand, I hold all cards.”
In every negotiation in business and life one has to understand who holds the cards. Bluffing and bullshitting will only get you so far. Years later in the business world I heard this phrased another way, “The Golden Rule is he who has the gold rules.”
Wizard of the Weird Circular Slide Rule
There were a lot of bright students in the Chemical Engineering program but Don Winters was indisputably the brightest student I ever met. He was my classmate in several courses including one of the most challenging courses required for ChE’s. The course was Transport Phenomena. It involved complex calculations of mass and energy flow notorious for its level of difficulty. Many worthy students flunked this course.
The textbook was titled Transport Phenomena by Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot. The subject matter was esoteric, the math was difficult and the authors were consummate tricksters. The first clue was in the preface where they outlined their objectives in writing the text. If you take the first letter of each sentence in the preface it spells out, “This Book Is Dedicated to O. A. Hougen”. Hougen was the author of a previously published seminal text entitled Chemical Process Principles.
Their diabolical word play continues throughout the book interspersed with abundant differential equations and advanced mathematical concepts describing fluid flow, heat transfer, and molecular diffusion. The exams were open book and graded on a curve. That is, they were graded as a competition among the students. No one ever got a 100%. The material was extremely difficult and time was limited. As a result, the open book approach deceived many good students. They assumed since they could freely look stuff up during the exam they didn’t have to study that hard. They were dead wrong! There was a one hour limit and problems were carefully chosen so that even if you knew exactly what you were doing it was nearly impossible to finish in the allotted time.
To compensate grades were awarded on a curve where the highest score got an A, the next highest a B and so forth. Typically, when the tests were handed back the highest would usually be about 60% and perhaps occasionally a 75% or 80% and they would then quickly decline to 0%. Some felt it wasn’t fair but in reality, it is a perfectly accurate reflection of the “real world” outside of academia.
If you studied the material well it was always amusing during an exam. While working out solutions to the problems you could hear some of the student’s frantically paging through their books looking for a clue. You knew they hadn’t studied the material and were in a complete panic. You also knew the more they flipped through the pages the more confused they became. They were rapidly entering the “circle of doom” where the mind just goes completely blank.
Don Winters was the extreme introvert. He never participated in class, just sat quietly in the last seat in back of the room and only spoke when called upon. And then, in very succinct phrases, providing only the bare minimum of information required to answer the question, no more, no less. He never volunteered, never pontificated.
When I took this class, it was well before the advent of electronic calculators and we all had slide rules to carry out our numerical calculations. The standard for nearly everyone was a ten inch K&E Deci-Lon carried in a leather case that hung from your belt. Slide rules came in five inch and ten inch. The bigger the slide rule the more accurate it was and the engineer’s standard was the ten inch K&E. Don didn’t have a ten inch K&E. He didn’t even have a five inch K&E. He had a weird circular slide rule about 3 inches in diameter and was the only student that had one like that. However, it didn’t seem to handicap him.
K&E Deci-Lon Slide Rule
Circular Slide Ruler
Following the first exam, test papers were handed out with the highest grade first followed by the descending grades. The order went something like; Winters 100%, Joe Blow 60%, Jane Doe 50% and so on down to 0%. The pattern was repeated on subsequent exams throughout the semester. About half way through it was obvious the professor was having a problem with Don Winters; didn’t appreciate his nonchalant attitude coupled with his complete mastery of the material. The professor would go out of his way to call on him and would always get the same concise but consistently correct answers from Don.
As the semester progressed we would often be called at random to present our homework at the blackboard. The solutions would usually occupy at least three of the four blackboards. They consisted of one esoteric equation after the next followed by numerical calculations to arrive at a final answer. On one instance when one of our fellow students performed this task at the board the professor announced the student’s answer was incorrect. He then erased the students work and replaced it with three blackboards of his own calculations. Winters raised his hand and when called on by the Prof he replied, “that’s not what I got”. The professor was visibly annoyed and instructed Don to go to the board and show his calculations, with the terse admonition, “OK, let’s see what you got”.
When Don stood at the board and opened his text book you could hear the binder crack as though it was the first time it was ever opened. On a single board, he summarized his calculations and sat down. He had a different numerical answer than the professor. OK, now this was war! The professor then went through his own calculations step by step to demonstrate where Winters had gone awry. Somewhere into the third blackboard the Prof abruptly stopped in his tracks. There was complete silence. Even if you didn’t follow the mathematics everyone instinctively knew what just happened. The Prof had discovered his own mistake! Finally, after several long minutes he turned to the class and said, “Winters’ was correct. Class dismissed”. He never called on Winters again and Don Winter’s continued to get 100% on all the exams. Very impressive.
In the last semester of senior year I showed up for our final Chem Engineering class taught by a Professor notorious for his difficult exams. He started to take roll call, “Hernandez, Stenseler, Scarrano, Gunardson, Gymkowski” and then stopped abruptly and fell silent. He turned to the class and asked, “Where’s Winters, Don Winters was one of you guys, where is he?” Silence for another minute or so. Then one of our guys spoke up, “He’s gone, Winters dropped out last semester”. The Professor was shocked. He asked, “Why did he drop out?” No one answered. He then said. “I’ve been teaching for eighteen years and I’m infamous for my exams in the Chem E 27 course (First year introductory chemical engineering calculations course required of all Chem E’s). “In eighteen years of teaching nobody has ever obtained 100% on one of my Chem E 27 exams, with the sole exception of Don Winters who showed up late, left early and got 100%”. He asked again, to no one in particular, “Why did he drop out?” Nobody answered. I never knew the answer either, after all it was 1969 and maybe he went to Woodstock that summer or something and never recovered. Who knows?
After I graduated and went to work for CE Lummus I discovered Don Winters was working as a technician in the research lab. I renewed my acquaintance with him and a year later he returned to NCE and finished his Bachelor’s degree. I lost touch with him after that and have no idea where he finally wound up. He was probably the brightest guy I ever met, but definitely a free spirit.
The story I’ve relayed about Winters reminds me of one of my favorite tales about Richard Feynman. Niels Bohr, a Nobel Prize winner himself, was once asked what he thought of Richard Feynman. He replied “There are two kinds of geniuses in the world, the ordinary genius and the extraordinary genius. An ordinary genus is someone you and I could be like if we were very much smarter than we are. But an extraordinary genius is someone who thinks in an entirely different way. Richard Feynman is an extraordinary genus.” To me, Winters may have well been in that category.
Nandy Hernandez – The Cuban refugee
Another of my classmates, Fernando (Nandy) Hernandez was also a very bright guy. He was one of the group of guys that hung out together during my student days at NCE. Nandy was a Cuban refugee who escaped during the revolution when Castro took power. He escaped aboard one of the so called “banana boats” that made it the ninety miles from Cuba to Florida in the early days of the Cuban revolution. He was a low key guy and an excellent student despite his limited English. We took many of the same classes together, were a little older than most of the other students, both of us were married and somehow naturally gravitated to each other.
After getting to know him I learned he escaped from Cuba under dire circumstances and he and his wife eventually made their way to Miami and then to Newark, NJ. He enrolled in the Chemical Engineering program at NCE and was doing well but really aspired to become a medical doctor like his father. NCE is a NJ state school, so tuition for in-state students is very reasonable and since he couldn’t afford the tuition at medical school, chemical engineering was his next best alternative.
I eventually learned during the revolution his father was politically active in opposing the Castro regime. Even though he was a highly respected medical doctor, he was imprisoned by Castro for his political views. I also learned that Nandy was working full time at a low paying job to pay his rent, daily living expenses and tuition and at the same time trying to put enough money aside to get his father out of Cuba and to the USA. Getting his father out of prison and to the US involved paying bribes in Cuba, ransom if you will. Enough to get him out of prison and passage on one of the illegal dilapidated boats bound for Miami. It took Nandy several years to save enough working at menial jobs while going to night school.
Eventually, after we finally graduated, he had enough funds and advanced his plan for his father’s escape through a Florida based Cuban underground organization. His father eventually arrived up north in West Orange, NJ, a town not far from Newark and shared an apartment with Nandy and his wife.
Even though his father was a qualified medical doctor he couldn’t get a medical license or practice medicine in the US. So, he got a job as an orderly in a hospital in West Orange cleaning bed pans until he learned enough English and was confident enough to take the required medical exam for his license to practice in the US. It took several years but eventually he got his medical license, established his private practice and started making a substantial income. By this time, Nandy graduated from NCE and was working at CE Lummus as a junior process engineer. We worked together for a short time in Bloomfield, NJ, at the company headquarters.
Nandy still had the ambition to become a medical doctor and now that his father could afford to help him with tuition and miscellaneous expenses he applied and was accepted in medical school, to the best of my recollection, in Barbados. He attended the University there and when he completed his studies secured an internship at the Miami Medical Center in Florida. We kept in touch for a few years and the last I heard from him he was the chief surgeon at the Miami Medical Center ER. I’m disappointed I lost touch with he and his wife. He was an inspiration to me at a crucial time. Every once in a while, when my motivation would start to fade I would consider what Nandy was up against and realize I didn’t have it so tough after all. It always would re-energize my determination.
A Failure to Communicate
I had a professor for thermodynamics, Dr. Chen, who had a pretty thick Chinese accent. You had to listen very carefully during his lectures to follow him. I really don’t know how the non-native speakers in the class could understand him at all, but somehow, they did. There was a Cuban refugee in the class, Carlos, who spoke with a very heavy Spanish accent. Conversations between Carlos and Dr. Chen were quite a challenge to follow. In one particular session, we were learning a about a classic thermodynamic equation known as the van der Waals equation. The van der Waals equation (or van der Waals equation of state) is a mathematical expression relating the density of gases and liquids (fluids) to pressure (p), volume (V), and temperature (T).
Dr. Chen was lecturing, and with his accent and inability to pronounce the letter V which always came out sounding like a W, he kept repeating “You use WanderWall equation and then you substitute walues for …………” Carlos kept looking at the Professor with a quizzical expression and finally raised his hand. He asked, “what dis mean Wanderwall equation, what dis mean?” Professor Chen responded, “What you mean, what dis mean – dis is it, Wanderwall equation”.
Somehow the Cuban guy passed the course but I’ll never know how. Take home messages for me were – never underestimate someone’s ability because of difficulty with language and yes, mathematics is in fact a truly universal language.
Unit Ops Lab – Clean Up in Aisle Five
Ray Cutro was a helluva nice guy. Not the brightest guy in the class but a real nice guy; really easy to get along with. In the class called Unit Ops Lab, students were asked to form groups of four or five individuals to do a semester long project of their own choosing. When we were asked to form our group, four of us that had been going through together immediately coalesced and started to discuss what we would do for our project. Ray wasn’t asked to join any of the other groups and he eventually approached sheepishly and asked me, “Hey, guys could I be in your group?” I wasn’t crazy about the idea but invited Ray to join us anyway. The reason I wasn’t enthusiastic was that even though it would mean an additional member for the group, I knew I would have to assign one of our guys to keep an eye on Ray.
For our project, we decided to build a double pipe heat exchanger and a setup to monitor heat transfer performance for various flow rates through the equipment. When completed the heat exchanger was about ten feet long and about eight feet high and looked very much like this.
Double Pipe Heat Exchanger
We piped up water to the inner pipe and compressed air to the outer pipe to measure the heat transfer from cold water to warm air. To determine flow rate of air, we used a wet gas meter on the air side outlet. The wet gas meter looked like a large alarm clock. It was about eighteen inches in diameter and for safety was constructed so that in case of overpressure the back would blow out. Outlet valves were located on the water side at ground level and on the air side at the top of the exchanger. We had a step ladder set up at the outlet of the exchanger so that we could reach the outlet air valve. One guy was stationed at the water valve at ground level and another at the air valve on the step ladder. I was stationed at the wet gas meter and took readings of the flow rate for several increments of flow.
Double Heat Exchange Experiment
Wet Gas Meter
All went well, at first. We started at low flow rates and then recorded temperatures and flow rates at several intervals as we slowly increased the air flow rate. Ray was stationed on the step ladder in control of the air flow through the exchanger. As we increased the air flow to higher levels the sound became progressively louder and louder. At one point, it became so loud that I had a hard time communicating with Ray at the top of the ladder. The needle on the wet gas meter started to spin faster and faster and the meter itself started to pulsate. I got concerned we were pushing it too far and shouted to Ray to cut back on the flow of compressed air. He misunderstood and instead opened the air valve wide open. The wet gas meter expanded and contracted once or twice and then the back blew out as it was designed to do and the internal parts flew across the lab to the opposite side of the room.
Wet Gas Meter
One of our classmates, Sue Chein, had assembled a large glass distillation column on that side of the lab for her experiment. The guts of our wet gas meter took out the center section of her glass column. Fortunately, she had completed her experiment and was no longer standing near her apparatus. It was quite the mess.
Humanities – English Literature
The engineering curriculum at Newark College of Engineering was steeped in math, physics and chemistry but the curriculum also required elective courses in the humanities. There were several options including history, literature, art and music. I always enjoyed reading and so naturally was attracted to English literature for my required humanities courses. I took all of my electives in English Literature and accumulated enough credits to meet the requirements for a major in chemical engineering and a minor in English Literature.
The course involved reading assigned titles followed by expository writing on each literary work. Many of the titles in the first literature courses were classics I had previously read so they didn’t interfere with the time required for study of my core technical subjects. Later, I was required to read other more advanced works that I was unfamiliar with, but enjoyed immensely. It was a welcome respite from the heavy duty technical courses.
Today, I frequently take these short quizzes featured on Facebook to more or less keep my mind active. One category is the “How Many Have You Read?” quiz. Unsurprisingly, I always score in the top 5% or 10%. Many of the titles in these quizzes are Classics by Alexander Dumas, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, Hemingway and his arch rival Faulkner, and others by John Steinbeck, Albert Camus, and Dostoevsky. These still are my favorites.
Hemingway and Faulkner
Hemingway and Faulkner were contemporaries and rivals. I think that was more of a problem with Ernest Hemingway than William Faulkner. There is an interesting contrast between the two though. Whereas Hemingway was a world traveler and raconteur, Faulkner lived and wrote all his works within a few miles of where he was born and raised in rural Mississippi. Hemingway once commented on Faulkner saying, “My fish is the giant blue marlin, Faulkner’s is the lowly catfish.” That may have been, but Faulkner wrote some very powerful stuff and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. Not too shabby for a guy that never left rural Mississippi! Hemingway finally got his Nobel Prize in Literature five years later in 1954. But Faulkner beat him to the punch.
Graduation – 1971
Hal and daughter, Jill – Graduation 1971
I graduated in 1971 with degree for Chemical Engineering. My Mom and Dad didn’t attend my college commencement. I don’t know why. I never asked. It never came up.
After completing mandatory night courses in algebra and trigonometry at Union Junior College I transferred to Newark College of Engineering (NCE) with a major in mechanical engineering. After the first semester, I switched from mechanical to chemical engineering continuing in the evening program. While I was working at Lockheed in Edison, NJ and attending evening classes in downtown Newark. It was a tough schedule getting cleaned up after working in the machine shop all day and driving over an hour to get to class by 6:00 pm. Classes ended at 10:00 pm, and then I faced another one hour drive home. I didn’t even begin studying and completing the homework assignments until nearly midnight.
Newark College of Engineering
After two years of this routine and realizing that as an evening student it would take another four years to graduate with a degree, I began to contemplate transferring to a full-time day program. I reckoned that as a full-time student it would take me only another two years to complete the requirements for my Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering. Joann was working full time at the Bell Telephone company and between the little money we saved and her salary I believed I could finish my studies in two years and so I resigned from Lockheed to pursue engineering as a full time student.
The Newark College of Engineering campus is located on High Street in downtown, Newark, NJ. It is basically in the geographic center of one of most depressing ghettos in the United States. Today, there is beautiful student housing in dormitories on campus, but back then it was strictly a commuter school with no on campus parking. You needed to find a parking space on the street wherever you could. This environment made night school quite an experience! You would spend the last two hours in class learning about advanced stuff like partial differential equations and functions of a complex variable and then get down to the basics like getting to your car alive.
NJIT Study Housing Today
The Volvo – Commuting to school
I bought a cheap used car, a 1962 Volvo B18. It was cheap to purchase and economical to run and a great commuter car to get back and forth from school.
1962 Volvo B18
This was the second car I located and bought for myself. And it was a good one. I drove this car to Newark when I was a student. I drove it for over 200,000 miles, worked on it myself and eventually sold it for $100.
The big problem at school was parking. Parking in a lot was expensive and you could almost never find a spot close to campus. The problem was solved one day when I had an automobile accident on the highway returning home from class. I was on the Garden State Parkway when suddenly the traffic ahead of me came to an abrupt halt. I stopped in time but the guy behind me didn’t and crashed into the rear end of my car. The car was crushed in about a foot from the rear bumper. We exchanged all the necessary insurance information and I drove the rest of the way home. The guy that hit me didn’t have adequate insurance and I really didn’t have the funds to fix up the car properly so I simply replaced the rear taillights and continued to drive it as it was.
I noticed that the area surrounding the campus had a lot of abandoned cars on the street. It looked pretty much like a war zone. These assorted wrecks were haphazardly abandoned on the street around the campus, and it seemed they were never towed away. Just too many I guess for the police to keep up with. So, I got an idea. The next day I put the license plates on my car with wing nuts so I could easily and quickly remove and replace them. I would drive around the school until I found an empty spot, usually in a no parking zone, and I would pull in at a haphazard angle, take the plates off and put them in my briefcase. I would leave the windows wide open and go to class with my license plates in my briefcase. With the rear end bashed in the car looked like it was already abandoned. I did this every day for two years and the car was never towed. It was always there where I left it and was there when I returned at the end of the day. I would put the license plates back on with the wing nuts and be on my way.
Abandon Cars on Streets in NJ and NYStreet in Newark, NJ from NJIT 1970 Yearbook
When I graduated I put the car up for sale. It had over 300,000 miles on it and looked like hell but still ran good. I advertised it in the newspaper as a “good parts car”. Two young guys showed up to look at it and as it turned out they were both students at NCE. I told them about my “parking system” and they bought the car on the spot for $100. I presume they used the same system as I did and never heard from them again. Happy customers!
Tolls on the highway were another problem. I had to pass two toll booths in each direction every day and each was $0.25 so it was a dollar a day fore and back. That was just the beginning of the introduction of automated toll collection machines and one booth on the far right lane was automatic and the others were manned by toll collectors. One morning on the way to class I entered the automated lane, tossed a quarter and accidently missed the machine. The quarter bounced across the road and the toll collector in the adjacent booth just waved and signaled me to keep going. There was a lot of traffic on the road and he didn’t want to hold things up so he just waved me through.
The next day I was armed with a bunch of pennies. I tossed a couple of pennies at the automated collection basket and purposely missed. They tingled across the road and sure enough the toll collector waved me through. So, from then on, each day cost about 8 cents instead of a dollar. I’m sure the toll collector caught on but judging from the look of the car, all bashed in as it was, and the fact that I was a just young student he purposely let it slide.
Tuition was another problem. I was able to get several scholarships as my grades were good and combined with student loans and a little disposable income from savings I could just about manage the tuition. So, I transferred to days and started a full time program.
Things went well for the first year of full time studies but I ran into a snag the second year. I was then what was known as a non-matriculated student. Since I transferred from Junior College and then took night classes I wasn’t following the full time curriculum. And since some courses were only offered once a year. The result was it would take an additional year of full time studies to complete the requirements for my degree. I had only planned on two years full time and I started to run out of money.
I made an appointment with a student advisor to see what could be arranged. He told me nothing could be done and I would have to continue for another year beyond what I had planned. I had already been an evening student and knew the procedure for registering as a part time student and of course knew the procedure for full time enrollment. I studied the curriculum and discovered that if I took a maximum course load at night and as well as a maximum course load during the day I could almost meet all the requirements with the exception of two courses. They told me no, I couldn’t do that, the program would be too difficult and I wouldn’t be able to keep up.
I regarded that as bad advice, so I ignored it and registered as a full time student days and went back a few days later and registered as an evening student with a full course load at night. The administration never discovered this. For two semesters, a full academic year, I was a full time day and full time night student simultaneously.
How did I do? I was very highly motivated and so by the end of that year achieved straight A’s in all of my courses. Unfortunately, even though I had enough credit hours, I was two required courses short of a bachelor’s degree. That was in 1969.
I applied for a full time engineering job anyway and was hired by the CE Lummus engineering company despite the fact that I didn’t have those two courses. Nevertheless, Lummus hired me as a junior process engineer with a full engineering starting salary and I was also eligible for the Lummus tuition refund program. I took the two required courses evenings as well as a graduate course in advanced thermodynamics and graduated magna cum laude in 1970. In my entire academic program at NCE I received all A’s and one C (in Industrial Management) for a grade point average of 3.76 out of a perfect 4.00.
I graduated in 1970 among a total of 750 engineering students with a class rank of third. The only two students that beat my average were a good friend, Tom Gymkowski, summa cum laude with a grade point average of 3.85 and an Asian female student, Sue Chen who also graduated summa cum laude with a perfect 4.00 average. My average wasn’t too bad for a guy that barely got out of high school with C minus average. It was all about a keen interest in the engineering program and perhaps most importantly a strong motivation to excel.
Lockheed had an assembly line in Edison, New Jersey where they manufactured a special type of electrical meter and various specialty parts for microwave communications. But they also had a separate machine shop as part of their “skunkworks” that designed and built prototypes of top secret classified military projects.
I was originally hired as a journeyman tool maker assigned to work in the shop that maintained the production line for the electrical meters. But following my interview with Tom Brennen, the special projects manager in the shop responsible for fabricating prototype designs for military projects, I was transferred to the prototype shop as it was then called. This was a fantastic machine shop with state of the art precision metalworking machines, Monarch precision lathes, Bridgeport milling machines, Moore precision jig borer and highly accurate surface grinders. With the proper skills and this machinery, you could make any mechanical device that could be dreamt up, and we did. I was assigned to work with a team of three senior toolmakers, Frank Herd, Steve Schupak, and Willie Kamm under the supervision of Tom (snake hips) Brennen.
Lockheed Skunkworks – The Projects
From its inception, in 1966, until its completion on September 17, 2011, the Hexagon project was a classified top secret military operation. Lockheed was the primary contractor for design and fabrication of this reconnaissance (aka spy) satellite which was the early precursor for the Hubble Space Telescope. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work on the Hexagon project. For years people would ask me if I was in the US Armed service during the Vietnam War and I would tell them no, but I was a civilian contractor for special projects for the US Air Force and Navy. I was legally bound not to discuss the details of what I had done so when asked I would quickly change the subject. I’m sure many didn’t really believe me and probably thought I was a conscientious objector or a rejected on medical grounds or something. Finally, in September of 2011 no longer did I have to change the subject and I could now divulge what I actually did. But many I’m sure still didn’t believe me. Most people outside of those that actually worked on the program don’t even know it existed.
However, it was great experience. I had the opportunity to work with some brilliant engineers and scientists from Lockheed as well as the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, CA and Caltech all of whom had major roles in the development and construction of the satellites. I was an evening student at Newark College of Engineering and that extraordinary group of people became my role models.
KH-9 Hexagon
KH-9 Hexagon
KH-9 Hexagon during assembly by Lockheed
Mariner Projects
Another similar, but scientific rather than military project, I had the opportunity to work on was the Mariner satellites. Mariner 6 and 7 comprised a dual-spacecraft mission to Mars, the sixth and seventh missions in the Mariner series of spacecraft used for planetary exploration in the flyby mode. The primary objective of these missions was to study the surface and atmosphere of Mars during close flybys and establish the basis for future investigations, particularly those relevant to the search for extraterrestrial life. As well as to demonstrate and develop technologies required for future Mars missions and other long-duration missions far from the Sun.
Mariner 6 had the objective of providing experience and data which would be useful in programming the Mariner 7 encounter which was launched five days later. Each spacecraft carried a wide- and narrow-angle television camera, an infrared spectroscope, an infrared radiometer, and an ultraviolet spectroscope. The spacecraft were oriented entirely for planetary data acquisition.
This is a schematic of a later version of the Mariner showing the major components and features.
The Mariner 6 and 7 spacecrafts were identical. They consisted of an octagonal magnesium base plate or frame, a conical superstructure mounted on top of the frame that held a parabolic antenna and four solar panels affixed to the top corners of the frame. Underneath the octagonal frame was another platform which held a variety of scientific instruments.
The spacecraft was attitude stabilized in three axes (referenced to the sun and the star, Canopus) through the use of gyros and nitrogen jets mounted on the ends of the solar panels, a Canopus tracker, and two primary and four secondary sun sensors. Propulsion was provided by a rocket motor mounted within the frame which used hydrazine as the propellant.
Power was supplied by photovoltaic cells covering the four solar panels. These panels provided electrical power and a rechargeable silver-zinc battery provided backup power. Thermal control was achieved through the use of adjustable louvers on the sides of the main compartment. Three telemetry channels were available for telecommunications. Channel A carried engineering data, channels B and C carried science data.
Communications were accomplished with high- and low-gain antennas. An analog tape recorder with a capacity of 195 million bits could store television images for subsequent transmission. Other scientific data was stored on a digital recorder. The command system, consisting of a central computer designed to actuate specific events at precise times. It was programmed with a standard mission and a conservative backup mission before launch, but could be reprogrammed in flight.
I worked on building the data recorders and the main octagonal base plate that supported all of the scientific instrumentation and recorders. My first job on Mariner 6 was to machine the magnesium base plate, the foundation for the spacecraft; a complex piece of work.
There were numerous small threaded blind holes for attaching the instruments and high precision angles with threaded holes to position the data recorders. I cut the base plate from a one-inch thick piece of magnesium stock, machined the edges and started on the numerous holes in precise locations on the plate. It was a long and tedious process and after expending approximately 200 manhours I was nearly finished and had only to locate and drill a final half inch diameter positioning hole. I finished boring the hole and double checked the location with my ruler. Something was wrong! The hole should have been located 6 inches from the center of the base plate but the ruler told me it was 7 inches. I checked the blueprint and 6 inches was correct, but the ruler said 7 inches and the ruler doesn’t lie.
I suddenly became weak in the knees. I had drilled the hole exactly one inch away from where it was supposed to be. Holy shit. I already had 200 manhours into the project and with this one mistake it was ruined.
I sat and contemplated this mistake for a considerable time. After a while, I decided rather than start over I would fix the mistake. When I was an apprentice at Heller Machine and Tool I learned how to fix a mistake like this so long as it wouldn’t introduce a structural defect in the part. And so, I went to the material storage area, found a piece of magnesium bar stock, cut off a piece and machined it on the lathe to a press fit in the ½ diameter hole. The trick to doing this correctly is to very slightly chamfer each side of the hole (top and bottom) and cut the plug a little longer than it needs to be. The next step is to very carefully peen the protruding ends of the plug very gently with a small ball peen hammer so that the peened metal spreads and folds over into the chamfer. The final step is to grind the top and bottom flush with the surface very carefully. Done properly the plug is nearly impossible to detect even under magnification. I finished the part and sent it over to the inspection department to be checked out. The inspectors never detected the plug and passed the part with “flying colors”.
About two weeks later, Tom, the foreman, came out to the shop to see me and said, “You know that base plate you made for Mariner, we sent it out to be anodized (a kind of surface plating which turns magnesium to a pale yellow) and the plater must have screwed up.” I asked how and he told me there is a dark brown spot on the surface about ½ inch in diameter. He said “the plater must have laid something on the surface that turned that spot dark brown”.
I had to own up. I told Tom the plater didn’t screw up. The brown spot must be the plug. He exclaimed what plug? I told him that I screwed up and plugged the hole with a piece of magnesium bar stock of a slightly different grade of magnesium that must have turned dark brown when anodized. He then exclaimed, “Inspection didn’t catch that?” I said no it passed right through. He then was silent for a long while. When he spoke up he said, “Damned impressive.” Followed by, “Well, cut off another piece of flat stock and make another base plate.” As he was leaving the shop he said, “Don’t screw this one up or we’ll both be looking for a job!” The second one was a lot easier and quicker to make than the first one and this one was perfect. It was the one that went into the satellite that flew to Mars.
What happened to the “bad” one? Well it was an outstanding looking piece and since no one but Tom and I knew that it was defective, management decided to enclose it in a glass case and exhibit it in the lobby of our building as an example of the impressive type of work we were accomplishing.
From time to time we would be visited by various politicians, dignitaries, and other assorted influence peddlers that would be given a guided tour through the Lockheed facilities including our special projects shop. Before these tours, we would retrieve the “bad” base plate from the lobby showcase and strap it on the jig borer in the shop. I would don a white lab coat and protective eye goggles, start the jig borer and essentially screw around with the “bad” base plate as the tour group gathered around behind me. They would all nod approvingly and mumble comments such as “very impressive”, “well done”, “carry on”, etc., etc. They didn’t really have a clue what they were looking at but it looked complicated and “very impressive”. Tom and I would always have a good laugh over these dog and pony shows when we retuned the “bad” base plate to its resting place in the glass case in the lobby.
We also built the data recorders that went into the satellite. There were two recorders onboard; an analog tape recorder with that could store television images for subsequent transmission and a digital recorder for other scientific data. The recorders would record at a relatively slow speed and then playback and transmit at very high speed. These were similar to conventional tape recorders used at that time in the music industry. There were two reels side by side, one for the Mylar recording tape before running through the recording head and another to take up the reel as the data was recorded. Weight was a critical consideration so every effort was made to reduce overall weight to an absolute minimum.
A problem arose early in the design of the data recorders. The original plan for each recorder specified two small electric motors, one on each shaft that supported the reels containing the Mylar recording tape. The problem was as the tape ran from the supply reel through the recording head to the take up reel, in order to maintain the tape at a constant linear speed through the recording head, the rotational speed of the shafts needed to vary. A complicated arrangement including electronic circuitry was devised to constantly adjust the rotational speed of each motor as the tape proceeded from one reel to the next. In addition to the complicated electronic circuitry, two motors exceeded the weight limitation specified for each of the recorders.
One of my shop mates, Steve Schupack, an excellent tool maker with only an eighth-grade formal education looked at this problem and within a few minutes came up with an absolutely elegant solution. He suggested eliminating the two motors and the electronic circuitry and instead use only one motor at constant rotational speed. Here is how he did it. He suggested putting a third shaft driven by a single motor outside of the two reels of tape. In addition, a belt of suitable material enveloped the two reels and the motor driven shaft. To record, the motor would drive the reels by means of the belt at constant linear speed. The diameter of the supply reel diminished as the tape ran through the recording head to the take up reel. The take up reel diameter would increase correspondingly as the tape was wound on this reel. To play back, the motor would simply be reversed. The reverse process would occur with constant rotational and constant linear speed. Wow, brilliant! Not only brilliant, but elegant. Lockheed presented Mr. Shupack with a $25 US Savings bond for the idea. And I learned a valuable lesson. Never underestimate a blue collar guy that knows how to build stuff with his hands
My career as a tool maker for the Lockheed skunkworks was a terrific educational experience and a very rewarding job. To this day I’m extremely proud of my contribution to those landmark projects and believe it was a much more productive use of my time than slogging through the jungles of Vietnam carrying a rifle and shooting at “Charlie” in the trees. God Bless the foresight of that gentleman at the local draft board for providing me with this outstanding opportunity. And incidentally there were no digital computers available at that time. The entire projects were designed with slide rules, mechanical adding machines, hand drawn blueprints and specifications written with typewriters.
When I graduated from high school in 1962 and began my first full-time job as a tool and die apprenticeship there was no draft for the armed services. It was a strictly volunteer army. US soldiers were present in Vietnam for several years but ostensibly only as advisors. The Green Berets were advising the South Vietnamese army in their fight against the North Vietnamese communists. However, as the war escalated, and the US took a broader role a military conscription was implemented. Although not everyone was eligible for the draft.
There were numerous exemptions. Certain medical conditions or religious affiliations precluded being drafted. Other exceptions were an upper age limit and marital status. If you were twenty-six years or older you would not be eligible or if you were married or married with a child, you would be ineligible. If you were a full or part-time college student or employed in certain professions in critical industries, you would also be exempt from military service. These exemptions were known as deferments from military service.
One of the critical occupations during that period was a tool and diemaker including a tool and diemaker apprentice. A deferment was automatically issued if you were employed in one of these positions. Out of high school, I was automatically issued a deferment through my employer, Heller Machine and Tool. And since I was also a part-time college student that also qualified me for a deferment. Since I had an occupational deferment, I didn’t give much thought to entering the armed services. I wasn’t against it I just didn’t think too much about it.
Tool & Die Apprentice
All of these rules changed rapidly as the war escalated. But, as chance would have it, I was just ahead of the curve and for five years was automatically issued a deferment every year. First, because of my apprenticeship in a critical occupation and when that was eliminated because I was married. When that was eliminated, a deferment was issued because I was then a full-time student. When that was eliminated, I continued to receive a deferment because I was married with a child on the way. When that was eliminated a lottery was established and the landscape changed drastically.
The lottery was established supposedly to improve the fairness of the system. This was a ruse. The lottery ensured an ample supply of cannon fodder because the war had been drastically escalated under Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency and when Richard M. Nixon was elected the United States had a major and growing presence in Vietnam and American casualties were numbering in the thousands each week. The rules had been constantly amended as the troop deployments escalated and number of casualties and deaths increased. Eventually, no one was exempt except those with serious medical issues, conscientious objectors, and those over twenty-six years old.
The lottery system was based on a person’s birthdate. The dates were selected on a random basis and you were either in a high, medium, or low probability to be drafted. My birthday, June 19, fell in the of high probability category. I was 25 ½ years old, less than six months from the upper age limit of twenty-six, married, Joann was pregnant with Jill, and I was a full-time engineering student. But suddenly the rules changed and my number was up.
Shortly after the system was initiated, I was drafted. I received my draft notice in the mail. It stated President Richard M. Nixon orders you to report for active duty at Fort Dix military base in two weeks. I immediately petitioned the local draft board for an exemption based on the fact I was married, soon to be the father of a child, less than six months from the age exemption and a full time student approximately one year from graduation. I was granted a hearing with draft board on a Tuesday evening two days before my date to report for active duty at Fort Dix.
Entrance of Fort Dix
Prior to the hearing, I summarized my situation in writing. When I was called into the hearing, I reiterated my experience with ever evolving rules over the previous five years and finally made my plea. I told them I was twenty-five and a half years old, six months from the upper age limit, had a certification as a tool and diemaker journeyman, was a year from graduation with my bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, was married and with a child soon to be born. I then asked for an exemption to finish out the academic year. I also brought my Journeyman’s certificate, my current college transcript, and my notice to appear for active duty. And I further stated I would agree that night to sign up for four years in whichever branch of the armed service they stipulated at the conclusion of my exemption.
There were six people on the board to hear my case. Five of the six appeared to be pillars of the community, businessmen and politicians in business suits. The sixth was an Army Captain in uniform. They were all seated along a long table and I stood at the head of the table to make my case. After I described my situation, the Army officer spoke up and said, “Okay, you made your point. Please leave the room and we’ll call you back when we’ve made our decision.” I sat outside the room for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes while they deliberated. It felt like a week.
Finally, I was invited back into the chamber and again stood at the head of the table. The military officer addressed me and gave me the news, their verdict as it were. He said, “The board has decided to extend your deferment for six months. At that time when you will have passed your twenty sixth birthday and under our current rules will no longer be eligible for military service.”
He then added an afterthought, “We really aren’t looking for someone like you in the military, especially at your age. We need young soldiers that can follow orders. You, on the other hand, clearly won’t fit that pattern. You came in here tonight fully prepared, armed with ample documentation, and made a solid case. You spoke like a Philadelphia lawyer and if I had you under my command, I’d be worried you would take an entire company AWOL. OK, that’s our decision. Now, I’ll ask you to wait outside for the next hour or so until were finished with our business here. I want to discuss your statement regarding enlisting following the expiration of your deferment.”
Naturally, I agreed but had no idea what he had in mind. I was thinking of the Navy. Once the board disbanded for the evening the Captain approached me and said that he would like to recommend me for a special assignment. I didn’t know what the special assignment was but agreed out of gratitude for the decision to allow me to continue my education. What he asked me to do was have a conversation with a special projects manager at Lockheed Aircraft located in Edison, New Jersey where I was then employed as a journeyman toolmaker. He provided the contact and naturally I agreed. We shook hands and parted.
The next morning, I was on the telephone with the contact at Lockheed and was asked to meet with him for an interview. At the conclusion of the interview I was offered a transfer from my current job as a machinist toolmaker for production line machinery to a specialist in prototype manufacturing to work on fabrication of classified military projects. Naturally, I accepted. Once I completed the mandatory background check and received my security clearance, I was transferred to the Lockheed special projects group, or skunkworks as it was then called, to work with a group of highly qualified senior toolmakers. And fortunately, Lockheed also continued to refund my tuition for engineering classes in the evening program at Newark College of Engineering.
US involvement in the Vietnam War started with President Harry Truman and further escalated during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950’s. It then further escalated and finally gained national attention under John F. Kennedy with the US military in an advisory capacity. It then escalated again into a full-blown conflict with major US involvement under Lyndon B. Johnson. US intervention finally ended when Richard M. Nixon abruptly pulled out our troops. That war and its aftermath had a huge impact on my generation and essentially shaped the baby boomer’s view of world events and US politics ever since.
To paraphrase a quote from John Steinbeck made following WWII, “War is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal. We go to war with an enemy and a generation later, enemies are friends and friends are enemies and the whole stupid cycle starts over again.” The Vietnam conflict, as it’s called, is an example of Steinbeck’s pronouncement.
It begs a simple question that has yet to be satisfactorily answered. Why on earth were we involved in Vietnam in the first place? The answer to that question was the ‘domino theory’. We were there because of the ‘domino theory’. Simply put, the domino theory predicted that if one small country fell to communist rule then all the other surrounding small countries would fall as well, like a row of dominos. In hindsight however, this was a gross oversimplification.
Domino Theory – Vietnam War
There were over 58,000 US military deaths in Vietnam making it the fourth deadliest war that the United States was ever engaged in, and for what? If you take a nation to war you need to have complete and clear strategic goals, something the Vietnam hawks never had. Who were these hawks anyway? They were “eggheads”, the lot of them.
The Secretary of Defense under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson that hatched this idiotic scheme in the 1960’s. Their concept was to develop a modern defense strategy in the Nuclear Age by bringing in economic analysis, operations strategy was Robert McNamara aided and abetted by a group of so called experts from the RAND Corporation and Ford Motor Corporation nicknamed the Wizz Kids.
They planned to improve the management of the United States Department of Defense by using research, game theory, computing, as well as modern management systems to coordinate the Department of Defense with planning, programming, and budgeting Systems. In other words, systems analysis. A procedure that had then gained popularity in the business environment. What? Unbelievable! This was war, man. People’s lives were at stake, not just profits.
To McNamara and the Wizz Kids this was a grand experiment to see what would happen. And 58,000 young American men lost their lives, many of my former high school classmates among them. Never trust the eggheads. They’ll invariably lead you down the primrose path.
“All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?” Edward Abbey
First Marriage, Honeymoon and the Kluin’s Extended Family
When I wasn’t at the Jersey shore for the summer, but back north in Union, NJ, I spent a lot of my time alone. I only had a few close friends and since my parents were quite a bit older, they didn’t have relatives close by with kids my age. I didn’t have the opportunity to associate with anyone close to my peer group at family outings and parties. In fact, we didn’t have any family outings or parties.
Joann, on the other hand, had a relatively large group of relatives and extended family. On weekends, they would all get together at one another’s houses for dinners and parties and, as her steady boyfriend, I was invited to join in. It seemed that practically every weekend there would be an invitation at either Joann’s home or at one of her uncles or cousins or other relatives or friends of relative’s nearby.
We would all gather for an informal dinner accompanied with spirited conversation on current events and more often than not this would be followed by a friendly poker game among the men. It was generally five-card draw with nickel, dime quarter limit on the bets. I never had the opportunity to play poker before and so it was a new and interesting experience for me. And since I was an only child with a small family, I had never experienced the comradery that these informal family affairs offered. I enjoyed it immensely.
Night over at the Kluin/Vogtman House (L to R: Herman Kluin (FIL), Anthony Kuzma (Cousin), me, Ted Vogtman (MIL Brother)
Over a period of a few years Joann and I became a steady couple and increasingly became active participants in all of the families’ informal parties as well as weddings, birthday parties, and other miscellaneous excuses to get together and party. Beer and wine were always available and flowed freely unlike at my home where alcohol consumption was generally frowned upon. Although social drinking was discouraged by my Father, he always had a few bottles of whiskey stashed around in secret hiding places in the basement, garage and attic where Mom wouldn’t necessarily look. And I could understand her concern over the booze because once he started nipping at it, he would eventually get pretty autocratic and ornery. So, on balance, inclusion in the Kluin family social circle was a pleasant respite from sitting at home watching reruns of “I Love Lucy” on TV with my folks.
This was also during my last year of high school and beginning of my first job at Heller Machine and Tool and the atmosphere on the home front wasn’t very easy-going. I kind of merged into the Kluin’s extended family before I was actually part of the family. This continued until I was twenty-three and Joann was twenty-two and it became a foregone conclusion that we would get married and raise a family. I didn’t actually propose to Joann in the formal sense, but we just started planning our wedding together. It was time. We were married on May 27, 1967 in Roselle, New Jersey in the Catholic Church Joann attended throughout her youth.
“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” Socrates
Communion, Protestant versus Catholic (Confession)
I believe the rule has now been revised but back then because I wasn’t a Catholic we couldn’t be married on the alter like a Catholic couple but rather exchanged our vows in the pit down below in front of the alter. I wasn’t a very religious guy, so it didn’t matter to me one way or the other. The wedding reception was held at a local hall that specialized in such affairs and overall, it was a pleasant experience. No arguments or fights or brawls took place and I believe a good time was had by most if not all.
Aruba Honeymoon
Joann planned our honeymoon and actually did a good job. She found a great deal on a trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba. Aruba has since become a featured vacation destination and I understand it now has numerous hotels, casinos and all-inclusive resorts. But in 1967, it was off the beaten path. There was only one hotel on the island, The Aruba Caribbean Resort. So, we spent the week at the Aruba Caribbean.
It was a great hotel right on the beach with a nice restaurant and attached casino. We booked the all-inclusive package which included all our meals and entertainment. It was first class. But after three days lounging on the beach every day, eating in the same restaurant every night, playing the slots in the casino every night, listening to the same female singer, good as she was, every night became a little tedious. I think the fourth night when she ended her routine with the same song, Guantanamera, Joann and I just looked at each other and broke out laughing. The next day we signed up for a guided tour of the island more to break up the routine than anything else.
The island is small, six miles wide and nineteen miles long, so the tour wasn’t very extensive but still a welcome break from just lounging on the beach in front of the hotel. Besides, by this time, I actually had sun poisoning from laying out in the extremely intense sun. It was the first time in my life I ever got sun poisoning. Since the time when I was a small child I always tanned immediately. My Mom would always say you’re brown as a berry at the beginning of the summer when after one day in the sun I was already tanned. So, when I was out in the sun in Aruba, I never gave it a second thought. What I didn’t realize how intense the sun could be that close to the equator. Especially since in Aruba where there is a constant wind from the East, the trade wind, that makes the intense heat bearable. Joann was smart, she covered up. But I was the big Macho Man and just stayed out there on the beach and baked. It was time for a break in the routine and a chance to give my bright red blistered back a break, so we signed up for the tour.
Before sun burn…..
The tour bus was a small mini-bus or van, if you will, and the tour guide was a local guy from the island, nicely dressed, articulate, knowledgeable and friendly. He appeared to be of mixed race as were many natives of the island. He had Caucasian features but was a sort of medium brown skin color. As I recall the tourists were comprised of four couples, including Joann and I. One was a black couple from the US. After the bus left the hotel in the town of Oranjestad, we proceeded toward the other end of the island and passed through the small town of Sint Nicolas.
The tour guide warned us that if we were to rent a car and take a trip around the island on our own, we should bypass Sint Nicolas and not stop there under any circumstances. One of the couples spoke up and asked, “Why not?” The guide then told us, “Blacks, because of the blacks. That town is where the blacks live, and they cause a lot of trouble.” The same couple then asked somewhat incredulously, “Blacks, what Blacks?” He answered as if it should have been obvious, “Haitians, the black Haitians, the blacks”. Here we are on a small island in the middle of nowhere populated by a handful of people all of them of mixed race and we had some racial strife going on.
Years later I experienced the same thing in Brazil, a country of mixed race people where nearly everyone is of mixed race and there was a distinction among them based on relative percentages of European and African heritage and they would make a distinction based on bloodline to the nearest one-sixteenth. Wow. So, on the guide’s advice, we didn’t return to Sint Nicolas. But I was wondering at the time what the black couple from the US thought about his comments.
The high point of the tour was the shark feeding station on the west side of the island. The water on the west side is always a rough as a consequence of the trade winds that constantly blow. There was a cove there where everyone including the resort hotel staff took their garbage to be dumped in the ocean. The garbage attracts sharks and we were cautioned to never go in the sea on that side of the island and particularly near that cove. We happened to be there during the garbage dump, and you could see the shark fins churning the water. They were well trained.
First Apartment
Trafalgar Gardens, Edison, NJ
When we returned from our honeymoon, Joann and I rented an apartment near Oak Tree Road in Edison, New Jersey on the second floor of a relatively new apartment complex called Trafalgar Gardens. I was working at Lockheed Aircraft in Edison and the apartment offered a convenient commute to and from work. It was a one-bedroom garden apartment (not sure what they meant by that as there were no gardens around the place). Nevertheless, it was a nice area and a nice apartment; an auspicious start.
Edison, New Jersey was undergoing a transition at that time evolving from a rural to a suburban area. Trafalgar Gardens was on the very outskirts of the suburban zone and directly behind the apartment was an open field interspersed with open fields, trees, and a small creek. It offered a great view from our second story deck and a certain degree of seclusion.
Located in the field behind the apartment was a collection of barns and outbuildings. The collection of buildings was part of a horse auction called Roosevelt Sales and Stables. The outfit was run by a guy named Louis (Bunchie) Grant and the stables were referred to simply as Bunchie’s. Auctions were held every Wednesday night and we could hear the auctioneer from the deck at the rear of our apartment.
We would frequently wander over to Bunchie’s and observe the goings- on. We would sit high up in the bleachers and watch the “cowboys” run the horses fore and back below as the auctioneer prattled on with his chant. Matter of fact I enjoyed the chant as much as watching the horses. It was an evening of exciting free entertainment. “Ok, Boys, open the gate, let’em in.” The gate would fly open and the rider would run the length of the building at full gallop spin around and run em back again. It also was the first time I was around horses up close and personal. I would often wander around outside the auction house to the stables and investigate the livestock and chat with the “cowboys”. I didn’t imagine at the time that later on I was to become a lot more up close and personal with the equine species.
I believe we stayed in the apartment for about two years, and it was at that time I started to contemplate switching from night school to a full-time day student. Joann was working a steady job at the Bell Telephone Company and between her salary, our meager savings, and the option of scholarships and student loans I reasoned I could switch to a full-time student and obtain my Bachelor’s degree, before going bust.
Things at Lockheed were also not looking very promising. The space program was winding down, layoffs in the industry were already taking place and it was only a matter of time before I would have to find another job. I applied to NCE as a full-time student and resigned from my position at Lockheed.
When I resigned and told my boss Tom (Snake Hips) Brennen that I was resigning to go to school full time he motioned over his shoulder at the engineering department and said, “What are going to do, become one of these guys?” I said, “Yeah, I hope so.” He responded, “Best of luck kid, you’re a damned good machinist and I know you’ll make a damned good engineer.”
Joann was pregnant, with Jill, at that time and in hindsight the prudent course would probably have been to stay put but nothing ventured nothing gained so we moved ahead with the plan.
The second apartment
A year after I started as a full-time student, I had enough credits to graduate but lacked two required courses. Nevertheless, I applied for a full-time position and was fortunate to get a job as a junior process engineer with The Lummus Company, a major engineering contractor in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Lummus had a tuition refund plan and the two courses I took after work at night were paid for by the company. I actually graduated with the class of 1970.
During that first year while working at Lummus my daughter, Jill, was born. We were quite cramped in the one-bedroom apartment at Trafalgar Gardens. We needed to find a larger apartment, a two bedroom, one for us and one for our daughter Jill. Joann soon found a place not far from where we were. It was a two-bedroom apartment above a detached garage at a private residence. It looked good, it was on several acres out in the country, and was very affordable. So, we took it and moved in. It turned out to be a huge mistake.
Joann, Jill and me
The landlord who lived in the house next to the garage had a couple of sons in their late teens or early twenties and basically, they were New Jersey “rednecks”. The sons were involved with building hot rods in a shed out back of the house and frequently they and their buddies would be revving up engines, peeling out and just making a general ruckus oftentimes until one or two in the morning.
The apartment was heated electrically with space heaters about two feet tall built in the wall just about the height of a toddler. On cold winter nights when the heat was turned up, they were red hot and a major hazard especially for Jill. If she accidently bumped or fell into one of them, she would have been severely burned. The living room walls of the apartment were also covered with faux wood panels made of flammable plastic. Clearly this was a disaster waiting to happen. In addition, late one night the rednecks working on their hot rods set the shed on fire. It was quite a blaze. No one was hurt but the shed and the cars inside were burned to the ground. That was it. We needed to get the hell out of there, ASAP.
Moving in with the Kluins
Options were limited and so we took up an offer from my in-laws to move into their house in Colonia, NJ (next town over). It was a relatively small but nice house in a quiet neighborhood. It had a partially finished basement, so we moved in and set up housekeeping.
Financial issues were also in play. Joann and I were in complete agreement that she should leave her job throughout her pregnancy and become a stay at home mom as soon as I was employed by Lummus. I would do that again, it was the right decision. However, finances were very tight. My starting salary at Lummus was the same as the salary I was making when I left Lockheed to attend school full time, $10,000 per year. But now circumstances were different. Joann’s salary was missed, savings were depleted, and I was faced with repayment of student loans I had taken for tuition. Thus, the offer to move into with the Kluins had definite financial benefits. It also allowed my in-laws, Herman and Helen, to participate in the first years with their new grandchild, and Joann and I had a babysitter for Jill when needed.
But in hindsight it also had some major drawbacks. This was a time for Joann and I to become full partners in life, raising our daughter, making our own decisions together and generally making our way in the world. But family decisions now involved four people instead of two. And since I was working full time, with a long commute and travelling on business as well I became less than a full partner in this family. It started innocently enough but escalated over time and in hindsight was a major factor that eventually led to our inevitable separation and divorce.
This story was originally written by Hal Gunardson and posted on a Rescue Dog Site, which no longer exists. It is dated 25 Mar 2010. Annie passed away in April 2022. She lived a long and happy life. We missed her terribly.
Annie’s Story
Hal Gunardson offered to share his adoption experience with Breed Rescue. This is Hal’s unique story with Annie aboard his sailing vessel “Free Radical”.
People are frequently asking me, “What kind of dog is that?” The answer is, I really don’t know. Annie is reputed to be a two and half year old half Shepherd half Smooth Collie mix but nobody knows for sure. She is a rescue dog and her early history is shrouded in mystery. I adopted Annie from an animal shelter just three days before her termination date and so Annie, who was formerly a rescue dog, is now a “rescued” dog. All I can say for certain is she is a good-looking animal, bright, healthy, alert, and curious about everything around her. In short, she is everything that you could want a dog to be.
Annie in her bunk aboard the sailing vessel “Free Radical”.
Ever since I was a kid I’ve always had a dog and it is hard to imagine life without a canine companion. But after my black Lab, Calgary, passed away three years ago, changes in lifestyle made it hard to see how I would deal with the responsibility of another dog. My lifestyle changes involved, among other things, living full-time aboard a sailboat and sailing up and down the east coast of the US and the Caribbean. For the past three years, I’ve become, as many call us, “snowbirds” sailing south in the winter and north in the summer. It was hard enough for me to adjust to this lifestyle without considering what it would be like having a dog aboard. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Dogs are remarkably adaptable creatures and we can learn a lot from them about always making the best of any situation.
At First Sight
So how did Annie go from being a landlubber to a seasoned “sea dog” in a couple of weeks? It was, to say the least, an interesting transformation. I was in port in South Florida when I finally made the decision to find a dog to live aboard. On a Sunday afternoon, I went over to the local shelter to look around. There were two lab puppies posted on the shelter’s website and I thought one of these might be the one. I inquired about the puppies and was told they were three and a half months old. Miley was already adopted but they believed the five-month-old pup was still available. I walked through the kennel to take a look and sure enough, the five-month-old lab was there, but somehow Annie, the two-year-old Shepherd-Collie mix got my eye. I think at first it was the ear action. She always has one ear up and the other down and switches from one to the other from time to time. It’s kind of her signature idiosyncrasy.
Anyway, the shelter’s procedure is first you write down up to three dog’s names, then enter a small room with a chair, desk, and a very large dispenser of paper towels, then they bring the dogs you are interested in, one at a time, into the room. You spend about 15 to 20 minutes alone with each dog to see if you are simpatico. The five-month-old lab puppy came in first. Nice dog but the puppy personality and all of the basic training involved gave me second thoughts. The puppies are apparently very popular and there were already three families interested in adopting her. So if I was interested, I could go to the bottom of the list. I said no, best to let one of the families adopt her. Then they brought Annie in.
She jumped, yanked, and pulled all the way down the hall. When she entered they told me to beware of two things. First, “This dog is totally out of control” and second, “she was abandoned because she chases livestock.” OK.
As soon as the handler left the room Annie laid down at my feet. I petted her for maybe 10 minutes. She then got up and paced about the room, each time stopping and staring at the crack in the door. She was telling me she had to go out to take care of her business but of course, I couldn’t let her out. Next, she squatted in the middle of the room and made a pretty good-sized puddle. So, that’s why there was such a large towel dispenser on the wall. After the clean-up, she laid back at my feet for the remainder of our time. When the handler returned I said, yes we definitely bonded and I would like to adopt her. Seemed to me she was only out of control when she was trying to get out of the kennel and concerning the livestock, well there wasn’t going to be any livestock to chase where she’d be living. Two problems already solved.
Her Name
I asked if there was a list of adopters for Annie and they said, “No, it’s generally more difficult to place the older dogs.” For a brief moment, I thought about renaming Annie, perhaps to something more nautical. But then it then hit me, Little Orphan Annie, the perfect name for her. As I thought more about it I realized that the karma actually went much deeper.
The Sailing Sloop Annie
Being a lifelong sailor I remembered a famous sailing sloop named “Annie” built in 1880 that’s permanently moored in the Mystic Seaport museum. It seemed apropos that Little Orphan Annie, the rescued dog, would be living aboard a sailboat herself.
The last of the sandbaggers. The remarkable 8.8m/29ft Annie was built around 1880 in Mystic, Conn. Her racing rig measured 20.7m/68ft from the tip of the bowsprit to the clew of the main. Annie was preserved by the far-sighted Maine Historical Association in the early 1900s and is now at the Mystic Seaport Museum. Pic from the Museum site.
Annie’s Song
Next John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” which he wrote for his first wife came to mind. Particularly the second stanza which was a love song for his wife but any dog lover can immediately connect the lyrics to their relationship with their dog;
Come let me love you, let me give my life to you let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms
Pretty heavy-duty stuff to be sure, but exactly what I had in mind as I left the shelter with Annie by my side.
The Interview
The next step in the process was for the handler to interview me. I understood they are cautious as I’m sure the folks at the shelter really didn’t want to see the dog back again in a few days or a few weeks.
During the interview, the biggest concern about my qualifications for adopting Annie seemed to be the fact that I am a full-time live aboard on a sailboat. I can’t imagine that I was the first one who lived aboard a boat to come in to adopt a dog. Nevertheless, it seemed to generate a great deal of concern. But I apparently passed muster and off we went. Despite my nervousness about the dire warning “out of control”, she walked alongside me as if she had been doing it all her life. I felt she somehow knew she was going home.
Only home turned out to be a lot different than she expected.
The Boat
She rode in the car sitting up in the passenger seat like an old pro and got out when we stopped without any doggy drama. However, the trouble started when we approached the dock. In her former life, she apparently had never seen anything like this.
Annie relaxing next to “Free Radical” – on the dock at the marina.
There is an aluminum ramp leading from the land to the floating dock which moves up and down with the changes in the tide. When I tried to take her down the ramp you would think she was walking across a bed of hot coals. At first, she balked and finally, she literally pranced down to the concrete dock as fast as she could. When we got to the boat she was completely perplexed. She didn’t want any part of it. There is about a two-foot difference in height between the dock and the boat and she could have easily jumped the gap but it scared the hell out of her and she was determined to stay on the dock. I tried to gently lift her aboard but she wouldn’t have it. For the next four and a half hours she lay on the concrete dock and stared at the boat as it gently swayed back and forth.
Annie at the Dock Staring at the Boat for the First Time
Suddenly another song with an Annie connection slowly entered my consciousness, “Sweet Dreams (are made of this)”, by Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics. Somehow I imagined that Annie, the rescued dog, might be having these thoughts as we approached the edge of the land, the Marina, the dock with the boat gently rocking in its berth.
Sweet dreams are made of this Who am I to disagree? Travel the world and the seven seas
As I looked at her expression, I imagined she must be thinking, “You want me to do what?”
Finally, she fell asleep on the dock. I left her tied with a fresh bowl of water and went down below in the cabin to sleep.
I woke about midnight and went to check on Annie. There she was fast asleep on the dock but the temperature had dropped and I worried about her catching cold on the concrete. Especially since, like most shelter dogs, she already had a case of kennel cough. While she was still asleep I lifted her aboard and put her in the cockpit of the boat. She was not particularly happy about it but grudgingly submitted and saw that all things considered, it was a better deal than the concrete dock. She fell asleep in the cockpit and I did the same down below in the cabin.
Annie Oakley, another Orphan Annie
I believe that orphans, both human and canine, have a special internal drive to adapt and excel in whatever situation they’re thrust into. Perhaps because of their humble and often difficult start in life, there is a strong tendency to overcompensate and overachieve. This was certainly true with Annie Oakley.
Annie Oakley c. 1880
Annie Oakley was born a poor back country girl from, believe it or not, Darke County, in western Ohio. When she was nine her father died and her mother gave her up to the care of the county’s poor farm. Afterward, she was placed into indentured servitude with a local family where she reportedly suffered both physical and mental abuse. Despite her difficult start, she became an extraordinary shooter and her amazing talent got her a starring role in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show making her the first American female superstar.
Taking Care of Business Aboard
About a month after Annie had been aboard, the kennel cough cleared up, she had learned to jump on and off the boat, climb up and down the ladder from the cockpit to the cabin, and experienced her first offshore sail. She was genuinely relaxed and seemed to be really enjoying her sailing lifestyle.
Annie Oakley, another orphan, and yet another Annie connection, is for me just another part of the Annie karma. I don’t think Annie the rescued dog will become a canine superstar but it didn’t take long for her to get accustomed to her new and, at least for a dog, unusual surroundings. She adapted extremely fast and within about a week had the basics down pat and was taking the whole experience in her stride.
Annie on Alert Aboard s/v “Free Radical”
And she is also extremely serious about her new and critically important duties as First Mate in charge of security. (NOTE from Jill – Anyone, I mean anyone, who knew my dad and Annie knows this to be true. You could not step foot on the dock the sailboat was located without hearing Annie “telling” my dad, “Alert! Alert! Someone comes this way.” She took this job extremely seriously. After my dad passed away, it took her a while, but she does the same thing when anyone arrives at the house!”)
Taking Care of her other “Business” Aboard
A major issue with a dog living aboard a boat is how to deal with their daily bodily functions, especially when sailing offshore for days at a time. It would be great if they could be trained to back up to the starboard rail and hang their hindquarters overboard but I think that is probably easier said than done. There is a sailor, who has posted on the internet that claims he has actually trained his dog to do this, but the old saying is “seeing is believing” and I haven’t seen it yet.
So, I bought a 2 by 4-foot piece of Astroturf and placed it in an out-of-the-way place in the cockpit. It took her about two days to figure it out and then, no more mistakes. As I said dogs are very adaptable. Of course, when we go ashore I’m among the blue plastic bag brigade following close behind her cleaning up as necessary.
Rescue Annie
Once I had exhausted all of my immediate thoughts about Annie’s name, I did a bit of further research and found some fascinating connections that only reinforced my decision to not change her name.
There is a training mannequin used for teaching CPR known as Rescue Anne, (also known as Resusci Annie or CPR Annie). It was developed by a Norwegian toymaker around 1960 and the distinctive face was based on L’Inconnue de la Seine (the unknown woman of the Seine), the death mask of an unidentified young Parisian woman who died in the late 1880s.
Mystery surrounds the origin of the death mask. According to one legend, she was a young woman who drowned in the Seine River, and a pathologist at the Paris morgue was so taken by her beauty that he had a plaster death mask made of her face. Another legend claims that the face was modeled after the daughter of a German mask maker. But in any case, the term L’ Inconnue de la Seine has survived to describe her face. The origin of the Inconnue is uncertain, veiled in mystery, just like Annie’s past.
Bohemian Lifestyle
After the L’Inconnue mask was made public, copies quickly became popular in Parisian Bohemian society. Bohemians are known for practicing an unconventional lifestyle in the company of like-minded people with few permanent ties. They are societies’ wanderers, adventurers, and vagabonds which also pretty well describes offshore sailors, the so-called “snowbirds”. Seems like a pretty apt description of Annie’s new life as well.
The L’ Inconnue de la Seine has also been the subject of many artistic and literary works over the past century. Albert Camus compared her enigmatic smile to the Mona Lisa, inviting speculations as to what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society.
And so I thought, how could I possibly consider changing her name with all these incredible coincidences going for it.
Annie, it is – and so Annie it shall be!
Barefoot Annie – Barefoot Annie’s Coffee Shop, South Carolina
Finally, as to the compelling appeal of Annie’s name, I think of Barefoot Annie of Barefoot Annie’s coffee shop in Simpsonville, SC. Coincidently, the sailboat “Free Radical” originally came from Charleston, SC. (check out Barefoot Annie on YouTube where she sings “Amazing Grace” acapella, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWrU6ImndyI).
And the very first verse, I can imagine in Annie’s thoughts:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.
With all due respect for the late John Denver, for both Annie and me, this is the real “Annie’s Song”.
Postscript
I hope you enjoyed this saga about Annie the rescued dog and her adventures aboard s/v “Free Radical”. I work alone on board and I really don’t have anyone to review my writing. So I read it aloud to Annie a couple of times and she seemed to think it was OK. She even panted a bit from time to time when I got to the parts that complemented her. So, I’m taking that as positive feedback. I hope you find it inspiring and my message is if you’re thinking about adopting a rescue dog, don’t sweat your circumstances, just go for it! Dogs are incredibly adaptable and the rewards are immeasurable both for you and the dog!
In my teens, when my family was spending our summers in Ocean Beach at the Jersey shore I hung out with a bunch of kids whose families also had summer houses in the same small town. One of my friends was a young guy named Bob McGonagall. Bob was a stocky athletic kid with a great sense of humor that was always up for any kind of spontaneous mischief we could devise. Because of his kinky brown hair his nickname was “Buffalo Bob”. “Buffalo Bob” was not merely a participant in our mischief but a major instigator as well. Whatever crazy scheme the group would come up with Bob would always be the first to kick it up a notch or two. The general consensus was that sooner or later he would probably end up in jail. On the contrary, I heard years later from some our mutual friends that Bob had become a law enforcement officer and in fact joined the FBI in Newark, NJ.
Decades later, when I was living in Allentown, PA and working for Air Products I would frequently drive down to Philadelphia at night to have diner in the Society Hill section of town and hang out there in the bars and nightclubs for the evening. On one such trip I was having dinner at the bar in one of the popular restaurants on 2nd Street and wound up sitting next to a group of guys that were FBI agents from Philly. They were telling “war stories” about some on the job exploits and the stories were hilarious.
Before long they drew me into their conversation, and we exchanged information about who we were and where we were from. I casually mentioned that I had grown up at the Jersey Shore and in my teens had a buddy that joined the FBI in Newark, NJ. They asked his name and I said his name is Bob McGonagall but he went by the nickname of Buffalo Bob. Suddenly the whole group became animated and they responded telling me “Hey, that guy is famous in the FBI, That’s Rocky McGonagall, he’s one crazy ass son of a bitch”. They started to tell me about his exploits and the stories sounded like they were talking about Clint Eastwood’s character Dirty Harry. They told me he was retired a few years back but his legacy lives on within the FBI.
My Grandfather built two model steam engines which I inherited from my Dad. When I was a pre-teen these engines were a source of endless fascination for me. One is a two-cylinder vertical engine for a model boat he built and the other is a stationary one-cylinder single action horizontal engine.
One day when I was playing around with the engines, I decided it would be interesting to build a smaller version of the horizontal single action engine out of scrap metal from the basement stash. I understood the general principle of the single action steam engine but was somewhat confused how the valve actually worked.
I thought I would fool around with the thing and figure it out. I had my Dad’s permission to use the metal working lathe and drill press so I decided it would be a good project for me to mess around with. The cylinder, flywheel and shafts were straightforward lathe projects, but the valve was a bit of a mystery.
I realized it had to be constructed so one port would let the steam into the cylinder and another would be needed to let the steam out. They also needed to be timed so that this would occur the instant the piston reversed direction. It also had to be made using only the lathe and drill press since these were the only two machines I had to work with.
Eventually, I figured it out after many false starts, and I used up a lot of scrap metal before the engine would run beyond one revolution. By trial and error, it finally came together and ran smoothly.
Years later I became aware of the saying attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, “The mind learns from the hands”. But this was probably my first actual hands on experience based on this principle. There is no substitute for building one; thought experiments are all well and good but fundamental understanding comes from building, experimenting, modifying and experimenting some more.
Many years later, when I was a self-employed chemical engineer, I worked with a mechanical engineer, Richard Keener, who had a complete machine shop in his garage and built some of the machinery I designed for my clients.
We were working together in my basement shop one day and he spotted the model steam engine I had built. He asked me about it, and I told him it’s a steam engine I built when I was a kid. He asked, “How old where you when you built it?” I told him “I was about twelve or thirteen.” He replied. “Christ, you’re a damn prodigy!” I told him “No, I just had a good example to follow.” But it was a great compliment from a guy I had a lot of respect for. A man that designed and built his own turbo charger for his vintage Mercedes Benz.
He also had a vintage 1953 MG TD sports car his shop completely disassembled. It was now in a heap of parts piled on the floor. Hanging on the wall over the pile of parts was a photo of Richard at the wheel in Watkin’s Glen, New York setting the track speed record. He was negotiating the last turn with the car healed over on two wheels. I asked him when he was going to put it back together? He told me eventually. He called it his future retirement project.
I don’t believe he ever retired or ever got around to that project. I would have loved to tackle the rebuild. But there was no way he would part with that old pile of parts. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now.
1953 MG TD
The Unfinished Gasoline Engine
When I was in high school, I took a college prep program but also took a class in machine shop. With my marginal grades, my Mom encouraged me to take the shop class as a backup plan. She encouraged me to “learn a trade” so I could make a living if I didn’t get into college. Having worked with machinery at home from the time I could barely look over the top of the workbench it was obvious to the shop teacher that I knew my way around a machine shop. He was an excellent teacher and provided me with a great deal of encouragement.
In the senior year each student had to do a shop project of his or her own choosing that would count for fifty percent of their final grade. I already conquered the steam engine project at home several years earlier, so I decided to take it up a level and build a model of a one-cylinder gasoline engine.
I worked the entire school year on that project but near the end screwed up machining the cylinder and never finished it. I still regret that I gave up too soon. Nevertheless, the shop teacher was impressed, gave me a good grade, and more importantly recommended me to a local machine shop, Heller Machine and Tool, for a job as a tool and die maker apprentice.
This was my first full time job after I graduated from high school. And so, I started the apprenticeship program at Heller Machine and Tool Company in Union, New Jersey. It was a formal four-year program sponsored by a Government grant for my employer. I started for minimum wage of $1.25 per hour. Take home pay was $42.50 per week. It was a great job. I loved it and was good at it. Part of the program was a requirement to take certain courses in the evenings at an approved technical school, specifically algebra and trigonometry.
For the first time since my early childhood, I was truly academically motivated. I researched the options and discovered I could take the required math courses at Union County College, a local Community College located nearby in Cranford, New Jersey. I eagerly signed up for the courses and at the end of the first semester I received an A in both courses. The first time I ever got two A’s back to back was in those two math courses. I signed up for the next semester and Heller Machine reimbursed the tuition.
Once I started with the program, I became even more motivated. There was none of the bullshit there had been in grammar and high school. Either you showed up for classes and got the benefit or you didn’t and dropped out or flunked out. I not only showed up, I was energized.
I didn’t want to lose my Toolmaker’s job and actually found the higher math a really gratifying challenge. I finally hit my stride. I was doing well in the curriculum and made a commitment to continue with the program and obtain a two-year associates degree which would qualify me to apply later to a four-year university. It wasn’t part of the apprenticeship program, but I was able to convince Cliff Heller, the owner of Heller Machine, to support my plan and reimburse my tuition for the Community College program.
I aced all the courses in Junior College and began to consider majoring at a four-year university in engineering. I never actually completed my Associate’s degree but after a year and a half in Community College decided to transfer to Newark College of Engineering (NCE). That was the plan if I could get accepted. I had taken the SAT’s in high school and scored in the top ten percentiles. I then took the entrance exam for NCE and achieved a very high score. I was always good at tests, I was just never good at doing the homework assignments. Based on the SAT’s, the NCE entrance exam and my grades in Community College I was accepted at NCE and entered the evening program majoring in mechanical engineering.
Over the next year, I continued evening classes in the mechanical engineering program. I then took a required course in fundamentals of chemistry, an introductory chemistry course for mechanical engineering students. This was it! I had another epiphany. I loved this stuff and it occurred to me I was enrolled in the wrong program.
Chemical engineering was the right place for me. The following semester I switched from mechanical to chemical engineering and fortunately was able to transfer most of the credits I earned as an ME student to the ChE program.
The Jersey Shore – A great experience, the beach, the girls, the boats, the sailing, all good stuff for a growing boy
This Is How It Started
When I was about fourteen my folks bought a summer home at the Jersey shore. It was in a small beach community called Ocean Beach (in Lavalette, NJ) about halfway between Point Pleasant to the north and Seaside Heights to the south. Our house was on the Barnegat Bay on a street called Bay Shore Drive which led to a peninsula that jutted out into the bay. Ours was the third house from the end of the peninsula. It was in a great location right on the water overlooking the bay; a modest one-story beach house with a great view and boat dock.
Our neighbor was a stock broker with a rather elaborate house that included among other amenities a two-car garage as well as two baths. I was a pretty handy kid with tools and so my folks allowed me to build a vanity for the bathroom in our house. It turned out pretty well and one day my Mom showed it off to the neighbor. He asked me if I would build a similar vanity for his second bathroom and told me he would pay me for the job. Naturally, I agreed.
He bought the materials and I went to work. When it was finished, he paid me a few dollars for my work and then told me he had a small sailboat in his garage. He said I could have it, but it had a hole in the deck where someone stepped on it, but if I could fix it up it was mine.
My Dad bought me a ¼ inch 4 x 8 foot piece of marine plywood for the job and I went to work on it. I repaired the deck, gave it a new paint job and had my first sailboat; a sailfish, which is basically a surfboard with a mast, retractable fin keel and a tiller. I had no idea how to sail it and neither did my Dad since he was a power boat guy. Nevertheless, I launched it in Barnegat Bay, raised the sail and fooled around until I finally got the hang of it. I must have tipped it over a thousand times during my learning process but when you’re fourteen and a good swimmer that was just all part of the fun.
The Sailfish
Hal on his Sailfish
I recall my first experience tacking. I had no idea what tacking was but one afternoon out in the bay quite far to the north of home a stiff wind arose out of the south. I took off heading northbound with the wind at my back and was having a great time but wound up a considerable distance from home. I finally decided I better get back, so I came about into the wind and discovered that I was still heading northbound and my sail was flapping (luffing) in the breeze. The sailing term is “in irons”.
I didn’t realize then that the boat would not sail directly into the wind. I fooled around for a while until I discovered if I pointed the bow at an angle to the wind the boat would make forward progress but not exactly where I wanted to go. A little more experimentation and I was going forward at a different angle but again not on my desired course. OK, it dawned on me what I need to do is zig zag back home. So that’s what I did.
It took a couple of hours, but I finally made it back just before nightfall. I was back at the dock exhausted, had been more than a little panicked but now secure in my newly acquired knowledge of zig zagging. Years later I learned that zig zagging had a technical sailing term, “tacking”.
When I took my offshore sailing courses in Fort Lauderdale on a 38-foot sailboat, a Jeaneau, I realized the sailfish really was an excellent way to learn. Small boats, as sailors say, are “lively” which means everything happens fast and they are really easy to tip over. By comparison, on large sailboats everything happens in slow motion, but the basic principles are the same. If you can sail a small one, you can sail a big one.
I enjoyed that sailfish so much and spent so many hours sailing it that when I turned sixteen my Dad bought me a brand new “Snark” for my birthday.
The Snark
The Snark was a little bigger than the sailfish and had an actual cockpit with a seat at the tiller. I refined my sailing skills in the Snark and became adept at keeping her upright and skimming over the whitecaps. It was great fun and a great learning experience.
I also had a small secondhand runabout that my Dad bought for me. It was a fifteen-foot Lyman skiff with a twenty five horsepower Johnson outboard engine. It was a wooden boat with what is called a lap strake hull. That is the boards of the hull overlap rather than butt up to each other. It’s a more seaworthy design than a smooth hull.
The “Sea Tiger” – 15 ft. Lyman Outboard Skiff
The boat had a brass plaque on the dashboard with the name of the boat engraved on it, “Sea Tiger”. It was the mighty sea tiger; well more like the sea kitten but whatever. I never thought it was an appropriate name, but my Mom loved that name and always called the boat ‘Sea Tiger’. When I prepared to take it out, she would always ask, “Are you going out in the Sea Tiger?” I would always cringe when she said that and I’m sure that’s why she always said it. It became a private joke between us. It was a great little boat though and I spent many hours in the bay cruising and fishing and just messing around out on the water.
Most of the other kids my age living in the area had their own similar small outboard skiffs. We had a great time racing each other and exploring the tidal islands in the bay and generally learning by hands on experience about boats and tides and weather and all of the stuff you need to know to safely handle yourself on the water. These truly were the Halcyon Days of Summer.
“According to Greek mythology, Alcyone, the daughter of the god of the winds, became so distraught when she learned that her husband had been killed in a shipwreck that she threw herself into the sea and was changed into a kingfisher. As a result, ancient Greeks called such birds alkyon or halkyon. The legend also says that such birds built floating nests on the sea, where they so charmed the wind god that he created a period of unusual calm that lasted until the birds’ eggs hatched. This legend prompted people to use halcyon both as a noun naming a genus of kingfisher and as an adjective meaning either “of or relating to the kingfisher or its nesting period” or calm.”
Risky Behavior
Most of the time when I took ‘Sea Tiger’ out I would fool around in the bay with the other kids on boats and be back home by supper time. But there was an inlet not too far away, the Point Pleasant Inlet connecting the bay to the Atlantic Ocean and every once in a while…
At certain times, the inlet can be treacherous, especially when the wind runs against the tide. But from time to time I would take the ‘Sea Tiger’ out the inlet to the ocean and back just for adventure, just for the thrill of it. My folks never knew I did this. If they did, I am sure I would have been grounded for a long time.
Point Pleasant Inlet
But when you are a teenager you do stupid things and sometimes you are just plain lucky. I would purposely take the boat through the inlet during rough conditions just for the fun of it. I would generally take it out late in the afternoon and come back in with the fleet of large fishing boats returning to port to “ride and surf their wakes”. It was usually on an incoming tide. This is called a following sea and often times I would look behind me and there was a five or six foot wall of water directly behind the transom of my boat. The wave would not break until it hit shallow water and so you could ride the wave, so to speak, as long as you kept up your speed. It was a great thrill but dangerous as hell! There is nothing like impending disaster to focus the mind and somehow, I was lucky enough to stay focused and survive without any mishaps.
Recently in Florida there was a story that got a lot of attention on the local news about two teenage boys both fourteen years old, ostensibly experienced boaters and fishermen, who took their small 19 foot open cockpit outboard boat out of Jupiter, Florida and were lost at sea. Months later the damaged boat was found washed ashore in Bermuda nearly 700 miles away with life vests and one of the boy’s iPhone was aboard but no sign of the boys. It was stormy the day they went missing and they probably were overtaken by a sudden gale and heavy seas, the boat capsized, and they were not able to grab a hold and were lost at sea.
This story had a profound effect on me because of my own experience when I was that age. Like many of us, I thought I was “bulletproof” and could get away with risky behavior. And somehow by sheer luck I did. But when I heard about this incident, I couldn’t help but think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Just thinking about this tragedy made me “weak in the knees”.
My Dad’s Boat
Shortly after we moved into the house in Ocean Beach my Dad bought an 18-foot Chris Craft mahogany speedboat with a trailer. The boat was a Chris Craft Riviera named “Playboy” with a 327 cu. in., 300 HP Chevrolet inboard engine. On flat water the boat could do 60 mph.
18 Ft. Chris Craft Riviera
The Ocean Beach community had a small marina where he kept the boat. “Playboy” was the prettiest boat in the marina especially just after we worked on it all winter and re-varnished and re-caulked the hull and the deck. That was an annual project and a lot of work every year. These boats were designed for use on freshwater lakes, not for salt water. Every season we would take the boat back north, strip it down to “bare wood” and refinish the whole thing.
There was only one other boat in the marina that was more outrageous than “Playboy”. That was the Chris Craft Cobra owned by a guy from our hometown, Union, NJ, Pete Szpaichler. His nickname was “Spike” and he owned an auto body shop in town not far from the high school. He was a few years older than me and I didn’t know him very well, but I knew him by reputation.
Those were the times when all of the high school boys were into hot rods, most of which were more or less “junk” and needed a lot of work. Spike had a hell of a racket going with his auto body shop. He would let the kids work on their own cars in his shop and they would pay him to do so. Today with liability legislation, insurance and so forth this would be impossible. But in those days with the lax regulations he pulled it off.
At any given time, there would be seven or eight “hotrods” in his shop in various states of disrepair and the teenage owners and their buddies would be there every day after school working their butts off and paying Spike for the privilege. What a racket! I would see these guys in school, and they would brag, “Hey man, Spike lets me work in his shop,” like it was a status symbol. Idiots, they didn’t get it.
So, Spike had the 18 ft. Chris Craft Cobra with the custom metal flake gold paint job on the fiberglass cowling. He pulled it on a trailer with authentic wire wheels which matched the wire wheels on the 1955 pink Cadillac convertible he used to haul the boat.
18 Ft. Chris Craft Cobra
1955 pink Cadillac Convertible
It was a sight to behold! Spike was quite the marketing genius in his time. He had a lineup of teenage ‘would be’ drag strip jockeys paying him to work in his shop on their cars. Wow, what a scam.
Where is Spike today? I don’t know, but I bet he is either in jail or he’s living on his multi-million-dollar mega yacht in Georgetown, Bahamas laughing his ass off.
My Dad’s Second Boat
Pop on Sundancer
The name of this one was “SUNDANCER”. It was a 26-foot Shepherd mahogany speedboat built in Canada.
The Casino Arcade – Seaside Heights
When I was sixteen years old my first full time summer job was at the Seaside Heights boardwalk. I got a job in the amusements section at the Casino Arcade making change for customers for the pinball and skee-ball machines. The building also housed a fabulous old antique carousal. The carousal had a pipe organ in the center of the ride that was converted at some point to a mechanical device that played the organ continuously. It played one song all day and all night; Down Yonder. I would hear that tune every day all summer for sixteen hours a day. To this day sixty years later I know every note of down yonder by heart.
There was a dance hall on the second floor of the building that was open from six till midnight every night. I never went into the Casino Dance Hall as the age requirement was twenty-one. But every night I was entertained by the impromptu show going on just outside the dance hall.
Every night about seven-o-clock, four or five amateur harmonizers, would congregate under the overhang at the Casino Arcade in Seaside Heights decked out in their Italian Knit shirts, three quarter length black leather jackets and PINZANO Milano black Fedora straw hats for an a capella jam session. They would start tapping their feet in unison and begin with “Eh, doom bopa, DOOM BOPA, doom bopa, doo …” Then the lead singer would break in in a soprano falsetto joined by the tenors and baritone while the bass continued to maintain the tempo “Eh, doom bopa, DOOM BOPA, doom bopa, doo …” These guys were great and never failed to draw an appreciative crowd. Different groups would show up at random and compete for the crowd’s approval every night of the week. The jam sessions would continue for several hours until late in the evening. These were the original Doo Wop A Capella groups of the 1950’s. Oh and by the way “Eh, doom bopa, DOOM BOPA, doom bopa, doo …” is the lead in to Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers circa 1956. How the hell do I remember that? That was more than sixty years ago. Amazing the trivia that’s stuck in your mind.
During my senior year in high school after I had turned eighteen, I took the driver’s education course in school and finally got my automobile drivers license and also purchased my first car.
When I was looking for the first car, two of my friends, Tom and his older brother Don Demscack, both car enthusiasts, who were really into hot rods, introduced me to a fellow a few years older who lived nearby and had a car available that he was giving away! He had just been drafted to play football for the Chicago Bears, was moving to Chicago and had to get rid of the car. It was a 1932 Ford three window coupe without an engine that looked a lot like this one.
1932 Ford Three Window Coupe
He claimed he was willing to give the car away to get it out of his driveway to anyone that was willing to pick it up, work on it and transform into a hot rod. All we had to do was tow it away. I regarded this as a real bonanza and in my imagination the car would look something like this when it was done.
I really excited about this potential windfall and immediately went home to tell my Mom and Dad about the car and persuade them to let me tow it home. That really didn’t go over too well. My Mom went ballistic when I told her I wanted to tow it home and put it in the back yard to work on it. She told me in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want the house to look like a junkyard and her refrain was “What will the neighbors say?”
Needless to say, I was very disappointed and to this day I’m actually still disappointed. Over the years I’ve seen many of these “32” three window coupes at hot rod and car shows and I will always regret I didn’t just drag it home and deal with the aftermath.
What really surprised me is my father didn’t support my idea. He had all of the skills and the tools to accomplish the rebuild and it would have been a terrific father and son project as well as a great learning experience for me. He just remained silent and my mom won the argument. No hot rods at Tyler Street, period. I began to have some doubts about the story of the Stutz Bearcat in a basket that was oft repeated and the subject of so much family folklore.
1949 Cadillac Convertible – First Potential Car
When I finally took the driver education course and obtained my license at eighteen, I started to look for a used car I could afford. I found a 1949 Cadillac convertible. Mom insisted that I bring my father to check out the car. He came with me and boy was he negative. He found the car didn’t have any oil pressure and convinced me it was about to fall apart. That deal was nixed on the spot. Unfortunately, for whatever reason this story of the Cadillac with no oil pressure became a ‘thing’ with my mom and she would often repeat the story to friends and family.
She would say, “Skip was going to buy a car with no oil pressure, boy it’s a good thing his father was there to check it out and save him from himself”. The implication being ‘what a stupid kid’. Of course, the fact that he was a Ford guy and the Cadillac was a Chevy product had nothing to do with the reason he didn’t like the car from the outset and with a little investigation discovered it had low oil pressure. However, my enthusiasm for car shopping fell to a low ebb.
1954 Lincoln Capri Convertible – First Car
Dad then found a 1954 Lincoln convertible for sale and announced that this was the right car for me. It actually was a really nice car and a Ford product. And the oil pressure was OK. As I recall I bought the car for $200.
1954 Lincoln Capri Convertible – Skip and First Car
It was a nice first car and it ran well for several years without any major problems. But at eighteen years old you feel it’s time to make your own mistakes even if they’re stupid mistakes. This was never really “my car”. It was my Father’s car that he decided was right for me.
1957 Lincoln Convertible – Second Car
Out tail finned everybody, even my Dad’s Eldorado, with these fins. These were by far and away the biggest tail fins known to man! This car was also one of my father’s finds that he thought would be good for me. You always have to be skeptical when someone tells you “Hey, this is a really good idea…. Oh, and by the way, it’ll be good for you too”.
1957 Lincoln Convertible
Nevertheless, I bought the car and drove it several years before it eventually started to have mechanical problems and became too expensive to maintain.
1963 1/2 Ford Fairlane – Third Car
Another one of my father’s finds. This was the car I owned when I got married. It was also a Ford and have to admit It was a good one.
1963 1/2 Ford Fairlane
The Volvos – Just the Beginning
1968 Volvo 145 Station Wagon
This was the first car I actually decided to look for eventually located and bought for and by myself. It was actually a good decision and turned out to be a practical and economical family car. It was the first of many Volvo station wagons I owned over the next several years.
1968 Volvo 145 Station Wagon
The ultimate Volvo station wagon was the 1973 P1800 ES.
1973 P1800 ES
1973 Volvo P 1900 ES Wagon
I really liked the Volvo P-1800 coupe that was produced from the 1960’s through 1970’s. However, in 1972 Volvo introduced a modified version of the P 1800 which was a mini station wagon. Volvo called it the P 1800 ES Sport Wagon. I was shopping for my first sports car at that time and looked at many of the coupes but couldn’t find one in decent shape that I could afford. On one of my many car shopping excursions I stumbled onto a 1973 Volvo P 1800 ES. It was at the upper limit of my budget and I really liked the concept of the station wagon sports car, or as my father-in-law Herman called it, the Volvo speed wagon. The only drawback was it had an automatic transmission and I really felt a true sports car should have a manual. Nevertheless, I compromised and bought the car. And it was great fun to drive.
Volvo only produced this model two years, 1972 and 1973. The coupes were very common, but the P1800 ES speed wagons were and still are a rarity and always attracted a lot of attention.
I was able to purchase this car for well under market value and was skeptical about the low price. But desire overruled better judgement and I went ahead anyway. The car ran well and seemed OK but the old saying “if it looks too good to be true then it probably is” tuned out to be true.
Everything was fine for the first several thousand miles and then the transmission would periodically slip or fail to shift into a higher gear. I changed the transmission fluid several times and temporarily solved the problem. But after a few hundred miles the problem would reoccur. I brought the car back to the dealer numerous times and they fooled around with for a little while and returned the car ostensibly fixed.
Each time after a short interval the transmission problem reappeared. Out of frustration I eventually brought it to an automatic transmission specialist and again had the same issue. They charged me a couple of dollars, temporarily solved the problem and then just as the guarantee period was up the problem reappeared. So, this was why the car was so attractively priced!
Exasperated, I finally decided to fix it myself. I bought the Volvo Shop Manual and a 4×8 foot quarter inch thick Masonite board which I painted white on one side. I then brought the car to my parent’s house on Tyler Street since they had a two-car garage. I parked the car on one side and on the other side placed the Masonite board white side up. I removed the transmission and put it in the center of the Masonite. I then disassembled the transmission laying out the internal parts on the board exactly like the exploded view in the manual. The very last mechanism I disassembled was the hydraulic clutch located, deep, deep, way inside the transmission.
This was the very last thing to take apart before all of the parts were completely disassembled. And when I finally took it apart the problem was obvious. The O-ring that sealed the piston in the clutch body was completely deteriorated. It turned out to be a 95-cent part!
NOTE – Jill Johnston – this picture reminded me of what the garage floor looked like. I never understood why I always was fascinated with these pictures of order, but it could have come from when I visited that garage and say the transmission of my future car in pieces. I don’t recall it exactly, but always seemed to recall that memory.
For good measure, I also replaced the clutch plates which cost another fifty dollars. But the cause of the problem was the O-ring. I finally realized why the car was under-priced and also why the Transmission specialist didn’t fix it for their advertised guaranteed price of $29.95. The labor cost to totally disassemble and then reassemble the transmission was prohibitive. The bonus for me was I got to learn a lot about automatic transmissions.
Once I got the car back together there was never a transmission problem again for all the years, I drove it and for all the years Jill drove it after me. The transmission actually out lasted the car. The so-called unibody was notorious for eventually rotting out rusting from the inside out and ultimately the car disintegrated leaving only the engine, transmission and drivetrain intact.
1992 Toyota MR2
The Toyota MR2 was a great little car. It was a mid-engine design, perfectly balanced and was like driving a high-powered go cart. I had great fun driving this vehicle on the winding back roads in rural Pennsylvania. However, it was virtually worthless in the ice and snow. Really couldn’t drive it during the Pennsylvania winter.
1992 Toyota MR2
It had two other vexing problems. First, the cable for the emergency brake ran through a tube underneath the body that would get wet on the road and if the temperature dropped below freezing the cable would freeze making it impossible to release the emergency brake until it thawed out. The solution was to not use the emergency brake in the winter but to always remember to put the transmission in first gear. It took a couple of times getting stranded in the Air Products parking lot before I figured out the simple solution and got in the habit of using this parking option.
The other major fault with this car was the rear tires were a larger size than the front tires and tended to wear out twice as fast. I could only get 8 to 10 thousand miles before they needed to be replaced. And they were quite expensive. So, I got in the habit of buying rear tires with a high mileage guarantee. But I would keep changing tire dealers since they would only fall for this once before they refused to sell me new tires.
1999 Porsche Boxster
I had just received a pretty good end of year bonus from Air Products and went shopping for my dream car, a Porsche 911.
Over the span of a few months, I test drove several 911’s but they were all just a little bit out of my price range and the sellers were unwilling to budge on the asking price. I was poking around at the Porsche dealership in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania and this silver Boxster was just traded in on a new 911 coupe. It had 7000 miles on it and was essentially just broken in. It was also within my budget. I took it for a test drive and bought it on the spot. Never sorry I did. It was a great car and a lot of fun, but ………….
1986 Porsche Twin Turbo – Whale Tail
This is the one I really wanted, the “black on black” twin turbo whale tail, but alas it wasn’t in the budget.
1986 Porsche Twin Turbo
This car only had 4500 miles on the clock and was reported to have been owned by Lonnie Smith. Not my buddy Lonnie Smith in Houston but Lonnie Smith the baseball player who originally played for the Philadelphia Phillies. The asking price was $80,000. I test drove the car and it was awesome. It was essentially a street legal race car. However, the car had a disconcerting glitch; turbo lag. Turbo lag occurs when you hit the accelerator hard and momentarily the car doesn’t respond and then about a second later the turbo kicks in and launches you into outer space. Well that’s what it feels like! A good thing I didn’t get this car or I probably would have killed myself with it. The Boxster was enough car for me. But when I see one of these on the road I still …
Porsche 930 Turbo
I found the following posted on internet under the heading “the ten most deadly cars”.
“There was a time when the Porsche with its even more precise handling, and throttle lift mid-corner sent you backward into the weeds. When the turbo was added, you got a car whose potency was matched only by its lethality. In the right hands, the Porsche 930 Turbo was sublime, however, the slightest errors in high-speed cornering often meant you wouldn’t get a chance to try again.” Guess I was right about the Porsche twin turbo!
Junior High School – Seventh Grade – A unique mostly toxic experience
NOTE – from Jill Gunardson-Johnston: Please note that after a lot of consideration, I have decided to post several blog posts with regards to my dad’s writings regarding race. From my perspective, his views were that of his experience and took a pragmatic view of the world. Those of you knew him, knew that he always approached controversial subjects from the perspective of curiosity and to engage in good debates and conversation. I hope these posts do not offend anyone in this PC culture, but after some deep thinking I felt that it was important to post these sections as they were written regardless.
Junior high school, sometimes called middle school, encompasses the 7th, 8th and 9th grades. High school is the 10th, 11th and 12th grade levels.
It was 1957 when I was about to enter the 7th grade and the township had recently built a new junior high school and initiated a junior high school program. The school was a considerable distance from home, and I was bused to and from school each day. This was a new experience since I could previously walk to my grammar school.
The other new experience was attending school with a substantial minority population. I don’t recall the exact percentage of non-white students, but it was about thirty percent. When I say non-white, there weren’t any Hispanics or Asians in this population, only Negros or today the politically correct term is Blacks. There were about 70% Whites and 30% Blacks in the student body. I didn’t realize it then but in hindsight I believe the reason for the new junior high school was the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Federal Government under President Dwight D Eisenhower passed the Civil Rights Act to achieve among many other things the desegregation of public schools.
This was my first experience associating with people other than Caucasians and it was a completely different dynamic. I would say a significant percentage of black kids were conscientious and socially well adjusted. However, there were also more than a few that were big trouble. Their bizarre behavior was completely alien to me. I knew a number of white kids in grammar school that were badass, but nothing prepared me for the encounters I was to experience in junior high school.
When I was in grammar school, I befriended a kid my age that was an incorrigible badass. One afternoon we were hanging out and inadvertently wandered into the edge of the “black section” of our segregated hometown of Union, NJ. We were walking down the street when a group of five black kids were approaching on the other side of the street. They were screwing around making a general ruckus, shuckin and jivin as it were. Without warning my buddy crossed to the other side of the street and as soon as he got close enough hauled off and cold cocked the biggest one who was probably about two three years older than rest. My buddy then returned to our side of the street.
While the group of black kids dragged their friend off the pavement and continued on their way. I asked him why he did that, and he said they were fixing to come across the street and jump us, so I took it to them instead. He then offered the following advice, “if you ever get in a situation like that again always take them by surprise and attack the biggest one first, the rest will scatter. That’s the way those guys are.” It turned out it was sound advice. I didn’t need to apply it for a long time but many years later when I was dating my future wife, Joann it actually came in handy.
There is a city park nearby Joann’s childhood home in Roselle, NJ called Warinanco Park. I don’t know what it’s like today but back then it was usually a pleasant place to stroll without much concern for your personnel safety. Late one afternoon Joann and I were taking a leisurely stroll through the park and we stopped to rest on a park bench. There wasn’t anyone else in the area and we were just having a casual chat. Suddenly, a group of black kids showed up shuckin and jivin along the adjacent pathway. My first instinct was to get the hell out of there, so I abruptly told Joann, “Let’s go!”, and we started walking briskly down the path ahead of that group who were acting like they were just looking for trouble.
As we proceeded along the path, I could hear them closing in on us. I glanced back and sure enough there were about four or five of these guys of various sizes. They got closer and louder as we made our way towards the park exit and it was finally obvious that they were about to jump us. As they often do, the smallest one started to step on the back of our feet and eventually pushed me on the shoulder mouthing off with some nonsense, “Hey white boy, whatchu doin here?”
I already made a fist and decided to use the strategy I learned from my badass childhood buddy. I abruptly turned, took aim and coldcocked the biggest one who was actually about my size. The rest stopped dead in their tracks. They didn’t expect it and when it happened didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. The group just stood there dumfounded for a few moments and gave us a chance to take off and make it out of the park back to her house. When we told her Mom and Dad what happened they immediately called the police and reported it, but the punks were long gone, and nothing ever came of it.
When I settled down and took a look at my right hand there was blood almost up to my elbow and it wasn’t mine. Looks like I landed a good shot and maybe even broke his nose. After this episode from then until this day I always maintain a high degree of situational awareness and have become the master of slipping away undetected at the first sign of trouble.
I’ve survived every situation Knowing when to freeze and when to run And regret is just a memory written on my brow And there’s nothing I can do about it now.
Willie Nelson – “Nothing I can Do About It Now”
My junior high school experience was an early affirmation of affirmative action in action. I was bussed quite a distance to attend this particular school whereas the grammar school and high school were both within a short walking distance from my home. Nonetheless, I was required to travel by bus to attend junior high school.
There was a young black girl who sat next to me in homeroom class. Our last names were alphabetically close, her’s being Gregory. And since our homeroom seat assignments were arranged in alphabetical order, we wound up sitting next to one another. And for three years of junior high and another three years of high school we were seat mates. Marywill Gregory was a pleasant, quiet, studious and somewhat introverted kid. She was sweet and petite. I liked her.
When we finally graduated all the students passed around their yearbooks so friends could autograph their pictures. Marywill signed mine “To Skip, with Love Marywill”. My Mom freaked out. I guess she thought I was going to bring Marywill Gregory home to meet the folks. There was no such plan, but Mom didn’t buy it.
At the other end of the spectrum was Carlota Delatoro, a large rotund intimidating specimen. It was the first time I ever heard a female with a dirtier mouth than any guy I’d ever met. I never heard the term “muh fucker” before until I met Carlota in the seventh grade. There sure were wide variations in that tribe.
At seventeen I had a part time job after school at the local A&P supermarket collecting shopping carts and pushing them back to the storefront. Sounded like an easy job. However, the site was on a hill that sloped from the front to the rear of the store. Collecting the carts, which always seemed to be at the bottom of the hill was easier said than done. Well, at that time I was in pretty good physical shape and that job sure kept me that way. I made a few dollars working after school and weekends and after I paid my Mom two dollars a week for room and board, I still was able to save a little money for a used car. At seventeen, I was understandably anxious to get my own car and start driving.
However, one of my Mom’s hang ups was she didn’t want me to drive a car until I took the driver education class offered to students in my high school. I think her primary motive was the car insurance would be cheaper if I took the course before I got my license, but to her credit the course was actually worthwhile. The problem was that my birthday is in June and school was already finished for the year. Therefore, I had to wait until the following year to take the course and couldn’t get my license until after I turned eighteen. Like most teens, then and now, I wanted to drive as soon as I turned seventeen, not eighteen. That extra year seemed like an eternity.
Well, I hatched another one of my novel schemes to get around this minor problem. Since I had a few bucks tucked away I reasoned I could buy a motorcycle, a Harley Davidson, rent a place to keep it close but away from home and ride the bike until I could get a car. What? Motorcycle license? What license? I don’t need no “stinkin” license! Hey man, when you’re seventeen this seemed like a perfectly logical plan.
I found a used 1953 Harley owned by a retired police officer which was in my price range of $500. I bought the bike and arranged to rent a garage a few blocks from home to keep it there with two friends who also had motorcycles. The three of us each had a key and split the rent three ways. My bike was a fire engine red 1953 Harley hardtail, pan head, suicide shift. Hardtail meant that it had a solid frame rather than the newer (at that time) split frame which had shock absorbers on the rear axle. The hardtail had a large “buddy seat” for two people and the shock absorbers were heavy duty springs attached to the seat rather than the bike itself.
My Bike
1953 Harley Davidson FLH
There were two types of motorcycle shifts for changing gears; a foot shift with a hand operated clutch and a hand shift with a foot operated clutch. The latter was known as a “suicide” shift. This is because to change gears you had to take your left hand off of the handlebar to operate the shift lever, a questionable practice from a safety standpoint, especially at high speeds. Thus, the term “suicide” shift.
All went well ……at first. I would go out ostensibly to meet my buddies and hang out but instead would walk to the garage where I fired up the bike and took off for joy rides around town and sometimes out in the countryside. Often times, I would ride with my two buddies who shared the garage with me, the two Tom’s, Tom Farley on his Triumph Bonneville (very fast bike) and Tom Demscak on his 1957 Harley. The three amigos, as it were.
Tom D’s Bike
1957 Harley Davidson
Tom F’s Bike
1960 Triumph Bonneville
It was all good until one afternoon as I was going down the road just after leaving the garage, I passed by Mom in her car going in the opposite direction. She freaked out and became so flustered she almost went off of the road. Well, the jig was up.
When I got home later, she was waiting for me in the living room and as I walked in the door. She opened up with both barrels. “I know you have a motorcycle,” she screamed. So, I had to confess and tell the whole story. She asked where I kept the bike and I told her about the rented garage. She then told me, “I want you to bring it home. When your father gets home, he can go with you to the rented garage and get the motorcycle, bring it home and put in our garage.” She insisted, “If you’re going to keep it, you’re going to keep it at home.”
In hindsight, I believe there were three reasons why she objected so vehemently to the motorcycle. First, she was paranoid about my safety. Not only with the motorcycle but in many other respects as well. That’s what Moms are like and as they should be. The second reason was she didn’t want me to fall in with bad company. The 50’s and 60’s were when the movies with James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause” and the negative perception of motorcyclists portrayed by Marlon Brando in “The Wild One” were popular. It was the era when the outlaw biker image first emerged. And it was not an entirely incorrect perception. The third and most obvious reason was that she could harangue me every day to get rid of the thing, which she did relentlessly.
I kept the motorcycle at home for the next six years and every day it was there she tried to convince me to get rid of it. Finally, I offered it for sale about the time Japanese crotch rockets were being imported to the US and were rapidly gaining popularity. I thought I would never sell that old Harley, but I was wrong. I placed an ad in the local newspaper and immediately received numerous calls. On a Saturday morning, eleven people showed up to see the bike and there was a virtual auction in the driveway. I got $650 for it!
Over the years, I often considered getting another but never bought another motorcycle. However, when I was in my 50’s, I was window shopping in the mall and wandered into the Franklin Mint. And there it was, a limited-edition scale model, 1953 Harley Davidson hardtail, fire engine red, with a “suicide shift”. Hey, that was my bike! As I said Mom hated that motorcycle every day it sat in the garage until the day I sold it.
A few weeks later, I visited her in the Life Care Center where she was living and during our conversation, I told her about the Franklin Mint shopping excursion and the scale model Harley. She immediately exclaimed excitedly, “That was your motorcycle, you had to buy it. “Surely you had to buy it, didn’t you?” she said. I said, “Yup, damn right I bought it, I paid $500 for it, same as the actual motorcycle back in 1960.” Just out of curiosity I checked the NADA prices for a 1953 Harley today! Excellent condition $29,790, very good condition $17,460. Who knew? Whatever. I should have kept that one.
NOTE from JILL: It seems that my dad, Hal, had more to write as he was writing this section, but never got back to it. There are several sections of his writing that have topics just listed. I wish I remembered those stories that go with them. So, if anyone does know, please be sure to let me know. I have a few pictures of a few things that accompany the topics.
As I said before, my father accumulated a lot of miscellaneous stuff in the basement. Tools, woodworking and metal working machinery, an industrial air compressor, bits and pieces of wood and metal, old car parts and what not were all part of the trash stash.
When I was about fourteen, my Dad and I participated in a model airplane club where we built model planes and flew them in competition with other enthusiasts. Two of the other members were a German machinist, Heinz and his son Wolf (Wolfgang).
One day they showed up at a model airplane field meet and Wolfgang was riding a motor bike built from a bicycle. It was propelled by a small lawnmower engine and I thought this was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. I had an old Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engine and an old bicycle at home, and I decided that I would build a similar motor bike. I rummaged through the stash of parts and bits and pieces that were laying around and scrounged together about everything I needed to put the thing together.
My Dad and I with the Motor Bike
The engine sat on frame built out of scrap metal located behind the bicycle seat above the back wheel. The frame was hinged behind the engine and had two bearings mounted on it with a shaft that turned a large roller. The roller rode on the back wheel of the bike. God knows where the roller originally came from but there it was in the spare parts box. It was held against the back wheel with large springs on each side that attached at the top of the hinged frame and at the bottom to the axle of the back wheel of the bike. The shaft that held the roller protruded beyond the bearing to one side of the bike and a pulley was fastened to the shaft. A Vee – belt connected the pulley on the shaft to the pulley on the lawnmower engine.
The Vee-Belt between the shaft and the engine was slack so when the engine was running the belt would slip and no power was transmitted to the roller. A lever was mounted on the motor bracket which had an idler pulley mounted on one end and a handle on the other. When the handle was pulled forward the lever would engage the idler pulley with the belt taking up the slack, engaging the engine with the roller and transferring power from the engine to the roller which in turn would transmit the rotational force to the wheel of the bike and propel it forward. This was all accomplished with spare parts and scrap metal scavenged from the stash. No welding was involved. It was all put together with nuts and bolts, spare parts and scrap. And it worked.
When the project was completed, I took the bike outside and fired up the engine. My Dad was with me to see how it worked on its maiden voyage. I engaged the idler pulley and off I went down the street. I was so excited that I continued on down the street onto a dirt road and the off into an adjacent field to “open her up” and see what she could do.
I was enthralled it was working as well as it did and at full throttle (probably about 10 miles per hour or so) I wasn’t paying enough attention and went through a patch of tall weeds at full speed. There was a fallen tree hidden in those weeds and I hit it full on and I went over the handle bars. I wasn’t hurt, except for my pride, but no one was there to witness the “accident”.
The bike was okay, so I climbed back on and continued back to the house. When I got back my Pop was mad as hell. “Where did you go? Why didn’t you stay close by and check it out before taking off for parts unknown? What were you thinking anyway?”
Well, I had no good answers to any of those questions. I didn’t mention what actually happened, but just told him that I rode out to the field and back. He wasn’t satisfied with that explanation and just stormed into the house. After about an hour everything calmed down and all was okay again. I never did tell him or anyone else about the hidden log in the weeds.
Years later, when I became a parent I realized in retrospect what drove his concern when I took off out of sight for some time and he was waiting there thinking, “Where the hell did he go, why isn’t he back, did something go wrong, was this a big mistake, what?”
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” Attributed to Mark Twain.
At the next model airplane field meet we took the bike to the airplane competition and met up with Heinz and his son and naturally we showed off the bike. Mine wasn’t as pretty as his, but compliments were exchanged all around and although my Dad always had a funny way of showing it I knew he was as proud as punch.
Of course, we raced the bikes. The dads marked off a run on the adjacent dead-end street and we lined up at the starting line. The run was a couple of hundred yards. Both of us revved up and took off full throttle down the street. It was close, and his bike was a lot prettier than mine, but I beat him by a nose. I had more horsepower. He only had 3hp and I had 5hp.That was my first drag race. It was great fun. Many years later when I saw Orange County Choppers on TV, I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I take it a few notches higher and start building choppers like Paul and Paul Jr.?” C’est la vie.
Looking back and reminiscing over my childhood amusements, there was a definitely a pattern here. My main childhood activity was building stuff. And I never stopped. It was an obsession and still is. It’s just out of control.
My nickname from the time I started kindergarten until I
graduated from college was Skip. The best joke I ever heard about the nick name
Skippy was told by a TV comedian. He said he met a girl named Jane and when she
asked him his name, he said it was ‘Skippy’. She responded, “Oh really, I’ve got
a dog named Skippy”. He replied “Oh yeah, I’ve got a pet too, it’s one of those
bare assed monkeys……. named Jane.”
When I was very young my parents were friends with an older couple, immigrants from Germany, Karl and Edith Prekwitz. They had an adult son named Skip (aka Skippy). My Mom thought it was kind of cute and so she also gave me the nick name ‘Skippy’. Not many children of my generation were named Harold and combined with Gunardson is sort of cumbersome to pronounce and remember. So, I used the name Skippy which later in my teen years was truncated to Skip.
I kept that nickname throughout my college years until I got
my first post college job as an engineer at Lummus. The first day on the job
the personnel director was escorting me to my new office and he told me “You’re
going to be sharing the office with a senior engineer, Hal Sherwood and by the
way his name is also Harold.” He then asked me “So what do your friends call
you, Hal?” My response was “Yeah, Hal”.
From that day forward Skippy was a thing of the past and it’s
been Hal ever since. Hal Gunardson is a lot less cumbersome to pronounce than
Harold Henry Gunardson. Ironically, the nickname Skip is derived from Skipper
the term used to describe the captain of a ship.
I can’t remember much from ages three to seven, except it was
a very pleasant childhood. Mom, contrary to conventional wisdom, taught me to
read well before I entered kindergarten and always provided me with an ample supply
of books. Professional educators in those days discouraged the practice, but it
was perhaps the most important lesson I learned in early childhood and has served
me well for over seventy years. As a young boy, a few of my favorites I read
and re-read many times over were:
Big Red by Jim
Kjelgaard
Big Red a wonderful book about a young man and his dog, a champion Irish Setter. Although Danny doesn’t own him, it is his job to take care of Red. The book was written by Jim Kjelgaard in 1945, so the reader must picture a time when life was a little simpler. Ross is a trapper and they live without running water and electricity in a small shack in the woods.
Having been
written in the 1940’s, this book does not look at the world that we see it
today. Danny has grown up with a trapper for a father, and he is a trapper
himself. Danny is often with a gun, especially when he takes Red out partridge
hunting. They often find themselves in trouble either with a bear, a wolverine,
or just the hardship of life living out in the wilderness.
The Cruise of the Raider “Wolf” is not intended as another war book; it is the story of one of the strangest and greatest sea adventures of modern times.
The Wolf has become a legendary figure—a name connected with strange happenings at sea; but to most people it is only a name. The actual cruise was a shadowy, mysterious affair; and for many reasons the history of the cruise has remained equally vague. Briefly, this raider slipped out of Germany in 1916, and for fifteen months roamed the seas of the world depending for fuel and food on the captures she made. Her very existence depended on these captures not becoming known. Ships encountering the Wolf therefore simply disappeared, their fate unknown. The raider roamed the Atlantic, Indian, Pacific oceans, even touched the Arctic and Antarctic seas. And she capped this unparalleled cruise by running the blockade back to Kiel.
Incidentally, the Wolf was the only enemy warship to enter Australian or New Zealand waters. She mined the coasts of both these countries.
After the raider’s return to Germany there was a world-wide blaze of publicity. The reception of the Wolf’s men in Berlin was one of the outstanding war events in the German capital. Then the Wolf disappeared from public notice as quickly as she became famous. One reason for this was that Captain Nerger, the raider’s commander, was not a publicity seeker and was not in particularly high favor in Germany. It was necessary to receive him with honor after he brought his ship back from such a cruise, but after that he was quietly moved to an obscure post and was heard of no more.
The author was a prisoner aboard the raider for the last nine months of the cruise.
Sea Wolf Jack London
The novel
begins when Van Weyden is swept overboard into San Francisco Bay, and plucked
from the sea by Larsen’s seal-hunting vessel, the Ghost. This ship’s evil
captain, Wolf Larsen – The Sea-Wolf – is a murderous tyrant who uses his
superhuman strength to torture and destroy, his brilliant mind to invent sick
games, and his relentless will to control his mutinous crew. Pressed into
service as a cabin boy by the ruthless captain, Van Weyden becomes an unwilling
participant in a brutal shipboard drama. Larsen’s increasingly violent abuse of
the crew fuels a mounting tension that ultimately boils into mutiny, shipwreck,
and a desperate confrontation.
White Fang Jack London
In the
desolate, frozen wilds of northwest Canada, White Fang, a part-dog, part-wolf
cub soon finds himself the sole survivor of a litter of five. In his lonely
world, he soon learned to follow the harsh law of the North—kill or be killed.
But nothing in his young life prepared him for the cruelty of the bully Beauty
Smith, who buys White Fang from his Indian master and turns him into a vicious
killer—a pit dog forced to fight for money.
Will White Fang ever know the kindness of a gentle master or will he die a
fierce deadly killer?
A classic adventure novel detailing the savagery of life in the northern wilds.
Its central character is a ferocious and magnificent creature, through whose
experiences we feel the harsh rhythms and patterns of wilderness life among
animals and men.
A tale of
strange adventures, befalling Tod Moran, mess boy of the tramp steamer
“Araby,” upon his first voyage from San Francisco to Genoa, via the
Panama Canal.
This book
is the first in a series about the same characters. It has mystery, not over-hyped,
and authenticity. I like fantasy fiction all right, but there must still be a
place for realistic non-urban, pre-computer reading material about adventure as
well. Pease can be a bridge for tweens to Stevenson
and Conrad.
I found it interesting the review pointed out the bridge to
Stevenson and Conrad because that’s exactly what happened. I progressed from
The Tattooed Man by Howard Pease to Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad and Treasure
Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
One of the most memorable gifts I received when I was about
six or seven years old was contained in a large heavy box (very large and heavy
to me at the time) which sat under the Christmas tree for about a week before
Christmas. On Christmas morning, I opened the box and it was full of books on a
wide variety of subjects. I was enthralled. It kept me busy for many months and
believe it or not I’ve referred to those books well into adulthood and many I
still have.
Mom also was my biggest cheerleader for my early interest in
art. I showed a talent for drawing at an early age and this ability was encouraged
and enthusiastically promoted by my Mom. My Dad, not so much, as he basically
could never draw a straight line. But Mom was my biggest fan and ardent
supporter. Creative inspiration came from the old oil paintings stored in our
attic that were painted by my Father’s Father, Grandpa Gunardson. His oil
paints and brushes were there as well; the original tools that led to my first
forays into oil painting. To my Dad’s credit, even though he didn’t directly
encourage my artistic efforts very much, he built me an artist’s easel for my seventh
birthday that I used all of my life and is now in the storage.
In addition to my Grandfather’s oil paints there were several
other items that had a profound influence on me. They were the scale model
boats he built from scratch and the model steam engines for the boats. As I
recall from my Mom and Dad, before he retired and went “shore side” my
Grandfather Gunardson, was a steamfitter aboard large cargo ships, freighters
as they were called. He spent his spare time building the model boats and
engines. And there was also a huge collection of books. Among them are the
complete works of Mark Twain, Alexander Dumas and Joseph Conrad as well as
Encyclopedias of Natural History and many assorted works of fiction by Jack
London and other classics. I spent many, many hours poring over those old books
time and again. Later in life I never hesitated to add to those early
collections and never regretted the money I spent on books. I always and still
do regard it as money well spent.
Now approaching seventy-two years old and living in the relatively
cramped quarters of my sailboat “Free Radical” I often wonder what to do with
all those books. To me they are and have always been more than just old books. To
a large extent they influenced my childhood, my teenage years and are in many
ways are a snapshot of who I eventually grew up to be. But In today’s
electronic age they are mere artifacts. Just old books. That’s all. And they take
up a lot of space, space unavailable in the confined quarters of a sailboat.
There are only a very few regrets I’ve had in my decision to live aboard the
boat, but one of them is I miss those books.
On a recent visit, Jill and I were having a conversation that
somehow drifted to the subject of all those books in the “storage”. I lamented
that I really didn’t know what to do with them. There is no room on the boat
and they’re just taking up space in storage. Jill commented, “Yeah, there sure
are a lot of them, and some pretty weird genre’s, like “In Patagonia”,
“Climbing Ice” and “How to Survive a Grizzly Bear Attack”. She was right about
that. I thought about donating them to an old age home or a hospital library
but the readers in those venues probably wouldn’t have much interest in titles
like “Climbing Ice” for instance or a how-to manual on avoiding grizzly bear attacks.
What else was in that treasure trove I inherited from my
Grandfather? There were tools of all
sorts many of which I still have (in storage and a few on board the boat) and
there is the exceptionally large harmonica that I unfortunately never learned
to play, although I tried and failed. There was the antique 22 rifle, that I
eventually gave to my son Jim. But I’d say the items I inherited that had the
most influence in no particular order of priority were the books, the oil
paints, the model engines, the tools and the model boats (well on second
thought probably the boats top the list).
My Father was also fond of boats, not models, but power boats
which I spent most of my teenage years messing around in. Boats were always
present, in the past, in the present and without doubt will continue to be in
my future. I guess it was inevitable I would eventually become an old guy still
just messing around with boats. When I was a small child friends and family
would inevitably ask, “What do want to be when you grow up?” and I would always
answer, I want to be a merchant seaman. Well I never became a merchant seaman,
but I did end up living aboard a boat.
One of my favorite nautical authors, Bernard Moitessier, when asked why he left shore to go on a small sailboat to sea for months on end said, “You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that’s all”. Nuff said.
According to family lore my Grandfather Gunardson and Great Uncle
Charley were very close and when both families immigrated to the United States,
my Grandfather and Uncle Charley renovated an old farm in upstate NY where
Charley and his wife Jenny settled and spent the remainder of their lives. The
place was, and still is, “in the middle of nowhere”. It’s just outside a small
hamlet called Clemons, NY located between Lake George and the Lake Champlain
canal.
The farm was truly “off the grid”. Uncle Charley and my
Grandfather dammed a stream on the land and fashioned their own home-made hydro
generator to supply the house and farm with electrical power. They raised all
sorts of livestock including cows and chickens, grew their own vegetables on
the arable land and made their own maple syrup from the 160 acres of maple
forest surrounding the farm. Family legend had it that Great Aunt Jenny was a
terrific cook and eventually Uncle Charley, Aunt Jenny with their daughter Signe
turned the farm into a tourist destination. People from NYC and other major northeastern
cities would book a room for a week and spend their vacation as guests on the
farm.
In their younger years, well before my time, my Mom and Dad
would also spend their holidays at the farm. I can only remember visiting the
farm once when I was very young, but it left a lasting impression on me. It
still is a very fond memory. That memory and my Mom’s many stories about Uncle
Charley and Aunt Jenny’s farm at Clemons to a large extent influenced my desire
to ensure my children Jill and Jim had an opportunity to experience a rural
lifestyle during their formative years.
There aren’t any photographs of the farm in the family archives but at one time I had an old postcard with a picture of the farm on it that Charley and Jenny had available for their guests. I used that postcard to do an oil painting of the farm.
Hal (Skip) and dad, Harold at Family Farm, Clemons, NY
My Dad was a
car enthusiast. As an auto mechanic, he not only worked on them but enjoyed
everything about them and as I was growing up, I recall several great
automobiles he owned. I never saw my Dad’s first car since he owned it long
before my time. But family lore has it as a young man he bought it as a pile of
parts and brought it home piece by piece in a basket then he and his father
assembled the car together. The car was a Stutz Bearcat.
1912 Stutz Bearcat
1912 Stutz Bearcat
The original
Stutz Bearcat was manufactured in the first two decades of the twentieth
century. It was an expensive sports car in its time and had an impressive
racing history. I don’t know exactly what year my Dad’s car was, but I believe
he was born in 1901 and so he was probably in his early twenties when he
acquired the parts for the car. The car was second hand, so it was most likely
around a 1912 vintage. Estimated value in 2016 is $800,000 to $1,200,000. Too
bad he didn’t hang on to that one.
The first
family car I remember was his 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan. I was about six years
old when he purchased this vehicle. He always bought second-hand cars, usually
about two years old, and kept them for several years before selling them and
getting something newer. This car in 1949 was $3,238 and is valued today at
about $25,900.
1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan
1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan
The Lincoln Cosmopolitan was the car he drove to Miami, Florida to visit my mom’s sisters when I was about 6 or 7 years old. He kept this one for quite a few years until 1957 when he purchased his first brand new car, a 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser.
Lincoln parked in driveway at Tyler Street
1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser
1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser
Cruiser skirts over the back wheels, air intake vents at the top of the windshield, reverse tilted back window and push button drive. Genuine Detroit Iron. Original price in 1957 was $4,103, today $38,800. Our second family road trip to Florida when I was twelve years old was in this Mercury Turnpike Cruiser.
Me and the Old Mercury Cruiser
1959 Cadillac Eldorado
He bought this Cadillac second hand in the early sixties. Now these are some serious tail fins! This car was a real classic Cadillac and long after my Dad sold it eventually became a highly prized collector car. It’s ironic, for all my dad knew about automobiles he had a knack for buying some incredible classics, like this one in particular, hanging on to them for a few years, and selling them at their rock bottom price just before they escalated in value. He had a great eye for classic automobiles, but his timing was a little off. Original price $7,401 now $65,700.
My Mom, Ella, and the Cadillac
1964 Lincoln 4-Door
1964 Lincoln 4-Door
Another
classic car, even in its time. This was one of the last great Lincolns. It was
one of the few four door convertibles ever made and it had the unique so called
“suicide doors” where the front door was hinged at the front of the car and the
rear door was hinged at the rear. Originally $6,295.00. Today the value is
$20,600.
1967 Oldsmobile Toronado – Front Wheel Drive
1967 Oldsmobile Toronado
Originally created as a design painting by David North in
1962, the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado was nicknamed the “Flame Red Car.” Although
the design was never intended for production, it became the first American car in
thirty years with front-wheel drive. It had a muscular styling that paired well
with its 425 cubic inch V8 engine with 385 horsepower. Even though it weighed
over four thousand pounds, it could reach top speeds of 120 mph.
My mom called this “the sports car” or the “little car”. This
one was the end of the line. It was definitely a unique automobile. One of the
first front wheel drive American cars. An article on the internet recently
claimed this 67 Tornado was rated as one of America’s 50 best cars of all time.
Cost in 1967 was $4,810, today $28,800.
It’s ironic, my Dad always obsessed over money and coveted the
good fortune of others most often focused on expensive cars. He would see a new
Cadillac Eldorado or Lincoln Continental on the road, and he would lament,
“Look at that. I don’t get it! Where do
these guys get the money for a car like that?” He also played the lottery
religiously, every week and never won more than a few dollars. He would often
complain that this week he ‘almost won’, he was only one number off from the
winning ticket. He didn’t get it. One number off or nine numbers off, it didn’t
matter. The irony was if he only would have kept any of those classic cars he
had for a few more years he would have made a small fortune.
Mom’s Cars
1936 Ford Coupe
This 1936 Ford coupe was the car my Mom had when I started
kindergarten. It didn’t have a back seat, just an open space back there. She
used to drive me to school in this car, not in the front seat but standing in
the back, for safety. If she would have had an accident I wouldn’t have smashed
into the windshield, just bounced around there in the back. When we moved from
Walker Avenue to Tyler Street, she still had this vehicle that she nicknamed
“Bessie”.
1955 Pontiac Two-Door Sedan
Her next vehicle was a second hand 1955 Pontiac two-door sedan. The paint on the car was badly deteriorated so the first thing my Dad did after buying it was take it to an outfit called “Earl Sheib” for a paint job. He had the car painted all white and this included part of the chrome trim and bumpers and even a little on the windows at the edges. What do you expect for a $19.95 paint job completed in one day? Earl Sheib was already infamous at that time and an “Earl Sheib job” became a euphemism for any half-assed piece of work. This was the car I learned to drive and used until I bought my own first car, a 1954 Lincoln convertible.
Modern Cars – The Pizzazz is gone
Something I’ve noticed in the last few years is all of the
cars I see on the road are predominantly one of four colors; black, white,
silver or grey. Every so often you will notice a red, green and occasionally a
yellow but never a pink, turquoise or other outlandish color unless it’s an
antique fifties or sixties vintage. It appears we have gone full circle since
the days of Henry Ford and his model T.
“You can Have Any Color as Long as It’s Black,” Henry Ford
The post WWII economic boom spawned a fascination with the
automobile and American companies arose to the challenge to produce affordable
automobiles for the eager car buying public. Safety and economy weren’t priorities,
but styling and affordability ruled the day.
I notice that black, white, grey and silver make up about
ninety percent of the cars seen on the road today. Every once in a while, a
red, dark green or blue stands out from the crowd. And very seldom do you see a
bright yellow one but when you do it is usually a sports car and often a
convertible sports car. But they are
rare as hound’s teeth. By and large the majority are most often black, white
and grey. Here’s how it looked in the fifties.
Cars of Cuba
Or this, the USA in the Fifties?
1957 Lincoln
2017 Lincoln
Shapes. The body shapes have changed drastically as well.
I think one guy somewhere in Japan designs all the new cars now. They all look almost the same, kind of frumpy. The trend today seems to be luxurious interiors and all sorts of electronic gizmos.
The Gunardson branch of the family has been and continues to be a relatively small and ever dwindling group. For several reasons, a lot of the family history is shrouded in mystery. My Grandfather, Charles Johan Gunardson (1879-1940), passed away before I was born and my Dad’s older brother, Uncle Carl (Carl W. Gunardson, 1903-1961), passed away when I was about sixteen years old.
On my Mom’s side, (Ella Garrabrandt 1910-2007), some her sisters lived nearby when I was very young but moved from New Jersey to Florida and to a large extent lost touch. She also had two brothers, George in Chicago, IL and Henry, who lived in Los Angeles, CA. She had a few cousins nearby in Metuchen, NJ, but we only visited them on rare occasions.
My grandmother’s maiden name was Krebs (Ella Krebs 1888-1941). I recall my mom often talking about Grandma Krebs when I was very young. In any case, most of the family on both sides were widely dispersed geographically and also not very communicative on the topic of our family history. At least they weren’t when I was within earshot. So, unfortunately, I can’t provide a lot of detail on either the Gunardson or Garrabrant side of our family and their relationships or misadventures.
The best I can offer is a description of the events and relationships I personally experienced over my seventy plus years. The format I’ve followed is essentially a collection of essays or “war stories” in roughly chronological order to the extent I remember them. This format, an autobiography as a collection of essays, was appropriated from the autobiography of Mark Twain the master of American prose. Another one of my favorite author’s, Edward Abbey once said, “if you’re going to plagiarize, always plagiarize from the great and the dead, never the living and mediocre”. So that’s what I’ve done, plagiarized from the great and the dead, Mark Twain.
I hope you find it interesting and perhaps a little entertaining. I’ll begin this “tome” with another Mark Twain quote, “Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.” So here it is; a description of my clothes and buttons for your edification and amusement.
From the Beginning…
Photographs of me as an infant are conspicuously absent from the family archives; there aren’t any cute baby pictures to fawn over. The reason is because I was adopted. The earliest photo of me is a professional portrait taken between the ages of two and three years old.
Figure 1 – Portrait of Hal Gunardson (about 1945-46)
My parents adopted me when I was about two and a half years old on March 17, 1947 through an agency, Catholic Charities, in Newark, NJ. While I was growing up my mom never elaborated on the event except to simply say I was adopted, that’s all. However, after she passed, I discovered my adoption papers among her personal effects. They state I was born on June 19, 1944 in Newark, NJ to Helen Hendrickson (no father was listed) and my original christened name was Steven Hendrickson. Incidentally, the surname Hendrickson could be Dutch, German, English, Danish, Norwegian or Swedish; basically, anywhere a man named “Hendrik” would have a son. Could be Iceland too, maybe. Who knows? It doesn’t really matter.
According to the theory of “nurture versus nature” only the nurturing aspect is relevant in my case. The nature part is a mystery and will always remain so. It is one of the unknown unknowns. Parenthetically when I visit the doctor for periodic check-ups they always ask me “What’s your family medical history?” I tell them, “There is none, it’s zero. Just one less thing to worry about”.
So, the nurture phase began about the age of three when I was rechristened Harold Henry Gunardson; Harold after my adoptive Father, Harold Widegren Gunardson, and Henry after one of my uncle’s on my Mother’s side, Henry Garrabrant.
Uncle Henry
Uncle Henry (Henry Garrabrandt 1917-2000) was one of my mother’s favorite siblings. As adults, they lived a considerable distance apart but were always very close in spirit. My mom lived in New Jersey and my uncle Henry was initially stationed in Alaska with the military and after he retired from the Army he settled in California. I believe he attained the rank of Captain during his military career. Mom always spoke very highly of him with a kind word and a warm smile.
Figure 2 – Picture of my Uncle Henry and his wife, Evelyn
After he retired from the active duty in the service, he purchased a hardware store in Santa Monica, CA. It was one of those “old fashioned” hardware stores with the wood floors and the old-fashioned wooden bins for displaying merchandise. The store catered to both locals and celebrities alike and a photo in the family archive (**I’m trying to find it….Jill) shows my Uncle Henry in his store with one of his more famous customers, Ronald Reagan.
Henry was also a talented and accomplished singer and for many years sang with a choir at St. Paul’s in the LA area. Oh yeah, and he was also a member of mensa. Incidentally I purposely didn’t capitalize mensa. More about that later but in short, I’m not very fond of these kinds of organizations.
Dad’s Side – The Gunardson Family
My father, Harold W Gunardson (1905-1995) was a physically big guy. He stood six feet three when men of that era usually weren’t over six feet tall. He weighed in at about 240 pounds and because of his height, he actually appeared quite slim. In fact, among his peers his nickname was “Slim”. This is a picture of my mom, Ella, my dad, Harold and me as a young boy.
My Uncle Carl was bigger yet. He was about six feet five and probably close to 300 pounds. As a small boy, they both looked like giants to me. I was told my Grandfather was of even larger stature at about six feet six and over 300 pounds. He died in 1940, before I was born but photos of him confirmed his large physical size. This is a picture of my dad and Uncle Carl, when they were young. (**I am trying to find another picture of him as an adult.)
My Grandfather’s name was Charles Johan Gunardson (1879-1940) and my Grandmother’s maiden name was Louise Widegren(1867-1954), to me always just Grandma. My father was Harold Widegren Gunardson (1905-1995) and my uncle was Carl Widegren Gunardson (1903-1961). Apparently, it was the custom in Scandinavian families to use the mother’s maiden name as the middle name for the male children.
I was told in his younger day’s Uncle Carl was a merchant seaman and he certainly looked every bit the part. He always walked with a swagger, had a crewcut all his life and sported numerous “old school” tattoos, typical sailor’s tattoos, ships, anchors, mermaids and such. Although I actually have very fond memories of him. He was regarded within the family as kind of rough character.
I remember a particular instance when he took me for a day trip to Bear Mountain in NY when I was about five years old. Every few miles he would pull off the road, get out of the car, open the trunk and fetch a warm bottle of coca cola. When he returned, he would pop open the bottle, hand it to me and tell me “take a couple of swigs”. After about two gulps he would take the coke bottle back, reach under the front seat for the bottle he stashed there and fill the coke bottle to the top with rum. This was repeated every few miles all the way to Bear Mountain and home again. I never actually got to finish a whole bottle of coke. This is a picture of Bear Mountain in the fall.
Bear Mountain is not far from the west bank of the Hudson River and on the way home Uncle Carl made a detour to check out the river. There was a tugboat at the dock and my uncle got out of the car and struck up a conversation with the captain. The next thing you know we were invited aboard, and I got a chance to go up on the bridge, sit at the helm and peer out at the river from that lofty vantage point. That made a huge impression on me and was the high point of that road trip.
This is a picture of a Tug Boat at Bear Mountain.
Years later in my fifties while I was sailing in the Carolinas I befriended a delivery Captain named Woody Wilkerson who had previously been a tugboat captain. One day, I asked him what qualifications you needed to be a tugboat captain. He answered, “First, you got to been in jail.” I think that summed it up pretty well.
When my Mom was in her 90’s she was talking about family history on my father’s side and she exclaimed, “You’re Uncle Carl, nobody ever tamed him.” She needn’t have said any more. That described it pretty much as I remember him.
Figure 3- Article in Paper – Carl Gunardson
I also recall my father and Uncle Carl didn’t seem to get along too well. They were generally amiable when they were together but that wasn’t very often. According to Mom, the reason Dad wasn’t fond of his older brother was in their younger days, when my Dad owned his gas station and they were in business together Uncle Carl would frequently fail to show up and put in his hours. When he did show up it was often with one of his current “girlfriends” (aka Honky-Tonk Specials). They would hang around for a while, then disappear. Carl wouldn’t be seen again for several days or sometimes weeks. My Dad never talked too much about it. Except indirectly, by telling me several times during my teenage years, “Don’t ever get into a business partnership, a partnership is the worst ship afloat.”
Carl was married to Bertha Nilsson (1897-1986), a Danish immigrant, who spoke with a heavy Scandinavian accent. She was a member of the local Scandinavian club and associated mostly with Swedes and Danes, who always spoke their native language at their meet ups. As a result, Aunt Bertha never really learned to speak English very well and as she got older, her English language skills diminished. Although her voice always sounded very pleasant, I had a hard time understanding her with her “sing-song” Scandinavian accent.
Uncle Carl and Aunt Bertha had one child, a daughter Norma Gunardson (1922-1992). She married a man, James Munro from Newark, NJ. There is some mystery to this story and my mother really did not want to talk too much about it.
Norma married James Munro in Santa Ana, California on October 31, 1942. Uncle Jim had just enlisted in the 1074th Army Air Force, Base Unit in June 1942, achieving the rank of Corporal in Squadron “A”. He was eventually honorably discharged in December 1945 and subsequently passed away in October 1947. His wife, Norma was the one who applied for the military marker for his burial site in Union, NJ. She signed the application as Norma Munro and it is dated November 1947.
I don’t remember Jim and I was told he died before I was adopted. The story was he was in the Army and killed in action in the Second World War. This really didn’t add up since World War II officially ended with the surrender of Japan in August 1945 and I was adopted in 1947. And there is also the photo in the family archives of Jim with a winter coat on holding me in his arms outside the Walker Avenue house and my Mom would frequently tell me while I was growing up how Jim loved me very much. I think the WW II story about Jim was one of my Mom’s “white lies” as she called them when for whatever reason the real truth was to too embarrassing or otherwise to be avoided.
Figure 4 – Harold W. Gunardson, Grandma Gunardson, Carl Gunardson, Baby Hal, Jim Munro
Mom’s Side – The Garrabrant Family
On my mother’s side, my mom was the oldest of seven children and she told me her father, Henry (Gary) Garrabrandt (1886-1929) died at a young age; in his late thirties as I recall (aged 43). She had two brothers, Henry (Gary) and George and four sisters (**Note from Jill: Marie, Margaret, Lyda and Mildred).
One of the oldest sisters, Marie, died in 1930, well before I was born. The youngest sister, Lyda (1913-1947), died in her thirties from Leukemia. The second oldest, Marguerite, moved to Florida when I was very young and I never really knew them or their children.
I understand that one of those sisters (Marguerite) was married to a very wealthy gentleman who was an heir to the A&P supermarket fortune and they lived on a large estate somewhere in Florida. I believe it was in Palm Beach. When I was about six years old we took a road trip to Florida and visited them for a day or two. That was the last time I ever saw or heard from them.
Her other sister was my Aunt Millie (Mildred), who I called Aunt Minnow since at the age of three. I was unable to properly pronounce Millie and when I tried it somehow emerged as Minnow. My mom and Millie were very close. Aunt Millie loved the nickname Minnow and insisted I continue to call her by that nickname which I did the rest of her life until she passed away in her 80’s in Miami, Florida, where she and her husband Bill had retired.
Her married name was Shuster and she had two children, Duke and Jane. Her husband Bill Shuster was an amateur musician and had a recording studio in his home in New Jersey. He named his son Duke, after Duke Ellington, the famous jazz musician of the era, and encouraged him to become a professional musician.
Duke played the trumpet and was quite good. Back in that era there was a popular TV show called “Ted Mack’s, Original Amateur Hour”; the equivalent of American Idol of its time. Duke won it two or three times in a row. He subsequently went on to become a professional trumpet player and although successful never achieved super star status. He was a couple of years older than I and naturally I looked up to him like a big brother. As a result, I also took up the trumpet in grammar school but really didn’t have any natural talent and eventually gave it up a few years later.
Duke started his musical career in Florida at the big resort hotels in Miami Beach. (**Note from Jill – our family took a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando in 1978. We paid a visit to one of their fancy restaurants where Duke was playing as part of the Big Band entertainment. We spent a few minutes to say hello – I remember it like it was yesterday).
Duke eventually moved to Las Vegas and played with some of the big-name bands there in the 1950’s and 1960’s. He was married, or whatever, to a Las Vegas showgirl, and they had a daughter, Audrey. At a very early age Audrey was sent back to Florida to live with my Aunt “Minnow” who raised her to adulthood. Amazing, that as an adult, Audrey turned out to be a real homebody and “solid citizen” unlike her father Duke and her mother Jane who were also raised by my aunt “Minnow”. In her later years, my Mom and Audrey always kept in touch and eventually became very close.
I think Duke passed away in his early fifties in Philadelphia, PA where he was taking music lessons from a famous music teacher there. The rumor was he died from a combination of drug addiction and AIDS.
Jane, Duke’s older sister was regarded by my Mom as a ne’er-do-well and I never got to know her very well. She was married (or whatever) at a fairly young age to a guy named Ace. I think Ace was a biker dude. Jane and Ace subsequently took off for parts unknown and was basically never heard from again.
There was an amusement park not far from our house on Walker Avenue in Irvington, New Jersey called Olympic Park. It featured a roller coaster, a Ferris wheel, other amusement park rides; as well as the usual concession stands and an Olympic size swimming pool with a separate smaller pool for younger children. Aunt Minnow would frequently take me there for day trips sometimes with my Mom and sometimes it was just Aunt Minnow and me.
They are some of my fondest childhood memories. It included my first ride on a roller coaster, my first ride on a Ferris wheel and numerous other firsts including my first opportunity to fire a rifle. Back in those days, amusement parks featured shooting range concession stands. There were various pop up targets and about five or six 22 caliber rifles chained to the counter. For five cents or so you could shoot at the pop-up targets and score points for prizes. Can you imagine such a thing today? Don’t even think about it. But back then it was regarded as harmless amusement for a six-year-old.
The archival photos of my early childhood were taken at the house on Walker Avenue in Union, New Jersey where I was raised until my pre-teens. Photos in my later teen years are at the Tyler Street house, also in the small suburban town of Union, New Jersey. Tyler Street was where I lived until I was in my early twenties and married.
At the age of seventy two after more than a decade in retirement, I can look back in retrospect over the past seven decades and say it’s been a pretty good run. The poet laureate of Key West, Jimmy Buffett, summed it up pretty well; “Some of its magic and some of its tragic, but I had a good life all the way”. When I break it all down there were four distinct episodes: the first, was childhood through high school, the second, was college, marriage, children and starting a career, the third was, raising the family and building a career, and the fourth final and current chapter, semi-retirement.
NOTE: I love this profile picture of my dad. It literally made me crack up laughing out loud (LOL) when I first saw it. When he was visiting, I asked him about this picture. He told me that it was a long story, but will try to make it short. You see, he just purchased a new cell phone. One morning he was on his sailboat, s/v Free Radical, and he just came up on deck and saw a Pelican on a dock post in the next boat slip. My dad said he was just “hanging out” and he thought he’d take a picture with his new cell phone. The problem was he had no idea how to use the camera. The camera lens was flipped toward him instead of away from him towards the bird. He took the picture – which is what you see here. Hilarious… and of course, he thought it was so funny that he made it his Facebook profile picture. He said friends of his said he looked like Merle Haggard in this picture.
It was 1976 and the oil and gas industry was expanding, especially overseas. The Lummus Company was extremely busy and had numerous international projects underway. One was a major refinery expansion in Germany at the Erdol Refinerie Neustadt. I was chosen as the lead process engineer for this project and was asked to relocate for a year to the Lummus branch office in Wiesbaden, Germany to manage the process design and engineering. This was a significant promotion and would be my first time managing the complete process design of a major refinery.
I talked it over with Joann and decided to accept the opportunity and move to Germany for a year. Jill was six years old and Jim was four (actually he was 2) at the time. I thought it would be a great experience for the whole family, especially for the kids. Joann agreed and we decided to go.
There were two other factors I hadn’t discussed with Joann that were important considerations in my decision to take this assignment. First, it would be financially lucrative and since we were in credit card debt it would be a way to extricate ourselves from this unpleasant burden. Second, it would be a way to distance ourselves from the strain of living with the extended family in New Jersey and give Joann and me a chance to function as an independent family for the first time since we were married.
I took an early reconnaissance trip to Germany for a couple of weeks to meet the German team and scout out a suitable place to live. Wiesbaden is a beautiful town in central Germany just west of Frankfurt and across the Rhine river from the city of Mainz. In the mid-1970’s there was a large US military presence in Frankfurt and there were schools on the military bases for children of US ex-pats. I returned to the US excited about this opportunity for a foreign assignment. A few weeks later Joann, I, and the kids packed up and embarked on a United Airlines flight to Wiesbaden, Germany. At that time the economy in Germany was very robust and the value of the local currency, the Deutschmark, was gaining relative to the US dollar almost daily. Since I would be there for at least a year I was able to convince Lummus to transfer me to the German payroll and the currency exchange rate effectively doubled my salary.
The Nassauerhof Hotel
On our arrival in Wiesbaden, we checked into the Nassauerhof Hotel, a grand old hotel in the center of town within walking distance to my office and adjacent to the Fußgängerzone in Landeshauptstadt, Wiesbaden, known to us as the Fussganger Zone (foot walking zone), which featured a range of unique small shops and restaurants. The Lummus Company covered the expense for us to stay in the hotel for several weeks until we could find a suitable apartment.
The Nassauerhof Hotel, Weisbaden, Germany
With the German economy booming, rental properties were scarce and furnished apartments were hard to find. The Lummus personnel department put us in contact with an agent, Frau Neumann, to provide assistance in finding a suitable apartment. Our requirements were a two-bedroom apartment within our budget within reasonable proximity to my office. Frau Neumann, a portly German lady, who spoke excellent English, was our agent. She eventually found us a furnished two-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood within walking distance of my office. It was in the Sonnenberg section of Wiesbaden, just north of downtown.
Unfortunately, the apartment was on the bottom floor of a multistory building, in what was previously the basement of the building. It was acceptable but had only about six feet of headroom between the floor and ceiling so Joann and I had to kind of duck down to move around. Nevertheless, we took it and moved to our new address Pfahler Strasse 46, Wiesbaden, Germany. We set up a crib for Jimmy in the living room and Jill had her own bedroom.
The German Neighborhood
The apartment wasn’t the most luxurious of accommodations but the neighborhood was very nice. Our neighbors were six couples with young children, about Jill’s age. We enrolled Jill in the ex-pat kindergarten class at the Erbenheim US Army Air base just east of the city where she spent weekday mornings. She would play with the German kids in the small yard outside our apartment in the afternoon and on weekends. It was a great arrangement and a terrific learning experience for both Jill and Jimmy. Within a short time, Jill learned to speak German with the kids her age and Jim also learned the language at his vocabulary level. In fact, despite my futile attempts to learn German, when we were shopping on Saturdays and I became frustrated when proprietors would refuse to speak English, Jill would frequently translate for me.
When we returned to the USA Jill was enrolled in the first grade in New Jersey and during the first week of school she came home with a note from her teacher that said she wanted me to attend a parent-teacher conference regarding Jill’s “problem”. The teacher was a young woman herself, probably about 24 years old. She informed me that Jill had a serious speech impediment. I said I didn’t notice a problem, what is it? She replied in a very serious tone, “Jill has a strong tendency to roll her R’s” I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I told her of course she rolls her R’s, she is speaking with a German accent. I politely informed the teacher that we just returned from a year in Germany where Jill played every afternoon with German kids all of them speaking only German. I told her that I could never roll my R’s despite a year of frustrating attempts. About two weeks later, Jill resumed her normal command of English and rolling R’s quickly became a thing of the past. Jimmy was only in his second year but he also was speaking German with a limited vocabulary. If he was speaking with his sister he spoke English but if he was speaking to the German kids it would be in his nascent German.
Germany – Culture Shock
I was grumbling one day about the countless rules in Germany that I failed to completely understand. A German friend explained it to me this way. He said, ”in Germany, we have a large population in a relatively small geographic area so we necessarily need to have rules and regulations to cover every contingency.” He then added, “However, for oneself, there are always exceptions.” It took some time to get accustomed to these rules and regulations and particularly the exceptions. One of the major differences, actually throughout Western Europe, was the extremely liberal view of public nudity. This was vividly demonstrated one afternoon in our own backyard. Jill was playing with the German kids outside and suddenly the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, there was Jill stark-ass naked with a daisy in her mouth. All the kids were about five or six years old and several of the others were naked as well. What the hell?
The German culture in the workplace was something else. I had worked with Europeans including Germans in the USA but nothing prepared me for the culture shock that was in store for me in the Wiesbaden office.
On my first day in the office, I met up with an old colleague, Konrad Triesel whom I worked with in New Jersey a few years earlier. Since I was in charge of the project (although he thought he should have been offered that job) he undertook to become my newest best friend. This guy was wrapped tighter than a banjo string. When he spoke he stood at attention ramrod straight, the veins in his neck and his forehead popped out as if they were going to burst and he would speak with a staccato cadence. I could picture him in my mind with a switch and a monocle.
He took me into his office, closed the door, and gave me some sage advice, at least in his mind it was sage advice. He said, “We worked together in the states and I know your style, lay back, easy-going Americanishe style. Well, that will not work here JJJermany. You need to understand in JJJermany, everyone walks with za open knife in za pocket”, and “YOU need to become the Prussian general”. He then railed on about how the management (Der Arbieten Furher) had a dossier on him (Triesel) and his every move was being constantly watched. The problem was he was half right. He needed to be watched. He continued to rant telling me, “I know they have a dossier on Triesel, they know Triesel is head of the Btriebsrade (workers union), and then in a confidential tone with lowered voice “they know Triesel doesn’t like the Jews”. And so, that was just the introduction to my experience in the German office.
Another situation involved one of the young female engineers working on my team. She was an East Indian girl, Saunda Chouduri, very smart, very competent, and spoke fluent German, but very shy. Even though she received her degree in Germany and had been there several years she was completely out of her element in that environment. She reported to a guy named Dieter Gluck.
Dieter was about six foot five, had a goatee, a perpetually unhappy expression, and essentially no discernible sense of humor. He had escaped from East Germany a few years prior, it was rumored under machine gun fire, and I guess based on that experience was extremely secretive and taciturn. He always had a completely clean desk with only a calculator and a single sheet of paper on the desk at all times. I once entered his office to ask him about his progress on the design of the distillation tower that he was working on. He glared at me in silence for several minutes and then without breaking his stare slowly reached into his bottom desk drawer, withdrew a sheet of paper, and slid it across the desk. It was the final page of the calculations for the tower with all the pertinent information neatly summarized, height, diameter, number of trays, etc. I slid it back to him across the desk while he continued his unblinking stare, he slowly reached back down, opened the same drawer and placed the sheet back into place, and closed the drawer again without breaking his stare. I got up and left. No words were spoken. Dieter was Saunda’s supervisor. God, I felt sorry for that girl. Later in the project, I rearranged the reporting relationships and Saunda perhaps for the first time since she was in Germany started to open up.
I also had an American ex-pat that came over to Germany to assist on the project, a young guy named Russel Biss. I decided he could work with Dieter because of his previous experience with distillation towers. The first day Russell arrived, I introduced him to Dieter. Dieter sat motionless glaring at Russel as he extended his arm to shake hands. Dieter ignored the gesture and simply stared back at me, without making eye contact with Russell, he stated, “Vell, I usually don’t like zu vork mit za young puppies”. Then after a pregnant pause, he replied “but in zis case perhaps I make an exception, yah”. Not too bad for Dieter. This was nice as he got. Eventually, I made Dieter my second in command (He was the personification of the Prussian General that Conrad Triesel talked about on my first day in the German office). Needless to say, the project was successfully completed within budget and on schedule.
WARNING – The following is a dispassionate discussion of the practical limitations of alternative energy without any influence from feelings or wishful thinking.
There is a finite limit to the amount of energy input. Solar radiation at the earth’s surface is limited to a certain quantity of energy per unit area. On a cloudless sunny day at any given location, or at any specific time, this input is fixed. According to the first law of thermodynamics, the amount of energy falling on the surface cannot be created nor destroyed. It can be only converted from one form to another, albeit with a loss in efficiency but the quantity or amount cannot be increased beyond what is coming in.
First Law of Thermodynamics
The second limitation is capture and conversion of solar energy involves a loss due to inefficiency. This is a result of the second law of thermodynamics. The energy output is always less than the energy input. The quality of the useful energy output is degraded and for any system, there is a maximum theoretical efficiency that cannot be exceeded under any circumstances.
Second Law of Thermodynamics
What we have then is a limited amount coming in and somewhat less going out based on the laws of nature, before we even consider the nighttime hours, the twelve or so hours that no energy is coming in, and the effect of overcast or cloudy days when the amount coming in during the twelve hours of daylight is greatly reduced.
So for any given location, the maximum theoretical energy output that we can capture and convert is reduced considerably from that which is coming in from the source. This is the useful available energy.
If we compare the available solar energy after capture, conversion, and transport to the energy demand, that is the amount required to heat the house or heat water or produce electrical power to run an air conditioner, we find that a very large area of solar collectors is needed to satisfy the demand. It becomes apparent that the capture of solar energy from radiation from the sun requires an area for the collection that is totally impractical for all intents and purposes. Or conversely to meet the demand, solar can only provide a fraction of the demand with a collection device of a practical size. I wish we had understood this dilemma before we started. But we didn’t. As a result, the observed performance was unfortunately disappointing. We finally realized that we can’t get there from here. At best, we can only get part way there from here.
Long Story Short: A Collection of Stories by Hal Gunardson 
