From Milwaukee I took off for Detroit on the Fourth of July weekend. The folks were supposed to be home in Grand Rapids or I would have taken the shorter route. They were not home. I went next door and got the house key. My mother had told me that I should have tken the cottage key from Honey at the bar so I thought taking the house key from the neighbor would be OK. I was wrong. My father told me that I was not welcome in his house and to never, ever enter it without his explicit permission.
You know, I do not remember the next door neighbor’s name. They had a daughter a few years younger than myself. She was engaged to a boy that her mother did not approve of. Her mother encouraged me to sabatage that relationship. The girl was a nice girl but not really my type. I did not take her seriously. I liked her but not that much. We spent some time that weekend as I talked with my mother at the cottage – really Honey’s as there was no phone at the cottage.
I arrived in Detroit at Chuck Borso’s house at McKinney and the Ford’s Expressway. Chuck was as good as his word: I slept on the couch for a week.
I drove my motorcycle all over Detroit. I applied to many places for any sort of job – preferably a programming job. I drove past Chrysler Corporate in Highland Park. I still had the card from the auto show. I stopped in at personnel and gave them the card. The card was magic: they called the guy and they asked what I wanted. I wanted a job as a computer programmer. They gave me the standard IBM PAT. The PAT was the “Programmer Aptitude Test”. This test was necessary since many people wanted to be a programmer -- the pay was good and the future was better. There were not enough education facilities to meet the needs. Ergo, the PAT. I had this test memorized. They called engineering, Bud Kulka. He interviewed me and offered me a job. $7,200 per year. One third of what the average auto assembly line worker made. Enough to live well in Milwaukee. Poverty level in Detroit. It was a job. A real job with a real future.
I drove the motorcycle back to Chuck’s house and then back to Milwaukee for my belongings. Bill Davis, Pam Voell’s husband, loaned me a VW Beetle for a trip to Lansing with clothes and a few personal things. My friend Chuck Krueger made the trip with me. I had more belongings but these were enough to start.
Sunday. I took the Greyhound bus back to Detroit. I was to start work the next day. The bus pulled into town – the city of Detroit was on fire. The John Lodge Expressway, like many expressways, was below ground level with the cross-streets having bridges over it at regular or irregular intervals. So as the bus rushed toward the downtown terminal all we saw were flames. We were driving into World War III. The guy next to me was an actor at the newly opened play at the Fisher Theater. We arrived at the terminal and were informed that we were out after curfew. The city was shut down. This was a serious riot. We had the option of going across the street to a hotel or stay in the terminal – anything else was a curfew violation.
I had no money and had spent enough nights in Greyhound or train stations to not want to do it again. I walked across the street to the National Bank of Detroit building steps to wait for a city bus. A girl waiting for a bus pulled a knife on me and stood there shaking. I told her: “Not Me: I shall keep my distance”. Just tell me what bus goes to 6-mile and the Ford’s. I think it was the 10 bus. I forget. In any case, the buses were not stopping. Understandable: you could see the flames and the rioters not too far up Woodward. I saw my bus coming. I knew that it, like the others, would not stop. I stood in the middle of the road. It stopped. We all got on. The bus headed north/east.
I would have said just east but Detroit is laid out on an angle. The main drag is Woodward Avenue. It goes from the northern affluent suburbs south to the tunnel to Windsor, Canada. Only Woodward Avenue does not go south.
Detroit is at the bottom of the Michigan thumb. Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair are to the north. Lake Erie is south and east. The Detroit and St. Clair Rivers connect the two. The Detroit River bends around such that the tunnel and the Ambassador Bridge go south to Canada. Detroit residents are proud that this is where Canada is south of the United States: they have warped their world to make sure everyone knows about south. Woodward really goes about 30 degrees east of true south. There is a grid of streets that matches Woodward. There is an overlapping grid of streets that map true north; and a third set of streets that form circles, more or less, and referred to as the mile roads. Except they are named streets: McKinney is 6-mile on its part of town. Then there is Grand Avenue which cuts to the northwest from downtown. The Ford’s expressway comes in from the southwest, gets to downtown, and then cuts north -- but Detroit people say it goes east.
In any case, I am on the city bus and it will get to McKinney and the Ford’s. In Detroit it is never “Ford”. You would want to say the Ford Assembly Plant or the Ford Headquarters (Dearborn). No. You always say “Ford’s” in Detroit. We go up Gratiot and find out how bad things really are. Bricks come through the windows: by the time we get off Gratiot, all of the windows are broken. We are hiding under the seats. The driver is holding on for dear life and not stopping for anything – including people waiting at bus stops. He asks riders where they live and delivers them to their doors. He will take the bus home tonight and not return to the stable. He lets me off at Chuck’s house. The screen door is closed but the door is open. Dumb. The city is on fire. The people are rioting and the door is not bolted. I yell from the front yard. I am afraid to get near the door or I may be shot. They are listening to the riot on TV. I am listening to it in the front yard. I can hear the half-tracks of the Army Reserve going down the Ford’s a couple blocks away. I hear weapons firing. I hear automatic weapons firing. Chuck and his roommate let me in and wonder why I did not ring the bell. I invite them into the front yard.
The next day I start work. This will not happen as the city is shut down. I go in on Tuesday and am sent to IBM programming school for two weeks to learn COBOL. I learn it. I also learn about it. If you really need to know it now, see COBOL down below -- otherwise keep reading the current dialog.
After arriving at my new home on the city bus, I learned about the remainder of the riot sitting on the couch with Chuck and his roommate. Chuck worked for a machine company in Detroit somewhere. He was a brilliant person and I presume the job was a good one. Jeannie was in the apartment in Lansing. We would visit her various times during the summer. We went there during the riot and watched the news there. The roommate worked for UniRoyal. I never knew what he really did there. I hurt his feelings with my unwarranted, outspoken comments about tires. I still feel some guilt about that. We watched the riot on TV.
There is a history here. In the early 1960’s the Detroit City Police had a battle on the Fourth of July with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. The police lost.<> This was embarrassing.<> For the next several years, the police rebuilt the department and its image. It built specialty police cars and worked hard on training.<> When the 1967 riots broke out, the police quickly realized that they could lose this one too.<> They backed down.<> The mayor immediately asked Governor Romney for National Guard assistance. <> He got it.<> Now the problem is that these new soldiers with new uniforms with new rifles in new trucks had no riot control training. The situation disintegrated rapidly. This was the state when I arrived in town. The National Guard and Police were shooting each other and sometimes at the rioters.
So Governor Romney asked President Johnson for assistance. Johnson sent Cyrus Vance to evaluate the situation. I blame Cyrus Vance personally for our poorly organized debacle in Viet Nam.<> You can look that up history as I need not go into it here. Vance and the mayor and Romney were on TV. The mayor was insisting on troops now. He reminded me of Khrushchev without the shoe.<> Romney was supporting him.<> Vance was acting like the asshole he is (pardon the language but many people died because of him).<> Johnson was playing this for all of the political fodder he could. The Democratic president refused to send troops to the city of Detroit until the Republican governor stated that the State of Michigan was in insurrection.<> This declaration would have invalidated every insurance policy in the state. Romney stood his ground. They finally compromised on wording that was less political.<> This took a day.<> This day cost millions of dollars in damage to Detroit. The troops arrived Monday night. The riot ended a few hours later. Maybe I am a day off. It was a long time ago.
There is another bit here.<> The 101st Airborne Division had just returned from Viet Nam and was getting ready to return to their homes. Instead they re-boarded their planes and were told they could go home after the riot ended.<> These guys were motivated and knew how to stop the enemy. They looked like mad dogs and I am sure that I would have preferred the dog if I had to make a choice. These soldiers were dispersed throughout the riot areas: 4 to a corner.<> Their uniforms still had mud on them and were definitely not new. The soldiers stood staring across the streets at each other while leaning on their rifles. I walked past some of these on my way to school on Tuesday. I went out of my way to walk around them at some distance.<> So did everyone else.<> They went home a few days later.<> The riot was over.<> The police took over.
Rioting people had attacked and fired upon firemen responding to fires. These rioters deserve a special place in hell. I have no opinion on the other rioters.
I ride the bus back to Milwaukee on the following weekend. Bill Davis loaned me his VW microbus for the remainder of my belongings and I made it to Detroit from the Summit apartment. No furniture but all my clothes. The VW rear gearbox went out. I paid to have it fixed and the windshield replaced. The windshield was splattered with shotgun pellet holes.<> Bill and Pam were supporters of Father < >Grappe (racial-equality advocate) and places where they went had many people that were not of a similar opinion.<> I thought Bill would be pleased. He was not. I paid for these with future earnings.
I stopped off at Haeselich’s to say good-bye. The door was locked and no one was home. I had never seen the door locked. The back door was also locked. The world had taken another twist when I was not looking.<> Also Milwaukee was under marshal law: absolute curfew 24-hours a day. The mayor had shut the city down to prevent a Detroit situation.
I started to drive the motorcycle back to Detroit. It died about Kalamazoo. I mean it really died. I opened the dipstick to check the oil: the oil was silver-flecked and a light grey. This meant that something metal had disintegrated and it would never run again.<> The Michigan Highway patrol called my parents and I disassembled the motorcycle to fit in the back of their station wagon. The bike had done well by me but I would never ride it again. I had put about as much money in repairs as it had cost originally and could not afford more. I gave it to Gary Leive who gave it to another friend. I was a bit late in delivering the title but the new owner drove it for some years after between Rochester and Minneapolis. I used to have a picture of him and his motorcycle.
But now we put the bike parts in bushel baskets in the garage and they drove me to Detroit to Chuck’s apartment.<> It was late.<> My father was angry or still angry.<> I could not tell which.<> I was banned permanently from his home except to remove my motorcycle. I learned much later from my mother that my father was angry because I had not said thank you for the ride. I know I said something in gratitude. Maybe not the words “thank you”.<> In any case in a two-week period I had driven the 320 miles between the two cities 6 times.<> I had seen my world change from student to unemployed to programmer. I had seen the Detroit and Milwaukee riots. I had seen my life of 5 years in Milwaukee disappear.<> And I was tired.<> I was physically exhausted.<> I was mentally drained.<> I was dealing with a man I considered insane. And he was finding more reasons to call me a mental deadbeat and be angry with me.
I had a new start and I took it.<> No more smoking.<> No more drinking.<> No more destructive homes to live in.
I took a business-card sized piece of paper.<> I wrote down 10 short-term goals.<> I wrote down 10-medium term goals and I wrote 10-long term goals. I read this paper every time I took out my wallet.<> The short-term goals were met by the end of the summer. The long-term goals were met when my first daughter was born. In 1975, I threw the paper away. I was successful. <>Period.
I was assigned a desk in the programming room.<> The Chrysler engineering building was the original Dodge Brothers assembly plant. It was old. Our area was a single floor that sort of backed into John R.<> John R was a major street that paralleled Woodward. Our computer was an IBM 360 model 40 with 256K memory. It had a bank of tape drives and a group of 2311 disk drives. These were later replaced with 2314 disk drives.<> We had a 1403 printer and a 2540 reader/punch. This was a typical IBM computer installation. Next to our computer was the Engineering scientific-side computer.<> A similar system but with an IBM<> 360 model 50. We did not talk too much to them. Between the computer room and the programming room was the EDP room with a platoon of keypunch girls. This entire area was my home for the next year.
I thought that this was the best computer system there ever was. I knew better but this was mine. The computer ran only on first shift but it was a long shift since Hugh came in early and the other operator, I forget his name, came in a little later.
The operating system was DOS.<> Not the PC DOS.<> The <>IBM 360 DOS.
I opened a checking account and had my money transferred from my bank in Milwaukee. The new bank lost the deposit and cost me a month more of no money.<> They eventually found the check in a shoebox after I insisted that they must have it since it had left my Milwaukee bank three weeks before.
A couple of months later my statement did not arrive.<> Since I was living on a shoestring, knowing what money had arrived, including my pay checks, was critical. The clerk told me that the bank’s computer had gone down for three weeks and that my statement would arrive late anytime that that happened.<> I transferred my account to National Bank of Detroit.
National Bank of Detroit was a worse problem.<> It took them 5 days to process a paycheck automatically deposited by Chrysler.<> This was crazy.<> I did not have the week.<> Checks bounced.<> After some argument they would reverse their charges and stopped bouncing the checks.<> They started manually auditing my statements and correcting them before sending them to me.<> It took almost a year for them to get to this point. Until then, I had monthly arguments and corrections. Even in 1967 this should not have been a problem.<> NBD was a problem for years after I left Detroit.
COBOL is the language invented by Commander Grace Hopper of the US Navy. It is a language for ignorant people to get what they want out of a computer.<> It is verbose and very similar to <>a structured English. Unlike the scientific languages where import and export of data is a necessary nuisance, COBOL defines data formats as records and handles them reasonably well.
In other words, you compute formulas with the FORTRAN family. You maintain information with COBOL. Businesses need to maintain information. COBOL is their tool. Now we have several problems. The first is that the computers are small and slow and programmers are taught to minimize data size. The end result is that the data records contain data formats which use abbreviated fields.<> For example, the year is stored as two digits rather than four. This is the bottom line of the Y2K problem: COBOL programmers using the 2-digit date.<> The solution to the problem is simple: use a binary format rather than a decimel format for the same data. Binary 2-characters will hold 32,000 values where only 2,000 are necessary.<> The character format only holds 100 values in the same field. The problem is that all programs with record and field values of the old data must be converted to the binary format in a consistent and timely manner.<> There are similar solutions but this is the basis for all of them. This was not deemed a problem at the time except for people like me who got nervous about any abbreviated things.
The real problem in the COBOL world was that the language attempted to be all things to all people and there were many people in the field without any common sense at all when it came to programming.<> We have already stated that there was a lack of education in this area.
COBOL had some really pathological constructs.<> The most obvious of these to a real programmer is the “alter goto” and the “perform through” verbs. These actually change the program code at execution time.<> Many programmers found ways to hurt themselves without the help of language difficulties.
It took 30 years to modify COBOL to permit structured methodology.
It is not really all COBOL’s fault.<> The problem is that the science of programming had not evolved to its current state and the people doing the programming had no formal education in computer analysis.<> Much was accomplished in a day when computers still had millions of wires. And the days of EDP were slowly being replaced with these behemoths.
There were a lot of people inherited from accounting.<> There were a lot of people inherited from EDP.<> EDP was Electronic Data Processing. Really a misnomer as the machines from this area were all mechanical. That is, they read punch cards and collated them and made new cards and printouts of the collated data. The algorithms matched colored cables on punch boards. It took some skill to make a punch boards <>process your cards in the proper manner.<> These people got to be pretty good at it. But they were not programmers even though they called themselves that. The better of these got promoted to System Analysts from data processors. Whoopee-<>doo. This meant that they told others how to process and sequence the punch cards.
Back to COBOL.<> I was a COBOL programmer now.<> I was assigned various system responsibilities in the Engineering department.<> I was assigned the processing of competitive body and chassis weights. This was solely a computerized version of the above: collating and printing of weights data. I forget other applications. There were some.
I was given the chore of designing a system for scheduling new car production. Styling is a division of Engineering. <>A very powerful division.<> I wrore a series of programs to produce a PERT chart of the process.<> My customers were very good, very intelligent, and very patient.
Our director, Bud Kulka, was promoted to the director of the corporate computer center shortly after I arrived. Our new director was a retired navel commander who mostly reminded me of a pock-marked barracuda.<> He did not appreciate me as well as had Bud.
My boss was the programming manager, Ron Hammel.<> Ron was a real bummer as he was threatened by his own people. This is a little ahead of where we are but it gives you an example of the problem. One day we installed a new version of the operating system. It caused a program for which I was responsible but that everyone used to program check and cause a memory dump. I was in early enough to notice this and gave the operator a fix for the problem. I then went upstairs to another computer department to consult with them.<> A couple hours later I returned to find everyone in the shop poring over a memory dump.<> I went into the computer room and asked about my job to fix the problem. The operator and the managers were huddled.<> Ron, Hank, the scientific guy, the operator. I asked and was told that my job had not been run as I had asked but had been put at the rear of the queue to be run last on the orders of Ron Hammel.<> Ron asserted that I had no business having a job run before anyone else got theirs run.<> All of the jobs run before mine had failed and were on the programmers’ desks.<> I looked up and called him a dumb rummy. The operator held back a laugh. Hank smirked.<> Ron ran off crying and told the director that I had called him a dumb rummy. The director told him that I was right: he was a dumb rummy.<> Ron disappeared for the rest of the day.
At a later date, my protégé, Karen, was having problems with one of her program responsibilities.<> She had taken on helping me on her own time. I needed the help.<> On a Saturday, I caught Ron modifying one of her programs. Monday that program had problems. We found what Ron had done. He was transferred to Akron.
My biggest problem with Ron was that when I was promoted to Systems Programmer to work for Hank, Ron made sure that my programming responsibilities were never removed. This forced me to work two shifts a day.
Hank was the manager of Systems Programming in the department. Maintaining the operating system and educating the operators was his responsibility.<> I would never have gotten to where I did without Hank’s tempering personality and good will.<> The world should have more Henry < >Usakowskis. Hank’s desk was on the back wall of the programming room.<> My desk was assigned next to his when I was promoted.
Dick Doherty
Kathy Zabriskie
Leonard Johnson
Steve Temchef
Don Salen
Butch Maxwell
The Dodge 440
After life with Chuck and his roommate, I moved into a house with three other fellows. Charley, the Rat, Simpson had the lease and the upstairs bedroom.<> Jim had the bedroom downstairs and the other guy had the room across from me. Jim and the other fellow were teachers.<> This house was near 8 mile and Schafer on a little street named Tracey.
I do not remember his name.<> To me, he was sort of a non-entity.<> Teachers have to be at school before rush and come home before rush. This guy got a ticket for obstructing traffic in the morning because he insisted on going 35 (the speed limit) on the way to school.<> Coming home the same day, he got a ticket for speeding on the same street. Detroit is the only place I ever lived where you really could get a ticket for obstructing.<> Otherwise I remember nothing about him.
Jim was a really good guy.<> He had gotten his degree from a college in Appleton, Wisconsin.<> His uncle was the dean of students at the University of Wisconsin.<> Jim influenced his uncle and I later got a letter inviting me to return to the university.<> Everyone should have a friend like Jim.
After the Schaffer house, I moved into an apartment.<> We shall get there.<> Jim moved elsewhere and I believe drove an ambulance in Ann Arbor.<> I saw him a few years later in Ann Arbor. I saw him some years later when he lived in Quincy, Massachusetts.<> We visited him in the motor home on our RV trip.
Jim was a high school English teacher in Ecorse.<> This was a real challenge as Ecorse is 95% black and the graduating senior class was basically illiterate.<> Jim tried to help.<> His contract was not renewed.
Jim had a real thing for fireman.<> Our house was wired for telephones in all of the rooms although we only had one line.<> Jim added speakers to each of the phone jacks and connected them to the fire radio channel.<> You heard fire calls wherever you were in the house. Maybe not in Charley’s room.
My sister Kathie visited us and spent the night on the couch. She and her boyfriend recounted the fire calls the next day. They calls were a part of the household.<> We did not hear them.<> Ocassionally Jim would run out the front door when he recognized the fire call as being in the neighborhood. I think Jim had a full fire-fighter outfit in the trunk of his car.<> He had a fire radio in the car too.<> His car was just like mine except that it had the 318 V-8 whereas I had the 279 V-8.
Both cars were that golden brown color that made them almost invisible compared to the bright colors of the other cars those years.
Charley was a real rat. Maybe weasel was a better term. He would hustle pool to pay the rent.<> This was not necessary but Charley had that personality. The rent from the three of us covered to real rent. He would spend that and then have to find more.<> He had a favorite pool hall down by the U of Detroit. I went there with him once to help him set up the suckers. I then went home. I always wondered why Charley never came home with broken thumbs.<> Charley had an inverter in his car so that he could use his electric razor. I have no idea if Charley had a job.
Charley did have his upstairs room laid out like a pimp castle. Fuzzy rug. Fuzzy walls, A large stack of Playboys next to the bed. Charley also had a girlfriend. She was only 17 and went to a Catholic High School. She was also pregnant.
We had a bar with tall stools for the dining room. We ate at the bar. One night at dinner, Charley got a call from his girl friend. She was at the hospital to have the baby. They would not admit her. They would not accept Charley to admit her. Charley had to explain to the girl’s mother on the way to the hospital that he was the father of the baby that her daughter was needing her to sign admission papers for. The three of us laughed through our dinner.
Sometme along the way, someone gave each of us a 6-pack of Coors. In those days Coors was only sold west of the Mississippi. These were prize possessions. They were also supposed to be kept cold. Since I did not drink, I had no idea about the care and feeding of beer cans. I kept mine in the corner next to the hot air register. After a few months and I had no better ideas, I put it in the refrigerator. The other tried to drink it and were ready to kill me. I guess beer tastes bad when it spoils. I still would not know.
In any case, life was sort of uneventful here. These were the days where Ma Bell owned all of the telephone equipment. According to Charley, the house was previously owned by a real-estate agency. In the basement was something called a KSU. It was some sort of switch box. I think it was for the 6-button phones that were useful for small businesses in those days. I have no idea but it looked nice. I figured it out well enough to attach one of Steve Keidl’s phone birds. This device made it so that we could receive long distance calls free. In the contemporary jargon, this was referred to as a black box. A Blue box permitted you to make long distance calls. This was much simpler and cost about 75 cents for the parts.<> There were red and yellow boxes but I have no idea what they did. Black boxes were simple. I sold a couple. I gave one to Jim’s uncle at the university. I put his in a 6-button phone since that is what was used at the university.
Dishwashing in a group of single men is never a good situation. My father gave me the old dishwasher since the Grand Rapids house already had one. The condition was that I rent it to my roommates. To my father everything was about money. The Tracy house had little room but the dishwasher helped solve the problem.
Snow
Van Dyke Dodge
Carter Carb
Moving out
This is the most important part of my life in Detroit.
Hungarian Pig
Jeanne’s Wedding
Before I went back to school, I gave the Borsos my dishwasher. They kept it in the kitchen for a while but never used it. I think it was a tradition thing. In any case it just sat there with a load of water in it for a couple of years.