∙ The chairman of billion-dollar-a-year Cities Service Co., Burl Stevens Watson, 67, drawls self-effacingly, "I'm just an average man. There's no romance in my story." But last week Alabama-bred Oilman Watson made stories all over the nation's business pages. At midweek Cities Service won an Interior Department contract to extract, process and sell to the U.S. up to $9.1 million a year worth of helium, production of which the Government previously monopolized. Next day Watson announced plans for a $108 million stock swap to acquire Columbian Carbon Co., an $80 million-a-year producer of carbon black, ink and pigments.Both moves were part...
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