Page thirteen... Memoirs of John D. Zieley The next day, we inspected the property and Fritz was enthusiastic over the whole scheme, as he considered the location ideal, and the proposition from a business angle excellent, the only drawback being whether we could obtain the use of the property from the RR Company. Mr. Manville was intimately acquainted with Mr. Cabel, the general manager of the C & O R.R., and told us to call on him in Richmond and use him as an introduction. The next day we left for Richmond and called on Mr. Cabel. We outlined to him our plan and inquired about the property, whether we could lease some on advantageous terms, and whether the RR Co. would have any objection to having it used as a petroleum base, storage and refining plant. After listening to our story Mr. Cabbel said (not sure about spelling of his name, J.D.Z.), "I am not acquainted with your company, know nothing of its financial standing, but if that is satisfactory to the RR Co., I'm sure an arrangement can be made of advantage to both. I like your plan, it has great possibilities and I believe we can work out an agreement along the lines of leasing the property for a term of years at a nominal sum, provided your company agrees to make all shipments of oil over our lines. This would give us additional business which we are very desirous of obtaining, as at present we are not getting any of this class of freight. You go back to your company and tell them when they are ready to go ahead we will make the proper concessions and assist in the development of this business in every way in our power." Well, when we all left Mr. Cabble's office Fritz and myself saw visions of a new distributing plant that would give our company the practical monopoly of that territory and an outlet for a large quantity of fuel oil, both through the Newport News Shipbuilding Co., and also having the cooperation of the C & O RR to develop a large business in gasoline and lubricating oils throughout that territory. But "the saddest of all, it might have been." And this narration. Our plan was good, and as the years since have proven, it would have been a huge success properly financed and managed, but the the only thanks we either of us received from the officials of the Inter-Ocean Oil Co. was to be told that it was a wild, crazy plan of two _visionary_fools_ (underlined), and that's that. The Inter-Ocean Oil Co. is at present not in existence. It never cut any figure as an oil company, but Mr. Ewing, shortly after the events narrated, resigned from the company and joined the Mexican Petroleum Co. which was just being organized. History tells the story of the remarkable success of that company and Mr. Frederic Ewing was one of the chief reasons why it was so successful, an indomitable worker, a man with a vision, and an excellent engineer and sales executive. Well, I never was very successful in drumming up fuel oil business in that territory, chiefly because of the poorly developed manufacturing business in the South at that period, and also because the company I represented could not compete with the larger oil companies who had better facilities for distribution and had advantages in freight rates. And then the Great War began in 1914, brought to a standstill the whole fuel oil business, and so I was recalled to New York, thus ending my friendship with Lem Manville and my visits to the Old Dominion. After our return to New York from Richmond, Va., I continued to work for the Inter-Ocean Oil Co., trying to stir up business in different lines of products such as lubricating oils, asphalts, and asphalt paints, but the Great War was upon us, and when the U.S.A. entered into the conflict, as they did shortly thereafter, business in petroleum products came to almost a complete standstill. I saw trouble looming up on my horizon and I knew I was useless to the company. But I lived on hope and trusted there might come some sudden change, and so I hung on, first because my salary, such as it was, was my only source of income and second because I feared if I resigned I would not be able to obtain another position. In fact, I knew only too well, positions were unattainable as there were at that time thousands of men younger and better equipped that I without work. And thirdly, trouble, and sore trouble, had come upon me from another direction. Lucia had become very ill and I could see her case was hopeless, she needed constant care and required a nurse, and nurses were an expensive luxury, but still I had to have one, and also she required the attention of a physician. How to meet all this on a small salary was my problem, and I knew I would be swamped if I lost my position. I was desperate again, tortured by seeing Lucia failing day by day, and tormented by the thought I was taking money away from the company I was not earning. The way before me was a blind alley and I knew the end of it was only a short step away. I never, through these and the following days, lost faith in God and believed he had made McNammara a tool to carve out for me a new life, and then I recalled my experiences and all I had learned and was still learning. For if God wasn't leading me, why all this? And so I trusted Him and waited for events to show me the way. It was not very long before the next connecting link in the chain appeared. This link was in the person of a Mr. Tewkesbury of Boston, Mass., who one day dropped into our office. He was an officer of a producing oil company in the Panner field, Mexico. I was at that time giving considerable thought to asphalt, and he was interested in my ideas on that product because he was selling a type of crude petroleum which was the most viscous oils product and had the largest residue of asphalt. I had had considerable experience in burning this topped crude as fuel oil, and I remember telling him I thought it a wasteful thing to do, that it might be converted economically into more valuable products. Well, I liked Mr. Tewkesbury from the start and he seemed to take a fancy to me, and so began a friendship that lasted for many years, and his acquaintance turned out to be the link I was looking for, as you will see. _The_Guiding_Hand_was_still_here._ Dr. Dunckel thought it might benefit Lucia if I could get her out of the city, and so we moved to Summit, NJ, obtaining cheap board at the Beechwood Hotel. By cheap board I don't mean to infer that the hotel was a cheap place, it was just the reverse, it was a fine first class hotel and extremely well run by a Miss Gillian, and managed by her sister, Mrs. Bob Roberts. But my income was so small and so uncertain I took the cheapest room in the house, a small room on the top floor without bath. And Mrs. Roberts was most kind to us all the time we lived there which was from the fall of 1916 to the spring of 1918. Lucia became much worse and took to her bed and required constant nursing, and I was able to get a young nurse from a nearby town who came in by the day and I paid her $18 per week. My room and board cost me $30, and in addition to my own personal expenses, such as my commutation ticket to N.Y. and small incidental, ran my budget up to and over my salary, which was then $200 per month. This was my financial condition at this particular time, and in addition to this, I owed doctor bills, and again I found myself hard up. When one day, without previous warning, I was informed by my superior, the manager of the department I was then working in, that my services were no longer required. I am not criticising the manager nor his superiors, the officers of the company who had carried me on their payroll longer than the companies usually do, and while it was the dreaded blow, I knew it must come sooner or later so it was not entirely unexpected, but still it was a hard blow. When I left that office that day I had to exercise my faith to the point of breaking. Here I was after four years just where I began, only worse off. Except I had learned something about petroleum, but what earthly good did that to me in the straights I found myself in, a desperately sick wife who needed comforts and medical attention and required a nurse, no money, no home, no friends whom I could turn to. Another crisis had arrived. I was afraid to go back to Summit. I did not want poor Lucia to know so I walked and walked, street after street, from 11 o'clock, the time I left the office, until my train left late in the afternoon. Almost crazy with worry on the way back to Lucia I decided I must not let her know what happened, so when I entered the room I put on my happiest smile and tried to act as cheerful as I could. But Lucia looking up at me from her pillow said, "John, what has happened?" I said, "Why, nothing." And she replied, "You have lost your position." I couldn't fool her, she read me like a book. And then she said a surprising thing, and it was a prophetic thing she said, "It's the best thing that could ever happen to you, now you will be on your way again." Memoirs of John D. Zieley continue on page fifteen after the Zieley Timeline on page fourteen.