Chapter 6 "General Unknown" from Million Dollar Speedway (c)

CHAPTER 6 GENERAL UNKNOWN Spring 1979

Brooklyn looked as if his eyes were about to pop, a non-medical explanation, although descriptive. His protruding eyes, the exophthalmos thing, could have as easily been described as eyelid retraction or more directly as Marty Feldman disease. Originating in New York City’s Queen borough, the peculiar nickname was misplaced by about ten miles. Ancestrally, Brooklyn belonged to a succession of engravers and merchants. His parents welcomed the young boy’s fascination with science in general, chemistry in particular.

At another boy’s bar mitzvah, a middle-aged uncle checked Brooklyn’s wrist, noting a fast, racing pulse. Inquiring if his nephew felt well, Brooklyn’s response spoke volumes. I feel like I’m going 100-mph, Uncle Bernie. Hey, your eyes pop out just like mine.

A family physician placed a name beside his disease, memorable for two reasons, Graves and disease. Like other Bayside boys Brooklyn registered for Selective Service but when ordered for an Army physical was disqualified. Perhaps not the best news, or was it, no likelihood of dying on the Korean peninsula nor during Vietnam-era recalls.

Matriculating at New York University - NYU, he opted for an advanced course in synthetic chemistry. Some disease characteristics, particularly those driving obsession translated into early successes.

After completing the Ph.D. process in 1975 he joined the corporate chemistry world under the aegis of Louisiana-based Big River Corporation, a manufacturer of gasoline additives. Had he been posted to its more gentile Virginia offices; a different outcome

might have ensued. Instead, he was dispatched to their Shreveport research facility, establishing residence in nearby Bossier City, locally known as Bo-Zur. To say Brooklyn was misplaced, understated the issue. One day while sharing a beer with an African-American man mowing his yard, neighborhood snoops detected a schism between his values and theirs. Whether from irrepressible hyperthyroidism or perhaps due to a shared beer, Brooklyn’s Boz-Yur course shortened.

Across that era each week’s Chemical & Engineering - C&E - News, furnished a fresh list of job-changing opportunities. The thin magazine could easily have been name Chemical & Engineering Jobs.

Brooklyn pinched the latest copy from Big River’s library, driving north in Louisiana's most recognizable automobile, a Citroen D/S. Traveling north on US-71, he made it as far as Pittsburg, no-H, Kansas, before the Citroen’s water pump expired, causing him to seek a reservation at the Stilwell, a hotel boasting both air conditioning and asbestos fireproofing. Begging mercy on the desk, he introduced himself as an out-of-town doctor.

While reviewing an unreserved room list, the clerk inquired What kind of doctor are you?

His reply was accurate, yet dense. Organometallic synthetic chemistry. While only the chemistry term registered, the clerk’s response reflected the candor and openness that make small-town life alternatively refreshing and at other times oppressive. That makes you our second out-of-town visitor for the chemistry post.

Alone in his room, Brooklyn placed a C&E News on his chest prior to taking a nap. But as he paged through listings later that evening, he found a locally relevant entry: Research Chemist, one adapted to teaching multiple sessions of general and organic chemistry; industrial and teaching experience preferred. Forward names of three (3) references along with a curriculum vita to Pittsburg State University.

Vexed at his Big River release, Brooklyn monopolized headquarters’ Xerox room, photocopying letters from professional references. He not only copied his curriculum vita but generously invested in photocopies of two obscure journal articles he helped author. Wedging fifty-copies into a company sales valise, he obscured previously gilded Big River Chemicals lettering.

By lunch on his first Pittsburg day, he had delivered names of three references and a resume, had met two chemistry professors and three of their Eagle-Picher colleagues.

The Eagle-Picher laboratorians shared that their firm owned lead production and refining plants located in both Joplin, Missouri and nearby Picher, Oklahoma. Brooklyn quickly learned how EaglePicher had broadened across mining, refining and distribution of high purity lead compounds.

Pittsburg’s professors included Brooklyn in dialogues during the five days required for a rebuilt Citroen water pump to be bused in from the nearest dealer, from Boston, Massachusetts. While local professors welcomed his interest, Brooklyn was reasoned Pittsburg lacked the Graves-relevant endocrinology expertise he required.

Thankfully, his new professor friends referred him to their colleagues at the University of Kansas City, located one hundred miles north.

Similar to chemical-producing Midland, Michigan and even Wilmington, Delaware, Kansas City shared in 3-per-day syntheses.

Its synthetic contributions were more aligned with regional agricultural, medicinal and polymer products.

Armed with a blacked-out valise, Brooklyn pointed his waterpumping Citroen northward, arriving four hours later at a secondtier Kansas City hotel, the Genie, one featuring inexpensive rates.

He shortly ferried five soiled dress shirts to Ross Miller’s, a wellknown dry cleaning plant east of downtown. The cleaner’s lobby offered him a no-risk opportunity to test communication skills in a city vastly different than Queens, New York.

Similar to Pittsburg, these Kansas City professors furnished collegiality, if not friendship. A senior chemistry colleague initiated a call relay, passing the baton to the department chair before identifying an anchorman, their dean. They all liked the irrepressible New Yorker and a schedule to interview him was devised.

Ross Miller Cleaners wasn’t intimidated by a dried Tabasco stain on a tie of the same design. His light blue Enro shirt evenly absorbed medium starch and Ross Miller performed similar miracles on a blue interview suit. College officials readily hired

Brooklyn, considering themselves lucky to have attracted an NYUtrained chemist.

Evaluations from his first or even his second term’s teaching, presented a disappointing picture. In fairness, Brooklyn’s thyrotoxicotic waxing and waning energy status, plus effects originating in multiple medications, created an uneven, scattered lecturer. Frustrated by his lecture shortfalls, Brooklyn devised a few questions of his own. Why were these students all pre-something? Was he a warm-up act for professional school applicants?

Collegial opportunities fell similarly short of his expectations. A neighboring botanist, Mel-something, appeared to Brooklyn to do little more than catalogue plants. However adapted Brooklyn’s studies were to 3-per-day syntheses, they were also narrowly focused, short-changing him in the liberal features of either art or science.

USMC Mel’s profession and devotion were similar, the science of plants, ferns in particular. He didn’t mind his service-derived nickname but corrected anyone cutely referring to him as a marinebiologist. Mel had waded ashore to some of Okinawa’s most intense fighting. When he arrived only a few palm trees stood and before his 6th Marines departed, no vegetation remained anywhere on the island. From Easter 1945 forward, Mel’s mission became one of eradication of what he viewed as joint obscenities, those surrounding deforestation and defoliation.

His afternoon was spent pressing fern specimens into pages of newsprint. Past fifty-five and nearing sixty, he had captured many fern species. But Missouri was only one place, leaving ten thousand more species un-pressed. In addition to fresh entries, he scrolled through earlier ones, finding solace in their elegance.

While the aroma of plants pressed into damp news print stretches from pleasant to neutral, what Mel experienced that afternoon could only be characterized as sulfurous, maybe even vile.

Its source was removed from his fern press by fewer than forty-feet.

Students in a general chemistry laboratory were performing a time-honored experiment, one entitled Identification of a General Unknown, thereby creating an irritating, toxic sulfur odor that did

more than irritate his nostrils; it reminded Mel-the-veteran of burnt hair and charred flesh.

A young chemistry assistant named Racer presided over a Hellminiature, one in which eighteen Meeker burners heated individual water baths that limited reaction temperatures to the boiling point of water. Each boiling assembly accommodated as many as eight test tubes, each one spiked with a sulfur-containing compound that generated hydrogen sulfide, or as chemists shortened, H-2-S. However anonymous science buildings may have appeared, occupants easily identified one another by their footsteps. The chemistry assistant wasn’t startled to hear Mel’s approaching.

Racer, please see if the maintenance people can un-paint the s prop-out windows so they can be opened, here’s my note. When Racer heard the botanist’s heavy door close, he knew Mel had departed, leaving Andy, the stockroom assistant, as his only employee companion.

Andy had been promoted from orbital floor polisher duties to working in the stockroom, basically ordering supplies and ensuring students initialed glassware breakage forms. Shoving breakage forms at groups of student, he resembled a crazy baseball fan in search of multiple autographs.

Andy quickly completed the breakage protocol at the beginning of each laboratory session, shortly freeing him for naps or even mischief. The previous semester Andy had shared chemical-packing popcorn with students before revealing that the stale snack originated as a packing material surrounding toxic chemicals.

A written reprimand had been placed in his H-R file and nearly everyone agreed he would have been dismissed, if not for the fact that Andy and Olive were raising a developmentally-challenged nine-year-old. Whether due to naps or toxic popcorn, Brooklyn had instructed Racer to keep Andy on a short leash.

Racer couldn’t depart until the last student had submitted her results. Only one student remained, a pre-nursing female identified in the grade book as Gigi or more parenthetically, Gee. Short Frankie Vallee-style hair winged back to reveal attractive features, her light pink blouse sported upturned cuffs bonus-ed by a leatherbanded wristwatch and a link ID-bracelet.

Racer wasn’t sure whether Gigi – Gee was deliberate or perhaps just slow. Nevertheless she paced herself through the chemical identification process, calmly penciling entries before handing Racer her answer sheet.

Consequences of a mistake included erroneously claiming the presence of an absent metal or omitting one actually there. Racer generally placed tilde marks beside correct entries and x’s beside mistakes. In Gee’s case he tilded agreement beside all four, less any x’s. Good job, you batted-a-thousand.

Obviously pleased, Gee quipped. Hey, I’m a softball girl and I know what that means. Racer, I’m familiar with the iron and copper entries but what about the other two, lead and antimony, what are their biological roles?

Correct, iron (Fe) and copper (Cu) are potentially beneficial but lead (Pb) and antimony (Sb) are toxic-only. If you take our advanced course, you’ll learn how to determine the amount present. We have two guys, Drs. Jarrell and Ash, who help us with that.

Racer’s weird name-dropping referred to the inventors of an important instrument, one revolutionizing heavy metal analysis.

The heavy instrument, as opposed to its two inventors, Messrs.

Jarrell and Ash, was present. While Gee required fewer than three hours to identify a few chemicals, that process could take longer, much longer.