5 Stockade and Solitude
2Alexandra’s death left her parents with an aching sense of loss. Another light in Bucky’s world had gone dark. He wanted to strike out at Death somehow, to fight back. Some of his anger was directed at the medical profession. This was supposed to be the new age of science. Signs of progress were everywhere. Why hadn’t doctors done something about the four diseases that had weakened and finally killed his lovely child?
3 It made things worse that most people didn’t even expect to see cures for these diseases. People just thought that nothing could be done. ‘‘Nobody even tried to do anything about them,’’ Fuller said later. It was the same way with housing. Fuller felt sure that poor housing had contributed to Alexandra’s death. He blamed faulty sanitation, cold drafts, and stuffy rooms.
4 But most of all, Fuller blamed himself. He felt that he could—and should—have done more to prevent the tragedy. After all, what had he really done? At the age of twenty-seven, he was unemployed. He hadn’t provided his family with a clean, healthful place to live. He’d spent too much money on alcohol. He’d avoided his duties in the pursuit of selfish pleasures. Where had he been when Alexandra fell ill for the last time? Out having a good time with friends.
5 ‘‘A winter of horror’’—that was how Bucky described the period that followed. Anne’s mother, long an invalid, passed away not long after Alexandra. This meant that Anne had to take on more duties in the Martin’s Lane house. She had to care for her younger sisters and brothers. Bucky remained without a job. He couldn’t seem to escape the pain that followed him everywhere.
6 It was Anne’s father who finally brought some relief.
7 James Monroe Hewlett had invented a new kind of building block. It was the size of the standard concrete block that is still used today, except that it was only half as high. What made it unique was its composition. Hewlett had mixed straw and cement together to make a much lighter block. His blocks were strong enough for most building uses. They were also easier to handle and cheaper to make. They were fireproof and waterproof.
8 Hewlett had been able to patent his idea. That meant he had registered his idea and design with the government. A patent is a government document giving the inventor rights to the invention for a limited time. A patent gives the inventor the right to prevent others from making, using, or selling the invention.
9 Hewlett owned the patent but hadn’t been able to interest a building-supply company in making the block. Now he thought Fuller might be interested. Why not form a company to manufacture and sell the blocks? It looked like a good business opportunity. After all, Fuller had always worked for other people. Why not try working for himself?
10 The more Fuller learned about the idea, the more he liked it. Hewlett explained how the blocks could be used in a new kind of system for building walls. First the blocks were put together to form a wall in the usual fashion. They could even be stacked up with nothing between them to hold them together. Each block had two four-inch vertical holes in it, one on each end. When the blocks were interlocked in a wall pattern, the holes were right on top of each other. Concrete poured into the holes formed columns that held the wall together. In this way,' a strong wall could be quickly built out of blocks that weighed only two pounds each.
11 Fuller rolled up his sleeves and got started. He turned a red barn near Rock Hall into a workshop. Like a young Thomas Edison, he started experimenting with different materials. Straw, which Hewlett had used, might not be the best fiber for the purpose. Bucky experimented with this and that. Finally he decided on shredded wood. He also tested different types of cement. He tried adding chemicals that might add strength. At last he found the mixture that would make the strongest block at the least cost.
12 Now Bucky had to design the machines that would make the blocks. When he was satisfied, he patented his diagrams. Meanwhile, he had to form a legal corporation. Shares of stock were sold to get start-up money. Hewlett, who believed in his son-in-law as much as in his blocks, bought many of these shares. Others were sold to relatives and friends. Fuller was named president of the company, the Stockade Building System.
13 The factory to make the blocks would have to be centrally located and near good transportation. After a search, Fuller decided on a place in New Jersey. Getting the blocks into production presented hundreds of problems. Fuller kept going on energy and alcohol. Alexandra’s death still weighed on his mind when he had time to think about it. He could still crack jokes and seem happy, but there were signs that things were not well.
14 One night, for instance, Bucky and Anne gave a party at the Hewlett house. Anne, in a carefree mood, began to flirt with one of the guests. This irritated Bucky. He walked out, apparently to get some air and clear his mind. But he kept on walking. He walked to New York, twenty miles away. Anne didn’t hear from him for two days. Then he simply reappeared, explaining nothing. Anne calmly accepted the situation. Life had to go on.
15 The pressures on Fuller kept mounting. He really believed in the Stockade Building System. The idea made sense. Now he had to prove that it could also make money. This was not easy. The building industry, he found, did not welcome new ideas. Architects designed houses and named the materials that went into them. To play it safe, they used only materials that had been around for years. The building unions, too, fought against anything new. Why should a bricklayers’ union accept a better technique if it meant less work for its members? Even when Fuller could get an architect to order and a union to use his blocks, he still had troubles. State and local building regulations—called codes— did not mention Stockade blocks. Building and fire inspectors sometimes just said no. Fuller’s blocks were not in the code book. And when they said yes, it was often yes…if. Fuller would have to construct a test wall. These walls always passed the tests, but they took a lot of Fuller’s time.
16 In spite of the problems, the Stockade Building System managed to grow. A second small factory was built, and then a third. Bucky was on the road most of the time, away from Anne. When another factory was started near Chicago, Bucky felt he had to be on the scene. He moved to Chicago. Because of her family responsibilities, Anne remained in Lawrence.
17 That time in Bucky’s life was not a happy one. He could see Anne only on trips to the East. On the job, twelve-hour days were common. After work, he visited clubs where liquor was illegally sold. These places were far from wholesome, their patrons worse. Fuller got to know Al Capone and other Chicago gangsters. The whole Stockade experience was remembered later as a blurry bad dream: ‘‘During these years I worked terribly hard, but the minute I was through work for the day—I guess I was in a whole lot of pain about our child having died—I would go off and drink all night long and then I’d go to work again. I had enough health somehow to carry on.’’
18 By 1926, however, Anne found that her duties in Lawrence had lessened. She joined Bucky in Chicago. They had enough money to rent a nice apartment overlooking Lake Michigan. Bucky did his best to mend his ways. Why not? He and Anne were together again, and the company continued to grow. Stockade had built over two hundred buildings. Five factories were now turning out the blocks for many more. The worst seemed to be over, and the future looked good. It looked even better when Anne told Bucky that she was pregnant again.
19 Then without warning—as it had so many times in Fuller’s life—the tide turned. Hewlett found himself in need of cash. To raise money, he had to sell his shares in Stockade. Soon after, the shares were bought by the Celotex Corporation. Celotex was a large and powerful building-materials company. Celotex now controlled Stockade. What would this mean to Fuller?
20 He suddenly found out. The people at Celotex liked the Stockade product. But they didn’t like the Stockade management. They thought the company wasn’t making enough money. That was the problem. The answer? To fire the company’s president, Bucky Fuller.
21 So once again, Fuller went into free fall. After years of hard work, he was simply pushed out of the business world. Celotex had given him no warning. He received no severance pay, or money given to dismissed workers. Now he had no job, and his record would be labeled a failure.
22 But, Fuller wondered, was he really a failure? That depended on who was doing the labeling. He tried to see the BIG PICTURE. It was true that the Stockade stockholders were still waiting for fat dividend checks. Fuller had never spelled $UCCE$$ with dollar signs. What money he had made had been put back into the company, to keep it growing. Slowly he had come to realize that others in the building industry were ‘‘trying to make money with building, rather than making good buildings.’’ If judged on moneymaking alone, Fuller was ready to label himself a ‘‘complete failure.’’ As he was to say many times later, ‘‘You have to decide whether you want to make money or make sense.’’ He couldn’t do both.
23 Such thoughts were comforting, but they didn’t pay the rent on the lake-view apartment. Bucky and Anne had saved little money. They were stranded in Chicago with almost no bank account. Bucky didn’t know how or where to begin looking for another job. His spirits went down and down. His expenses went up and up. In August 1927, Anne gave birth to another baby girl. They named her Allegra, from the Italian for ‘‘joyful’’ or ‘‘happy.’’ Bucky was joyful to see a beautiful child he could call his own, but he was hardly happy about life. Allegra was an added responsibility.
24 Burdened with worries, Bucky started to take long walks around Chicago. He wandered here and there, a solitary figure, alone in the night with his thoughts. Little by little, these thoughts turned to suicide. Why not, really? What did the future offer? He had made a mess of his life so far. Now, did he want to drag Anne and Allegra down into the mess with him? That didn’t seem fair to the two people he loved most in the world. Back in 1920, he had taken out a $50,000 life insurance policy. If he died Anne would get the money. That was enough to live on for years. Besides, the Fuller and Hewlett families would be glad to help out. They always had.
25 In later years, Fuller was to tell the story of his near-suicide many times. Some of the details differed from telling to telling, but in general the story went like this: Late one night Fuller was out on one of his lonely walks. Worry and self-hatred walked at his side. He found himself on the shore of Lake Michigan. The cold wind brought him no comfort. The water must have looked dark, anonymous, inviting. Once again he thought of ending his life. ‘‘I had adequate courage to swim out into the lake until I became exhausted and sank.’’
26 That swim never started. As Fuller stood by the water, he found himself thinking. He began to think about thinking. He knew he had a good mind. He asked himself if there was any good reason to believe in a mind greater than the human mind. Yes, he reasoned. The orderly universe itself disclosed something he could call God. Then who really knew better about the value of Bucky Fuller’s life—God or Bucky Fuller? God, obviously. For Fuller, there was wisdom in realizing that he himself was part of the universe, put here for a purpose. Should he commit suicide? No. ‘‘Apparently addressing myself, I said, ‘You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You belong to the universe…. You and all men are here for the sake of other men.’’
27 From that point, thought tumbled upon thought. Fuller realized that in deciding not to kill himself, he had relied only on his own experience. Perhaps that word was the key to the future: experience. Always, he had relied on the opposite of experience: tradition. In the very first grade, he had been told to ‘‘shut up and learn.’’ He had tried Harvard because it was the thing to do. He had entered the business world because it was the thing to do. Yet both failures had given him a lot of experience. Why, when he thought about it, he had nothing but experience. He had worked with cotton-mill hands in Canada and bankers who controlled big building projects. He had known Vincent Astor and Al Capone. He had certainly learned more than most thirty-two-year-old men. Now he had to think about what it all meant.
28 Anne Fuller must have been shaken by the plans that fell from her husband’s lips in the next few days. Fuller announced that he had been put here on earth for a purpose. That was to understand the BIG PICTURE and then use his findings to help other human beings. To do this, he needed time to study and think. Earning a living, he said, was part of a tradition he chose to ignore. He knew he was penniless. He knew he had a wife and child. He just felt forced to see what he could do, as one determined person, to better the lot of humanity.
29 Anne must have had her doubts, but she kept her faith in Bucky. They gave up the lake-shore apartment. Looking for a cheap place to rent, they finally found a run-down place on Belmont Street. It was little more than a room in a poor neighborhood. Fuller didn’t care. He lived in his own mind. Why had he always just accepted what others wanted him to think? Words, he decided, had had a lot to do with it. The voice of tradition had spoken in words. He himself had learned to throw words around, even with some wit and purpose. But what was he, a parrot? Had he really thought about the words he used? What did simple words like good and bad really mean? If he had been born in another time and place, things he now called good might be bad indeed. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. He informed his wife that he was going to stop speaking. He would talk again only when he was sure that each word came from his own experience.
30 Of course, Bucky broke this vow with little Allegra. He also spoke some to Anne, but not enough to please her. For nearly two years, Anne became Bucky’s voice in dealing with the world. It was she who looked after Allegra and dealt with outsiders. Meanwhile, Fuller sat in libraries or at home, reading and thinking. He read history, science, mathematics—all that it now seemed he must know. Sometimes he just sat and thought for hours at a time. Or he would push Allegra’s baby carriage through the streets, lost in a mental city of his own. To make his thinking clear, he started to write. He wrote hundreds of pages, thousands of pages. He tried to connect bits of knowledge in one field with information from other fields. He discovered that every fact he knew was related to everything else he knew. All knowledge was one. To him, art was science, and science was art. The so-called experts were almost ignorant. They learned more and more about less and less. Specialists could never see the BIG PICTURE. In this way a new occupation was born: compreheusivist.
31 Religious is a word often used in connection with this period in Fuller’s life. In one version of the story, he hears voices and feels lifted off his feet. Certainly he was ‘‘reborn’’ in a sense. He surrendered himself to a Higher Intelligence. He took a vow of silence. There was almost a vow of poverty. In a way, Bucky seems to have believed that ‘‘the Lord will provide.’’
32 The Fullers did not eat well, but they did eat. They managed to pay the rent. Allegra received a healthful start in life. Somehow, money always seemed to come to Bucky and Anne just when they needed it. Two older relatives died, leaving the Fullers small sums in their wills. An old friend heard of Bucky’s new life and repaid a forgotten loan. The Hewletts and the Fullers helped out at times. Bucky found that when he took life seriously, life treated him with care. He later said, ‘‘There’s something of the miraculous in all that.’’