California II


We made the move to California in 1971. We stayed there until 1976 but it seemed forever to me. I was very busy! The company for which I worked was named Intech Inc, kind of a play on words. It was founded by three gentlemen, Leroy Buckler, president, Lee Evans, chief engineer and Bill Jumper, vice president of marketing. All of them came from Siliconix Inc in Sunnyvale California and Texas Instruments in Dallas Tx. Lee Evans was the inventor of a special type of transistor called a field effect. Texas Instruments didn't see the market, hence Siliconix. Not sure what happened to the three after that but they left Siliconix to start Intech. I think the original plan was to manufacture modular electronics until the other division of the company gained success, so I was place in charge of selling the modular devices. Before I even started, Lee Evans parted ways with the company and another fellow was hired as chief engineer, which was a red flag. Lee was a genius and very cantankerous. Anyway the other product was an FM marine radio which no other company had offered on the market. As a quick lesson for those of you that don't know, FM and AM are the two common types of signals for radio. FM offers  much better clarity than AM but is line-of-site which means you have to have visual of each location. AM is sometimes scratchy but the signal can be skipped for a longer range Almost all marine radios were AM so Intech's product was rather unique. Sounds like a winner doesn't it? Not so fast my business majors. The two ships would have to have visual or a whole bunch of antennas were necessary (at that time) so the bread and butter of Intech relied on the sale of analog components, so here comes Bob. We had representatives in all states and many foreign countries and two sub-manufacturers, one in France and the other in Japan. My job was to instill a desire to sell our product instead of another. This was before the invention of microcircuits which came along before I left Intech. I travelled all over the USA trying to sell a product soon to be obsolete. We did have a great success in New York. One of my reps called on a company called Loral Corporation and we bid on a device to be used in the fire control system of the F15. It meant we had to manufacture to military standards and go through a rigorous inspection which we managed to do. I felt it harder to deal with our manufacturing than the customer but we wound up with a contract of over $1,000,000 which was a big deal to a small company such as Intech.

One of the best parts for me was golf. Bill was an avid 6 handicap golfer. I was terrible but we met another friend who was a pro teacher. After a few failures he managed to get through to me enough to cure my horrible slice. I joined a golf league and played whenever in town, which was about every third week. I don't think I ever won a tournament but I was pleased to improve, so much so that I traded my JC Higgins golf clubs for a brand  new set of Lynx (Fred Couples used this brand). We took trips often to 17 mile Drive where we could play Pebble Beach for $30 and Spy Glass for $10. Both courses are beautiful and will make a good player look bad. We played Pebble Beach once right after the tournament and I remember Bill shooting 90 (he was normally in the 70s). We had sales meetings at the Holiday Inn by the ocean. Not a bad life, right? We bought a house in Saratoga, California and it was probably the best house we ever owned, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths on one level. It was built on an old walnut grove so as you walked out the front door there was a hybrid walnut tree (English and Black). Black walnuts are very messy! We had a plum tree overhanging the driveway (also messy). We had lemons, oranges and cherries. The crazy birds would eat the cherries and get drunk. We also were less than a mile from Paul Masson winery and 17 miles from the Santa Cruz beaches. The problem I had was that I spent more time in NYC, Boston,  Atlanta and Houston than in California. When in town we spent a lot of time with Bill and family> A big issue was alcohol as Bill had a problem and I was caught up in it. More on that in a bit.

In late 1971 we discovered Ellen was pregnant with our 5th child. Julie Marie was born September 22, 1972. Bill and I were in Los Angeles that day for an electronics convention when his wife Patsy called to say Ellen was on her way to the hospital. This was in the days when you could just jump aboard a shuttle to fly so I caught a plane back just as they were bringing the baby out. Ellen drove herself to the hospital with some drama. It seems a road was blocked for construction on the route she was taking. Just as the fellow was telling her to turn around her water broke and again she was escorted through! She made it fine though I'm sure it was very stressful.  So, now we have 3 boys and 2 girls which I thought was enough of our contribution to the human race.

I will write more in my next segment. This was a very busy 5 years!


Our home in Saratoga (current photo, not 1971)


Pebble Beach Golf course




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