We moved out of Tracy on one day’s notice. There were problems left over from Charlie. It took a couple of days to get mail forwarded and a few other things. Charlie had collected the rent but we knew he had not paid it too the landlord. We knew we would be evicted and so we left: we found an eviction notice on the door the day after Charlie moved out.
The move out of Charlie’s coincided with the delivery of my tax refund check. I did not know this but I knew I did not receive the check. I started protesting to the IRS. It took a year and a half to resolve. It turned out that Charlie had taken the check, forged my name, and cashed it. This took many complaints to the IRS and a couple of notarized affidavits but I got a new check in 1970. I also got a call from Charlie while at work (!) asking about the check I had given him in exchange for property stolen from him.
Stolen? I do not think so. There was a telephone exchange box in the house and several telephones. I think we each took a telephone but then I had brought a couple of telephones. Remember in those days, AT&T owned all residential telephones and equipment – I had a couple left from my university days.
I saw Charlie in the parking lot one afternoon at my new apartment house. I think he wanted me to see him. He stole my London Fog and my high-power speakers from my car. He also broke into the apartment storage area and stole anything that belonged to me. This included some camping equipment and my stamp collection. I missed my stamp collection as I had had it from grade school but it contained nothing of real value. My mother had given me the London Fog. Not much I could do about the theft. So I just held it against Charlie. It was a year later that I found out about the theft of the IRS check. I hope they nailed him on that. With Charlie’s slick tongue, I doubt anything happened about it.
AfterTracy, I moved in with a fellow at Chrysler who worked in corporate accounting: Bill Bean. I liked Bill: he had a good head on his shoulders. He had a nice 2-bedroom apartment on State Fair Road. State Fair Road is sort of like 7½ mile road east of Woodward. I was a poor roommate as I was a slob. I only worked, and slept at home. I never made my bed. Someday I shall tell you why not. On the other hand, I was never home. I always worked late. Sometimes I spent the evening or all night at Kathy’s. Weekends were always at the farm.
After a few months, Bill got married and his buddy Mike moved into Bill’s place. I liked Mike: he was from East St. Louis – or at least had gone to college there. One night I was cooking dinner when Mike arrived. It would be a couple of hours so Mike went down to the nightclub next door. He returned in just a few minutes. He was pale as a ghost.
He toild me that as he was talking to a fellow at the bar another man came in and accosted the guy. The new man claimed the fellow was sitting in his chair. The first guy refused to move and so the new man pulled out a pistol and shot him. Mike came home. At this time, State Fair Road was a middle class neighborhood and this kind of thing would have been more expected over by Tracy. I suspect things have changed. Mike learned quicly that as tough as East St. Louis is, Detroit is tougher.
I was still friends with Jim Kaufman from Tracy and went down to Indian Village a few times to see him. This was a giant beautiful old home being totally restored by his roommate.
Jim told me about an experience coming back to his car after a show. Someone attempted to rob him. He opened the car door, which set off the siren that we had installed. Jim hid under the car until the police came.
Jim also talked to his uncle, Dean of Students at the University, who said I could register for the fall semester. I jumped at the opportunity. Dean Kaufman then moved on to become the president of an eastern university.
I was accepted into the University and had to be there by the last week of August. So much to do at Chrysler. Our department chairman decided to make a free trip to the Adirondacks by making the Pert Management System (PMS) an issue. We went to the Ivory Tower in Armonk and pleaded lack of support. Our Detroit Manager, Don Salen, was there as was a fellow from Chrysler Corporate. IBM laid out the red carpet and heard our story about the defective PMS distribution tapes and how they had intercepted the tape I had located in Los Angeles. Somehow I do not think they were impressed with our visit. This sort of thing had no resolution in Armonk and was just an excuse for my director to get a free ride.
The Corporate guy sat next to me on the trip home. He told me that I would hear from him. That was nice but it did not matter: I was going back to school.
I turned in my two weeks notice. The director refused it and wanted me to ask for a leave of absence. He told me that he would hold up my final paycheck if I did not do what he asked.
I was called to the Corporate offices on the floor of the President, Lynn Townsend. My friend from the trip east was there as were about 10 others. I was invited to be the engineering representative to the corporate computer direction task force. This task force reported directly to the president. The downside was that I would still be employed by the engineering department. I thanked them for the opportunity but informed them that I was on my last week. This was late Monday so I had only 72 more hours to be an employee. 72 hours? As has been stated several times, I worked two shifts per day. I told them that since they were aware of the slave labor conditions in engineering that the best thing their task force could do would be to improve the working conditions of motivated employees. Where had they been for the last year? I guess I let too much anger go. Many thanks were offset by the frustration of the last year.
I left on schedule with no exit interview and my badge in hand. Useless but whatever. No exit interview? Personnel goes home by 5 and I worked until midnight Friday.
In October, I signed up at the University placement office for an interview with Bendix Corporation. The interview was scheduled for the Monday after Thanksgiving. I went to the farm in Detroit for Thanksgiving. Oh, how I miss having a family. It snowed. You know I will drive in almost any weather but this was beyond my abilities. I missed Monday.
While on the farm at Thanksgiving I broke the middle finger on my left hand. I was impressed when I first arrived at the farm at how the boys treated their youngest sister, Tina. David and Chuck loved her and valued her more than any precious jewel. They would play with her: they threw her up in the air so high that she could look in the second floor windows. Now, this is a two-story farmhouse from the olden days. The ceilings are eleven or twelve feet high. This means that a second floor window is about 15 feet off the ground. They would toss her up while mom washed the dishes in the sink. The sink faced the window looking out the back where Tina was flying through the air.
I loved Tina just as much but I did not trust myself to throw her that far. Maybe five feet or so. And I was more available. Chuck was in New Jersey. David was off to Michigan State. I also would play with her in the house. I would let her grab the middle finger of each of my hands then pull her up from the floor. I would toss her high enough to touch the ceiling. Not as good as 15 feet but a good lift. She loved it.
One day while I was doing this, her hand slipped from my right hand just as I lifted her off the ground. I quickly lifted her with the other hand so that I could grasp her before she fell on her face. This was successful, sort of: she did not fall. The problem was that my finger snapped. It broke just below the joint. I quickly jammed it back in place. It hurt so we quit the tossing for the weekend. Everybody laughed: Tina broke Chuck’s finger.
When I got back to Madison, I had trouble typing because my finger was crooked. I snapped it straight – with another crunch. Allen looked over and told me that I had better get it looked at. I went to the University Hospitals and saw Dr. Okagaki. I think it was he that I saw. In any case, he showed me the X-rays. The finger had indeed broken. Broken all the way through. The finger was now set and healthy so it was decided to not operate in any manner. The problem was that it had splintered when broke and jammed together. There was a collar of bone shards protruding from an angle around the break. The doctor told me that these were what were causing the pain and that they would wear down and the pain would go away. It would take a while. I was lucky. Lucky or not, it still hurt.
When I did return from Detroit, I called Bendix to apologize for missing the interview. When they found that I lived near Detroit, they invited me to interview at their offices in Southfield the Friday before Christmas. I did this.
In those days you dressed in a suit for any interview. I got to the farm for the holiday. I brought Randy along and dropped him off in Lansing. We did spend the night at the farm and left early in the morning. Billy saw Randy and told his father that I had snuck a hippie into their house. When I got back from Lansing the old man gave me a really hard time. Maybe he was just putting me on but I could never tell: I think he was serious. Billy never did like me much so I did not go back so much after that.
In any case, I showed up for the interview. The company was empty: it turned out to be a holiday for the company. Nobody had told me that. Even still, the man I was to interview kept me waiting twenty minutes in the reception area. I read some of their literature.
The interviewer turned out to be the head of personnel. He was not cordial but I had learned the formality of Detroit while at Chrysler. Southfield is a northwestern suburb of Detroit. I showed him the literature that I had picked up in his reception. It was a new concept: an anti-lock braking system. I described to him how it would work. I knew this because my friend Steve Keidl had described the same thing as a part of an engineering communications course project. The man told me that the device did not work as I had described. This was disappointing to me because in the days prior to electronics, there were only so many ways to implement such a system. It went downhill from there.
He was looking for an application programmer and I was interviewing as a systems programmer. He had no idea what a systems programmer was and my attempts to educate him were not appreciated. He thought of me as an inexperienced kid trying to take a cheap shot to the top. I thought he was remarkably uninformed on the computer industry. We parted with comments that were not professional. He told me to grow up and I suggested that he learn more about the jobs needed within his company. I told him that they needed me and if he new his requirements, he would be jumping at the opportunity to hire me.
Now this is in character for me sort of. I am very humble and have so little ego that I have trouble saying hello to friends, let alone strangers. This is out of this part of my character. But the man had attacked my knowledge base on the braking system and the profession that I had worked so hard to fit within. I had to defend the profession if not myself.
The man outdid me: he actually called managers at his computer centers and asked about what I had said. I had two interviews waiting for me by the time I got back to the farm. I skipped the Ann Arbor interview and scheduled the South Bend interview.
Christmas at the farm was a normal Christmas. I had presents for most although I was really broke that year. Gary Leive, Steve Keidl, and Bill Davis had all loaned me money. Additional money came from my job in Admin. My car payments and lifestyle cost more than they should have. I had to return to the University early since I had to finish a computer project for a class and get back to my job their. I made arrangements with Kathy Z. to meet me there.
The interview with Robert Ball (Programming Manager) and Emery Johnson (Systems Programming manager) landed me a job offer. $10,000. That is what I requested and I got it.
Kathy showed up in Madison. She had had her little Dodge winterized for Detroit. I told her to get it winterized for Madison. She did it although she did not believe it necessary. It was. The entire week she spent in Madison was cold: it never got above 10 below zero. Hers and my car each started every day. I was so hyped on speed that I was bad company for Kathy and will owe her for my rudeness for the rest of my life.
The project was a success but I barely passed the course. My concept was great: a terminal-oriented aid to education program. This program would accept a large number of students and a smaller number of teachers. It taught arithmetic. It treated addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as major divisions with a tutorial (abbreviated) for each. Within each major division, handling single and multiple digits was a minor division for which there was also tutorial (also abbreviated).
Each student logged on to the level that he had had when he had left. Promotion was autmomatic with a high success rate or manual on request with a lower success rate. Demotion was automatin with a low success rate. Each techer could assign himself students. When so assigned, the interactions of his students showed up on his terminal. A teacher could interact with his students. A teacher had access to an algebraic calculator.
The program worked in all facets. It had no errors when completed in time for the class. Because there were no computers available handling terminals at that time, I wrote the code to operate on the Admin IBM computer. I used tape drives, disk drives, card readers/punches, and the operator console as terminals.
You have to realize that in those days, this was a major task. The algebraic calculator was as far as anyone else in the class would have done. This was a necessary part of the program to give the student problems and to compute the answers.
The device independance was necessary for me to test simultaneous activities but was not a trivial matter.
The support of multiple, interactive terminals, was a serious operating system consideration. Polling multiple devices simultaneously is not simple. Taking over the operator console is not trivial. Kathy’s help was critical in the device independence area. In any case, it all worked. No bugs. I used a concept that later became known as object-oriented-design for this project. OOD was introduced to the computer industry 20 years later. I got an F for my project and a D in the class. I though that this was patently unfair. In a class of 30-some students, I had the only working project. Most had gotten no further than the design stage. Computer time at the University in 1968 came at a high price: one turn-around per day. If you were lucky. With my access to Admin computers, I had instant, fulltime access for at least one shift per day.
I also worked on the job that the University had hired me to do. Kathy went home and I have no idea why she still liked me. The speed had made me so ornery that I got along with no one.
The semester ended in the middle of January. I barely passed my classes but I did. MY D in that computer class kept me from graduating: my GPA was too low to graduate. I shall relate here some things that happened after I got to South Bend as they happened here.
I appealed the loss of graduation. I was 2 grade points short of 2.0 for the last 60 credits but my grade point for the semester was above 2.0. 2 grade points out of 160 credits and I could not afford to stay another semester: I owed the world too much money.
I lost the appeal but they did concede that I could take the credits elsewhere and transfer both the credits and the grade points back so that I could raise my GPA.
Then things went nuts. I received a diploma in the mail. I mean, I really wanted it. I had worked seven years to get it. I had it in my hand and I knew I did not earn it. I called the Registrar’s office to verify that someone had changed their mind and that I deserved the diploma. I was assured that no mistake had been made. I requested that they write me a letter verifying the diploma.
Instead of a verification, I received an angry letter stating that I had stolen a diploma and that legal action would result if it were not returned immediately. This really pissed me off. The following Monday, the diploma and the letter were on the front of the Registrar’s desk. Pissed off: I should have added a letter of my own. I doubt that anyone ever knew the significance of the placement of the diploma and letter. Do you know ANY ex-students who have access during closed hours to the office of the Registrar at any university? The fact that I did means that I had access to student records. I could have changed my grades and no one would have known. Ever.
Let’s back up here a little bit. During the semester I had made friends with one of the computer operators at Admin. He was a student: Atis Purins. He had attended Wauwatosa East after I left there so we did not know each other from the old days. We met at Admin.
At Chrysler I had learned the internals and externals of the IBM OS operating system. With my project and my work, I had learned the internals and externals of the DOS operating system. This was with the help of my friends at IBM: Kathy, Lenny, Steve, Don Salen, et al.
The University had files and files of student records. These were in a locked room. Any student with key access to the computer center or other Admin offices had their grades manually audited. This means that the grades posted in the Admin files were verified back to each professor to make sure grades had not been altered. This verification occurred prior to the computer processing. I had a two-fold advantage here. I was actually on an outside department payroll and not on the Admin-access list. Moreoever, I had shown Atis how to stop the computer on the processing of any student and observe or alter the grades.
This was merely a matter of demonstrating access not a matter of doing the act. In fact Atis called me at three in the morning of grades processing to tell me what my grades were and asked if I needed them changed. I knew instantly that I would not graduate. I told him toi leave the grades alone. I do not know if he would have changed them for me but that he could was what we had proved. This was weeks before the diploma incident.
So. If I had been dishonest enough, I would not have needed to steal a diploma. I could have improved my grades enough to obtain one. I had access (through someone else) to the files room and could have gotten to my grades there. I had matching paper from Amdin storage. The forgery would not be tracable -- as some other guy did by erasing and rewriting on the secure paper. Stupid. No. I am honest. I tried to do it right.
But I would have liked someone to know that I was honest rather than accusing me of theft. So I used my keys (and those of a few friends) and put the diploma on the Registrar’s desk. I suspect that he saw the envelope and asked his staff what it was doing there and since no one knew but they were expecting it, they just wrote it off as a misfiling.
I turned in my keys the following week.
I still resent (obviously) the fact that I have tried all of my life to be honest and although not always succeeding, I am not a thief nor a liar nor in most respects a hypocrite and people still treat me as though I am no better than a common thief.
I went through all of my school and never cheated on a test or exam or knowledge base. I have gone through life with the same attitude. I make this claim knowing that no one cares. The worst that I ever did in school that I can remember was in 10th grade when I wrote a book review on a condensed book rather than the original. I forget the reason for doing this although I felt justified at the time.
Sometimes I think that I shall die and no one will attend the funeral except my loving daughter, Megan. But then there are some that I would prefer were not there for the unease they would cause others.