Eventually, he quit

Eventually, he quit. I think full time work, raising a family and maintaining the house and car just left too little time for college. This was probably a poor decision but who am I do criticize?

My dad, at this point in his life, was loyal to Mobil to a fault. He would drive miles out of his way to put Mobil branded gasoline in the family car.

In 1960 he was loaned to Amoco to work on a startup team for a refinery on the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines. This was a six month assignment, there were some significant complications, but we all survived.

When he returned from this assignment, Mobil offered him a salaried, non-degree professional position with a new startup, Mobil Chemical, adjacent to the refinery in Beaumont.

The chemical plant had two main facilities, an Olefins cracker and a Benzine unit. My dad was assigned to the Olefins plant and in particular to the care and maintenance of the charge gas compressor. This is an enormous compressor that drives the feed at very high pressure into the cracking furnaces.