To me, she looked rather dowdy, and I thought she was the mostintroverted girl I had ever met. Later that evening, when I walked herto the front door of her grandmother's house where she was living, forsome indescribable reason I became carried away andasked for a date the following night. I admit I was desperate. To thisday, she can't imagine why her brain refused to function and sheaccepted.
Saturday night, resplendent in my uniform, I showed up at her doorstepat the appointed time.
Barbara opened the door and stood like a radiant vision dressed for anelegant night on the town. We stared at each other for a full minute,unable to believe we were the same two people who had met the nightbefore. What a difference clothes make.
I took her to Hollywood, where we swept into all the jazz jointsfeaturing such greats as Nappy Lamar, Stan Getz, Red Nichols and CharlieParker.
Barbara was only eighteen, and I was twenty, and the legal drinking agewas twenty-one in those days.
But perhaps because I looked older in uniform and Barbara was sodazzlingly attractive, we were never asked for our ID. We had amarvelous time, stayed relatively sober, and I still got her to hergrandmother's house at a reasonable hour.
After I was sent overseas, we corresponded for the next two years, untilI managed a flight back to the States, courtesy of the Air Force, for atwo week leave. Incredibly, I arrived on her birthday, and we went outto celebrate. The days flew, and I recall a fabulous two weeks togetherbefore I returned to the islands. On the flight back, I made my mind upto marry her and began laying the foundation for courtship. I madeEbenezer Scrooge look like a spendthrift while I saved my meager AirForce pay supplemented by my used-car sales. I sold my share in theLuscombe, gave UP MY apartment at Waikiki Beach and moved back into thebarracks to accumulate a nest egg.
A year later, I flew back to Camp Stoneman near San Francisco to receivemy discharge. A civilian again after three years, nine months andsixteen days, I caught an American Airlines midnight flight from SanFrancisco to Burbank. A couple of fellow passengers took up aconversation with me, asking about my time in the Air Force and what Iwas going to do when I got home. I recognized the taller of the two asRichard Tregaskis, who wrote Guadalcanal Diary. 'the other was LowellThomas. Little did I know I would meet him again in New York thirtyyears later and receive an honor from the Explorers Club in his name.
At the airport, I found an early-morning bus that dropped me off sixblocks from home. I was burdened with so much baggage, I had to drag myduffel bag and diving equipment over the sidewalk the entire trip,arriving at my front door to be greeted by my parents at 5:30 in themorning. Three hours later, with a cashier's check totaling myhard-earned wages over the past three years clutched in my grubby hand,-1 bought an XK 120 modified Jaguar roadster at a foreign automobiledealership, receiving a nice discount because Dad audited their books.
CRAIG DIRGO: So you returned, bought a new car and went to claimBarbara.
CLIVE CUSSLER: That was the plan. So I drove over to Barbara's houseand was shocked to find her going with a sailor stationed on a ship inLong Beach. I guess while I was overseas, it was a case of out ofsight, out of mind. It never occurred to me that my goal of marriagewas not mutual. And yet, my best-laid plans and sacrifice paid off.
Theswabbie took one look at dashing, debonair Cussler in his brand-newJaguar, and he took off for his ship, never to be seen again. Who canblame him?
His competition was simply too stiff and uncompromising.
After a four-month courtship, I took Barbara out to dinner, then dancingat the Palladium in Hollywood, to the music of Sonny Burke's big band,then drove to Mullholland Drive, where I proposed.
They just don't come any more romantic than me.
Barbara, unable to resist my best-laid plans, could only say yes.
CRAIG DIRGO: Do you think it was the Jaguar that swayed her?
CLIVE CUSSLER: Probably. Possessing a mind rigid with practicality, Ipromptly sold the Jaguar and with the hard-earned cash purchased a NashRambler station wagon, a beautiful cherry-wood Magnavox TV with a recordplayer, living-room sofa and chairs, dining-room tables and chairs, anew refrigerator and a washer/dryer. My dad gave us a stove, and I tookmy old bedroom set. So when we moved into a little duplex on HeilmanBoulevard in Alhambra, every stick of furniture was paid for.
Barbara never forgave me. She always claimed she would have cookeddinner on a Coleman stove, eaten on the floor and furnished the placewith blankets and wooden crates if I had kept the Jaguar.
Barbara must have seen something in me my teachers never did, and shehad to have nerves of steel.
I know she could have reached much higher. At the time we were marriedin the Chapel of Roses in Pasadena in 1955, I was making $240 a monthpumping gas in a Union station on Sixth and Mateostreets in Los Angeles. You might say it was a case of coming fromnothing and bringing it with me.
Fortunately, Barbara and I matched together like a pair of old socks.
After a honeymoon in Ensenada, Mexico, we set up housekeeping as if we'dbeen doing it for years. Barbara worked in the personnel department ofthe Southern California Gas Company, while I filled gas tanks for theUnion Oil Company. I didn't finish college because I still hated schooland had no idea of what I wanted to be when and if I ever grew up.
Six months later, a longtime friend and neighbor, Dick Klein, whomarried Carolyn Johnston, the lady who introduced Barbara to me, and Ibecame partners and leased a Mobile Oil station on Ramona Boulevard andGarvey Avenue in Alhambra. No more than seventy-five feet separated usfrom the fence bordering the San Bernardino Freeway. Between us, Dickand I had less than a year's experience, and I've always suspected theonly reason the company allowed us to operate the newly built stationwas that no other dealer wanted a location that was difficult for heavytraffic to reach. Dick and I, however, saw potential, since it was thelast stop for gas before entering the freeway, and it was also in aneighborhood where we grew up and knew many of the residents.
The three and a half years I pumped gas was an interesting milestonetoward a writing career. So much happened, I could easily write a bookon our experiences. We were held up, burglarized, shortchanged,cheated, fleeced and vandalized. A drunken driver missed the turn andcrashed into the station, luckily missing everyone who was workingthat day. You can bet our insurance adjuster became tired of seeing ourfaces on a continual basis.
We fought constantly with the company over promotions they tried to cramdown our throats, much like fast-food chains do today with theirfranchisees.
We put in ungodly fifteen-hour days. As time went on and we couldafford to hire help, this dropped to ten hours a day.
We gave aid to more accident victims than I care to remember. A younggirl, who walked her dog past the station every afternoon, used to stopand talk. One afternoon, I looked out from my office and saw her lyingin the street after she was struck by a car. Dick and I took care ofthe dog and made her comfortable until the ambulance arrived. Shesurvived. We rushed to perform first aid for a young boy who was struckon his bicycle. He survived, too.
And then there were the injured and dead we helped pull from the mangledwreckage of cars on the freeway. Whenever we saw traffic back up oneither the east or west lane, one of us jumped on our three-wheelHarley-Davidson motorcycle and took off with a tool box toward theaccident, knowing we might have to dismantle doors to remove thevictims. We nearly always arrived before the police and ambulance andhelped ready the injured for the hospital. I believe that in the threeand a half years we had the station, Dick and I testified in eighteentraffic investigations.
Mobile Oil estimated our station, despite having only two pumps, shouldsell twenty-six thousand gallons of gas a month. Company estimates wereuniversally inflated to urge their dealers to unparalleled heights. Inever agreed with the psychology behindit. Few stations came close to the estimates. Dick and I, however,were promoters. We called ourselves Clive & Dick's Petrol Emporium,bought an old 1926 Chevrolet truck and painted it in company colors,actua
lly using it to the embarrassment of stalled customers when wepushed them into the station with it. We picked up and delivered carsfor service with our Harley that the company painted with our name andphone number. Dick talked a nearby tire company into wrapping a hundredused tires which we stacked around the station to make customers thinkwe were a big tire dealer and could offer them discount prices. Wedreamed up promotions for free brake adjustments and lube jobs just tosell brake jobs and oil. During gas wars, we painted a big sign withlowered prices-I believe we once got down to 27.9 cents a gallon-andpropped it on the old truck next to the freeway.
Within a few months, Clive & Dick's Petrol Emporium was pumping fortythousand gallons a month. We were taking home eight hundred dollars amonth and -thought we had arrived in fat city.
Dick bought a new house and a Ford station wagon.
I bought a triplex and played landlord.
You talk about cheap. I was a partner in a gas station. I drove aVolkswagen, and I walked to work. My gas tab averaged four dollars amonth.
CRAIG DIRGO: So things were good.
CLIVE CUSSLER: For a while. My daughter Teri was born, and I began tothink about the future. Because of our success, Dick and I had hopedeither to buy or lease a fleet of service stations and build an empire.
But the company stepped in and said no. "You're doing fine with yourone little moneymaker." With nowhere to go, least of all up, we toldMobile Oil officials to stick it in their ears and sold out. In keepingwith my grandfather, who peddled his saloon in the nick of time, we soldour gas station six months before they closed off Garvey Boulevard tobuild the Long Beach Freeway. The gallonage at the station soonplummeted from forty thousand a month to eleven thousand.
Nothing exists of Clive & Dick's Petrol Emporium. An apartment now sitson the corner we once occupied.
CRAIG DIRGO: What then?
CLIVE CUSSLER: I drifted for a while, selling the EncyclopediaBritannica, Lincoln-Mercury automobiles and a newspaper cartoon serviceto retail merchants.
It didn't take a message inscribed with fire on stone tablets to tell meI couldn't sell a glass of water to a dehydrated prospector in theMojave Desert. If I wasn't the worst salesman in Los Angeles, I was nomore than two steps away.
Then I got lucky. I overstated my qualifications and was hired asadvertising manager for a plush supermarket at the entrance to LidoIsland in Newport Beach, California, called Richard's Lido Market.
I've never seen another food store with a comparable style and degree ofsophistication. The dream child of a peppery little guy, Dick Richard,the store was quite large for its time, with high ceilings painted adark blue-green. A maze of spotlights provided the illumination, givingthe floor the atmosphere of a nightclub.
Richard's concept was to provide the finest-quality groceries possible,and he achieved his goal. No other chain store could come close tomatching the superiority of the produce, meats and deli products. If itwas imported or gourmet, Richard's stocked it. There was simply noindependent food store in the nation like it. Richard's spent largesums of money for advertising and in store promotions that were uniquefor their time.
On my first day on the job, I was required to lay out a full-page ad forthe week's food specials. I had never laid out an ad in my life.
Canny guy that I am, I talked to the man who had formerly held my jobbut who had now been promoted to store manager. I told him that sincehe had a distinctive manner of laying out the previous ads, I thought ita good idea if he laid out the next one so I could get a feel for hisstyle. He took the bait and showed me the tricks of the trade. Iquickly got the hang of it and was off and running.
Advertising and I were meant for each other. It was all there. Adevious mind combined with an industrious talent for innuendo, duplicityand hokum.
I had found my niche in life. Within six months, I was winning awardsfor creative advertising from the Orange County Advertising Club and theLadies Home Journal-National Supermarket competition. I even talked thelocal newspaper into giving me free space to write a homemaker page.Naturally, the recipes all tied in with the market specials for the weekon the adjoining page. We even did a column called Sally's Salmagundi,which meant medley or mixture.
Barbara, Teri and I moved from our triplex in Alhambra and rented alittle apartment on the beach in Newport. I'd go body-surfing in themorning before bicycling to my office at the supermarket.
In the evening, we'd walk along Balboa Island to the Crab cooker Cafefor a bowl of chowder. Eighteen months later, we bought a little tracthome in a subdivision called Mesa Verde in Costa Mesa, where my son,Dirk, and second daughter, Dana, were born.
I slaved in the yard, building an Oriental pond, a mound with adistorted pine tree, a unique divider between mound and pond, a redwoodfence and poured concrete with gravel surface for steps leading to thefront door and my backyard patio. I planted trees and an Orientalgarden in the front and flower beds in the backyard that curved aroundthe lawn. I constructed a Polynesian playhouse for the kids that wasperched on sawed-off telephone poles. The roof and sides were sheathedin bamboo matting with a sandbox under the floor. Yes, I missed mycalling as a landscape designer.
CRAic, DIRGO: But you found a calling in advertising.
CLIVE CUSSLER: I enjoyed it. I decided to leave Richard's, and alongwith a talented young artist, Leo Bestgen, I formed a small advertisingagency. We decorated the office with antiques and a huge conferencetable we bought for ten cents on the dollar from Railway Express becauseit was slightly damaged by the shipping company. We opened our doorsand struggled for several months before paying the rent. To enhance ourincome-Barbara was home with Teri and son Dirk, who had arrived in1961-I worked evenings in a liquor store in Laguna Beach.
Times were tough, but as a family we still managed to have fun. Irestored a 1952 Jaguar Mark VII sedan that was owned by a Hollywoodscreenwriter and loaned to the director for the movie Will Success SpoilRock Hunter? It was driven by Jayne Mansfield and Tony Randall.
I also restored an at 42 tractive speedboat whose owner had become drunkon his palatial yacht one night and took the smaller speedboat to shore.He collided with several moored yachts and ran aground before thespeedboat sank. He said I could have it for free. So I bought a usedtrailer, and with the help of friends, grunted and strained and pulledthe boat off the beach and hauled it home. I sanded and repainted thehull red, white and blue and repaired the damage. I took out theinefficient little inboard engine and replaced it with ahundred-horsepower outboard motor. On weekends, we'd speed aroundNewport Harbor, find a secluded beach on an undeveloped island, park theboat and picnic while the kids swam.
Eventually, I sold the outboard and bought an old twenty-six-footdouble-ender navy whale boat that had been converted into a fishing boatby a Swedish carpenter who built a deck and a cabin on her. I spentmany evenings and weekends remodeling her into a character boat.
We all had great times cruising around the bay amid yachts costingmillions of dollars. Since the outboard had been named First Attempt,naturally the whale boat became the Second Attempt. We entertained manyfriends and business associates on that little boat. I learned mylesson about the old adage of a boat being a hole in the water you pourmoney into. Except for a little eight-foot Sabot sailboat that camelater, she was the last craft I ever owned.
After three years, the advertising agency of Bestgen & Cussler prosperedto the point where I could stop working in the liquor store and we couldmake a livable wage. Leo had a great artistic talent andpreferred doing illustrations over laying out mundane ads. After manydiscussions, we decided to sell our accounts and furniture and close thedoors, Leo to go into design and illustration and me to become acopywriter at a big-time advertising agency. Everybody thought we werecrazy when success was just around the corner. But it was a case of twoyoung men who were not as interested in money as they were in doing whatthey wanted to do.
Leo became a successful and respected illustrator whose work can be seenin national magazines, and I went to wor
k during the next several yearsat three national advertising agencies on Wilshire and Sunsetboulevards, gradually working up to creative director. This was in thesixties, the truly creative years for advertising. I was fortunate towork with a number of creative people on accounts such as Budweiserbeer, Ajax detergent, Royal Crown cola and Bank of America, to name afew. Eventually, I produced radio and television commercials.
I still enjoyed writing and creating original concepts and transferringthem into visual images that sold a product and made everybody happy.
It wasn't as much fun as being a slayer of kings and ravager of women,but along with occasional fulfillment, there were incredible pressuresfrom deadlines and campaigns that didn't measure up to the clients'expectations. For every four successes, there was one failure thatcould result in the loss of an account.
The awards for outstanding television and radio advertisements that Iwon seemed flattering at the time but soon began to pale. Years later,when I earned a living writing books, I put them in a big box and leftthem for the trash man. They were part of a past I seldom cared todwell on.