Mensa

Back at the dawn of time, IE the 1970’s, I had a friend named Russ. Russ started out as a real estate client but Russ and I became good friends. I’m guessing that most folks thought of Russ as an odd ball and by some parameters he was. The truth of the matter was Russ was smart, very smart. A member of Mensa smart. Russ wanted me to join Mensa so he could be with someone that he actually knew at the meetings. I declined to join. I thought that I probably had a decent chance of passing the entrance exam. Test passing is one of the few talents that I was born with. I just wanted to observe Graucho Marx’s philosophy of “I wouldn’t want to join any group that would have me as a member”. Also as an old professional sailor, I thought that I wouldn’t really fit in with all of those egg heads.

Russ and I were talking on the phone one day and the topic of Trivial Pursuit came up. Russ said that nobody would play the game with him anymore  because he has won every game he has ever played. Every single game, I asked? Yes, every game. I told him that nobody would play the game with me either for the very same reason. You’ve also won every game you’ve plated, he asked? Every, I replied. One of us said that if we were to play against each other, one of us could not make that claim anymore. That sounded like a challenge if there ever was one so it was game on. Russ was so confidant that he was going to kick my sorry ass that he would have me over to his home, and have his wife make us lobster to cushion the blow when he beat me. The evening I came over we dined on lobster, drank some really good whiskey and went to battle. I won game #1. I was still unbeaten. You know who wasn’t anymore. Russ wanted a rematch. Long story short, I beat him again. One more game Russ? We played a third game. Half way through game #3, It was clear that I was way ahead and with a flurry of swearing, Russ threw in the towel and conceded the game. As anyone who knows me at all will tell you, I have a really crappy memory. So I didn’t have all of the answers committed to memory as some people have claimed.  I just seem to have a real knack for test taking. My son Dave has the gift also although he probably is smarter.

I had talked to Russ a few times on the phone as a potential customer but  I never met him face to face until I had an offer of his to sign for a sixteen unit apartment building that I had sold him. The building was relatively pricy and there was an equally pricy second trust that we wanted the seller to “carry back” to make up the balance of the down payment as was the custom back then.

As I was leaving Russ’ home I commented that I needed to get some background info about Russ to help the comfort level of the seller who was now also to be the secondary lender. I asked where he worked. He said Mattel. What do you do at Mattel? He was the head of the data processing department. Very good. How long? He answered 23 years but was leaving Mattel in two weeks. Whoops, not so good. Where are you going? He told me he was going to Drake Engineering.

Drake Engineering, that name had a slightly familiar ring to it. What do they do? He said that they made racing engines. I said Drake? As in Myer-Drake? Yes. As in Offenhauser, the engines used at Indy?   Yes again. What will you be doing at Drake, I asked? He replied that he was going to be the new president. Well that’s pretty good news.

Over the next few years Russ would call me and ask me down to Drake in Costa Mesa to see “What were putting on our dynamometer”.  Drake was doing, at that point in time, what any prudent executive would be doing with their company on the ropes to pay the bills. Being one of the premiere names in auto racing, Drakes dyno results were like Moses’ stone tablets or Caesar’s wife, beyond question.

I remember one time they had a VW engine with twin turbochargers on the stand. This was about 1979 and nobody ever hears of putting TWO turbos on the same engine. I was shocked. Russ told me that VW hired engineers like housewives buy eggs. They get them by the dozen.

As an aside about test taking, about twenty years ago my son Dave and I were returning back to Long Beach from the schooner races in San Diego. As we were leaving Harbor Island we went over to the fuel dock for some diesel fuel. The place was packed and there was over an hours wait to fuel up. I said that we had enough fuel to motor back to LB and besides we should be able to sail back. Off  we went and when we had Oceanside off of our starboard beam the motor shut down. We had run out of fuel and there was no wind to sail on. We settled down to wait for the wind to come up. We sat dead still for over 24 hours. The GPS showed us that we had moved less than a mile all night. Dave told me that an empty Styrofoam cooler had passed us a few hours ago and here we still sat. To amuse ourselves we asked each other question from a Mensa book that Dave had on how to pass their entrance test. I chuckled after awhile and commented on how screwed up we were acing the Mensa test questions but didn’t have enough common sense to not run out of fuel. Finally I had had enough and called Boat US and they dispatched a boat out of God knows where with a five gallon can of fuel. The 5 gallons of fuel cost me $100 FOB literally freight on BOARD   but it was money well spent as we had consumed all of the food, and most of our beer and booze on board. No sooner than I restarted the engine, the wind piped up, really hard and we sailed from Oceanside to LB in no time at all. I suppose any responsible Mensa would have done the same damned thing.