A new type of prison

Dr. Skora suggested that I go to Calvin City where the plant was located after the New Year Holiday. I would visit the facility, meet the people there and get a quick tour of the area. After I returned from my visit to the Calvin City plant, I would come back to Newark and discuss work projects in more detail. He also suggested the we would then discuss the details of a bonus plan which would be part of my salary. He always talked as if my accepting his position was predetermined and that I had no choice. Again a major consideration in The Crazies picking me for a victim was that I came from a poor family and poor people are slaves - they have no choices.

The first week of January, I took the trip to the Calvin City plant. I flew into Paducah, stayed overnight at a motel and then the next morning I was picked up by the plant manager, Herb. He drove to the plant which was located some twenty five miles away.

The minute I walked into the laboratory located adjacent to the plant, my heart sank. The laboratory consisted on one medium size room in a building which also housed the plant offices. There was an adjacent office for a laboratory worker. Herb's office and a small reception area which served the office for Herb's wife, Marge. The entire building was in poor condition and most of the place did not appear like it had been used in years. The only equipment present in the laboratory was a gas chromatograph and two small balances (scales). All of the items were of 1960 vintage. In fact, the balances were so outdated that I had seen those models in antique shops and I had last used one like them when I was in undergraduate school in 1962! It was hard to hide my disillusionment as I talked to Herb and Marge.

The technical knology of the Hafers was not more up-to-date than the equipment. They had worked at the plant when it had been owned by large corporations and they had stayed on as part owners when the last corporation had pulled out in the nineteen seventies. At that time, Marge and Herb apparently had gone into semi-retirement and they had operated the plant as a mom and pop operation until they ran into financial difficulties. That is when Stanley Skora entered the picture and bought controlling interest. In the years that the plant was a "mom and pop" operation, the plant, laboratory and mom and pop had stagnated.

The level of Marge's and Herb's technical knowledge was exemplified when I questioned them about the one major product they made at the plant. They described the process to me except for the "secret catalyst" used in making the product. From the nature of the process, I concluded that the "secret catalyst" must be what chemists call a "phase transfer agent" and I narrowed the choice from that group of materials down to the two most probable ones. Later, after I began working there, I learned that the "secret catalyst" was indeed one of the two materials that I had surmised. My deduction of the exact catalyst was no stroke of genius but rater it was a conclusion based on common current knowledge. But, because Marge and Herb had been in semi-retirement, they thought their process secret ingredient was state-of-the-art technology.

After a tour of the plant, I returned to my motel room. I sat on the bed and reflected on what I had just seen and started to cry. After surviving eight years of brutal torture, I was being coerced in to taking a job in an antiquated plant and laboratory that involved handling highly toxic chemicals in an unsafe environment. I would also be technically isolated since I would have no professional peers with which to interact. And I would be essentially isolated physically since I would be the only person working in the laboratory.