Clive Cussler Read online

  With his Jaguar parked in the driveway, Clive was ready to pursue Barbara. After she had met Clive, Barbara had majored in art at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Returning to Los Angeles, she spent several semesters at El Camino College in Torrence, before transferring to UCLA. Clive and Barbara were soon dating on a regular basis and, in late January 1955, Clive drove up to Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills and proposed. Clive and Barbara were married on August 26, 1955, at the Chapel of the Roses in Pasadena. Dick and Caroline Klein were best man and matron of honor and Felix Dupuy served as an usher.

  After a week’s honeymoon in Ensenada, Mexico, the couple rented an apartment in Alhambra on Hellman Boulevard. To raise the money needed to outfit the apartment, Clive sold the Jaguar and replaced it with a used Nash Rambler station wagon. “Barbara never forgave me,” Clive says. “She claimed she would have cooked dinner on a camp stove, eaten on the floor, and decorated the place with wooden crates rather than part with the Jaguar.”

  After they were married, Barbara left UCLA and went to work in the personnel department at the Southern California Gas Company. Clive was hired as a salesman at Peter Satori Motor’s Pasadena store. One afternoon, Dick Klein stopped at the dealership to say hello. “Clive was eating his lunch in the back seat of a Rolls-Royce in the service area,” Klein says. “He looked absolutely miserable. When I asked him how he liked selling cars, he confessed, ‘I couldn’t sell a glass of water to a man dying of thirst in the desert.’ Clive was always such a go-getter, and I had never seen him that down.” Sliding into the seat next to his friend, Klein admitted he was also unhappy.

  Klein had enlisted in the air force a few weeks before Clive and spent three years running a printing press at a base in St John’s, Newfoundland. He was currently preparing zinc plates used for offset printing, a tedious process involving a slimy, abrasive solution and acid. On weekends, Clive would sometimes help Dick clean the residue out of the catch tubs, a job he remembers as, “Very labor intensive, very hot, and very dirty.”

  “Here we were,” Klein says, “the two of us, sitting in the back of a Rolls-Royce, stuck in jobs we loathed. Clive asked me, ‘What do you think we should do?’ Since we both knew how to work on cars, off the top of my head, I suggested we open a service station. Clive thought about it for a few minutes, flashed the familiar Cussler grin and told me it was the best idea I’d ever had.”

  Union Oil Company’s headquarters in downtown Los Angeles was their first stop. When the company’s representative inquired about their experience, Clive and Dick explained they had been working on cars since they were teenagers. The rep informed them there was more to operating a service station than changing a spark plug or replacing a head gasket. If they were serious, he would arrange it so they could spend a day working at a station in Glendora. The owner, who wanted to retire, could provide the rep with an evaluation of their performance.

  After Clive and Dick put in a ten-hour day at the station, the owner invited them to a local watering hole where he proceeded to hammer the beers. When it was time to leave, he was in no condition to drive. Clive and Dick volunteered to drive their new friend home, but after spending the evening listening to him rant about how much his wife disapproved of his drinking, they propped him up in a chair on the porch, rang the doorbell, and made a hasty escape.

  No good deed goes unpunished. When Clive contacted Union Oil, the rep informed him, “You guys are going to hate me now, but someday you will appreciate what I’m telling you. The station owner says you guys would be lucky to stay in business for six months. Get some experience and come back and see me.” Despite his initial disappointment, Clive agreed they had a lot to learn, and the rep offered to make a few calls on their behalf - Clive reported to a Union Oil station in Los Angeles, and Dick was hired by a station in Monterey Park.

  Clive and Dick had been working in their respective stations for six months when a “For Lease” sign appeared in the window of a Mobil station in Alhambra. Clive contacted Mobil and heard a familiar refrain - you don’t have enough experience. However, when the company learned Clive and Dick had lived in Alhambra for twenty-plus years, the lease was approved. Dick laughs, “Mobil figured our families, friends, and neighbors would buy enough gas, oil changes, and lube jobs to pay the bills.”

  “Clive and Dick’s Petrol Emporium” opened for business in November 1955. Located at the corner of Garvey Avenue and Ramona Boulevard, adjacent to the San Bernardino Freeway, the station was similar to countless red and white Mobil stations scattered across America in the 1950s. The office was separated by a wall from the two service bays, each equipped with a hydraulic lift - restrooms were around back. A pair of pumps, regular and ethyl, along with air and water hoses, were located on an island. Close to the street, a large, freestanding sign was crowned with Pegasus, Mobil’s famous red flying horse. “Clive,” Dick remembers, “always got a kick out of referring to Pegasus as, ‘the flying red mule.’”

  This was the era of gas wars. The partners purchased a 1926 Chevrolet truck. Painted red and white, and emblazoned with “Clive and Dick’s Petrol Emporium,” the colorful vehicle parked next to the busy freeway, displaying the station’s gas prices. As soon as a competing station dropped their price, Clive or Dick would hurry down to change the price on the truck. “Clive,” Dick says, “was always coming up with clever promotions. We did weekly mailings, offering a free brake adjustment or lube job. The majority of the customers who came in for the free deal would end up spending money on a tune up, wipers or tires.”

  Rather than buying their tires from Mobil, Clive and Dick were able to negotiate a better price from Felix Dupuy. Clive persuaded Felix to wrap 100 bald tires in striped paper. The impressive piles of tires gave customers the impression Clive and Dick’s Petrol Emporium was a major tire outlet and therefore able to offer the best price.

  When they opened the station, Clive and Dick worked fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, closing only for Christmas and New Year’s. A year later, two employees were hired and the partners were able to take some time off. They bought a 1948 Mercury convertible, stripped it - similar to the job Clive had done on his Jewett - and outfitted it with oversized truck tires. Weekends, they would explore Southern California’s deserts, searching for ghost towns, Spanish antiquities, and lost gold mines. Although they never found anything of value, the treasure hunters took along several vintage rifles and amused themselves, plinking at rocks.

  A Harley-Davidson Servi-Car was added to the station’s roster. The three-wheeled motorcycle, fitted with a cargo box behind the seat, would be towed behind a car being delivered to a customer, unhitched and ridden back to the station. The trike was also used to respond to accidents. “The majority occurred on the San Bernardino Freeway,” Dick says. “We would often get there before the cops or ambulance, pry off the doors and perform first aid.” During the four years they owned the station, Clive and Dick testified in eighteen accident investigations.

  Dick and Caroline were renting an apartment in a triplex next door to the station. After their son was born, they bought a house in La Puente. Clive and Barbara were living in the apartment on Hellman Boulevard they shared with a basset hound named Sam. When their landlord informed the couple they were not allowed to have a pet, they moved into the Klein’s vacated apartment. A few months later, Clive purchased the triplex. The extra room came in handy after the arrival of Clive and Barbara’s daughter, Teri Lynn Cussler, in January 1958.

  When Clive and Dick’s Petrol Emporium opened, Mobil estimated the station should pump 27,000 gallons a week. Two years later, Clive and Dick were averaging 36,000 to 40,000 gallons a week. Their success convinced the partners it was time to expand. Another Mobil station, also located in Alhambra, had gone broke, and Clive and Dick were confident they could turn it around. Once the second station was making money, they would add a third, then a fourth, and so on.

  When the plan was presented to Mobil, the company responded with an
emphatic “No!” Dick recalls the stalemate. “Mobil insisted we were doing just fine and should forget about buying another station. Clive and I both knew we would never make any real money with a single station. When the company refused to even discuss our proposal, we sold the business in the fall of 1959.”

  Six months later, construction began on the Long Beach Freeway. Garvey Avenue was closed to through traffic, and the station’s new owners were lucky if they pumped 11,000 gallons a week. Eventually, the station was torn down and replaced by an apartment building.

  After they sold the station, Clive and Dick went their separate ways.

  Clive remembers feeling, “kind of lost and up in the air.” With only one year of junior college, three years wrenching on aircraft engines and four years pumping gas, his options were limited. One thing he was sure of, any future employment would have absolutely nothing to do with spark plugs.

  A headhunter contacted Clive and told him a Newport Beach supermarket was looking for an advertising manager. The job - requiring neither a college degree nor experience - sounded like something to consider. Willing to try almost anything, Clive called and scheduled an interview.

  Richard’s Lido Market was a forerunner to today’s boutique supermarkets. Located near the waterfront in Newport Beach, the upscale market opened in 1956. “The store’s plush interior, muted color scheme, and dramatic lighting,” Clive says, “was something you might expect to find in a nightclub, not a supermarket. I have never seen another food store with a comparable degree of sophistication.”

  When Clive arrived for his interview, he was ushered into the store manager’s office. “He asked me if I had a background in advertising,” Clive says. “I lied, of course, telling him I had worked on all sorts of campaigns for some very large accounts.” Impressed, the manager asked Clive to return with a sample of his work. Leaving the store, with nothing to show, and worried a more qualified candidate might arrive at any minute, Clive bought a newspaper, a large piece of cardboard, a ruler and a pencil. Sitting in his car’s passenger seat - he was now driving a Volkswagen bug - Clive studied the supermarket advertising in the newspaper and roughed out an ad. “Honestly,” he admits, “it wasn’t very good.”

  Returning to the market, he presented it to the manager who agreed with Clive. “I think the word he used was ‘mediocre.’” With any hope of being hired slipping away, Clive told him it was the best he could do sitting in his car. After looking at the ad again, the manager laughed. “If you managed to do this sitting in a Volkswagen, I guess it isn’t that bad.”

  Clive would later write, “Advertising and I were meant for each other. You need a devious mind, combined with an industrious talent for innuendo, duplicity, and hokum. It was a perfect fit.”

  Clive had only been on the job for a few hours when he faced a crisis. His first assignment was a full-page newspaper ad announcing the market’s weekly specials. After doodling for several hours, with a deadline looming, he had nothing to show. Hustling to the store manager’s office, Clive casually mentioned how impressed he was with the store’s recent ads. The manager was responsible for the ads before Clive arrived. Explaining he operated under the premise, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Clive asked if he could look over the manager’s shoulder while he “worked his magic.”

  The manager took the bait. Within six months, Clive not only developed his own style, the store’s ads were winning awards from the Orange County Advertising Club and the Ladies Home Companion Supermarket Competition.

  In the fall of 1960, Clive sold the triplex and rented an apartment in Newport Beach. In the morning, he would get up early and spend an hour running, swimming, and body surfing, before riding his bicycle to the market. Teri was now three. “Living so close to the ocean was wonderful,” she recalls. “I was convinced the beach was simply an extension of our front yard.”

  Clive and Barbara, now expecting their second child, purchased a three-bedroom house on Primrose Street in Costa Mesa. Located a few miles east of Newport Beach, the small town was known as the lima-bean-growing capital of the world. Dirk Eric Cussler was born in January 1961.

  “Our backyard in Costa Mesa had a wild jungle feeling,” Teri says. “Dad built an oriental garden with a fish pond and planted all sorts of trees, bushes and flowers. Our playhouse was built on stilts, and the roof and sides were covered with bamboo. It had one of the tricks Dad has always been famous for - a sandbox hidden under the floor. The kids on our block were always coming over to play in our yard.”

  April 12, 1961, marked the 100th anniversary of the first shots fired during the Civil War. Clive decided the centennial provided a wonderful opportunity to promote Richard’s Lido Market. Assisted by Leo Bestgen (a part-time employee who was studying art at Orange Coast College), Clive pulled out all the stops.

  Enlarged images by noted Civil War photographers decorated the store, and Clive rented period costumes from Knott’s Berry Farm and MGM’s costume department - the market’s employees looked like they just walked off the set of Gone with the Wind. Products still being produced by companies dating back to the Civil War - including H.J. Heinz, Arm & Hammer, Van Camps, and Underwood Deviled Ham - were advertised at their 1860s’ prices. “That one,” Clive says, “almost caused a riot.”

  Customers who brought in a vintage photograph of an ancestor dressed in a Civil War uniform qualified for a free pound of hamburger. By the time the promotion ended, the market had given away more than 200 pounds of meat. A few years after he left Richard’s, Clive ran into the store manager who hired him. Clive’s Civil War extravaganza, he acknowledged, was the most successful promotion in the market’s history.

  Clive liked his job, but his relationship with owner Dick Richard was never harmonious. “Dick,” Clive says, “was a peppery, short-tempered control freak with a Napoleon complex. He stood a little over five feet, and we were convinced he was threatened by anybody taller than him. I was constantly fighting with him over the design and content of the store’s advertising.”

  Things came to a head when Clive and Leo’s work was noticed by several local retailers. Asked if they would consider freelancing, Clive went to see his supervisor who had no objections as long as it did not interfere with their duties at the market. During a Chamber of Commerce meeting several of the duo’s freelance clients cornered Dick Richard. After relating how delighted they were with his employee’s creative efforts, they told him he was lucky to have such talented fellows on his payroll.

  For reasons only he understood, Richard called Clive and Leo into his office the next day and fired them. “Not only had I gotten permission from the manager,” Clive says, “None of our freelance clients were in competition with the market. We didn’t even get two weeks’ notice. The ungrateful S.O.B. simply showed us the door.”

  Clive and Leo’s unpleasant departure from the market convinced them they should combine their talents and work for themselves. The Bestgen and Cussler Agency opened for business in October 1961. “We rented an office in Newport Beach,” Clive says. “It was small, only two rooms, but after we painted, wallpapered, and decorated the place with a few antiques, it looked pretty good.”

  Leo set up his drawing board in one room, and Clive knocked out copy in the “conference room” on a large table purchased at a Railway Express damaged goods sale. Initially, business was slow and Clive had to augment his income by working nights in a liquor store. Less than a year after the agency opened, Bestgen and Cussler’s cash flow had improved to the point where Clive was able to quit the liquor store, and the agency moved to a larger office, also in Long Beach.

  One of the agency’s clients owned a large yacht. Following an evening of merrymaking aboard, the owner headed for shore in his runabout. On the way, the tipsy mariner collided with several moored vessels but managed to run his boat up on the beach before it sank. Rather than salvaging the craft, he gave it to Clive. With the help of several friends, Clive pulled the boat off the beach and towed it hom
e. After repairing the damage, he painted the hull red, white, and blue, replaced the tired inboard engine with a potent 100 horsepower outboard, and lettered First Attempt on the transom.

  Teri remembers the family’s weekends on the water. “After speeding around Newport Harbor, Dad would find a secluded beach on one of the islands and park the boat. Mom and Dad would whip up a wonderful picnic lunch while we kids played in the water.”

  The runabout was fun, but Clive, like most boat owners, lusted after something bigger. He traded up to a twenty-six-foot navy whaleboat, previously owned by a Swedish carpenter, who had added a deck and cabin. By the time Clive finished with his own refinements, including another multicolored paint job, the vessel was, according to Clive, “A ‘character boat.’ I naturally christened the craft Second Attempt, and we had great times entertaining friends and rubbing gunnels with yachts costing millions of dollars. But, I learned the ageless lesson - a boat is a hole in the water you shovel money into. Except for a little eight-foot Sabot sailboat, she was the last craft I ever owned.”

  In the fall of 1963, Bestgen and Cussler, with a client waiting list, was thriving, but the partners were bored. Tired of laying out mundane ads, Leo wanted to concentrate on a career as an illustrator. Clive was ready to see if he had the stones to cut it at a major advertising agency. After selling the accounts, office equipment, and furniture, the two men shook hands and set out on their new callings.