CHAPTER 117 EVENTS FOR THE FUTURE. 1967-1968
1967-68 were pretty bad years for the country and perhaps the world, but on a personal level things were going rather well. I had put together several collections by now and I took a photo of my binders spread across my bed.
Eight months after I became a Control Clerk, I got promoted again, this time to TBA Ledgerman. The elite regular job in Accounts Receivable was Ledgerman, this was sort of one rung down from that. . Ledgerman were the persons the Ledger Clerks worked for basically. All the debits and credits pulled went to the Ledgermen (although some were women) who matched up the individual accounts and cleared items. There were about a half-dozen Ledgermen in each region and they were all Level 10s. TBA Ledgerman was a specialized version. It was not assigned to a region, because this person handled items from all regions. TBA stood for Tires, Batteries and Accessories. There were far less items for these than for gas and oil.
TBA Ledgerman was a level 9. I went from a Control Clerk at Level 7 to a Level 9. In other words, I did something unusual at Atlantic, I jumped a grade. Ron Paul, remember him of the two thumbs on one hand, immediately brought a union grievance against me.
Yes, Atlantic’s employees were in a union, the Atlantic Independent Union. I even ran for Shop Stewart and narrowly lost. I had run on a platform that the union and the company were too cozy for the good of the employees. People choose to stay cozy. I guess they were afraid we’d strike if I got power. It was a close result.
Ron Paul, of course, claimed I broke seniority rules by jumping a level. He had blown his chance in Addressograph and been shunted aside, now he thought he could exact some revenge. He claimed he had more right to the Level 9 job. I and the company and union had to hash this one out. It was true he had several years seniority on me and it was also true you just didn’t see people jumping two levels in this company, but in the end it went my way and I became the TBA Ledgerman while Ron Paul disappeared into obscurity.
I slid easily into the position.
On October 23 I was at my parents telling them I had sold a story to Magazine of Horror. This was not only the first fictional story I sold to a publication found on newsstands everywhere, but it was an international magazine with a good sized world-wide circulation. On top of that, it was the first time I got to use my real name. I had visions of greatness.
was a science fiction writer as well as editor of several publications. As a boy he had been inspired and encouraged by H. P. Lovecraft, who he correspondence with.. As an editor he not only bought and published my tales, but he was first to publish a some guy named Stephen King, who seemed to be stealing book titles from me, such as It and Danse Macabre.
In this photo, from around 1939, Lowndes is the second from the right. He is with a group of writers of fantasy and science fiction, who were once quite popular, From left to right we have Cyril Kornbluth, Chester Cohen, John B. Michel, Lowndes and Donald A. Wollheim.
company, Richfield Oil Corporation. Atlantic was a fairly conservative company when I came on board in 1959. Henderson Supplee, Jr. (left) was in charge of it, having become President in 1952 and then Chairman in 1964. He was given a lot f credited for saving a once faltering institution and being instrumental in the later Richfield merger. However, he left the company in 1965, “because it was time”, he said. To be honest in those early years I worked there, I considered Atlantic a solid, but stodgy company. It made a consistent profit and its stock price was very dependable, but nothing about it was particularly exciting. My 5th Great Grandfather was an Abraham Supplee, born in 1746. I don’t know if I’m related to Henderson or not.
Atlantic first merged with a small firm called Hondo Oil & Gas in
1962. When Henderson Supplee stepped down in 1965, the head honcho of Hondo, Robert O. Anderson (right), stepped up and became president. On a fishing trip that Anderson took he met Richfield’s chairman, Charles S. Jones (left). Anderson nagged Jones into a merger. Thus in 1966 the Atlantic Richfield Corporation was born. It would be better known as ARCo. Jones became Chairman of the merged company, but when he died on December 10, 1970, Anderson took over. Anderson (right)
was anything but stodgy and contented with the status quo. He was a dynamic gentlemen and once he had full control of Atlantic Refining he helped lead Richfield to become a giant, one of the Fortune 500’s top 50 companies. The stock went on an upward tear after Anderson took over,, a situation that was very good for me. When I had first been hired at Atlantic in 1959, one of the benefits was what they called a Credit Plan. It was very similar to what would later become known as a 401K plan. I would have a set percentage withdrawn from my weekly pay. Atlantic would give me 50% of whatever I choose and put all this in a savings account. I had a choice between an account that would pay me a set interest rate on my money and this contribution could be used to buy Atlantic stock. I had chosen the stock.
shortly before I left ARCo in May 1969.
By then the company was doing well and so was I, too well I felt. All I wanted to do was get home at night and write, but I kept being successful in the office. In January 1968 I reached almost the top in Accounts Receivable, I was promoted to full Regional Ledgerman. The Region I was assigned was New England.
This was a Level 10 and with the Merit Raises I was also getting yearly I was making $127 a week. This was the equivalent of $917 in today’s dollars or $47,684 a year. I was only 27 years old. If we had held on to that house up on the hill, we would have been able to afford it. Instead we were living with my father-in-law and trouble was brewing.
The job was easy enough for me. Debits and Credits for customer accounts would come daily on IBM Punch Cards. I would match the payments to purchases, reconcile the balances on a sheet and sent it for processing. The paid items would be cleared in the computer and I would get new cards the next day. From my past experience with sorting burner tickets and in Addressograph I was very good at this. My inbox was always clean as was my desk, so clean in fact a woman working across the aisle from me complained to the Department Supervisor claiming I was hiding my work. She lost her argument because I wasn’t hiding work. I was just fast at doing it.
Generally, 1967-68 was a boring year for us. I was writing here and about and had sold my first fiction short story. I was doing well at work. There were some events in the world that really had more impact for the future than immediately.
The Supreme Court ruled that interracial marriage was constitutional. The suit was brought by Mildred and Richard Loving. In 2005, Nanci Griffith recorded a song she wrote regarding this case called “The Loving Kind”. I’m sure that many members of the younger generations don’t know that once it was illegal for people to marry someone of a different race in many states. People actually went to jail for such a thing. That prejudice was what made it somewhat risky walking about Philadelphia with Jane Waiters on my arm at that time.
Rights movement. Stokely Carmichael, head of SNCC did coin the phrase, “Black Power” and the Black Panther Party was growing powerful out in Chicago, enough so to grab unwanted attention from J. Edgar Hoover.
The National Transportation Board was created to look at safety in automobiles. This was a direct outcome of Ralph Nader’s 1965 book called, Unsafe at any Speed.
Over in the Middle East, Israel won the Six Day War. This all evolved around the closing by Egypt’s President Nasser of the Straits of Tiran to Israel shipping.
Troop strength continued to grow in Vietnam, the numbers were
up to 475,000. One individual not among this number was the boxer Cassius Clay, who refused to be inducted. As a result, he was stripped of his World Champion crown. It was around this time he legally changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali and joined Louis Farrakan’s Black Muslims.
Pirate radio was becoming more prevalent in Great Britain and a DJ called Wolfman Jack, real name a mundane Robert Smith, was becoming popular on underground radio in the states.
Personally, what really caught the gang’s attention outside their own artistic efforts was a large number of reported UFO sightings. As a writer of horror and science fiction, I took a deep interest in the Flying Saucer phenomena. Lois, Joe Rubio, Dot Waters and I spend some nights driving all over Delaware County believing we were in hot pursuit of some kind of invasion from outer space. “Look, there is a light, follow it, follow it!” It’s a wonder we didn’t smash into a tree or something and all die because we were speeding, watching the mysteries in the skies rather than watching the road. Did we catch any aliens? No. My conclusion years after the fact was that we were chasing the landing lights of many airplanes heading to Philadelphia International.
Imagine that, airplane lights near an airport!
In 1965 a company called Polaroid introduced a very cheap camera called The Swinger, probably a very apt name. It wasn’t much used for quality or artistic photography, but for taking those photos people didn’t want to drop off at the local drugstore for developing. The salient feature of the Polaroid was it took instant pictures, you developed the prints as you snapped them.
It was a messy operation from what I recall. You had to smear this very smelly chemical on the film to make it develop, then let it sit a bit. You then pulled off the front and there was your print, a glorious wallet-sized black and white image, (later color). It never lost the chemical smell, by the way, but over time the image had a habit of fading away.
The advertising aimed it toward the youth market, fresh scrubbed
kids on the beach and that kind of thing. The lady who gave it the name The Swinger claimed she got the inspiration from watching Edwin Land (right) walk around with the thing, holding it by its strap and as he ambled along. He would swing the camera back and forth.
Maybe the kids did use it for those beach outings. But that is not what the people I knew used for their Swinger portraits. The advantage of The Swinger was you could take nude photos and never have to have a developer see them.
I did take some general pictures with the thing, but the outcome was often streaking and over time the picture would fade and warp. We did take a number of nudes.
In the beginning of February the next year, about this same time as Dottie Bender Walls was being incarcerated at Embreeville State Hospital, Lois took a job at the Delaware County Hospital in Upper Darby. This was to be the kickoff of a turbulent year.
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