I returned to the States in September of ’56, and was discharged out of Treasure Island, San Francisco.  I returned to college in Santa Barbara. It was then known  as the University of California at Santa Barbara.  The first semester I was on academic probation, seems they had a long memory. But I decided to get serious, and made up the grades finally graduating with a BA in economics. 

College was finished but not before  April 7th ’56 when  our twins were born. We had a boy and a girl, Eric and Lisa.  We ended college with $50 in our checking account. But I had a job with what was then General Petroleum, a subsidiary at that time of Mobile Oil. I went to work for them. 

Fortunately they moved us, and we decided to go back to Sierra Madre so we could be near Joyce’s family, where she could get some help with the twins. And so her mother and aunt were there to help her with that, and her dad helped us rent a place, located something for us. And so I went to work for General Petroleum and was training to be a sales rep. Which eventually I went through the training and after going through a few little steps became a sales rep. I had twenty-six stations under me in the Glendale area and Eagle Rock. During that time, I very early discovered that business was not for me. 

How can I put it? Mobile Oil had come along and had taken over General Petroleum, which at that time had been sort of like a family  and people were very happy with it, had worked there all their lives. When Mobile Oil took over, they had sent their hatchet men out and people were kicked out after working seventeen years in order to avoid their receiving retirement. I thought to myself, “Boy, big organizations expect loyalty from you, but they’re not loyal to you.” The bottom line is the thing that speaks. And that just really upset me. 

So I was in a vocational crisis. I mean, I was really miserable, because I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing what I was doing. And I suppose that coupled maybe with other issues in my life, other experience, started me thinking in terms sort of more like the meaning of life or, you know, whatever. Church had never really been a big part of my life at all after I went through confirmation. You know, pretty typical of a kid.