Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
When I told Harry Jensen of my plans to start my own water treatment company he was perceptibly less than enthusiastic. Even though Harry was single and had few if any constraints the idea of having his own business was completely alien to his thinking. My experiences with working for big companies did not seem to have been redemptive, even when I was able to remain employed. Fortunately I was still single and living at home in spite of a couple of ardent attempts to become married. I didn't realize at that time that my guardian angel was working overtime. I rented the back room and the basement of the Ideal Barber Shop at 1009A-1st Street, S.W. for $35 a month.
Whenever I was tempted to feel sorry about my humble lot I needed only to think of the itinerant 'bum' I would occasionally see in the area. These days he would be thought of as one of the homeless; we referred to him then as a 'garbage picker'. He was heavily bearded and appeared to be wearing at least two heavy greatcoats in the cold weather. What he was wearing under them I didn't dare to speculate. One day I arrived about 9 a.m. and saw the old fellow standing by a steel drum garbage-burning unit that had flames licking up above the top rim. He had reached into an inner pocket of one of the greatcoats and drawn out a small frying pan which he placed on the ground. Then, as I watched, he reached into another pocket and withdrew a couple of cracked eggs he had salvaged from one of the dairies and broke them into the frying pan. Then he stood up and scrambled the eggs with a gnarled twig he had picked up nearby. I wasn't close enought to hear whether he was whistling but it wouldn't have surprised me!
I turned and went into the back door of the building which was the entrance to my 'plant' so I never knew if the 'Happy Hobo' had found a fork or spoon in his garments.
I concluded that I was going to need a briquetted boiler chemical that would fit into the standard cast iron 3 1/2" Bird-Archer feeders on the water intake lines of the boilers heating the tank farms in the Turner Valley oil fields. After searching through the automobile junkyards for a week or so I finally found that an old four cylinder Star engine block was perfect for my requirement.
I designed a briquetting machine that used the engine block as the prime briquette-shaping component mounted on a heavy metal frame that allowed room for a hand-driven hydraulic jack to fit below the pistons. While this was being built at the old Calgary Iron Works shop on Ninth Avenue East in Calgary I had contracted with Dominion Bridge to build a chemical blender.
I got my first order from the British American Gas Plant at Longview in November of 1949. The chief engineer was Bill Cox and he had a row of large fire tube boilers and placed an order for 500# of SC-10 briquettes. I was ecstatic; at 16 cents a pound I figured I had it made. I blended the basic material and Lloyd helped me carry it over to Calgary Iron Works. The Iron Works had made a deal with me to let us into the plant at night to make product but I had to finish paying for it before I could have it trucked over to my location.
The briquettes were packed fifty to a box and sent off on schedule to the B-A plant. A day or so later I had a phone call from Bill at Longview; I knew it was too early to tell whether the chemicals were working effectively for him.
'Did the boiler chemical arrive all right?' I asked fatuously.
'Yep, right on time. It dissolves real easy and the pH is right up where it should be; there's just one thing I want to ask you about.'
'Really, what's that?'
'Well, I don't want to be picky, but I thought you were going to send us briquettes!' I was absolutely thunder struck! I must have been speechless, since I was unable to speak for nearly a full minute.
'Jeez, Bill, I'm sorry, but we sent you briquettes! I can't understand what could have happened.'
'Well, to be fair,' he said, 'there are a few large lumps that look as though they might have been briquettes once.' He seemed to be enjoying the conversation.
'Look, Bill, why don't we just replace the whole shipment? I want you to be satisfied.'
'Aw, I wouldn't think you need to go that far; the product works all right, it's just a bit more of a problem to handle.'
We concluded that the briquettes had been made without enough binder and as a result the vibration involved with them being trucked to the south end of Turner Valley
reduced them to powdery remains We corrected the mix and have had no similar problem in the fifty years since. B-A remained a good customer for many years until the far end of the field became unprofitable and the plant was shut down. It was a spooky experience to drive by the location years later and to see only prairie grass where years before there had been the roar of compressors and the bustle of employees walking among active industrial and residential buildings.
For the next ten years I gradually built up my clientele of industrial customers including the Calgary Brewery, the Northwest Brewery in Edmonton, Red Top Pet Foods, Northern Alberta Railways and various other industrial companies. Then in 1958 I had a call from 'Shorty' Cuyler who had a steel fabricating shop in East Calgary near the Brewery. He had recently received a sales account from the Volcano Boiler Company and sold a boiler to Dernick-Guyer, a Calgary-based drilling company who had sent it for service to Estevan, Saskatchewan. Two weeks later it was back in Shorty's Calgary shop with a main fire tube melted into the shape of a bathtub.
Although the old locomotive boilers still in service providing steam to the tank farms in the Valley could be loaded with scale and still be functional a number of things were happening which would change that. Fuel costs were not a consideration as long as the boilers remained in Turner Valley; natural gas was plentiful and virtually available for no cost; boilers working further afield were finding fuel costs a considerable factor.
For years operators were required to hire a ticketed boiler man for every boiler operating in the field. Since there were literally dozens of boilers from one end of the valley to the other it was a considerable expense for the operators. When the Boiler Act was revised it meant that all of the boilers used on jack-up drilling rigs could be operated without a boiler man on hand. The hitch was that the 'Leveltrol' that maintained a constant water level was a hollow brass capsule suspended in a close fitting shaft; any minor build up of scale would cause the float to stick and give a false reading. When the Dernick-Guyer float stuck it continued to show water in the boiler when the boiler was in fact dry.
'Shorty' came to the conclusion that the only good boiler was a scale-free boiler and within a year most of my briquetted chemical sales were to drilling companies. At the same time the boilers in Turner Valley were gradually being phased out in favour of heater/treaters. Serendipity--ain't it wonderful!! The boom in drilling in the late fifties extended as far as Weyburn and Estevan and I drove down there on a couple of occasions with 'Shorty'. We considered ourselves lucky to get a sleazy motel room in Estevan. The temperature hovered around -30 degrees Fahrenheit as we drove around the barren landscape looking for drilling rig masts. We only got lost a few times and then only for less than a day at a time. There were a few characters who got themselves frozen to death before the drilling companies and service companies got wise to survival techniques.
In the meantime there were some great stories coming out of the 'patch' about guys who went blithely into the cold without proper gear. One of the Oilwell Supply hands was on a side road somewhere in Saskatchewan when he was suddenly blinded by a dense blizzard. He decided to wait it out so he curled up in a sleeping bag in the back seat of his car and went to sleep. He woke up from time to time only to see that visibility was still zero. Fortunately he had food-- two chocolate bars. On the second day, the 'blizzard' still unrelenting, he had to leave the car to relieve the pressure on his bladder. He was about to reenter the car when he had an incredible rush of shit to his brain. Why didn't he get up on the hood and see if he can make out any land marks? What a good idea!
He clambered up onto the hood of the car and looked around; he later claimed that he could see Regina from there! The 'blizzard' that had confined him was a 'ground blizzard' and was limited to a depth only equal to the height of his car! The sun was shining so brightly it nearly blinded him! ('--on a clear day, you can see forever!'). If the goddam wind would only let up he could be on his way. Back to the fart sack! He suddenly realized he was out of cigarettes-- food was secondary! He knew that without cigarettes he was surely going to die! He curled up in his sleeping bag and prepared to expire. When the man with the snowplow stopped and walked over to the car, peered into a side window and saw the body curled up on the back seat he thought he had found another frozen body, not the first in his experience. He opened the car door and gave the sleeping bag a sharp tug. Nothing! He tugged again and looked over at the body's face; an eye opened.
'You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette would you?' said a sepulchral voice. The snowplow driver smiled and lit a cigarette for the mummified body then reached over and stuck it between the 'nearly departed's' lips.
'When you recover your strength,' said the driver, 'maybe you wouldn't mind backing your car up so I can plow out the road in front of you and behind you. If you need a batte
ry boost just give me a wave and I'll pull up beside you.'
'I'm alive! It's incredible!' Mitch thought as he dragged himself out of the sleeping bag and crawled over to the front seat. 'I was having such lovely dreams, though!' he thought to himself. The car started on the second attempt and he backed it up
and waved goodbye to the snowplow driver.
-o-
The same individual was party to an event that rates as even more bizarre than virtual refrigeration. He and Don were driving along a road in the wastelands of Saskatchewan one day when they got into an argument about the specifics of a large owl they spotted sitting on top of a roadside telephone pole.
'We'll have to get closer if we want to be sure,' said Don, who considered himself to be something of an expert in the identification of raptors and birds of prey of similar ilk.
'So let's drive a bit closer, then,' Mitch said.
'No, no, we can't do that; we're sure to spook it if we get closer in the car. We'll have to pretend we're something it's used to.'
'So what'd you have in mind?'
'I think we should get out of the car quietly and go up to it along the ditch; we can pretend to be a cow or a horse. We'll get down on our hands and knees and cover ourselves with our overcoats. It would be helpful if we squeaked like mice; that'll hold his attention!' Mitch thought it was ridiculous but was sufficiently involved in the argument to go to extremes. Soon they were down in the ditch making slow progress on their hands and knees toward their target.
'No farting,' said Mitch, who was bringing up the rear, so to speak.
'No joking,' Don said, 'this is serious!' But he felt constrained to laugh and this set off an epidemic of giggles which required them to stop temporarily. When they resumed they had got out of 'sync', causing them to erupt once more in giggling and a sideways tumble into the snow.
'I suddenly became aware of 'a presence' Don told me.
'A presence?'
'Yeah, we had become so preoccupied with our mission that we were oblivious to anything else. When I looked back up to the road I was astonished to see an RCMP squad car parked close to the edge . The window was rolled down and an officer was staring at us unbelievingly.'
'Would you two chaps care to tell us just what the hell you think you're doing?'
the officer queried.
'Well,' Don said, 'believe it or not, we're squeaking for owls; it's the only way to sneak up on them.' Mitch started to giggle again.
'Shut up, Mitch!' Don snarled. Meanwhile the Mounties were having a quiet discussion, presumably to decide whether to run the lads in for drunkenness or to take them to a mental hospital. If they were 'queer' as we used to say in those days they had sure picked a funny way of doing whatever they did. They seemed unable to come to a decision so simply put the car in gear and drove off. When the lads looked up they saw that the owl had also departed. The great 'Squeaking for Owls' caper had come to an end.
-o-
I was still supplying boiler chemical to many of the companies operating in Turner Valley through the 1950's. About once a month I would take a carrying box with a couple of dozen sample bottles and drive all the way to the extreme south end of the Valley. Anglo-Canadian Oil had an office based in an old three-story house on the east side of the Highwood River. Hank Petiot and Herb Bagnall were the 'stud ducks' of that operation. I would cross the bridge across the river to see Gunnar Ellingsen at Tank Farm #3 and visit with him for awhile. Things have changed through the years because Gunnar not only received a wage for taking care of the tank farm, he also ran a small herd of Hereford cattle on the acreage he was allowed to utilize to the west of the tank farm.
I picked up water samples from boilers up near the B-A Gas Plant which I would have visited to have a brief jabber with Bill Cox then headed north through Longview to tank farms scattered along the oilfield. I never had to deviate far from the oilfield which ran all the way from the Harris wells south of Longview to the Brown wells at the top of the hills west of Hartell and the Home Oil wells west of Millarville. I'd have to have a map to remember the names of all the tank farms I visited but I remember names like Spooner, Davies Pete, Federated, Brown, Pacific Pete and Royalties. Federated had an office at Royalties and I always dropped in for a chat with Mel Teriff or Jack Hamilton.
-o-
Federated had a head office in Calgary located in the old Lougheed Building and when I decided to start my own business I dropped in there to float my idea. I was ushered into the presence of Ronnie Brown in the offices of the law firm of Brown, Moyer and Brown. Ronnie's father was one of the first promoters of the Valley; when he died Ronnie's older brother, Bobby, took over.
Ronnie listened patiently to my story.'Are you doing this all on your own?' he asked.
'Yeah, I'm the only shareholder!' I said.
'Are you sure you're not being funded by any of those Eastern bastards?' he asked.
'Absolutely! It never crossed my mind!'
Ronnie opened a drawer in the top left hand corner of his desk and pulled out a large pad of blank bank cheques.
'How much is the first order going to cost ?' he asked.
I was astonished. 'Just hang on a minute,' I said. 'I haven't even made my first batch of chemicals yet; I just came here to bounce the idea off you!'
'Okay! You just tell Jack Hamilton next time you go to Turner Valley that you've got all of our business, no arguments!'
'I'm sure Jack will approve,' I said. 'Thanks a lot, Mr. Brown!'
'Just call me 'Ronnie''!' he said.
Ronnie Brown was an interesting figure in Turner Valley during the decade of the fifties. Every year when Federated had their annual picnic out at Royalties Ronnie would arrange, presumably with Stu Hart, to have three or four of his top wrestlers come out to entertain the picnickers. The employees thought he was great.
Whenever someone mentions the beauty of the scenery in Alberta I automatically think of my monthly visits to Turner Valley.There were rainy and overcast days, of course, but on clear spring days when the sun was shining, the mountains covered in snow, and the grass becoming green again, it was more of a holiday than a day's work.
But spring time could be tricky; the roads to the tank farms could be muddy or slippery with half-melted snow. More than once I sat parked at the top of a muddy road that led down to a tank farm pondering whether I should chance the drive down or get out and walk safely down and back. My innate laziness was usually triumphant and I would drive down to the location. On occasion that could be a foolish mistake!
I particularly remember a visit I made to a tank farm on a side hill west of the old Purity 99 refinery at Hartell. Although I could see patches of melting ice on the road surface, I figured that it was not angled steeply enough to give me trouble getting back up the hill. I drove blithely down the hill, went into the boiler room, took my sample and clambered back into the car for the return trip. There was a large accumulaton of snow against the door of the building adjoining the boiler house so I was unable to back right up against the door but was unconcerned. I remained unconcerned until I was roughly two thirds of the way up the hill. As I sat spinning my wheels I regretfully concluded that I would not make it, ergo I backed slowly down the hill to my starting place. My scientific conclusion was that if I started more quickly I could make it up the hill without difficulty. So saying I took off at increased velocity and made it about 80% to the crest of the hill before coming to a slippery conclusion. Poop! I was not pleased when I had to back down the hill once more, my head filled with incipient recriminations.
Fortunately I was able to find a snow shovel in the large shop adjoining the boiler room so I commandeered it and went out to attack the huge drift which had built up against the shop doors. I had concluded that if I backed the car all the way into the garage the dry flat concrete of the floor would allow me to achieve sufficient momentum to
successfully climb up the slippery access road. The snowdrift turned out to be much larger than I had originally thought and I was soon shovelling in my shirtsleeves. Fortunately I was not sufficiently gymnastic to lean against the doorway and kick myself in the ass for my stupid display of laziness. I calculate that I shovelled close to two truckloads of wet snow before I was able to swing the two large doors open and allow myself space to back the car in.
'Well, here goes nothing!' I said, gritting my teeth angrily as I let out the clutch pedal. I shot through the open doors at a satisfactory pace and managed to manoeuvre up the hill and park on a level spot, dripping with perspiration but triumphant. I walked back down the seventy-five yards to the shop (trying to avoid dwelling on the fact that I should have done that two hours previously), closed the doors and walked back up to the car.
When I told my mother that night about my adventures she restrained herself from making the obvious comment and satisfied herself by saying 'I thought I saw the sky in the southwest turn a darker shade of blue about the time you were shovelling snow!'
-o-
Home Oil had a field office a few miles west of Millarville and there was a shop and boiler house about fifty yards down a slope from the office. I usually stopped in at the office to see Ollie Nevra (since deceased) and some of the other office staff before driving down to pick up a boiler water sample. On one occasion I walked into the normal clanking and hissing of the boiler room and reached for the valves to isolate the water column. Before I had touched anything there was a sudden loud explosion and the water glass connected to the water column disintegrated. Most of the water glasses were enclosed in heavy wire screening for safety reasons but this one had no such protection; I was fortunate not to be cut, even blinded by flying particles of glass. Someone with a weak heart would conceivably have passed out from shock when the water glass blew up
before anything had been touched--a weird coincidence!
In my own defense I must say that I never had to change my pants, however I found myself standing several feet outside the door of the boiler house with no recollection of having got there. I went back and turned off the isolation valves to the water column and then returned to the office to explain why they wouln't be getting a water sample report for that tank farm until some repairs had been made.
-o-
About the middle of the summer of 1952 I had some distressing news when I travelled to the Valley.
'Apparently Wiener has said he can make boiler chemicals right here and save the company some money,' I was told by one of the field hands.
'Wiener? I thought he was a mechanical engineer.'
'He is, at least that's what it says on his diploma but that arrogant prick thinks he's capable of anything!' I suddenly remembered Wiener picking my brains regularly to find out the ingredients of boiler chemicals. The rotten son of a bitch! When I had asked him why he wanted to know he claimed it was just general curiosity.
'He's dumped about five hundred pounds of chemicals into a big pile in the centre of the shop next to the boiler house at the main office.'
'How's he gonna mix it?'
'Doin' it himself with a spade shovel' he said, smiling.
'Christ almighty!' I said, shaking my head. 'Why the hell would a guy bother to do that?' I said. 'He's already got a job!'
'He wants to show off by sticking his nose in everybody else's business. He's an arrogant bastard and he resents the fact that you're doing something he can't do!'
The more I thought about it that day the angrier I got. A week later I was back in the manager's office showing him the profit and loss statement for my company. It was obvious that the loss of the Turner Valley business would soon bankrupt me.
'We'll see what we can do!' was the only comfort statement I received.
On my next visit to the Valley I was drawn aside by my original informant. 'You can quit worrying about Wiener's competition!' he said conspiratorially.
'Really?' I said. 'How so?'
'Well, it seems like somebody got into the shop at night and mixed in a bag of something that gummed up the works.'
'Something like Portland Cement is the only thing he could have in there without noticing it,' I said.
'Yeah, I think it was something like that, now you mention it!' he said. 'Luckily the bosses only gave him three boilers for a test run; they had to replace the feeders and the feed lines after two or three days.'
'How come? As if I don't know!'
'Plugged up tighter'n a bear's ass in fly time, they were!'
'Any idea who might have pulled this little stunt,' I asked him.
'Haven't got a clue,' he said. I looked at his face suspiciously but he continued to look blank-faced and innocent. I was never sure whether I had friends in the Valley or Wiener had a bunch of enemies. Maybe a little of each.
-o-
There was an enclosed area behind my Calgary plant that was capable of parking eight or ten cars. Regrettably, it was also capable of provoking an ongoing argument about who was entitled to the parking places. A clear decision by the owners of the buildings with posted names for the owners of the parking spaces would have put the matter to rest for once and for all; for some reason this was never done. Other than 'line jumpers' there is nothing that infuriates an 'entitled' parker more than having an 'unentitled' poacher parking in his space. It seems to abuse his deep-seated atavistic territorial instincts! I thought of these ongoing territorial disputations as more of a hobby than a critical series of confrontations.
-o-
Strange as it may seem, the toilet in the far corner of the basement of my plant was more of an ongoing concern. It didn't become obvious until after the first major rainfall had struck during the spring of 1950. When I went to the plant the following day I found six inches of black sludge covering the floor and approximately twelve inches of moisture on the walls, the depth to which the water had risen.
The plant happened to be in close proximity to the underpass next to the Palliser Hotel between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and heavy rainfalls resulted in the runoff backing up in the underpass and the basements of surrounding buildings. The next time I saw storm clouds gathering in the near distance I hastily excused myself and rushed to the plant. I arrived in time to see a geyser of muddy water gushing from the toilet bowl, rising to a height of a least two feet above the rim of the bowl. Yikes!
When the shock of seeing the plant in the actual process of being flooded had diminished slightly I set about trying to minimize the damage. My first obvious move was to slam the toilet lid closed. The highly pressure-driven water in the toilet bowl immediately shot out sideways through the remaining aperture with vicious force. My next ploy was to rush back into the plant and gather up a few of the empty soda ash bags made of coarse Kraft paper. My clothing was soaked by this time so I was not hindered by any attempt to keep dry. I crumpled up the heavy paper and jammed it into the toilet bowl. After the second bag had been securely shoved into place the problem seemed to have been solved; the floodwaters had been staunched! Or so it seemed!
As I stood back to admire my handiwork I became aware of a barely perceptible upward movement in the mass of sodden paper plugging the bowl.
'Holy shit!' I cried aloud as the waterlogged mass of paper rose inexorably from the bowl. My first impulse was to slam the lid down but the paper continued to rise and I finally stepped up onto the closed toilet lid and pressed my hands up against the ceiling. That contained the otherwise ungovernable force of the water, however there was a limit to how long I could sustain that ridiculous posture.
About that time I heard a heavy tread on the staircase and a city constable appeared on the scene. 'What are you doing here, sir?' he asked. Forgive me, but I felt that a spot of sarcasm was justified.
'What am I doing?' I said, 'isn't it obvious? I'm standing on the toilet lid holding my hands pressed against the ceiling! Is that against the law?'
'Are you the proprietor of this establishment, then?' he enquired.
'Well, I pay the rent, if that's what you mean,' I said dryly.
At that somewhat inconvenient moment the telephone on my desk began to ring. The constable, oblivious to my attempts at sarcasm and natty in his navy blue uniform and Bobby-style helmet, asked me if I wanted some help.
'As a matter of fact, I do!' I said, 'you could step up here and keep the water under control while I sanswer the 'phone!' When he took a step forward I assumed he was prepared to undertake the assignment. I was mistaken, of course! When I returned from the telephone he was still standing approximately where he had been when I left. Still dry and natty, of course!
And who had been telephoning me, you might ask. It was my mother! She was wondering if I knew that there was a cloudburst under way! Surely you can think of all the comments I won't bother repeating to you!
-o-
The B-A oil refinery in East Calgary was having a serious problem with their cooling tower getting plugged up with slime. 'No problem!' I said, 'I think I can make a briquette that will solve the situation.' I had in mind to make a briquette that contained a heavy percentage of chlorine. There was a product called sodium pentachlorophenate that I considere to be ideal. I'm not sure an examination of the product's capabilities would have changed my mind about using it. I just wasn't expecting it to be so invasive. My Condensed Chemical Dictionary reads in part:
In the middle of a later afternoon I had a 'phone call from Jim, my 'plant manager'.
'I think it might be a good idea if you came down here if you can,' he said.
'What's the problem,' I asked.
'Well, I don't know if it's really a problem, but a couple of guys from the barber shop are standing out in the front street with those sheets still attached to their necks and most of the gamblers from the back room next door are standing out there too!'
'Do you think maybe it's something you did?'
'Well, I decided to make some of those slime control briquettes and when I dumped the sodium pentachlorophenate down the chute it seemed to throw up a lot of dust.'
'Are you wearing a dust mask?'
'Yeah, I'm okay,!' he replied, 'can't say the same for those poor buggers out on the street, though! Old Ken, the barber, said it was just like a First World War gas attack!'
'Jayzuz! I guess I'd better come down!' We had assumed that we had a foolproof gravity system for loading our chemicals. Delivery of the fifty and hundred pound bags were taken through the back door and stacked near a chute that led directly down to the mixing machine on the basement floor. Soda ash used to throw up a bit of dust but the latest activity threw up a fine powdery cloud of choking dust that penetrated every crack and corner of the surroundings.
'I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to move as soon as possible!' Ken said regretfully. 'My partner has asthma and he's complained periodically since you've been here but this last episode was the final straw---I'm sorry!'
'I sympathize completely,' I said. We had overcome the floods and the parking privileges battles but the 'penta' had conquered us! Within a month we had found a new home in the deserted boiler room of a company east of the cemetery that was engaged in grinding up old buffalo bones from across the prairies (the company, not the cemetery!) When I returned from Europe we moved to an ancient barn north of the cemetery. Old George resided there with thirty or forty stray cats and a pair of pants that hadn't been washed for years. When the city decided to tear that place down we moved to a double garage in Forest Lawn.
I should have gotten a clear message when a recent European immigrant whose bakery had been burned down offered me twice what I had paid for it less than a year previously. There was far more money in real estate than in what I had been doing! I sold out and moved to an Edmonton location. In the meantime I bought a lot in northeast Calgary and operated there for several years before selling out and moving everything to Edmonton. After renting two different locations in Edmonton I finally built my present plant in Nisku Industrial Park a mile or so east of the Edmonton International Airport.
It's fifty-three years now since I started business on my own. Neither of my boys seem to be interested in it.1 Our daughter lives in Vancouver and seems to me to be managing in the high technology model agent business. I doubt that I can keep things going for another fifty-three years!
— The End —