St. Louis University Grad School 02

Difficulties, financial and academic, characterized the next year of grad school. The financial part was simple. Without the teaching assistantship, Sandy and I weren’t going to make enough teaching part-time at Harris for us to live. So, I had to take out several small loans to cover the tuition. I hated to do it but had no other choice. Towards the end of the semester (some time in late March or early April), I was so worried about money that I began looking for a job. One of my professors told me the CIA had contacted him a day or so previously and asked if he could recommend a student for a job. He wondered if I would be interested. After thinking for a few seconds I said I would. And so began my short and strange dance with the spooks.

Perhaps a week later I had a brief interview with a CIA rep I barely recall. He gave me an application and said if I was interested in being considered I should fill out the application and mail it. Which I did. It was the longest and most detailed application I would ever see.

A couple weeks after mailing it I received a phone call setting up a time on the next Saturday for me to come to the University and take a pre-employment exam. I agreed. The exam was complex and took four hours. Afterwards, I turned it in to the proctor and left. Two weeks later I received another call setting up a second exam for the following Saturday. That one took eight hours, not counting an hour lunch break. A couple weeks after that I was invited to a long interview with another CIA representative. I though it went well. He told me that if the evaluation was positive I would be hearing from him. Shortly after that he called and told me the Agency had tentatively approved me for a national security background check, which was for a Top Secret clearance. Whoa. The FBI would interview my family, past and present neighbors, teachers, professors, and friends. I had to call everyone I knew and warn them.

The FBI did interview everyone I had listed on the application and then some. For damned sure. After a couple months I received a call from the CIA agent who had conducted the second interview. He offered me a job as a photogrammetry analyst and said I would spend the first six months getting advanced photo and satellite analysis training at a CIA installation somewhere in Indiana and then would start working at the headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

That’s when I told him I had changed my mind and was no longer interested in working for the CIA. Oh, shit, the man didn’t take rejection well. He raised his voice and told me the government had wasted $50,000 on the interview process and how dare I lead the Agency on a wild goose chase. He was royally pissed off and let me know in no uncertain terms. I told him I had re-thought my interest and decided the Agency wasn’t right for me, especially considering what was happening in Vieetnam and hung up before he could further erode the lining of my inner ear.

The academic difficulty centered on a course in techniques of geographic research taught by Jack Licate, a young professor who had a BS from SLU and was fresh from doctoral studies the University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious Geography departments in the country. He was extremely intelligent and more than a bit squirrely. Today, the word would be geeky but back then squirrely hit that nail on the head. His course was really stimulating and I liked it the best of all my courses. I earned all As on the many papers that were due, one a week as I remember it. But when the final paper came due I was not in the right frame emotionally, worrying about money was one of the numerous more important things on my mind, so I decided to sort of blow it off. Seeing that I had a sure A by that point. So I turned in what I knew was a mediocre effort.

Several weeks later the grades were mailed home. I opened the letter, read the report, and went ballistic. Licate had given me a C. It was the only C I had ever received in any geography course. After ranting and raving in what amounted to a blind rage, I called his number at the university. To my surprise he answered and I sort of calmly asked him why the grade. He gave me some song and dance about me not taking the course seriously and maybe I should come in to his office the next day and we could talk about it face to face.

When I showed up at his office I was still steaming. He started with the same bullshit about me not taking the course seriously and I interrupted and demanded to know how all As in every paper other than the final could possibly equal a C. He told me the grade was a reflection of my understanding of geographic research as was demonstrated by the final assignment. He said that I was coasting and not putting in the effort graduate school demanded.

That’s when I lost it and started yelling at him. I literally told him he was full of shit and that he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. After about fifteen minutes of me ranting and cursing and him just calmly sitting there, probably dazed that a student would speak to him like that, I told him I would take the issue up with the Dean of Arts and Sciences because the final mark he gave me couldn’t be supported by the grades I earned throughout the course. And stormed out.

Even though I was hugely pissed off I knew deep down that he was right. I had been coasting and had blown off that assignment. After stewing about it over the summer I decided not to go to the dean after all but to enroll in whatever course Licate was going to be teaching the next semester and do well. Which I did. On that first day of class, when he walked into the room and saw me sitting in the first row, his eyes opened wide. I knew he was more shocked than surprised. To make a long story short, I received an A in that course and in the next one I took from him. And the letter of recommendation he wrote almost certainly was part of the reason I was accepted into grad school for a PhD.

The next semester I enrolled in only one more grad course and started working full-time as a marketing representative for Shell Oil Company. Dick Patterson, who at that time owned eight or nine gasoline service stations in the St. Louis area and the largest Shell station in the Midwest outside of Chicago, was responsible for getting me the interview with the District Manager.

I did well on that interview and was invited to Chicago for the next one. A week later I was hired to work in Shell’s Central Region (Chicago) but they decided to have me go through a year of training in St. Louis before moving to the Windy City. That situation suited me perfectly since my goal was to get into a good grad school for doctoral work and to hell with Shell.

For the next ten months I worked in Shell’s St. Louis District Office, learning the oil business. I did everything from working in a station for a week, to spending a week at the Wood River Refinery, to a week riding in a delivery truck holding 8,000 gallons of product, two months working in the office with the financial manager and the TBA (tires-batteries-accessories) guy, a month with the real estate guy, and four or five months shadowing first one than another marketing rep.

The only interesting thing that happened in the hugely boring ten months occurred one day when the real estate guy (who I had known from grade school) turned up sick and I was at loose ends. The Assistant Manager gave me a bunch of make work to keep me busy and out of his office. Around 3:00 he told me to read the lease agreement for the new district office the company was moving into within three months. I was irritated since I knew it was just bullshit until 5:00 rolled by and I would be out of his hair. But I sat at the small desk and carefully read the entire document, start to finish, including the lengthy appendices. That’s when I perked up and turned back to the main body of the lease. I re-read one part, turned to the appendix I had just read, and re-read it. Both sections referred to extensive storage space and how the cost was to be calculated in the yearly rent since that space could expand or contract as Shell required more or less space.

In short, the two passages contradicted themselves. The initial part calculated the rent one way while the appendix calculated it in another, totally different manner. It didn’t take a genius or a business major to see the two sections were at odds. Actually, the way the main part of the lease was written, Shell would pay almost double for the storage space when compared to the way the cost was calculated in the appendix.

I took the lease to the Assistant Manager and told him about the problem. He laughed and said in a condescending tone there was no way. The lease had been approved by the Central Marketing Division HQ in Chicago, the North American HQ in New York, and the international HQ in London. It was a done deal. He gave me a patronizing smile and said not to worry about it.

Instead of departing with my tail between my legs I opened the lease to the part describing the storage space and asked him to read it. Then I turned to the appendix and pointed to the formula and didn’t say a word. He read it, read it again, and then turned back to the original clause. “Son of a bitch,” was his only comment before thanking me and hurrying to his boss’s office.

Several months after I left the company, Dick Patterson showed me a Shell marketing brochure. One of the things it covered was a Shell Oil awards banquet in New York. A picture in the brochure showed the Assistant Manager receiving a check and a plaque from the North American CEO for finding a mistake in a lease that could have cost Shell several hundreds of thousand dollars. Oh well.

All throughout the time I worked at Shell I thought about applying to grad school. Sandy was not supportive since she was adamantly opposed to leaving St. Louis. After considerable reflection, I had requested and filed out applications to five grad schools for a doctorate in geography: Chicago, Wisconsin, Kansas, Michigan, and Florida. Each required a payment of $25 for processing. You might not think that a significant sum but $25 in 1967 had the same buying power as $166 in 2011. So, effectively I would have had to lay out the equivalent of about $830 in today’s money. And we were poor as church mice.

One night in anger and depression after a fight with Sandy over money I tore up four of the five applications and the checks I had included and threw them in the trash. The fifth, to the University of Florida, I had mailed the day before or it would have been destroyed as well. And was depressed as hell since teaching at the university level was the only life I wanted.

Jack Licate approached me in mid-winter and asked if I had been considering applying to graduate schools to work on a doctorate. I sighed and told him the sad story. He said that if I was still interested in pursuing an education he would contact Marvin Mikesell, his advisor at the University of Chicago. Holy shit, I nearly fell on the floor.

First, although fairly young, Mikesell was a huge name in cultural geography, one of the brightest stars in that constellation. He was one of the geographers who were at the forefront of changing how the academic world looked at geographers. Second, Licate was the guy who gave me a C in his course on geographic methods and still would recommend me to Mikesell. Jesus.

Of course, I would be VERY interested. Jack said he would see what he could do and would get back to me. When I left his office I was walking on air. Literally.

Probably two months went by before Jack asked me to come to his office. Once I was seated he told me that Mikesell was interested in my coming to Chicago. But all the TA and RA slots had been allocated for the Fall Semester because I had not applied within the appropriate time period. Shit, I didn’t know that I had applied at all. But, Jack continued, if I could enroll as a grad student in the Fall Semester Mikesell was certain I would get departmental financial support in the Winter Semester and from there on.

I didn’t know whether to breath or die on the spot. The University of Chicago was easily in the top five schools of geography in the world. Its reputation was stellar. Graduation with a Chicago PhD was a near guarantee of a good job at a first-class institution, or so I thought at the time. Going there had been a dream of mine for many years. I must have mumbled something to Jack on the order of thanks for going to bat for me and I’ll get back to you after I talk to my wife and ran straight to the library. Before the days of the internet, that’s where you went to dig up information. The recollection makes me smile.

The first thing I did was locate a Univ. of Chicago grad catalog and look up the tuition. My eyes nearly popped out. Annual graduate tuition was between $5,000 and $6,000, depending on the number of hours you took. My heart dropped like a stone. [Author’s Note: In today’s dollars that would have been anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000] No way in hell could I afford even one semester’s tuition. Even if I enrolled in the minimum number of hours the tuition would be close to $2,500. And that didn’t count the outlay for books and fees, which universities always hit you with. No possible way. Even if both San and I worked full-time it would be close. And since she was already pregnant and expecting in mid-May we would have three mouths to feed and no family in Chicago to babysit while we worked.

That afternoon I took the bus home rather than wait for San to pick me up from the campus. I was too dejected to talk to her. I had come face to face with my dream and the bubble popped almost before I could revel in the possibilities. Years later San told me she thought I held it against her for not being able to go to Chicago. In a way I did because if I hadn’t torn up that application to Chicago I might have had a strong shot at a fellowship. But, you never know. Life is filled with uncertainties. And, if I was upset about not going to that Mecca of geography, that resentment faded many decades ago.

Four months later I received a letter from James R. Anderson, chairman of the Florida Geography Department, offering me a grad teaching assistantship. I was in heaven. Although Sandy was distinctly not happy, I called Anderson the next day and accepted. We were on our way to Florida. Yes!