Once Barry Cossette concluded the tall, brash visitor was not dangerous, demented or worse, a salesman, he offered him a chair. Clive gave him a quick summary of his experience and Cossette decided this might be the best thing that had walked in his front door since he opened the agency. The two men shook hands and agreed to join forces.

Their first order of business was to pitch new accounts. In addition to a Dodge dealership, they picked up Deep Rock Water, a bottled water company dating back to 1896. When the city of Denver refused to run city water to druggist Stephen Kostich’s property, he drilled his own well and began to bottle and sell the crystal clear water that flowed from the aquifer. The company was purchased by Merrill and Dorie Fie in 1967, and a few years later, Deep Rock Water was supplying drinking and distilled water to the entire state of Colorado.

The market for bottled water in the early 1970s was a far cry from what it is today. Deep Rock’s customers, with few exceptions, were commercial accounts and advertising was limited to radio spots during the spring and summer months. Clive created “Drinkworthy,” a character who resided in Deep Rock’s well and praised the water’s attributes with an enigmatic Maine accent. Although it was never clear if Drinkworthy’s girlfriend, Ida Mae, lived in the well with him, she provided a sarcastic foil to his good-natured sales pitch. Both character’s voices were provided by “Little Johnny” Harding, a local radio personality.

Although Clive was working with tight budgets, he added occasional cameo appearances by character actors whose voices would be instantly recognized by the public - Andy Devine, Dennis Day, and Harry Morgan helped Drinkworthy sell Deep Rock Water. In addition to western themes aimed at the local audience, Clive’s commercials featured story lines inspired by current topics. In one spot, Drinkworthy uses Deep Rock water to cure a young girl during an exorcism. In another, Ida Mae threatens to burn her bra because Drinkworthy is paying more attention to his precious water than to her.

Merrill Fie remembers Clive as “a very colorful character who helped us sell a lot of water. You never knew what he was going to come up with, but it always worked.” Dorie Fie concurs - “Although it has been a lot of years since the Drinkworthy spots were on the radio, our friends still tell us they were some of the most unforgettable advertising done in Denver.”

Clive and Barry Cossette’s relationship was amicable and the agency was profitable, but Cossette, inspired by Clive’s tales of Los Angeles advertising, picked up and moved west in late 1970. Although Clive inherited the agency’s accounts, without somebody to share the load, he decided it was time to look for a steady paycheck.

In the Denver Post’s classifieds, he discovered three downtown Denver agencies were seeking a copywriter. After setting up appointments with all three, Clive dusted off his portfolio and resume, put on his best suit, and drove to Denver, confident he would be working by the end of the week. At his first interview, the agency’s owner began their conversation by telling Clive he was extremely overqualified. Clive countered, telling him he was getting a good deal. Dismissing Clive’s argument with a wave of his hand, he ended the interview, adding, “The last thing we need is a hotshot from the West Coast coming in here and telling us we’re doing everything wrong.”

Assuming he had simply run into a small-minded yokel with a cow-town mentality, Clive was still upbeat when he arrived for his second interview. “It was like listening to a tape recording of the first guy,” he says. “After telling me I was overqualified, he - this is a true story - told me, ‘We don’t need hotshot from the West Coast coming in here telling us how it’s done.’” Walking out of the office, Clive was tempted to drive to the city limits and check to make sure the sign read, “Welcome to Denver,” and not “Pumpkin Corners.”

It was now Friday. Clive’s third interview was scheduled for the coming Monday. He used the weekend to prepare a signature Cussler gambit.

Wadding up his oldest suit, he tossed it in a corner. Next, he eradicated the word “creative director” and any mention of awards from his resume and portfolio. The reels of his television commercials were deposited in a drawer. As an added touch, he skipped shaving for two days.

At the appointed time, Clive, looking like a lanky version of Willy Loman, was sitting in the reception area of Hull/Mefford Advertising. Looking around, he noticed the furniture had seen better days; the walls were past due for a paint job, and the solitary framed award was four years old. He was ushered into Jack Hull’s office, and after some small talk, with as much humility as he could muster, Clive explained he was very happy to be in Denver, far away from those know-it-all hotshots in California who made his life miserable. Hull ended up offering him the job for $10,000 a year. Clive talked him up to $12,000.

Reporting for work the next morning, Clive was shown to his office. “It was an alcove,” he says, “next to the restrooms. I was given a beat-up desk and an ancient Royal typewriter. There wasn’t even a phone, and everybody had to practically crawl over me to go to the john.” Clive’s assignments included writing copy for a trucking company, a real estate firm, and an insurance agency. “I had to come up with this saccharine prose,” he says, “congratulating gangs of grinning agents for selling a million dollars’ worth of homes or life insurance.”

On the job, Clive went out of his way to cultivate the image of a quiet, dedicated family man. If his co-workers noticed him at all, they were impressed by his work ethic. From the minute he walked into the office until quitting time, Clive pounded away at his typewriter. They had no way of knowing Clive could usually finish his assignments before noon, spending the rest of the day working on the next Pitt adventure.

In January 1971, Clive purchased a new house on West 72nd Street in Indian Tree Village - a development located in Arvada, a bedroom community ten miles northwest of Denver. “When my father got done with the house,” Teri says, “it was really something.” Dad built a sundeck in the back yard, installed overhead track lighting and a freestanding fireplace in the family room, and paneled the bathroom so it looked like a railroad caboose.”

The house backed up to a municipal golf course, a feature the Cussler children considered “our big backyard.” When no golfers were in sight, Dayna would go out and look for golf balls, selling them to the same duffers who originally lost them. Dirk and several of his friends found a golf cart stuck in a sand trap and spent the rest of the night driving around the fairways until the battery went dead. “I heard my father’s stories about growing up in California,” Dirk says. “He thought the forts and tree houses we built were fine, but we also cobbled together a boat. It wasn’t very seaworthy, and when Clive found out I had been out on the golf course lake, he flipped out.”

Juggling the demands of his family and job, Clive managed to put aside as many hours as he could spare to write. One of his cohorts at Hull/Mefford remembers Clive giving him a tour of his home office. “We went down the stairs to his unfinished basement and had to duck under the damp clothes hanging on the line. Tucked back in a corner, next to the cement brick wall, were two sawhorses with a door across them and this old manual typewriter. After he made it big, we always laughed about Clive’s classy office in his basement.”