Mustang IRS Blog

In  January’s post we looked at the efforts of the MARBON Division of Borg Warner’s attempts to manufacture an “All Plastic Car.”  This was the Go-Go 70’s (remember Go-Go Boots and Whiskey A Go-Go?) we’d just put a man on the moon, and anything was possible.  MARBON in Parkersburg West Virginia hired me as an Industrial Designer right out of college, so maybe that was true.

MARBON had created a Large Structures Lab to promote the use of ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) plastic, trade named CYCOLAC, in all sorts of vehicles.

Besides the Gold Line camper, and the CRV (Cycolac Research Vehicle) the Citroen Mehari is pictured.  Mehari is the French adaptation of an Arabic word meaning camel. It was based on the Citroen 2CV  (Deux Chevaux – pronounced dew-shove-oh).  With a front wheel drive 2-cylinder 33 hp motor it could just have easily been named the Tortoise.  Zero to 60 was listed as 52 seconds.  Sacre Bleu!    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-odiBk6jYE

The first 2CV had crank start, three lug wheels, and offered a second headlight as an option. Maybe that explains the big dent in the front bumper. The 2CV stayed in production in various guises thru 1990.

In 1968 Citroen saw a way to rebody the 2CVas a Mehari, somewhat along the lines of the American JEEP.   My WW II vet boss said “Yeh, that’s about right.  Apparently they’ve used up all  the thousands of Jeeps we left behind when the war ended, and they need something to replace ‘em.”   

About 7,000 Meharis were immediately purchased by the French military, so maybe he was right … I wonder how that went?  Citroen even cooked up a military four-wheel drive version by taking the entire front engine and transaxle assembly, turning it around and putting an extra engine and transaxle in the back, then wired the throttles together to make a two-motored FWD Mehari.  That model was discontinued after a short run.

By eliminating the steel body and replacing it with eleven vacuum-formed ABS panels, Citroen drastically reduced part and tooling costs. ABS is a great material, but when used outside it should be painted to reduce the effect of sunlight on the surface. Or you could apply an ACRYLIC film as the freshly extruded ABS passes through the last sizing rollers.  It’s easy to do, adds a deep color (ACRYLIC is also known as Plexiglass) and it is not affected by sunlight.     

In spite of passionate pleas by MARBON and predictions of disaster by everyone who knew plastics, Citroen would not hear of spending even a few cents extra on the body. “Vee save zee money!”

Citroen and the European division of MARBON decided they would import the Mehari to the US for the 1968 model year. After the big, very welcome, sale to the French military, perhaps Citroen thought they could make some “conquest sales” in the U.S. by converting Jeep buyers into Mehari buyers.   The odds of an All American Jeep driver being overcome by passion when first spying a Mehari, not too good..

Citroen imported Mehari as a “utility truck” so it didn’t have to meet any pollution or safety standards. It didn’t even have seat belts.

A space in the Citroen booth at the N. Y. Coliseum Auto Show was reserved for Mehari’s  introduction into the Big Time, and a car left France on the most economical freighter they could find.  Almost a month later the car arrived, and we got a frantic call from our European rep. now pacing the floor in the Coliseum.  “The car looks like s—- !  They deck loaded the S.O.B.!  The red color is faded and streaked, and Citroen thinks we are all IDIOTS!   The show opens tomorrow and you’d better find a way to fix this!”

After he hung up the phone, we couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

We had a color lab that constantly tested new pigments and other formulations, so they had a bunch of faded examples.  Red was (and is) the worst color for fading, and we had stacks of that.  We dumped the whole problem into the laps of the color guys, with the caveat that we were going fly two of their techs to N. Y. C. before quitting time, with whatever magic trick they could come up with.  They were going to work all night with hand tools (power tools would require UNION labor) and the car’d better look great by sunup.  I’m pretty sure neither tech had ever been on an airplane, or even left West Virginia.

To their credit, they did come up with a magic solution, or close to it.  As I remember it consisted mostly of diesel fuel, with an acetone kicker (acetone is the active ingredient in  model airplane glue) followed by a topping of carnauba wax. The fortified diesel ate the oxidized plastic surface (with some vigorous rubbing) and the wax left behind a shiny surface.  Voila!

We hurriedly mixed up a five-gallon batch, put it into a black metal can conspicuously labeled CAR WAX, found a box of red shop towels and told our two boys, “Just put them on the floor between your legs when you get on the on the plane and no one will bother you.”  Try that today.

They took the last flight out of Parkersburg, transferred in Pittsburg to a N.Y.C. flight, and our rep met them for a fast limo ride to the Coliseum.  Somehow it all worked.  No one went to jail, and the car looked great by 9 AM.  The two techs and our sales guys, not so much.

The 1968 New York Auto Show.  Trust me, there’s a Mehari in there somewhere. Keep looking.

Apparently sales were, umm, disappointing as U.S. imports ended in 1969.  Budget Rent A Car continued to offer the Mehari at their beach locations in California and Hawaii for several years.  The Mehari also had a cameo in the 1973 Elvis TV special “Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite”… so that was cool.

Your intrepid reporter covering a Mehari in Maui.  Wish I had that body again … not the plastic one … the other one.

The Mehari sold about 145,000 units worldwide during its 1968-88 production run.  Some people still love ‘em, and the cars are starting to be restored. Several Mehari clubs offer help and comradery, see www.mehariclub.com, and a few parts are being reproduced.

But if you leave yours out in the sun, don’t call me!

Thanks for listening.

Duane

p.s. In an ironic twist of fate, struggling auto makers FCA (which is mostly the Italian government plus Fiat and Chrysler, who bought Jeep in 1987) and struggling PSA  (which is mostly the French government plus Peugeot and Citroen) have joined into a company named Stellantis, bringing the Mehari and Jeep brands together.

This corporate mashup has been described as “Two drunks helping each other across the street.”  Ciao!

Watching the Rams defeat the Bengals in the Super Bowl was great fun.  Congratulations to both teams for a good game.  Seeing all those million-dollar players running into each other, I couldn’t help comparing them to “the old days” when players made hundreds or thousands instead of multi-millions, and 30 years old was considered ancient.

In 1966 I was a member of Asbestos Insulators’ Union Local 35.   My buddies & I spent most of that summer insulating the refrigeration system under the then-new Oakland Coliseum. Some sports marketing genius had decided the Coliseum could host football, baseball AND be an ice rink too!  Apparently there was a huge, previously unidentified demand for ice skating in Oakland.

As a result the area under the field is a warren of tunnels, dead end passages and crawl spaces that carry the refrigerant necessary to chill the whole field to about 0 degrees F ….. even in the summer. Each one of those pipes had to have super insulation, and it was our job to wiggle, slide and grunt our way around to accomplish this, usually dragging a box of insulation, tape, snips, etc. behind us on a long rope.   What fun! 

The expensive and complicated system was abandoned after a few years for lack of interest.

As a result of our subterranean navigation, we could get anywhere in the stadium, despite locked doors and gates.  Monday morning after home games usually found us in the team locker room, marveling at the carnage and the bloodshed.  Hunks of turf as big as saucers were common. (How did that get in here?)  Puddles of dried blood, torn pieces of uniform, hair, skin, unidentifiable bodily fluids, and mud covered the floor and walls. It looked more like a slaughter house than a locker room.  We’ve all heard how rough pro football is, or was, but seeing it is something else.

The stadium was known locally as “The House of Horrors” and the Raiders name was “THE EVIL EMPIRE.”  The most evil of all was 6-3  255-pound Lyle Alzado, whom I once met. He was “intense and intimidating” both on the field and off. 

He once ripped the helmet off an opposing player and beat him with it, prompting the NFL to create a special rule outlawing the move.  You would need a rule against that? 

Both steroids and Human Growth Hormone (HGH) use were legal in them days, and supposedly “pain killers” and “energy boosters” were available by the handful from the team trainers, especially on game days.

 On Nov 17, 1968, the Raiders met the N.Y. Jets at the Coliseum in what became known as The Heidi Game. We’ll see why it was named that shortly.

The Jets fielded “Broadway Joe” Namath at quarterback, while the Raiders had Daryle Lamonica.  Alzado lined up at defensive end, with eyes locked on Joe.  John Madden (future broadcaster) was the Raiders assistant coach.

It was a cold and windy day.  Some numbnut had over-watered the field and it quickly turned into a gigantic mud bath. No love was lost between these teams, and there were so many penalties that the game took almost three hours, longer than scheduled. Namath got his jaw broken (he later claimed he’d broken it on a tough piece of steak) and there is film of him getting punched in the groin during a pile up.  No foul was called on either, and Joe never missed a play.

Back then your rotary dial B & W TV set had 3 channels, ABC, CBS, and NBC.  NBC had sold a large block of time to Timex for a special showing of Heidi, about a young girl who lived in the Swiss Alps with her grandfather.  It was very family friendly, and you can just imagine the music.

As the 7 PM start time for Heidi approached, network execs in New York were getting nervous about the game running so long (all those penalties, you know) but only the network president could bump Heidi.  It was big bucks at the time.

At 7 PM, the network lost their west coast feed just as the Jets kicked a field goal with less than a minute left, making the score 32-29 Jets.  The switchboards at NBC started to light up.  The president of NBC had finally been located in Florida, and OK’d staying with the game, but no one could get through to the west coast, as all circuits were JAMMED!

The Jets kicked off and the Raiders returned it to the Jets’ 23 yard line, called a time out, then Lamonica threw a TD pass making the score 36-32 Raiders.  Some areas could get the game on radio, and things were getting really ugly.  N.Y. fans even called the Manhattan Police emergency line trying to get the game back on.  Sports bars across the country were being trashed.  The NBC switchboard overload blew 26 times.

The Jets fumbled the kickoff return and the Raiders grabbed the ball to score making it 42–32 Raiders.  They had scored two touchdowns in nine seconds!

As time ran out, the fans for both teams rushed the field in a total madhouse. 

Yeah, they just don’t make ‘em like that no more.  In 2005, TV Guide declared The Heidi Game one of the 10 Most Memorable Games in football history. I would love to have been in the Raiders’ locker room following the victory. After things settled down the Jets’ manager asked the Raiders’ manager if they wouldn’t mind washing the Jets’ uniforms for them, as they had a game the next weekend across the bay in San Francisco.  It would save the time and money shipping laundry to N.Y. and back.  “No problem … no hard feelings.  Just let us know when you land and we’ll have ‘em ready for you.”

As the team plane arrived in S.F. Friday afternoon the Jets’ manager called Oakland to see about picking up the uniforms.  “Uniforms, what uniforms? Never heard of that.”

The Jets had to charter a plane to bring their “home” uniforms, plus all their practice uniforms to San Fran as their white “visitors” uniforms were no more.  Saturday morning practice was run with Jets wearing what ever S.F. uniforms would fit. Very confusing for the press watching the work out, as multiple players were wearing the same names.  I’m sure the Raiders were rolling around laughing.

I heard recently that the City of Oakland is thinking of demolishing the Coliseum.  Some sections are so crumbled that fans aren’t allowed to sit in them.  It’s falling down all by itself. If or when the wrecking ball approaches the darkened underworld of the stadium, and the ball swings against a door locked some 50 years ago, it may reveal a room full of old uniforms. “Look, there’s a jersey with “Namath” on the back.  Looks like the 60’s!  Could it be?” If management would like a personal guide to that forgotten netherworld, I’m available for consulting.   

The Raiders have moved to Las Vegas (probably a better cultural fit) and the town has built them a shiny new stadium.  I wonder if sometimes, on a dark and windy night, you can hear my buddy Lyle Alzado (1949 -1992) raging through the corridors.

Thanks for listening.

Duane

In 1967, my best buddy and I went to see the hit movie The Graduate, where Dustin Hoffman’s character is advised that the future is “PLASTICS!” I graduated college in 1969, and a division of Borg Warner Corp. called Marbon was advertising they had built The All Plastic Car out of a material known as ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), tradenamed Cycolac. That sounded interesting, since I loved cars and wanted to embrace the future.

I sent Marbon a letter, along with a glowing recommendation from the BYU faculty, and after a couple of phone interviews they mailed me a plane ticket to Parkersburg, West Virginia.  A week of interviews, including two days at Psychological Services in Pittsburg, resulted in a job offer as their #3 Industrial Designer.  Wahoo!

 That era was known as “The Go-Go Years.” (Remember Go-Go Boots and Whiskey a Go-Go?)  Formerly staid companies were making wild bets with easy money and easy credit. Cycolac ABS was being used in everything from NFL football helmets to kitchen appliances to automobile parts.  Deacon Jones, a 6-5, 270 lb. defensive end with the L. A. Rams was our spokesperson, and every Cycolac ad ended with the tag line “Deacon Does.”

My boss was a big Scandinavian named John Helgesen, and my frequent traveling companion from the Ad Dept. was a fun-loving Irishman named Chuck Harley.  Together we covered the USA and most of Canada.  There was nothing we wouldn’t tackle!

Borg Warner is a well-established (1928) automotive corporation, and we did lots of business with The Big Three in Detroit.  Knobs, switches, chrome-plated grilles (replacing heavy, costly, die-cast grilles) made up a large share of our business. Somebody in management decided “If a little’s good a lots gotta be better.  Let’s make the whole car outta plastic!”  It was called the Cycolac Research Vehicle (CRV) and they touted it as the wave of the future.

We made or helped our customers make not only car bodies, but boats, canoes, ATVs, and my favorite, the Goldline Camper.  We designed it, our customer produced it, and it was sold exclusively through Ford dealers. Instead of plastic parts weighing ounces, we were going to sell parts weighing tens or even hundreds of pounds.  Management was ecstatic!

The Goldline was colorful, aerodynamic, lightweight, and well-insulated.  Made of four pieces, left & right exterior pieces glued together down the centerline, and left & right interior pieces made the same way, with urethane foam injected in the void between the inner & the outer. Chevy and Dodge dealers were supposedly green with envy, as they offered their square, stick built, heavy aluminum skinned campers that squeaked, rattled and leaked air & water. We were heroes, geniuses, and good looking too. Even Deacon said so.

About here is where we “shudda knowd better.” There is a thing called “co-efficient of linear thermal expansion,” or CTE, which affects all solid materials.  Wood doesn’t expand much, metals expand some, but most plastics expand and contract a lot.  For ABS plastics, the CTE is about 6 hundred thousands (.00006”) of an inch/per inch/per degree.  Doesn’t sound like much does it?  Everyone knew it was there, but no one thought to do the numbers. Let’s do them some 50 years later.

Up one side of the camper, roughly 9 feet, across the top, roughly 8 feet, down the other side, another 9 feet, and now across the bottom another 8 feet. That’s about 34 feet. Stay with me here!  34 feet X 12 inches gives you 408 inches.  

You are ice fishing in Northern Minnesota and it’s -40 outside.  Add the number of degrees outside to the temperature inside your camper (+75) which is held at room temperature by the built-in propane heater. That’s 115 degrees difference (+75 degs. to -40 degs).  

Now times that by the inconsequential .00006 inches.

408 x 115 x .00006 = 2.82

That’s almost three inches!  Not too bad unless the frigid outside is glued tightly to the toasty inside by the urethane foam filler.  That difference has gotta be accounted for somehow!

The story we all heard was, “Me and my three buddies were ice fishing all day, and at night we were in my Goldline smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and playing cards in our boxer shorts. Loved that camper, it was warm and toasty. All of a sudden, I heard what sounded like a shotgun blast and a big split appeared in the roof. I could see stars outside. A blast of -40 degree air hit me right in the crotch.” Oww!!

Yeah, well, we shudda knowd better, but we were having too much fun.

There was a new predator in the corporate jungle called Consumer Advocate, and a guy named Ralph Nader had just taken GM to the cleaners for their “unsafe” Corvair.  Marbon and Ford couldn’t shut down Goldline fast enough, and all the sold units were recalled.  Too bad.  It was a good design. No! It was a great design, if you didn’t take it to northern Minnesota in the damn winter in your damn boxer shorts.

I was in the meeting when one of our most senior executives said, “Well, maybe we don’t have the material for big structural parts.”  Cautious murmurs of agreement came from less-senior personnel all around the table.

We shut down the Large Structures Lab, and the CRV car business was sold to AMT,  makers of plastic car models. They made a few, but eventually the CRV vanished into that land of  “good idea ..but.”   

We went back to helping people design all manner of parts. ABS and its plastic cousins can be molded and textured or plated to look like just about anything.

As I sit in the cab of my new Ford truck, thinking about Marbon some 50 years ago, the handsome dashboard appears to be top grain hand-stitched leather, the heat vents are bright chrome, the center stack is polished black walnut surrounded by brushed aluminum, while the steering wheel is a combination of blond oak and hand sewn glove leather.  In the center of the wheel is a sterling silver oval with the Ford logo rendered in rich blue lacquer.

All very nice, but I know who you guys REALLY ARE!  Every one of you is plastic, disguised as something else and doing it better than the real article ever could.

Dustin Hoffman would be proud.  Plastics done in the right way really are the future, and the present.  The average new car now contains over 350 lbs. of plastic, up from about 10 in Dustin’s day.  I enjoy watching them become better, more cost effective, and now even more recyclable.   R.I.P. CRV.

Thanks for listening.

Ps.  Order The All Plastic Car By Nicholas Whitlow from Amazon. It’s a good read.

This letter was written by my mother, Persis Carling, to her mother Clara Spencer from San Francisco 80 years ago today, on Dec.9, 1941, two days after Pearl Harbor was bombed. It mentions my dad, Gerald, and my sister, Geraldine, who had been born in August. The others mentioned in the letter were Gerald’s sister and her husband, Clora and Frank Martin, and Berta, who is Persis’s sister Roberta.

Dear Mother and all,

We just received your nice letter yesterday just before we heard the President address Congress. Your letter spoke of a life free from fear and excitement while we were all excited about what was going on and what was yet to come. Everybody we talk to says they wish they were back in Utah where it was safe.

Yesterday we listened to the radio all day. They said all cities and towns from the Alaskan border to San Francisco would be blacked out tonight and that all radio stations would be cut off. One report later in the day said there had been an airplane carrier lurking off the coast of Washington.

All the schools across the bay were closed down yesterday as a precautionary measure. They have so many defense plants etc. over there they could expect heavy bombing.

They told us that one blast of a siren without a break was an air raid alarm. An “all clear” signal was a long blast from a siren with one break. they said if at any time we were on the streets and heard shots to immediately take cover. If we heard planes overhead, even if we did think them to be friendly, to lie down flat on your stomach so as not to be recognized and be the object of a direct hit.

Last night we were listening to the Lux Radio Theater when all at once it went off. Every station on the radio was silent. We were getting ready to go down to the hospital to visit a friend of ours who has a new baby. We were going to leave Geraldine with Clora while we went. Just as we got outside by the car all the street lights went off—“Geepers” it was a funny feeling—when we were going up Clora’s front steps we heard a siren but it only lasted about half a second. It came from down by the waterfront on North Beach so we just supposed it was a ship or something . We decided not to go to the hospital, so about 7:30 Frank suggested we take a ride up on Twin Peaks and see what was going on. As we rode through the streets some were all lit up with neon lights in front of business houses and people’s windows were all lit up and on other streets there were no lights at all and men were standing at intersections directing traffic and saying “lights out”. Kids were all over the sidewalks calling to every car that flashed lights on to see where they were, “turn your lights out”. We couldn’t figure it out. Riding in complete darkness is worse than walking especially around bends. Streetcars and taxies were without lights, hospitals and dormitories were blacked out, but looking down from Twin Peaks we could tell where most every street was. Market Street was one long streak of red neon signs. Mission Street was just about as bad. Fillmore and Haight were just little flickers but you could see plenty of lights all over town. We heard once that the Coast Guard was driving a submarine out of the Golden Gate. Search lights were going back and forth across the sky for awhile when we were on our way to Twin Peaks. When the radio came back on at 10 o’clock they told us there had been 60 unidentified planes flying toward San Francisco. They were spotted about 20 miles out at sea and American planes had taken off to engage them in air battle but they turned back and were being followed to see if they could determine the exact location of the airplane carrier at sea. They went on and described the unsuccessful blackout of San Francisco. It said radio stations were silenced so the enemy couldn’t spot us by radio waves. Street lights were turned off and the siren in the old Ferry Building sounded off for the first time in years which after one weak blow died out in silence. So, San Francisco was caught without any general alarm and it went on to tell how half cocked the whole thing went off. It said from now on all fire engines will be backed out of their stations and sirens turned on in order to let everyone know they mean business.

I heard every little noise last night and expected to hear the worst but when morning came we were still safe and sound and I felt like I had had a bad dream. Everything has happened in such a hurry. There aren’t any air raid shelters or even a clear space to run to if your house caught fire. I sure don’t want to be here when the fireworks start if I can help it. Gerald and Berta seem to think it’s “heap fun”, all the excitement, but it makes me feel sorta sick inside.

Sunday when news came that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor etc. the radio sent messages out for all Army, Navy and Marine men to report for duty immediately. All policemen and firemen were called back on duty. There was either one or two policemen on every corner in the city. Trucks were going around gathering up all uniformed men on the streets. Cars were as thick as ants on a honey jar, everyone was out to see what was going on. Newsboys came out calling “Extra! Extra! Japan declares war on America!” People came running from all directions to buy a paper.

The radio is off again this morning so I don’t know what’s been going on during the night but it don’t look so good or they would be broadcasting.

I hope you have a beautifully decorated tree and lots of popcorn and apples for Christmas because maybe if it gets too hot for comfort down here I’ll hop the train and come home (if I don’t change my mind about the fireworks). Gerald would have to stay as long as there is work but he said last night if I wanted to I could take the baby and go home. I would hate to leave him here in case it got bad, I’d be worried sick, but at least the baby would be safe.

It doesn’t look like Christmas will be so “Merry” for a lot of folks this year but I guess we can be thankful we have what we have in spite of it all. Don’t buy us any presents. If we are still here you can send us a box of eats and a letter or just a letter as we don’t plan on sending gifts to all of you.

Well Geraldine is crying for her bath so I’ll close for now. Tell Aunt Clara and Uncle George I send my love.

Persis, Gerald and Geraldine

“Think how proud your family and friends will be when you’ve shed those extra pounds and all those wrinkles.”

One of the more interesting part time jobs I had during the 2007 – 8 “financial crisis” was Night Security Guard at a local call center. My job was to check I.D.s of people entering or exiting the building, and stroll around the call floor as 200+ “representatives” took calls from all over the world, selling various products advertised on Pay TV.

• 

Operators really were “standing by” to take your call. As each call came up on the screen it showed:

• Product Interest. (Miracle Wrinkle Cream, Miracle Rain Gutters, Miracle Weight Loss, etc.
• Name / Age / Gender
• Phone number
• Address
• Credit history
• Available credit balance and short bio

The more the advertiser was willing to pay, the more detailed the information on the screen became. Various credit companies were flooding the mail with live credit cards, with as much as $10,000 available. “Just call the number on the back to activate.” Even I got one!

One night I happened to see a member of management in the lunch room and asked her “How does all this really work ?”

Since she perceived me to be a member of The Team she was quite forthcoming.

“When the operator answers your call he/she already knows who you are, a little about you, including your credit card number, and your credit history. Your answers to our questions just verify what is already on the screen.

“When Beula Butts of Shady Rest Trailer Park calls at 1 AM her time, about the New Miracle Wrinkle Cream, on sale for $29.95… we know quite a lot about her, and a good sales agent will be able to use that.”

I asked her if it went something like this.“ It’s late. Beula’s feelin’ kinda down, she’s single, pushing 40, no love life, and after a few beers she’s pretty sure some wrinkle cream can fix that.”

“Yea, that’s pretty close.” Ms. Management said. “Since the agent knows how much is available on that new credit card, he’s shooting for a ‘conversion’ which means he’s going to convince her to buy more, and then he’ll earn the commission that comes with that. A good agent will make the caller feel like family, and she’ll want to make him happy by buying more. There is a script on the screen to help him do that, but a good agent will make it personal, and manage his voice to make the script his own.

“Wrinkle cream can become Mega Vitamins, which leads to Food Supplements, which can lead to a whole suite of exercise equipment, work out clothes, work out videos and even a special Signature Model video player.”

Wow ! (and remember those few beers?)

A couple of nights later, I recognized a familiar face in the lunch room, the V. P. of a bank I recently had a construction loan with. The bank was seized by the FDIC (taxpayer bailout) and most of the staff was let go. Now here he was working as a telemarketer, so I asked about what I more and more believed was a pretty sleazy business.

“Oh yeah. A lot, or even most, of these people who call, especially late at night, have no business spending money on this stuff,” he said. “Credit card companies are sending out live credit cards to people who’ve never seen that much money in their lives, and they just can’t wait to spend it.

“What no one mentions, of course, is if you are late or miss a payment, the introductory interest rate jumps to 30% or even higher, and the monthly payment is calculated on the unpaid balance, which now includes interest and penalties. You could pay for years and never reduce the balance. When people realize that, they often just quit paying.”

If people went into default, I asked, could they lose everything they had. “Oh sure, and if they ignore a court order they could end up with a contempt citation, which is punishable by fine or even jail. In addition, their property could be sold at auction. They’d be squatting on the street when they got out.”

Over the next few weeks, I asked people I knew in the legal and accounting professions about the “end game” of this EVIL. Most were happy to talk. A “synthetic investment product” was specially created for this by Wall Street, called a Collateralized Debt Obligation. A CDO bundled all those shady debts together, then sold them as a top grade product to trusting buyers all over the world. Moodys, Standard & Poor’s, and other rating agencies gave CDOs top ratings as ultra-safe investments. The certificates were sometimes worthless, but Wall Street always got paid well.

Mortgage lenders were doing similar “predatory lending” with home mortgages. Called Credit Default Swaps, or CDS, the lenders passed the risk off to unsuspecting investors, and many went into default. Life savings and retirement funds were lost. Eviction notices were served, and the homeless population swelled. No bankers went to jail.

Rent or stream the movie INSIDE JOB with Matt Damon for a good documentary on how Wall Street spread their contagion around the world.

Yep, there is plenty of EVIL in this old world. As I watched the telemarketing dramas unfold night after night, I started to feel like part of the EVIL myself. Was I the Security Guard who watched as the cattle cars were loaded, and the innocents sent off to their ruin?

Fortunately, the economy hit bottom, or turned around, or whatever, and I left for other opportunities. The call floor shrank from 200 or so to about a dozen operators. The building was closed and is now up for sale.

When I see American citizens living in tents on downtown streets, I sometimes think “How could so many people have fallen so far, in so few years.” Well I know one way, and I was a small part of it.

Thanks for listening.

“I’m sorry to trouble you Mr. Shelby, but the brass cannon is missing off the front porch of the Governor’s mansion, and we have reports some of your people were seen carrying it through town.”

So began another chapter in the story of Carroll Shelby’s GANGSTERS. An evening spent with Wally Peat, chief mechanic on the King Cobras turned up some great stories.

It seems when the 1963 Corvette Stingray came out, Wally, Dave MacDonald, and his entire crew each bought one, drove them to Laguna Seca (now Weather Tech Raceway) for the final stop on the 1963 Pro Tour. Having arrived early they parked them smack against the fence of the Ford pits. When Carroll arrived he yelled, “You gangsters get the hell out of the pits with those damned Chevrolets!”

The name stuck, and the Gangsters went into history for their adventures both on and off the track.

The Laguna race started well. Bob Holbert beat the track record by 2 seconds in practice, but knocked himself out of the race after a minor shunt with another car. Dave MacDonald in the other King Cobra managed to win after Jimmy Clark trimmed the oil cooler off his Lotus 19 with a corner apex marker.

This of course was cause for a party. Wally, Dave, Dave Friedman, Joe Frettas, Don Pike, Craig Lang, and the rest of the Gangsters had “borrowed” the champagne (all of it!) supplied by Ford for a pre-race reception and stashed it in their unmentionable cars.

Naturally they proceeded to have a running champagne fight through the streets of Monterey.

Nassau Speed Week followed Laguna Seca as the final outing of the year. The good part of racing on the rough five mile Nassau airport circuit was the test it gave the chassis and suspension components. The really good part was that the transportation, lodging and entry/garage space was all FREE! All paid for by the Bahamian Government.

The GREAT part was the 5-day party between the two weekends of competition, with all the world’s racing elite in attendance, as well as a bunch of potential sponsors and well-heeled customers.

The nightly parties got wilder and wilder, fueled by Caribbean music and pitchers of Planters Punch, until one of the Gangsters suggested a raid to steal the brass cannon from the Governor’s Mansion. An elaborate plan was perfected by some of the greatest racing strategists in the world. Under cover of darkness and fog of mind, the heist was pulled off and the booty tied under the floor of the Ford transporter.

Some sharp-eyed citizen noticed 20 or so noisy revelers dressed in full Shelby racing attire carrying a cannon down the main street of town, and informed Ol‘ Shel and the cops. When they arrived to search the Ford pits, someone had untied the cannon and RE-STOLEN IT! Wally doesn’t know for sure who did the dirty deed, but rumors were his first two initials were A. J.

Unfortunately both King Cobras went out with suspension failure and the three Cobras entered were introduced to the new CORVETTE GRAND SPORT … with disastrous result.

In May of 1964 a whole new King Cobra was designed by Pete Brock, which was to become known as the Lang Cooper. Craig Lang was an Olympia Beer heir from Seattle, and a close friend of Dave MacDonald, and later Shelby and his manager Al Dowd.

In Shelby’s Southern California studio you rolled the engine/chassis out into the sun, put a sheet of plywood on a pair of saw horses, and designed the car on the spot, with the guy who was going to build it, the guy who was going to pay for it, and the guy who was going to race it. Today they call that “Interactive Management.” Using the latest Cooper chassis, with California designed suspension, it retains its classic beauty today.

Henry Ford II had his sights set on winning Le Mans with the GT-40 and retained Shelby to manage his effort. The GT-350 was coming on, and Shelby shifted his attention to bigger fish. The Competition Cobra Division was allowed to shrink and eventually die.

What Wally says of those days: “We worked on cars for a living, but what we really did was chase women and raise hell!”

As Shelby himself said a few years after the Gangsters split up, “There’s too damn many suits and ties around this place, and it’s no damn fun anymore!”

Many thanks to Wally Peat, Rich MacDonald and Dave Friedman for contributing to this story.

This quote was given to me about 30 years ago as I set out to find the original Mustang Independent Rear Suspension. It’s been quite an adventure.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one
Elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas
And splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself,
Then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that
Would never otherwise have occurred.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 1749 – 1832

Wally Peat, Shelby race car mechanic and fabricator, was showing me through his personal files when he came upon a picture of himself sitting on the back of a ’64 Falcon.

“See that lower control arm? That car had an independent rear suspension Ford was developing for the Mustang, which used the Falcon platform.”

I said I’d like to find one of those.

“Ford only made two or three, and they were all crushed, but if anybody had one it’d be Carroll Shelby,” said Wally.

Summoning up all my courage, I called Carroll who, after some conversation, transferred me to Lew Spencer. Lew was Shelby’s “chief of staff,” and he referred me to someone named Klaus Arning, who was Ford’s suspension guy, back in the day.

“Probably long retired, but maybe still in the Detroit area.”

Information gave me a number for Klaus. As the designer and multiple patent holder for the I.R.S., he was interested in my project. Fortuitously, Klaus and his wife were planning a trip which, with a few
adjustments, could route them through Utah. The Henry Ford Museum archives had partial prints for the mystery I.R.S., so Klaus stopped by to pick up some copies.

“I show them my credentials… they give me the microfilm,” he intoned in his rich Teutonic accent.

Finally, I had something in my hand other than hope. We spent some time in my garage with the prints and the rear ½ of an original Mustang as Klaus explained the finer points of suspension design. Great guy, very entertaining and VERY smart.

We became good friends, talked frequently, and attended the S.E.M.A. show in Vegas together for years. Klaus knew everybody. For some reason we went to Palm Springs in Nov. of 1990 for AN EVENING WITH CARROLL SHELBY a.k.a. The SHELBY ROAST, which benefitted Shel’s Children’s Heart Fund.

As the evening got late, Lee Holman Jr. of Holman & Moody racing stopped by our table, as Klaus had known his late father. Lee sat down and we told him of our quest to find the Mustang I.R.S.

Lee said, “I know where there is one.”

In late ‘67, after Ford and Shelby won Le Mans for the second time (if you haven’t seen Ford v Ferrari, please do so soon) Henry Ford II told Shelby the money spigot had closed. He was sending his stock car guys, Holman & Moody, to clean out Shel’s airport facility (since Ford had paid for it all) and terminate the lease on the two hangers.

“You’re out of business!”

Some say 6, some say 12, as the number of empty 18 wheelers H & M convoyed from Charlotte to L.A. to clean out Shelby’s facility. Ralph Moody was apparently a bit of a “pack rat,” and sources say he even took the cover plates off the electrical outlets. Under a work bench was a box that held some sort of suspension system, and Ralph packed it off to Charlotte.

H. F. II gave the same bad news to Holman & Moody about 6 months later, after promising their relationship was forever! Both partner’s deaths and 10 years later, Lee Holman Jr. was holding a garage sale to stave off bankruptcy. An eccentric collector from Oxford GA. bought the box of I.R.S. pieces for scrap value and stored it in his peach orchard.

After a couple of letters, phone calls and a personal visit, three greasy boxes wrapped in duct tape showed up on my doorstep. The deal was I could use the pieces to make tooling if I returned them along with a complete working I.R.S. ready to bolt into a Falcon he had that supposedly had one back in the day.

I called Wally, took my video camera, and we opened the boxes for what we both knew was going to be an historic adventure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyKDiKf4CxA

For the next 20 years or so I sold the I.R.S. as a kit to fit vintage Mustangs. I met some great people along the way.

John Clor of Ford published several stories on the I.R.S. including this multi-page blockbuster, THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW AN IRS MADE FOR MUSTANG WON LE MANS.

The story mentions the Original Venice Crew (O.V.C.) and Peter Brock, my favorite design icon. I knew Peter from the days when he was building hang gliders, and had just found an old blueprint machine that made real blueprints using ammonia. I knew Peter would appreciate seeing a full size (3 ft. x 5 ft.) hand drawn print, done way before Computer Aided Drafting (CAD).

“Funny you should drop by,” said Peter. “A bunch of the original Venice guys led by Jim Marietta are going to build some continuation GT 350s, and I bet they’d like to use that I.R.S.” \

We put some of the crew back together, and after giving Road and Track a ride in our first prototype, they declared it one of their 10 FAVORITE CARS OF THE DECADE!

Craig Jackson of BARRETT-JACKSON collector car auctions called one day shortly thereafter to say he had found the last two prototypes Shelby built in ’67, just before Ford pulled the plug. Intended for the 1968 model year, they were named the GREEN HORNET and LITTLE RED. Both were presumed lost, crushed, long ago.

The Hornet had digital fuel injection decades before Detroit built one, and the I.R.S. first ran on that Falcon way back in 1964.

When Craig found I had some ORIGINAL parts, hand-made by Klaus’ design team, he wanted not my replicas but the original pieces, which I had since
acquired.

That seemed like a good end to the I.R.S. project, after all those years. The original parts in the original car … yeah, that sounds right. Jim Marietta bought my tooling and jigs and the adventure was almost over.

Craig is friends with Edsel Ford II, who as a teenager was on the podium with his father, Henry II, when Ford and Shelby first won Le Mans back in ‘66. In exchange for Craig’s $1,100,000 donation to Edsel’s diabetes foundation, Ford Motor Co. built a special Mustang replicating the original Hornet. Roger Penske’s shop took a Shelby Mustang in primer off the production line, painted it Lime Gold Metallic, a 1967 color, then laid on Candy Apple Green with a deep clear coat, just like the original. All the labor
and materials were donated as a tribute to the people and the story they represent!

In the video that follows, you’ll meet Ralph Arning, Klaus’ son, good friend and 40-year veteran at Ford, and Jason Aker, Craig’s ace restorer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7-2Mpal8GA&t=1643s

Jim Marietta and I had dinner with Edsel II and his son, Henry III, at Cannery Row the year our car, 98 I, was the poster shot for the Monterey Historic races (the primogeniture at Ford goes Henry I, Edsel I, Henry II, Edsel II, etc.).

After dinner Greg Miller (Larry H. Miller Cos.) dropped by to announce he’d just purchased the first Cobra ever built, Shelby’s personal car, for about 12 Million and change. Quite a night.

Thank you, PROVIDENCE and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The early Mormon church just couldn’t seem to get along with its neighbors. After getting kicked out of several states at gunpoint (Ohio, Illinois, etc.), in 1847 they set their sights on a semi-mythical valley of salt 1,000 miles away in what was then Mexican territory. On the 150th anniversary of the Mormons entering the Salt Lake Valley (1997) I wrote a piece for our local paper about a trek to honor their journey.

The idea for the trek was started by two companies who do such things as a business. The Mormon Church soon realized that it would be known as “The Mormon Trek” by the public, so without actually sponsoring it, the Church supplied money, legal expertise, and “boots on the ground” organization along the 1,000 mile trail.

The highest and toughest section of the trail is Rocky Ridge, where many died of exhaustion or froze to death in the 1800s. It’s roughly between Jeffery City and Atlantic City, WY on the continental divide.

Sounds like the place to be for a story…let’s do it!

I called the Church “media relations” office to see what credentials I’d need to join their party and was politely told that world class media had been covering the Trek for months (true) and that all the credentials had been issued months ago. I took that as an invitation to join up.

Figuring about when the train would be in the area of the Ridge, I threw some gear into my pickup and headed out before dawn to see if I could find them. On a dark highway, somewhere north of Farson, WY, a large stake bed truck carrying plastic porta-potties roared past me. Where else could a pack of pink plastic potties be headed, out here in the middle of Wyoming, but for the dang wagon train? I followed the truck discreetly as the sun climbed into the sky.

Turns out it was headed for the noontime lunch/rest/ potty rendezvous site on the banks of the Sweetwater River. That was perfect for me. I found the “wagon master” and asked if I could spend a couple of days with him to write my story. He said, “If you can convince the Press Liaison Office, which is located in a trailer behind the Atlantic City Mercantile bar in Atlantic City, it’s OK by me.”

I knew the Atlantic City Merc from my oil drilling days (see A Summer in Butch Cassidy Country) so with the sorta recommendation from the wagon master, I was soon in possession of the prized yellow bandana, which gave me press status.

Whew!

The several-hour round trip put me back into camp just in time for the evening meal. The nice lady in Salt Lake was not kidding when she said “world class” media. Film, TV, and print crews from Germany, Japan, the Philippines, Italy, and more were there. The BBC had a film crew doing a multi-part documentary. Sygma Photo News of New York and Paris sent a photojournalist expressly to cover the Rocky Ridge crossing and the trail into Salt Lake. Around the campfire “Sygma” and I seemed to hit it off, especially when he found I had my own vehicle.

The following day was a 20-mile slog through choking dust. Few photo ops, so my new Sygma friend (sorry I can’t recall his name) and I jumped into my truck, and along with several other vehicles scouted photo spots for the next day’s climb over the Ridge. A World Class photojournalism lesson.

We saw a troop of Boy Scouts, several mountain bikes, and even what must have been a rental van, bump, scrape, bang and spark their way over the Ridge heading west.

The next morning following the pre-dawn prayer, we got what can only be described as a gut punch. It seems after previously okaying handcarts (but no wagons) over the Ridge, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) who manages the area had decided “No Handcarts” after all. “For your own safety” they had changed the route to cut out the Ridge! The organizers of the Trek had known about the decision for weeks, but waited until morning prayers to tell us so we would not have a chance to raise hell with our BLM minders.

The organizers estimated that as many as 10,000 people had joined the Trek, for an hour, for a day, or even longer as it crossed this great country of ours. It was Feel Good Americana at its finest, and without asking for government permission of any kind. Imagine that! BLM jerked the Ridge just because they could, and the organizers decided to “go along to get along.” A double-doublecross!

I did manage to salvage one of the shots Sygma and I had scouted. That’s the BBC film crew in the foreground. Choking dust!

The new BLM-approved route resulted in an easier, shorter day, which left time for a few people with handcarts to load into pickup trucks and return to the Ridge on their own. Gordon Beharrell had come all the way from England to honor his ancestor who had made the journey, and would not be denied! Sygma got the shot he wanted too, and it appeared in National Geographic if memory serves.

It was actually a pretty good solution. Faces were saved, egos were stroked, and the late afternoon light was better for photos than the flat midday light would have been. Oh, and the prayer was a really nice touch, too.

The handcart women seemed to have an earthy fire about them. Sygma’s favorite lens target was a remarkable young woman named Nanc’ Adams who had been with the trek for the entire 93 day journey. To get the whole experience, she often walked barefoot carrying her 4-year-old daughter on her shoulder, while pushing or pulling a cart.

Apparently that was a fairly common practice back in the day. “ Save your shoes for the rough parts” to be sure they will last the whole 1,000 miles.

As the trek got closer to Salt Lake someone thought to check where the handcarts would be featured in the annual 24th of July PIONEER DAY PARADE.

The 24th is bigger in Utah than the 4th of July. It celebrates the day Brigham Young and his pioneers first entered the Salt Lake valley on July 24th 1847, and Brigham said “This Is The Place.”

For some reason the Parade’s previously promised inclusion had been canceled. “Besides, our parade was planned months ago.” Sound familiar?

On June 22, both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran splashy front page stories on the Trek. The City of Ogden, which is just north of Salt Lake, saw it and contacted the Trek to invite them to participate in their much smaller Ogden celebration.

When the good burghers at the Salt Lake Parade realized not only had they fumbled away the prize of a lifetime, but that it was now going to OGDEN (awk!) they reversed their reversal and re-invited the Trek back to Salt Lake. The Parade set new attendance records and the handcarts stole the show.

The animosity between Salt Lake and Ogden goes way back to 1869 when the completion of the transcontinental railroad near Ogden brought money, booze, and painted ladies to the previously isolated “City of The Saints.” Ogden is still pretty much a railroad town today.

The whole Trek was happy worldwide news. Everyone loves a success story. I think the best story was in the local Ogden Standard-Examiner with a two-page foldout of barefoot Nanc ’Adams pushing a cart while carrying her daughter, with the “This Is the Place” monument in the background.

And it looks like a Sygma photo to boot. What a grand adventure!

Thanks for listening.

Duane

What could a retired hooker with a deformed face teach a 15-year-old rich kid from Detroit, a kid who would one day become president of the Packard Motor Company?

James F. Joy (1810-1896) sent his only son Henry Bourne Joy (1864-1936) to the Joy Mining District in Utah at the tender age of 15 to try his hand at gold mining and hopefully gain some “life experience.”

What better life coach for the homesick young man than the now retired “soiled dove,” bartender, nurse, and counselor, Mary Laird.

Mary (Maggie) Devitt was working as a dove at the tavern in Fish Springs, Utah when she got into a fight with another gal, who pushed Maggie onto the floor and smashed her face with a heavy old-fashioned liquor bottle.  The blow so disfigured Mary’s face that she was known thereafter as “No-Nose Maggie.”

Maggie lay in a coma for two and a half days while her co-workers, assuming she would soon pass away, took what few possessions she had including the clothes off her body.  A young miner passing through the settlement saw Maggie’s plight and, women being in critically short supply on the frontier, loaded her onto his buckboard and headed for his mining claim in Joy, Utah, some 50 miles away. 

Somewhere during the journey, Maggie regained consciousness, and realizing she was on her way to a new life, clambered onto the seat of the buckboard with her new young man, who hopefully provided her with some sort of covering.  Such was life in the mining camps on the frontier in the 1800s.

Maggie, whose last name was now Laird, and her new hubby built a one-room structure near the only spring in the area, and it became the center of life for the little community.  It was supermarket, doctor’s office, pharmacy, saloon, and counseling center.

After three years in the mining camp, the now older and considerably wiser Henry Joy returned to his native Detroit. He became president of the Detroit Union Railroad upon his father’s death in 1896, and also assumed the presidency of Packard Motor Car Company. 

Packard was one of America’s “Three P’s,” PACKARD, PEERLESS, and PIERCE-ARROW, storied marques known for high quality, luxurious automobiles. Packard’s advertising slogan was “ASK THE MAN WHO OWNS ONE!”  

Henry realized that automobiles would never amount to much until buyers had actual roads to drive on, not just the muddy tracks that passed for highways. In 1913 he became one of the principal organizers and the first president of the Lincoln Highway Association (www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org), which advocated building a “rock highway” from New York City to San Francisco. 

Henry had apparently acquired a taste for the great open spaces during his time in Joy.  He spent at least one month of each year–in the latest model Packard–traveling the 3,300 mile length of the “Lincoln,” which was still overwhelmingly dirt.  Much of his time was spent in the Utah desert, including Fish Springs, since Utah was the most harrowing section in the whole country.

The US Army sent a convoy across the Lincoln in 1919, which took over two months to complete, much of the time stuck in the mud.  The experience convinced a young lieutenant named Eisenhower of the need for a true transcontinental highway.  As president in 1955, “Ike” signed the Defense Highways Act, authorizing the construction of the first interstate highways.

Packard Motor Company played a huge role in winning both World Wars; manufacturing cars, trucks, and engines.  The Packard-Merlin Rolls Royce V-12 powered the English Mosquito and the Spitfire, American PT Boats, the iconic American P-51 Mustang, plus many other war-winning machines.

Henry died in 1936, just as WWII was starting to take shape, and Packard was once again shifting to a wartime footing. Without the leadership Henry and his father James had provided, Packard foundered in the postwar economy and faded from the scene in the mid-1950’s.

The Joy smelter burned about 1917 and the decision was made to close the mine.  Maggie stayed on as Joy’s only resident and her store, saloon, hotel continued to serve the occasional sheep herder, cowboy, and desert wanderer.

One bitter cold night a young man from “The East” had a little too much to drink, said good night, and stumbled out into the darkness.  They found his stiffened body the next morning about 100 yards from Maggie’s door, and buried him where he lay.  Passersby still tend the grave.  It’s marked, but unfortunately with no name.

Maggie passed in 1934, and  Lady Laird Peak now officially looks over the valley where she ruled and Henry Joy came of age. 

Her building is gone but the spring and the mountain peak bear witness to Maggie’s lessons of life, love, toughness, and the will to survive against all odds.

Thanks for listening.

My dad’s sister Rena met a handsome young officer named Bud Ziegler from Illinois during WWII,  and the following story became part of our family lore.

One of the true financial buccaneers of THE GUILDED AGE, John W. “BET A MILLION” Gates, was born in 1855 in rural Illinois.  Starting as a hardware store clerk, Gates blustered and bluffed his way up the social and financial ladder until one day he found himself riding across the country in J.P. Morgan’s private rail car, passing the time betting Morgan $10,000 a pop in 1890 dollars, on which raindrop would make it to the bottom of the window first. 

As a young man, Gates used to love hearing traveling salesmen (known then as drummers) tell stories of travel, conquest, and money as they sold him hardware stock.  One day, a drummer had a new product, barbed wire, which he claimed was going to “change the world!”  When Gates discovered the largest manufacturer of barbed wire was his mother’s cousin, who lived right there in Illinois, he said goodbye to his pregnant wife and took the train to Chicago.

Isaac Ellwood, “Colonel Ike,” was the lord of the wire world in 1876.  He looked at the plump young yokel who claimed to be a salesman, with a letter from his mother, and on a lark gave him “the whole state of Texas.”  Others had tried to sell “bob wire” to the Texas ranchers and been run out of town.  In fact, there were several carloads of wire sitting on sidetracks that weren’t worth the cost of sending them back.

After a long dusty train and stagecoach ride to San Antonio, during which Gates won enough at poker to sustain himself for several months, he tried his first sales calls.   The range bosses were sure no sissy Eastern wire could hold their longhorn cattle, and the cowboys were sure if they ever did fence in the range with “the Devil’s Wire” they’d be out of a job.

Gates was sure that if he could just show the ranchers that the wire would work, he could “sell the hell out of it!”  Weeks went by with no sales, until one sultry night on his hotel balcony, watching a medicine man draw a crowd on the plaza below, Gates was struck with “the Big Idea.”  For an appropriate fee, the mayor issued a permit to construct a corral in the middle of the plaza, to put on a “ROUNDUP OF LONGHORNS!”

While Gate’s hired laborers sunk a circle of sturdy poles into the ground and strung barbed wire on them, Gates distributed flyers and posters for miles around advertising “THE MEANEST LONGHORNS & THE TOUGHEST COWBOYS — LOCKED IN MORTAL COMBAT!”  The big night arrived and torches lit the plaza, liquor flowed, and Gates was busy taking side bets from cowboys anxious to double their money with this silly city slicker.  The “KILLER LONGHORNS” (which were actually the most docile creatures Gates could find) were driven into the corral, the gate closed and Mexican caballeros spurred their horses outside the fence, firing pistolas and waving fire brands over the animals.  After a few frantic attempts at escape, in which the steers bellowed with pain, the wire thankfully held and the whole herd cowered in the center of the circle, with the crowd cheering the new KING OF THE RANGE!  Gates pocketed his winnings, and started taking orders for “bob wire” just as fast as he could write them.

Barbed wire did change the world (or at least the western U. S.) almost as much as the coming of the railroad.

Uncle Ike Ellwood’s factories began running 24 / 7, and when Gates realized his sales were the source of the newfound prosperity, he insisted on being taken in as a partner.  Ellwood laughed him out of his office, so an angry Gates set up shop to make his own damn wire.  Although Ellwood held multiple patents on the wire and its manufacture, Gates managed to elude prosecution by locating his machinery where he could move it across the state line by night, when things got hot, and appropriate officials could be “convinced” to drop the charges.  This earned him his first nickname: MOONSHINE GATES.

Gates soon realized the real money was in steel, so in 1889 he sold the wire business to his partners and set his sights on becoming the equal of the titans of the age, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and the great J.P. Morgan,  King of Wall Street.

Soon Gates was buying steel directly from the refineries.  He convinced the other “wire pirates” to form a stock company (in which he owned 51%) to buy their own steel mill which eventually became part of US STEEL.

While competitors were paying Ellwood a royalty on wire they manufactured, and buying their steel at retail, Gates and his combine were underselling them and making huge profits to boot.

The Bessemer process of making high quality steel was developed in Europe in the 1850s.  The new steel was key to making the wire and railroad rails that spanned the U.S. in 1869.  U.S. plants were slow to adopt the new process, so most high quality Bessemer steel “pigs” were imported.  Showing no sign of bashfulness, Gates showed up at J. P. Morgan’s office one day and proposed a scheme to buy as many pigs as he could in the U. S., then go to Europe and buy all that were available there.  This would create a shortage, thus inflating the price.  Morgan would supply the money and he and Gates would split the profits.  Seeing a way to jab his archrival Andrew Carnegie, J. P. lent him the money and the whole scheme succeeded marvelously!

By 1898, Gates was ready to slow down, and decided to return to Texas. He had sold a speculator named Arthur E. Stillwell the steel rails to build 778 miles of railroad from Kansas City to a swampy town site on the Gulf Coast, optimistically named Port Arthur after his son.  Gates offered to buy 51% of the railroad, then got his friend E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific to buy the other 49%. Gates built a large mansion in Port Arthur, a municipal sewer system, docks, port facilities, and even a library…named of course the John W. Gates Memorial Library.

A local wildcat oil driller named Pat Higgins had run out of money drilling on a hillock known locally as Spindletop and offered to sell Gates 51% of the well in exchange for financing.  Knowing nothing about oil (remember there were only a few hundred cars in the U.S. then, only a few thousand in the world, and most crude oil was refined into a kerosene-like product as a substitute for whale oil in lamps) Gates accepted Higgin’s offer.  On 10 Jan 1901, Spindletop blew in, spouting the wooden rig, men, and oil 160 feet into the air. Gates immediately bought out Higgins. 

Gates built a pipeline to Port Arthur, where a refinery was built, along with docks and a deep water port.  When J. D. Rockefeller (STANDARD OIL) offered to buy the new company for 25 million (around $700,000,000 today) Gates turned him down.  When Rockefeller angrily refused to sell or transport his oil, Gates reportedly said, “Then I’ll build my own damn oil company” and  TEXACO was born.

John W. Gates died in Paris in 1911.  Services were held in Paris and Port Arthur, and his body lay in state for several days in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel in New York City.  He is buried in a huge mausoleum in the Oaklawn Cemetery in Yonkers, N. Y., alongside his son (who never married) and his wife, who apparently spent most of her married life at home.  Both died shortly after John, and a few of Gate’s cousins split his fortune.   One of the heirs, (Colonel) Edward J. Baker, took part of his money to build a luxury hotel in St. Charles, Illinois, and hired my uncle Bud Ziegler as a young bell hop.  Bud retired as the General Manager, and my beautiful Aunt Rena was often the hostess for gala parties. The hotel is still operating and worth a visit.

.