Honors, Citations & Certain Findings
Sixteen years of prizes, plaques and commendations, set out alongside the awards that were taken back, the degree the President would not accept, and three findings of a state inspectorate which we have framed and hung in the same row as the medals, having earned them in exactly the same way.
There is a wall behind my desk on the third floor and everything this company has ever been given is hanging on it. I want to be plain about the arrangement, because visitors get to the far end of it and go quiet. The medals are on that wall. The certificates are on that wall. The three findings of the state inspectorate are on that wall, framed in the same oak, in the same row, at the same height, and I paid for the framing personally.
A prize is a piece of paper somebody sends you because you did something they understood. A citation is a piece of paper somebody sends you because you did something they did not. I have been in business sixteen years and I have collected both, and I will tell you which pile has been better company.
The oldest thing on that wall is from 1943 and it says Shower Curtain Salesman of the Year. Men come up here expecting me to have buried it behind the physics. It is hung at eye level in the middle of the row, where a man cannot get past it, because everything on either side of it was paid for by the curtain.
The second thing worth your attention is a gap. There is a nail with nothing on it, at the end of the row nearest the window, and it has been empty since 1952. Records has asked twice about filling it. Records has been told twice.
The Wall, In Summary
- Location
- Third floor, behind the desk
- Frames
- Oak. Nine of one size, three of another.
- Earliest
- 1943 — Salesman of the Year
- Most recent
- 1958 — returned by us, framed by them
- Empty nails
- One, since 1952
- Reserved space
- One, to the right, at the end
- Cleaning
- Greg. Fridays. Nobody else goes near it.
I.The Roll, Complete And Unflattering
Records keeps this table and is not permitted to leave anything off it, withdrawals included — which most concerns of our size print on a different sheet, or not at all.
Honours, prizes and commendations received by Aperture Fixtures and by Aperture Science Innovators, 1943 to date.
| Year | Honour | Awarding Body | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1943 | Shower Curtain Salesman of the Year | National Association of Bath & Sanitary Fixtures | Held. Eye level. Middle of the row. |
| 1944 | Certificate of Appreciation — 200,000 units, no returns | Office of the Quartermaster General, U.S. Army | Held |
| 1946 | Certificate of Attendance | National Bath & Sanitary Exposition, Chicago | Held. Framed. It is a certificate of attendance. |
| 1948 | State Manufacturing Prize (Second Class) | State of Michigan | Held. The class is disputed by the recipient. |
| 1951 | Employer of the Year, Upper Peninsula | Marquette County Chamber of Commerce | Withdrawn, October 1952. We kept the plate. |
| 1956 | Commendation — supply of shower curtains to every branch of the United States military except the Navy | The Eisenhower administration | Held. Reprints available below. |
| 1957 | Honorary Doctorate of Science | A college in Ann Arbor, named in the file | Declined. See section III. |
| 1958 | Industrial Achievement Medal, Second Award | An institute of engineers, Detroit | Returned by us, framed by them. |
| 1958 | Distinguished Civilian Service, Department of the Navy | The Navy | Not awarded. Not sought. Not discussed. The Navy knows what it did. |
| 1961 | The Nobel Prize in Physics | Stockholm | Anticipated. Case built. Date reserved. |
Records notes that the final entry is dated ahead of this printing and has asked, in writing, that it be moved to a separate sheet. The President has read the request.
II.The Commendation, And A Reprint For Your Wall
In 1956 the Eisenhower administration gave us the supply of shower curtains to every branch of the United States military. Every branch. The Army, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard when it is at war, and eleven agencies that do not care to be listed. There is one exception and I have never printed the reason for it and I am not going to start on a sheet filed under Honours.
The commendation is nine inches by twelve and signed by a man whose name you would know. It cost sixty dollars to have the plate made, which is the same figure we pay a volunteer for an afternoon, and I want the symmetry noted because I noticed it myself and it pleased me.
Form ASI-107a — Reprint Request — Cut Along The Dashes
THE 1956 COMMENDATION, SUITABLE FOR FRAMING. Full size, heavy stock, two colours, mailed flat between boards. Twenty-five cents for postage. No charge to serving personnel, to employees, or to any man who has been through a chamber and come back out of it.
III.The Degree, And The Hat
In the autumn of 1957 a college offered me an honorary doctorate of science. I was glad to have it. I said so by telephone within the hour. Then the registrar sent along the order of proceedings and there was a hat in it.
A square hat. A flat board on a man’s head with a string coming off the corner of it. I have been four thousand feet down in a hard hat and I have worn a respirator for nine hours in a room that was on fire, and I have built a concern of 1,247 people without once putting on a mortarboard, which I would have thought was the point of the exercise.
Letter, Office of the President to the Registrar, 4 November 1957 — reproduced entire
Sir — I accept the degree and I decline the ceremony. If the degree cannot be had without the hat then the degree cannot be had, and I will think no worse of your institution for it, and you may give the hat to somebody who has the head for it.
Should the faculty wish to confer it another way, I will send a car. We will do it four thousand feet down, in a chamber of your choosing, and I will stand where your man tells me to stand and say whatever he wants said. Your Latin, my hole. Nobody has to wear anything.
Yours &c., C. Johnson.
“A prize means somebody understood you. A citation means somebody was frightened of you. Hang them at the same height.”
IV.Certain Findings
Three times in sixteen years a state inspectorate has come up the road, gone down as far as we let it go, and written something down. Three citations, all three contested, all three unresolved — which in the law of this state means we are entitled to say contested, and we will, and Legal has been instructed to keep saying it after I am not here to say it myself.
The findings are printed below because I would rather you had them from me than from a clerk in Lansing. Our position is beside them and it has not changed. The long form of it is on the safety sheet, where Operations has defined every one of these conditions out of existence at a length I have never had the patience for.
Citations issued by the state inspectorate. Findings quoted verbatim; the black is Legal’s, not ours.
| Citation | Date | Finding | Our Position | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SI-1955-114 | 9 August 1955 | Two levels of Shaft 07 record ambient temperatures for which the facility can identify no heat source, and personnel have been instructed in writing not to enter them in the log. | The instruction was to stop entering the same figure twice. | Contested |
| SI-1957-041 | 21 November 1957 | The inspecting party of four entered the emancipation corridor and left it as a party of four. The inspector’s account of the interval and the gate log differ by eleven minutes, and one man in the party cannot say what he did with them. | Clocks. The corridor has two and they have never agreed. | Contested |
| SI-1958-203 | 3 September 1958 | Of nine shafts the inspectorate was admitted to six. In two of the six there are finished rooms, lit and heated, which do not appear on any drawing the company was able to produce. | The drawings are behind. Facilities is behind. That is not a finding. | Contested |
Contest lodged in each case within the statutory period. The state has not listed any of the three for hearing. Legal describes this as a favourable posture.
Interoffice Memorandum
You have written three times asking that the citations come off the honours wall and go in a drawer. Here is the answer and it is the last one.
A man from the state came into my building, walked as far as he was let, and was sufficiently impressed by what he saw to fill out a form about it in his own handwriting. That is a review. New Mexico has never had one. Frame all three in the oak and hang them in the row.
While you have the hammer out: leave the nail by the window empty. I know what came off it and I do not need the reminder covered up.
Cave JohnsonPresident & Founder
V.Withdrawn, Returned, And Reserved
Employer of the Year, 1951, Marquette County, presented in a hotel dining room with a plate of chicken. Withdrawn in October of 1952 by a letter of four lines that gave no reason and asked for the plaque back. We returned the plaque. Nobody asked for the brass plate it was screwed to, so the plate is on the wall by itself, saying nothing at all, and it is my favourite object in this building.
The Detroit medal of 1958 we sent back ourselves, it being a second award and the first having gone to a firm that makes pipe fittings. The institute has since framed the medal with our letter of return mounted beside it and hung the pair in their lobby, where I am told people stop and read it. Records calls that “returned by us, framed by them”, and the phrase now has a column of its own.
Form ASI-107b — Reserved Space — Third Floor, End Of Row
- Award
- The Nobel Prize in Physics
- Basis of expectation
- The work. There is no other basis and none is required.
- Case
- Built. Machine shop. Curtain rail and plate glass.
- Case dimensions
- 14 in. × 14 in. × 4 in., lined
- Date reserved
- 15 June 1961
- Reason for that date
- The President selected it. He was not asked to explain it.
- Remarks
- Do not use the case for anything else in the meantime.
I have written to Stockholm four times and had three replies. He has read two of them. The case is finished and it is standing in the machine shop with a cloth over it and the men have started putting their coffee on it. Somebody ought to move it before he comes down. — C.
Cave JohnsonPresident & FounderDictated 3 April 1959. The wall was measured before printing. The nail is still empty.