I suppose this is the stuff that urban legends are made of, but in this case I can assure you that this story is true. Back in the late 50’s an industrialist who had made himself a lot of money producing airplane parts for the military became disillusioned with the path the country was taking after the Korean war. So, he purchased a large tract of land in southeastern Oregon and began setting up a self sufficient ranch. He did not move his family to the ranch at this time, but instead continued making a sizable amount of money from his business interests. He had diversified into packaging, office furniture and automotive parts after the need for aircraft parts had subsided and all of these companies were doing very well.
Paul Gordon had 3 girls and a son. The girls were as beautiful as their mother, a former model. They were tall, and willowy slim with honey blond hair and all three of them were very well endowed. The only thing that likely prevented them from becoming models like their mom was that all three of them had inherited their father’s rather severe myopia and they were quite dependent on the minus 10D or so glasses that they had to wear at this time. The boy, Paul Junior, was also nearsighted but only around -6D or so. But that was enough in 1967 to get him a deferment from the draft because at the time young males were all being called up to be sent to Vietnam.
Paul Sr. was not in favor of the country becoming involved in a military action in another country. A number of his friends and close associates had young boys that were going to be called up to serve. He also had, in his various businesses, a lot of really decent young male workers that he knew he would end up loosing to the draft.
Paul Sr. and his family all loved the ranch. They would go there together as a family for a month as soon as school let out in the spring, and Margaret Gordon and her 4 children would stay there until the end of August, when Paul Sr. would return for another week before he took his family back to the city. The conflict in Nam had been going on for a while when Paul came up in June of 1965. He was tired of reading the newspaper lists of casualties, and he had already lost a number of former employees. Paul was the type of boss who knew each and every one of his employees by name, even though he had over 3,000 people working for him. It probably didn’t hurt that most of his workers wore uniforms with name tags, but Paul honestly could remember names and faces.
That June Paul did a lot of thinking. He discussed his plans with Margaret and she agreed to go along with Paul’s idea of starting what would later become known as a commune on the ranch. Before long tractor trailer loads of lumber and other building materials started coming up the long dusty road to the ranch along with crews of carpenters, plumbers, electricians and concrete workers from the city. Soon a number of homes and a few stores were finished and ready for occupancy.
As the little town on the ranch was taking shape Paul Sr. was back in the city putting his affairs in order. He had turned down a number of offers for his businesses previously, but now he was looking carefully at any offer that was made. He had a number of meetings with the people that worked for him, and he told them of his plans to offer anyone who wanted to join him and his family a place in the community that was being built on the ranch. As he had expected, only about 1,000 of his former employee’s signed up for the trek to the ranch. But many of them were young men who were eligible to be drafted. There were also about 700 families and a number of them were teachers and other professional people. As well, some of Paul and Margaret’s friends decided that they would like to try living there as well, so the new community was going to have quite a variety of residents from all walks of life.
By the time Paul had received all his money from the sale of his companies a sizeable amount of his fortune had been spent. Even so, he was still quite wealthy at the time. Unlike other communes that were springing up in the Pacific Northwest at the time, because this community wasn’t built on a shoestring budget, this one had well built homes that were heated and cooled with a new geothermal process that had recently been developed. Solar power was in its infancy, but Paul had a few solar panels installed. And wind generators were makeshift contraptions that really couldn’t put out enough power to allow the town to live off the grid. But all the homes had been wired for 12 volt lighting so the wind generators and the batteries installed in every home were enough to supply the power for the lights in the evenings.
Paul Sr. had also registered the town as a religious organization, and had endowed it with money he donated. At his suggestion number of the young unmarried men studied to become ministers, and then once they were ordained they registered as conscientious objectors with the draft board. For good measure Paul also hired all of them to work on the farm, which was supplying beef and pork to the military under contract. So the 300 or so unmarried young men in the town were pretty well guaranteed to be allowed to stay without going off to war.
Paul Sr. had the strongest minus prescription of anyone living in the town at around -17D at the time. His glasses, which were made from CR39 plastic, which was the only available plastic on the market at the time were extremely thick and were dished in a lot on the front. His youngest daughter Ellie now also wore similar glasses as she had a very strong prescription as well. There were also a sizeable number of other men and women, as well as a few children who had to wear glasses for myopia, and there were a few others who were farsighted and wore plus glasses. However the minus glasses wearers were in the majority.
The little community continued to prosper and grow in numbers. There were quite a few marriages and by the mid 70’s Paul and Margaret had 11 grandchildren. All of their grandkids wore glasses by the time they were 6 or 7 years old, and a couple of the older girls had prescriptions that were considered to be very strong for their age. Paul had quite a lot of foresight when he started the town, because he had included an eye doctor in his selection of friends that he asked to join them, and he also brought along an acquaintance who moved his lens grinding lab to the town. Because the town was well funded no one was jealous of anyone else, and while some people would think that this was a venture into Communism, everyone really did enjoy their life.
I came to the community with my mom, my older brother and my sister in 1967 when I was 13. My brother was almost 16, and my sister was a year and a bit older than me. We had been at a shelter for battered women because our father drank a lot and liked to use my mom as a punching bag. We were happy to come to the community because it meant that we would now be free from dad and his constant drinking. I also suspected that he had been sexually abusing my sister, but nothing had ever really been said about it. I just knew that she was deathly afraid of him. My sister had gotten glasses when she was about 7 years old, and now at 14 her glasses appeared to be pretty strong. I wondered why our family had been selected to come to the commune because there were other families at the shelter that had not been asked to come, but I later figured out that Paul Gordon had a soft spot for anyone wearing strong glasses, and my sister Sheila certainly qualified.
Possibly another reason our family was selected was that mom had Ben when she was just 16, and now she was only 32 and was quite an attractive lady. There were a few unmarried men who were around that age bracket and I suspected that Paul was also looking for women who would make good wives. As I was to observe over the next few years Paul was very good at picking people to balance his flock.
Ellie Gordon, Paul and Margret’s youngest daughter was in the same grade at school as my brother Ben. She was almost a year older than Ben, but they soon became fast friends and were always seen together around the town. I wondered if the reason that Ben was attracted to Ellie was because of her strong glasses. He had always been extremely protective of our sister Sheila and her glasses.
In 1967 when he brought our family to town Paul Gordon Sr. was around 47 years old. He did rule the town with a rather strong handed approach, but no one could say he was not a fair or compassionate man. He told me one time when we were talking about life that he had been a very lucky man in that he had taken a gamble and purchased the factory where his father worked as a machinist making aircraft parts in 1941 when he was only 21. His father and a number of other employees had been asked by the former owner to buy him out as he wanted to retire, but while they could raise the money they didn’t want to own the company so Paul borrowed money from them, plus the bank and he bought out the owner. Soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor happened and aircraft parts were in such huge demand that Paul never looked back.
Life around the commune was not exciting, but we certainly worked hard. All of the men worked on the fields and in the barns with the cattle and the pigs and when dinner time came I was ready for bed. But first I had to do my homework because schooling was considered to be very important at the commune.
In 1970 Ellie and Ben were married. Ellie’s 2 older sisters had already married when they were each around 17 and Megan, the oldest had an 8 year old girl and 2 boys. Jennifer, the middle daughter, had a boy and a girl. Both girls were pregnant again at the time Ben and Ellie married, but the bumps didn’t show too badly in their bridesmaid gowns. Paul Jr. and I were ushers and Ellie and Ben had chosen their best friends to be maid of honor and best man. Now that Ben and Ellie were married it took no time at all before Ellie was pregnant.
I was very interested in optics so one day I went to the gentleman who made the glasses for the whole community and asked him for a job in his lens making shop. I guess he was surprised that I wanted to work for him and learn the trade because no one else had shown any interest in his business. After he got over his initial surprise, he hired me, and I began to learn how to grind lenses and fit them to frames. Dave had brought all his machinery up from the city with him and, while still very useable, the equipment had been around since CR39 had first been used for spectacle lenses in the mid 50’s. I loved to hold the raw lens blanks in my hand and imagine what the almost 1” thick blank would look like once it had been ground and polished into a finished lens.
I ruined a few lens blanks during the first few months that Dave taught me the business. The simple prescriptions were dead easy to make and of course there were quite a few people who had prescriptions in the under -6D range. The ones that defied me and required Dave’s expertise were ones like my sister Sheila now required. Sheila was, by the time of her wedding, wearing lenses with a -19.50D prescription. Dave had blanks that he could grind a flat front lens up to a -20D prescription, but most of the time to avoid a myodisc appearance he would do a prescription of this power with a -14D rear curve and a -6D front curve. The only ones he would do with the flat front curve were now Paul Gordon Sr’s -18.50D bifocals. The bifocal segment was on the flat front curve of the blank, so that is why he could not do Paul Sr’s glasses in a biconcave lens like Paul had worn much of his life.
I learned quickly and before long Dave was letting me do all the calculations for the lenses. A few of the ladies had a lot of astigmatism along with a strong minus prescription and Dave showed me how to grind the astigmatism into the front of the lens and the spherical power into the rear. Ellie, my sister in law, had developed a bit of astigmatism and her spherical power had exceeded that of her father’s so she now required a lens with -20D spherical and -2.50 cylindrical in the rear. I wondered how Dave could possibly grind a stronger lens for anyone, but soon after we finished Ellie’s newest pair a lady that Paul had recently rescued from a woman’s shelter came to us requiring a new prescription of -25D with -3.75D of astigmatism for each eye. The only difference was that her angle of astigmatism was on the 85 degree axis for her right eye and was 120 degrees on her left eye. We did not have the metal form for a combined -5D sphere and a -3.75D cylinder, so Dave showed me how to go about making it from one of his blanks. After we finished it took us a couple of tries to grind each lens, but in the end Dave was satisfied with the result. This young lady, Barbara Jenkins, was at the time the most nearsighted member of our society.
As the years went by some of the younger generation began to gradually reach the level of myopia that Barbara Jenkins had. One of Paul Gordon’s granddaughters, the oldest daughter of Megan and Ken, was approaching a prescription of -28D, fortunately with no cylinder. She was, at age 16, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and I was in love with her even though I was 8 years older than she was. Because of her rapidly increasing myopia and her need for stronger and stronger lenses we had been seeing quite a lot of Cassandra Hopkins and although I hoped her eyes would stabilize and her myopia would stop increasing I was always happy to see her drop by, even if it was only for an adjustment to her frames so they fit her face better. Since we had to grind and fit the lenses to the frames we also acted as the town’s opticians and had to assist some of the more nearsighted ladies with their frame choices, as they could not see well enough to pick a frame for themselves. By now Dave was leaving me to do most of the lens grinding and he was doing the fitting but I guess I had told him enough times that I was in love with Cassie that every time she came in he allowed me to help her with whatever she needed.
When Cassie came in from her eye doctor with her new prescription for her -28D glasses I wasn’t sure what to do to make her the best looking lenses I possibly could. I had been reading in some of the books Dave had about how to make very high prescription lenses as attractive as possible. I knew that appearance was of prime importance to a 16 year old girl, but I also knew that there was no way her lenses could be made to look really nice. But I had to try. So I took and ground a -20D into the rear of a lens, and then I placed another -8D into the front of the lens. We had some lens blanks that were a full 1" thick so I used as much of the lens as I could. I even went against regulations and instead of making the required 2.2mm center thickness I reduced this by another 1mm. Then I took and reduced the thickness by grinding the front and the rear of the lens, making sure the front myodisc circle was a little larger than the rear. I polished the flat areas to an optical quality and then I fitted the lenses to a frame that Cassie and I had chosen. I had worked feverishly on this job and when I saw the lenses fitted in the frame I knew I had done the very best possible job I could. I took the new glasses out into the waiting room and I carefully fitted the frames to Cassie’s face. She looked in the mirror and I could see from the look on her face that she was thrilled with what I had done. Her old glasses had been done with a -20D rear curve and a -5D front curve with a 2.2mm center thickness and there had been no reduction in the thickness, so they were a pretty clunky pair of glasses. Cassie had been expecting an even thicker pair and when she saw what I had managed to do for her she turned from the mirror and kissed me. I am sure my face went all red. But then I got the surprise of my life.
“Would you escort me to the dance Saturday night Harry?” Cassie asked.
“I would love to Cassie, but what will your parents say?” I asked her.
“I’m 16. I can go out with anyone I want to and over the past few years you have been so nice and helpful I think I would like to have you take me to the dance.” Cassie replied.
I was a little apprehensive so I talked it over with Dave. Paul Sr. had already suggested a couple of times that it was about time I was married, but I wasn’t convinced that he would be pleased that his granddaughter had asked me out. Dave suggested that the best thing to do would be to just go with the flow. But what I didn’t realize was that Dave had already told Paul that I was in love with his granddaughter Cassie. Dave and Paul had decided that I would be as good a husband for Cassie as anyone else in the community, so I already had his blessing if Cassie wanted to go out with me.
I had a wonderful time with Cassie at the dance. I was still a bit apprehensive about what the reaction of the community would be, but I didn’t get any negative feelings from anyone. I suppose it might have helped that I was well known to almost all of the people because in our community a large percentage of the residents wore glasses.
Soon after our family had arrived in town my mom met a really nice man who was a couple of years younger than she was. They couldn’t legally marry, because mom and dad were still married. But that didn’t stop them from moving in together. Butch was a really neat guy and he showed me how a father should act. Ben hadn’t had as much time living with Butch before he and Ellie married as I did, but I am sure that Butch’s good qualities did have a chance to rub off on Ben, because Ben was a super father to the 4 children that he and Ellie had.
Paul Jr, had taken over much of the day to day running of the ranch and made most of the decisions for the town. We actually had a mayor and a town council but if money was needed for anything they had to ask Paul for the funds. I am pretty sure that Paul went along with almost everything that was asked for, because everyone seemed really content to live here. Paul had not gotten married when his sisters did and a lot of the girls had tried to attract his attention. But until Barbara Jenkins came to town Paul didn’t seem to be too interested in marrying anyone. It didn’t take long though before he and Barbara were together almost all the time, and there was a lot of speculation on when they would marry. Barbara was in the same position as my mom though. She still had a husband out there somewhere who was looking for her and her 2 children. Like mom and Butch had done Paul and Barbara moved in together and nothing was said about the fact that a deacon of the church was living in supposed sin.
Barbara’s 2 daughters were 8 and 6, and they both needed glasses when they arrived. I fitted Liz, the oldest one with her first pair of -3D glasses, and then I made a pair for her younger sister Sara that was even stronger at -4.25D. This was not surprising because at that time Barbara was the person with the highest minus prescription in the community and my girlfriend Cassie would not surpass her prescription for at least a couple of years.
During the period from 1985 throughout the year 2000 I read about a number of advances in lens technology and design. The higher plus lenses were now made using what was called an aspheric design that reduced the bug eyed look that so many of the old high plus lenses gave. We didn’t have a lot of members of our community that were over +6D or so, but instead of grinding their lenses using the equipment we had I started to bring in the lens blanks from outside suppliers. Dave had resisted this because he felt that we were better off utilizing our own equipment. Finally in 1987, when Dave was 65 he retired and sold me the antiquated equipment he had brought with him when he moved and I was free to do what I wanted to do.
We probably had a larger percentage of high myopes in the community because of Paul Gordon Sr. It seemed that whenever Paul went into the outside world to visit the battered women shelters that he did he often seemed to bring one or more ladies with strong prescriptions back into the fold. My sister Sheila was one, and Barbara Jenkins was another, and while I hadn’t counted on the number of ladies and young girls he had brought here I was willing to bet that there were at least 20, maybe 25 ladies that he had convinced to move here that had prescriptions that were in the high teens. Minus lenses were now being made that had much higher indexes of refraction than the 1.49 index of the regular CR39. But I really couldn’t use anything other than CR 39 with the 1.49 index because I needed new equipment to successfully use the new material. I could do the calculations with a program I had for my computer and I knew that a -10D lens in 1.67 index plastic was about the same thickness as a -7D in CR 39, but I just couldn’t make the lens properly.
I just muddled along the best way I could. No one in the community seemed to be too concerned about having thinner lenses and we certainly didn’t sell anyone on the idea of getting contact lenses. The ladies all knew about contact lenses from the magazines that came into town but no one seemed to be in a hurry to be the first to wear them.
I did go ahead and purchase a new pattern less edger for shaping the lenses to the frames. This made my job a whole lot easier. And it came with wheels that would also do high index glass lenses as well, although I didn’t plan on having any use for them. However I was having a little trouble making new lenses for my wife Cassie’s glasses now. Her prescription had increased a little with the birth of our first 2 children and she now needed -32D lenses. I had made her most recent glasses using a rear curve of -20D and a front curve of -12D, and while this worked she found that because of the really strong front base she had a lot of tunnel vision. I had reduced that effect as much as possible for her by making the bowls as small as possible but there was only so much a person can do with optics.
In 2002 Paul Gordon Sr. passed away at the age of 82. He had not had any health problems to speak of, but one morning he was found slumped over the wheel of his new Cadillac, and it was discovered that he had a massive heart attack. I was afraid that his death would change the town considerably, but Paul Jr had been running things in his own manner for so long that after a few months passed I was able to breathe a sigh of relief.
It seemed that there were more and more residents that were growing up to have strong minus prescriptions. My sister Sheila had 2 girls and both of my nieces had fairly high prescriptions. Ellie and my brother Ben had 2 boys and a girl, and the girl also had a prescription of around -20D. Even the boys required glasses with around -10D prescriptions. I would venture a guess that by the time any of the grandchildren of the original settlers graduated from grade school they were wearing glasses. And in most cases the strength of the children’s glasses was proportionate to the power of their parent’s glasses.
I could no longer get away with the old tricks I had been using to keep the CR39 lenses as thin as I possibly could. I turned 50 in 2004 with the realization that I would either have to purchase a new lens grinding machine or I would have to bring the higher powered lenses in from an outside source. I was planning to retire when I turned 65, and I did not want to spend my own money for any new equipment. There really wasn’t much profit to be made for me because I had to provide Paul Jr with a cost breakdown for each pair of glasses I made and he allowed me a small profit that was paid to me monthly. Yes, my housing was provided. Yes, my business and office was rent free. And my family was provided with groceries the same as everyone else in the community were. But my small profit, which had actually given me a pretty decent bank account since I bought Dave out, was no where near enough to allow me to purchase a new lens grinding machine.
I gathered the brochures for a new machine from the manufacturers and I went to Paul Jr to see if he would help me with my dilemma. His solution was reasonable. I was to take the manufacturers estimated cost for a pair of lenses made by the machine, add on the price of a frame, and add in a small fitting fee. Then I was to be allowed to charge the community this price for each pair. Sometimes I would be able to continue using Dave’s old equipment, and since I had been paid for the use of this machine in the past, the now profit could go towards my retirement. If I worked for another 15 years my new machine would be mine to sell to a new optician. I went along with Paul’s idea, because I had padded my costs a little so that I would be earning enough to pay the new machine off in about 10 years. Also I had gotten Paul to agree to a surcharge for any pair of glasses that were over -10D and from what I was seeing I was going to be adding a lot of surcharges.
Now we are barely into the year 2014. My 10 year estimate was off a bit, because with a population in the town of over 5,500 people I have been making more glasses than I ever imagined possible. And my prediction that I would be adding a lot of surcharges has come true. About 90% of the graduating class from the high school last year had a prescription of -10D or greater. I still had my old lens grinding equipment, but the new machine was so much faster that I tended to use it for everything I did – even including the lower prescriptions I made out of CR39.
My wife Cassie had the strongest prescription in the entire community. Her glasses had been -45.00D for both eyes for a number of years now. I could no longer make her glasses and I found it was better for us if I ordered her complete glasses from a company in Germany that specialized in very high prescriptions. She had tried all types of lenses. But her biconcave double glass myodiscs made from 1.9 high index glass seemed to give her the best vision. Our 2 daughter’s and our son had more realistic prescriptions and were right in the -15D range.
My son Kevin had been helping me ever since he was 13, and he seemed to enjoy the optical business. I was still on track to retire in another 5 years, and Paul Jr had given me his blessing to train Kevin to take over the business. It appeared that our little back of beyond community was going to retain the ability to have glasses made in town for the foreseeable future.
Specs4ever Jan 2014