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Harris, Everette (audio interview #1 of 1)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Everette Harris was interviewed in his home in North Long Beach. He couldn't remember how many years he'd been retired and sometimes had trouble remembering other things as well. Still, he talked about many things that have changed since he migrated to California. 2/18/1990
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- 2020-10-02
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- SUBJECT BIO - Everette Harris retired as a manager at a local ARCO refinery. He worked his way up in the company after starting out as a laborer in the 1920s. He and his wife came to Long Beach from Oklahoma in search of better opportunities and he soon found a job at a Richfield oil refinery. There he discovered he could earn more money than he could back home. He continued working for Richfield in many different jobs until the company was taken over by ARCO. In this interview Harris describes how work in the refinery changed while he was employed there. He also talks about some different places that he lived and recreational activities he and his wife participated in and events, such as the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, which he observed. This interview was conducted by a CSULB student. TOPICS - family background in Oklahoma; migrating to California; finding work in an oil refinery; and 1933 Long Beach earthquake;strikes; working at an oil refinery; and recreational activities;
- *** File: lhoweharris1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-3:16)... Brief Introduction Harris was born in 1902 in a small Oklahoma mining town where his father ran a grocery store. Because of a slowdown in mining operations, his parents moved to California. Harris stayed in Oklahoma and married at an early age. He worked on the county road grading crew. In 1922 he came to California because his father had just been hired by Shell Oil Company and told him he could find a better job in the oil boom here. When he first arrived, Harris lived on the westside of the Los Angeles River in Long Beach. (3:16-7:51)... The oil boom brought an influx of job seekers and created a housing shortage in Long Beach. When his father first arrived, for example, he lived in a tent house. Harris' first job in California was helping a brick layer building an Edison plant. When he was laid off by Edison he went to look for a job in the oil business. The day he went to apply at the Richfield Oil refinery, there was a fire in a tower there. (7:51-12:22)... A boss told him there would plenty of jobs as soon as the fire was put out. He waited for about 4 hours, along with 4 others, and went to work later that night. He earned 50 cents an hour, working 7 days a week at Richfield. He first worked in the labor gang for about a year. He worked for a shop foreman putting up cat walks around the refinery towers. Richfield later built a new cracking plant. Oil was pumped in through a pipeline from Signal Hill . At the refinery it was pumped through coker units. His job was to clean the coker units. He didn't know of anybody who got hurt while he worked at that job. (12:22-16:41)... At Richfield he did shift work. He worked one week on each shift, days, swing and graveyard. Men liked shift work because he got paid more. When a worker changed from graveyard to days, he had 48 hours off. Otherwise they worked 7 days a week, 8 hours a day. In the summer, he took his vacation to spend time with his kids. They sometimes went to the beach. People came from all over to visit local beaches. There were lots of houses being built at the time and many oil wells being drilled on Signal Hill; the hill had been divided into town lots before oil was discovered. Many owners of small properties leased their land to oil companies. (16:41-19:00)... He had a daughter and son and his family lived on the westside of the Los Angeles River. Then he moved into a small house right on the beach. Eventually he made enough money to buy a house. It's the one he still was living in at the time of the interview. He rented it for about a year before buying it. (19:00-22:02)... When he worked at the Richfield refinery, it produced fuel oil, gas oil, kerosene and gasoline. These products were pumped into railroad tank cars and shipped out on the Union Pacific railroad. Richfield didn't produce enough oil on Signal Hill to keep the refinery working. Richfield shipped in crude oil from Taft and Bakersfield. Richfield took over the Pan-American Oil Company and used their pipelines. Toward the end of the 1920s, the company laid off some workers. His hours were cut to 36 a week. Most who were laid off later got their jobs back. (22:02-24:40)... There were attempts to organize a union at Richfield, but they were not very successful. He heard that the president of the oil worker's union ran off with a lot of money. Harris had a pretty steady job during the Depression, working about 36 hours a week. He remembers that David E. Day was the chief engineer and A. M. Kelley was president of the company. Both of them came to Long Beach from Bakersfield. O. C. Cook was foreman over the cracking units at Richfield and Pinero, who had come from Taft , was refinery superintendent. When Richfield shut down its plant at Hynes, Pinero moved to Watson. Harris lived downtown during the Depression. Unemployment was not too high because the oil fields provided jobs. Drillers made good money even during the Depression. (24:40-30:28)... His family was out of town, visiting friends near El Centro, at the time of the 1933 earthquake. They didn't find out about it until the next day. His wife's sister was killed at the Ideal Laundry where she worked. She tried to walk out the door and bricks fell on her. The schools where his kids went weren't damaged so much during the earthquake although Poly and Hamilton were badly damaged. There was no earthquake insurance in those days. The refineries held up well in the quake. Workers had to inspect all of the towers and equipment but they found very little damage. End of tape *** File: lhoweharris2.mp3 (0:00-1:44)... The 1933 earthquake hit hard out on Anaheim and along Atlantic where it ran in big waves. North Long Beach wasn't hit so hard. After the quake, one could tell which buildings had been built well and which hadn't. (1:44-5:01)... In 1932 he voted for Roosevelt; he was a life long Democrat. Harris doesn't remember the 1933 explosion at the Richfield refinery. He remembers an explosion and fire while he was on duty as night superintendent. He became night superintendent about 10 years before he retired but he doesn't remember when he retired. After he retired, there was another explosion and a big fire. (5:01-8:15)... Work was slow during the 1930s but it picked up during WWII. He worked 12 hour shifts during the war. The Shell Oil Company refinery was just across the street from Richfield's refinery and they had a nice cafeteria; he ate his meals there. He made a lot of money at this time. He also worked 12 hour shifts during a strike after the war. He was locked in the refinery for about 3 months; they set up a kitchen in the plant. He was paid time and a half for all overtime hours, beyond 40 hours a week; he worked 4 hours of overtime every day. The workers were striking for more money and better conditions. (8:15-10:19)... Refineries unionized during the 1930s but he left the union when he became a foreman. The strike that happened after the war hit most of the oil refineries in the area. Harris learned a lot from that strike. The company was ready for it; they had already moved in beds and were prepared. (10:19-12:31)... When he had time off in the 1920s and 1930s, he used to watch baseball games. There was a "colored" team in Los Angeles that came to play at a park that Shell owned on Signal Hill. Oil companies had teams, but he never played. Richfield had a really good team and teams from different refineries played against each other. (12:31-16:08)... There was a still a lot of farming in the area when he first arrived in Long Beach. What was, at the time of the interview, Lakewood used to be all farms. There were a few Japanese truck farmers. Some peddled vegetables door to door and others sold their produce at roadside stands. He liked to drive to Downey to get poultry, eggs and things like that. Only about 3 or 4 Blacks worked in the refinery as laborers. During WWII, Harris got classified 1A at one point; Richfield's personnel representative got very upset, called Richfield headquarters in Los Angeles and got his draft deferment reinstated. (16:08-17:54)... He stayed in touch with the refinery after retiring through an ARCO retirees club. The club had about 300 members and is meeting once a month at the time of the interview. Harris' brother Bill became an insurance agent and made a lot of money. (17:54-19:32)... His wife passed away 2 years after his retirement. His son, daughter-in-law and daughter also passed away. His son worked for General Telephone Company where he had a good job. When Harris was working, oil companies would not hire family members. (19:32-22:41)... Along with refineries run by large oil companies like the one he worked for, there were some small refineries around. In the early days they had to haul the crude oil to the refineries in trucks; later most had their own pipelines. There was a small refinery near the Richfield refinery on Cherry on Long Beach. (22:41-23:55)... Long Beach was dry during the 1920s but one could buy liquor nearby. Harris never drank but his brother-in-law, whose wife was killed during the earthquake, liked to drink and Harris sometimes went along with him. End of tape
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