I shipped a footlocker and a record player ahead of me before I took the flight
to Chicago in September, 1969. The first night of new student week at Northwestern featured
a "Beach Party" where I stood on the edge of Lake Michigan watching waves roll in. I said
to one of the other people that it reminded me of the Atlantic Ocean and she turned to me
and said "I don't know. I'm from Omaha and this is more water than I've ever seen in
my whole life." Also present at the beach that night were some upperclassmen who represented
SDS and were chanting "RotSea must GO!". Since
I was there with a NROTC scholarship, I found this troubling especially since one of the
lead agitators lived 4 doors down the hall from me. That was a turbulent year. After
Kent State there was a student strike at
Northwestern (among other places I am told). Classes were disrupted. The NROTC unit was
relocated from its central campus locations to the athletic facilites over a mile away.
I went on a Summer Cruise aboard the U.S.S. Forrest Sherman
for about six weeks begining in late July, 1970 in Dundee (Scotland) and ending up in Brest (France)
after stopping in Rosyth and Greenock (Scotland) and Bergen (Norway). Along the way we went
far enough North to be above the Arctic Circle and qualify as bluenoses a fact I did not
know at the time. The stop in Rosyth provided several days free time to visit nearby Edinborough
and attempt a pub crawl down the Royal Mile. I don't know how far we got but it was the
next afternoon when I happened upon an old copy of Newsweek and discovered that my lottery number
was over 300. One of the sailors asked me "What the fuck are you doing here?". By the end of
the cruise, I still hadn't been able to come up with a good answer to that question. At the
time, I didn't think that the Vietnam War was affecting my life. Yes, I had a cousin
who survived being there and I knew that there were people from CCHS who were there, but I
didn't recognize that the only reason why I was in the NROTC program was that I knew
that when I left college I would be drafted. When that changed, everything else changed.
I didn't understand how much.Top
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After finishing my degree requirements in December, 1992 my first career choice was to
be an educated bum. The student life was good and the idea of having to get a job, wear a suit, and
act respectable wasn't sitting well with me. By March, I recognized the flaw in this plan
when the need for food and rent money required me to have an income. I had applied to a
graduate program and was planning on starting a new phase of studenthood in September so I
found a temporary position with the glorified title of Assistant Building Engineer
for the General Finance Corporation which meant that I was the one called when lights didn't
work although my main function was to manicure the rose garden outside the Executive Dining Room
and keep the shrubbery shapely. On rainy days I was sometimes permitted to change filters in
the HVAC system or paint the floors and pipes in the boiler room. My supervisor was a good
old boy from Indiana who found out that I had been accepted to Indiana University Purdue University
as Indianapolis and said "Don't go there. Indianapolis is a shit hole town." (he pronounced it
"sheethole"). Despite his advice, I was still intending to attend but not only did they expect
me to pay out of state tuition rates, I would also need to have a job if I went there. So I
put my plans on hold until I could find a way to finance them. This left me pretty much where
I was except that my temporary position really was temporary and I still
had a need for food and rent money. My friend Doug's father was a middle manager for what
was then called the Standard Oil Company (Indiana) and he had found a position for his prodigal
child working at one of the company managed service stations located on the Illinos Toll Road at
the O'Hare Oasis and the family influence was
extended to cover me. So now I had an even more impressive title -- Driveway Salesman
and Lube Room Technician which meant I was allowed to pump gas and check oil and try to
convince people that they needed a new air filter. I was also allowed to install minor repair
parts like belts and hoses. After a few months my duties were expanded to include providing
road service which meant I was allowed to drive the service truck and deliver gas, belts,
hoses, etc. to stranded motorists for which they paid not only the price of the products
and any labor involved but an additional $9.00 (US) as a "road service fee" half of which was
turned over to the Toll Road Authority. I was also required to become a member of
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 705
Truck Drivers, Oil Drivers, Filling Station, and Platform Workers which was a really good
deal because as a union shop we got paid nearly double what most pump jockeys got and because
we were also employees of the Standard Oil Company (Indiana)
and were covered by the same benefits package as the people downtown in the original
Standard Oil Building
on Wacker Drive. (During this period the offices moved to the new Standard Oil Building
which was, for a short time, the tallest building in the world. Because the old building was being emptied,
my manager was allowed to scavenge office furniture and we took the service truck downtown to pick up
a standard metal office desk. The desk wouldn't fit in the bed so we left the tailgate down. When
he told me to make a left and go up the ramp, I punched it and the desk slid off and landed in the
middle of traffic on Lower Wacker Drive. It was a regular Chinese Fire Drill the way we both jumped
out, picked it up, tossed it back in and then drove -- carefully this time -- on.) During this period
I paid off my student loans, acquired a motorcycle, and was pretty close to achieving my original
career goal until my roommate's girlfriend dumped him, he went nuts and slit his wrists (which was
a hellacious mess to clean up) and ended up in the psychiatric ward. Shortly afterward my girlfriend
dumped me and I decided that I needed a change of scenery so I enrolled in an archeological field
school sponsored by Northwestern and what was then known as the Foundation for Illinois Archeology
in Kampsville, IL (it has since become the Center for American Archeology).Top
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Kampsville and archeology was
like a dream come true. I tiny little town next to a lovely river with a ferry instead of a
bridge. And aside from being interesting as a field of study, archeology is just plain fun. Get up at
the crack of dawn and ride to the excavation site. Work like a dog digging neat square holes in the ground. Find
neat stuff. Get sweaty and dirty and come home covered in a thin layer of mud. Stop off in one of the
two bars in town and have a cold draft. Go to lectures and then hang out in the bar with the professors,
graduate students, other field school students, local people and tourists. Listen to country songs on
the jukebox and sing along with almost everyone in the bar every time Kenny Rogers sings "You picked a fine
time to leave me Lucille,...". When the weather gets cold and the ground is frozen and covered with snow there
is plenty of time to analyze what was recovered, read through the literature, write papers and reports, and
generally act like a student all over again only you're actually getting paid to do it. I applied to graduate
schools, was accepted at several, got a fellowship at one and found myself back in Evanston as a graduate student
in the Anthropology Department at Northwestern. I was
studying the general question of what happened when people in North America started growing maize (corn)? I
was paying special attention to changes in growth and development which meant I studied the human skeletal remains
which were recovered from prehistoric cemeteries. This was before the Native
American Graves Repatriation Act came into existance and at the time it was not considered to be quite the sin
it has become since then. The Illinois Department of Transportation with the assistance of the United States
Department of Transportation provided funding to archeologists to mitigate the damage to cultural resources which
would be impacted by highway construction. What is now known as I-72 between Springfield and Quincy, Illinois was
then known as Federally Aided Project 408 and it was the money from this project which made it possible for a lot
of archeologists to spend time digging up prehistoric cemeteries and other archeological sites in
Pike County. This sweetheart deal was brought to an abrupt end in the
early 1980's when President Reagan undid some of President Nixon's executive orders which turned off the spigot which
was funding a lot of research. By 1982 the funds which were supporting me as a graduate student were gone so
once again I was faced with the prospect of finding a way to buy food and pay rent. The situation was a bit more
critical because on January 31, 1981 I married Heather Chepko who was also employed as an archeologist and
was working on projects which were part of FAP 408 and would be in the same situation in only a few months. Faced
with the prospect of borrowing tuition money for the 3rd year of classwork and paying Evanston rent which was
a bit more than the $75 (USD) we paid for the house in
Griggsville -- The Purple Martin Capital or finding a different line of work, I chose the latter.
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When you're living in a place that bills itself as The Pig Capital it's a fairly safe bet that there will
be many agricultural businesses competing for market share. One of them was Vigortone Ag Products. Vigortone
was the brainchild of a veterinarian in Iowa who discovered that if horses were fed a vitamin mineral supplement they would work longer
and harder and stay healthier. He called his product Dr. Fenton's Vigortone and a business was begun. By 1982 when
I went to work for them as a Field Sales Manager (another glorious job title), the business had grown to be the largest
manufacturer of pre-mixed livestock vitamin mineral supplements in the US and was part of the Beatrice Foods
group. The president of Vigortone was the founder's grandson. During the merger mania of the 1980's Esmark attempted a takeover of Beatrice but the chairman of Beatrice would have no
part of it and made a counter move to acquire Esmark in what was at the time one of the largest leveraged buyouts of the time.
Vigortone was put on the block and despite the president's effort to take it private, was purchased by the Pacific Molasses Company which was in turn owned
by Tate and Lyle PLC. Vigortone began a series of changes in marketing
strategy which was marked by a reduction in the number of sales representatives. During this time I was moved to a territory in
Western New York and six month later, while Heather was pregnant with our first child (Julia was born in 1984), to another in Central Pennsylvania. Where Illinois was
hog heaven, Central Pennsylvania agriculture was primarily a dairy producer. Formulating feed for dairy cows is not a simple task. Not
only do protein, calorie, and other nutrient requirements vary with the amount of milk being produced, but the things that cows eat are
far more variable than the basic corn-soy diet fed to hogs. The market price for milk is not as responsive to supply and demand as most commodities
and the cost of production is a critical factor so saving a few cents per hundredweight produced is often the difference between staying in business
for another year or having your banker decide that it's time to sell out. It takes a good computer program to find an economical way to combine the available
feedstuffs to maximize production. Vigortone's management recognized this and made it easy for all of its sales reps to acquire a genuine IBM PC with 640K of RAM
(hard drive optional) by arranging a bulk purchase, financing the deal at 2 points below market rates, and giving everyone enough of an increase in base salary to
be able to make the payments for 2 years. I got my first computer. Before too long I was more focused on doing things with the computer than with increasing
my sales volume rapidly enough to suit my new Regional Sales Manager who did not appreciate my service-oriented approach as much as my customers did. It soon became
evident that if I didn't kill him first, he was going to fire me. Not liking either alternative, I decided it was time for another change of emphasis and began actively to
search for a way to eat, pay the mortgage, and keep the children (Henry was born in 1989) clothed and healthy. After six years of travelling the side, back, gravel and
other roads in Pennsylvania, I decided that driving 40 miles each way to Williamsport to become a PC Technical Assistant was a
reasonable thing to do.
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Brodart Automation's main business was providing services to libraries. The Automation Division started out making microfilm/microfiche products to complement the main business of selling and renting books to libraries. Brodart Automation started the process which ended up turning beautiful oak card catalogs into trendy home furnishings with the introduction of one of the first CD-ROM based Public Access Catalog products for libraries by building IBM compatible PCs and bundling them with Hitachi CD-ROM drives and its own LePac® software to make a system that could be afforded by small libraries. My first position there was to be the technical support representative for a new product named Precision One® which allowed librarians to easily convert their existing hard copy card catalog records to a the standardized Library of Congress MARC (machine readable catalog) format. You have no idea how much fun it is to discover you're talking to someone who is sitting in the library of the Junior High School you attended when it was brand new and you were in the seventh grade. That is the exceptional case for telephone technical support because mostly you know that when the telephone rings you will find yourself dealing with someone who was promised something that was not delivered or who received a product which does not meet the expectations they had. Our sales representatives were all too often the victims of a Marketing Department which would begin to advertise features as soon as someone thought it might be a good idea. Like Ado Annie, the director of marketing could not say "No" when asked "Can your product do...?" and as a result the programming staff was continually under pressure to code new features and deliver them and of course it all had to be user friendly. Software testing consisted of running the software and verifying that it didn't crash too often. Recognizing that increased sales of poor quality products would result in more telephone calls from irate customers, I became an evangelist for quality assurance. As time went by, my responsibilities were expanded to include managing the programming staff and travelling to customer sites to handle really difficult support tasks. My favorite technical support trips took me to the Papua New Guinea University of Technology which even today has limited Internet connectivity and even less reliable mail service. To get from Central Pennsylvania to Unitech requires a minimum of 5 flights not all of which are non-stop and based on a small sample of 2 journeys the likelihood that your luggage will get there at the same time you do is vanishingly small. It was during this period that I discovered Mrs. Yuscavage.
Living in Central Pennsylvania, like assembling a toy on Christmas Eve, requires great peace of mind. It's the language problem. You're not supposed to listen to what people say, you're expected to listen to what they mean. The influence of German can be seen by the absence of the infinitive verb "to be" and the reversal of the words "let" and "leave". If the dog is outside and you want the dog to remain outside, you "Let the dog out." If the dog is inside and you want the dog to go outside, you "Leave the dog out." or "The dog needs left out." This peculiarity of speech led me to discover that all of the English teachers I ever had at Clarkstown have mingled their dramatis personae into a single character who I refer to as Mrs. Yuscavage. I think she's always been there sitting on my shoulder like some sort of cartoon angel/devil character. It was around 1994 when one of our Technical Assistants asked me to look over a letter to a customer and check it for accuracy. I remember giving it back and saying that I thought it was OK but that Mrs. Yuscavage hated it. Then I had to explain who Mrs. Yuscavage is and that if everyone spoke Central Pennsylvania, the show would have been named Let It To Beaver and the song would have been titled Leave It Be. It was one of those moments of clarity when a concept which had previously been only an abstraction becomes one of Mr. Cracovia's concrete cases. The important people never get left behind because we take them with us and you never know who the important ones are until years later.
Winters in Central Pennsylvania are highly variable. Some years are quite mild, others are
very cold and the amount of snowfall is a matter for the Wooly Bear caterpillars to determine. The
Winter of 1995-1996 began early with a snowfall that started about mid-day and by 3:00 pm
the roads were already terrible so when I left for home a little early I knew I was in for
a slow trip. I made it up the first mountain -- a long straight climb -- with little trouble. There
was a slippery layer underneath about 5 or 6 inches of snow but as long as I could maintain my
forward progress I wasn't too worried. Down into the Nipenose (pronounced Nip-a-nose) Valley wasn't
more than a little scary but when I got to the part where the road went into a shallow dip between
two hills there was another car halfway up the far side stuck right in the middle of the road. I backed
up about 200 yards, found a side road to turn around in and went back to take the longer way
around. I didn't have too much trouble getting over the 2nd mountain and down into Sugar Valley
where I stopped to clean my windows in the parking lot of the Amish store and watched a huge
semi-sized tow truck go past. I was glad it had gone by because it broke a lot of the road open
for me and I was able to follow it up to the top of Brush Mountain where I discovered where it
was going. A Pepsi truck had slid off the road halfway up the road I had to go down to get home. After
about 40 minutes, the tow truck had things straightened out enough for me to get down and home. A trip
that usually took a little less than an hour had taken 3. This wasn't the first time something like
that had happened and the whole experience was begining to get old. I began to think I should find
a job closer to home. By September I had found it. A little software company in State College
needed a database conversion programmer and even though it paid less than I would have liked, it
was only 20 miles from home and the road was flat almost all the way. OmniComp started during the
period when energy prices were high and people were looking for ways to reduce their costs. It allowed
companies to track their usage and cost, analyze loads, adjust for differences in weather from year to year
and generally manage their energy dollars. In November it was purchased by a larger company most of us had
never heard of -- an energy oriented company from Houston named Enron.
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For the first 2 years after being acquired by Enron, OmniComp continued to develop and sell its flagship energy management product Faser® and a facilities management package named ServiceCall®. The ensuing years have cast some of the things I saw in that period in a new light. OmniComp's objective for the year 1998 was to achieve a positive run rate by the end of the year. A new release of Faser® was scheduled for the 1st Quarter of 1999 so customers were sold on buying the upgrade early and the invoices were cut during December, the full value was booked as revenue and Voila! the positive run rate was achieved. The new president (an Enron Energy Services V.P.) achieved his objectives and got a sweet annual bonus as did the rest of us. In January 2000 the Vice Chairman of EES, Tom White and several other people came up from Houston and were treated to a presentation which described the plan for the new year. Since OmniComp's customer base included some fairly large corporations, the EES executives concluded that this customer base was too important to be managed at a distance and one week later the staff was informed that OmniComp would be leaving State College and moving to Houston. Key personnel would be offered relocation packages while secretarial, IT, and other staff would be provided with severance settlements. People identified as key who did not want to move to Houston would have their resignations accepted. Half the programming staff and all but one of the technical support people opted to resign. Heather and I decided that moving to Houston was the right thing to do. We got lots more salary, 25% relocation bonus, a guaranteed buyout of our house (an 1850's vintage log structure) and I would be able to resign my position as President of the Smullton Water Company, Inc. after more than 10 years when no one else would do the job. Julia was in the 9th grade, Henry was in the 4th and we were allowed to delay our move until the school year was over in June. A mad weeklong trip to Houston in April produced a house built in the current century and a traffic ticket for exceeding the speed limit in a school zone. On June 15th we moved out of the house in Smullton and headed for Texas.
Texas is an interesting place. Some people love it and others really don't care for it. Everyone should be given the opportunity to live someplace that is very different from the one they are most familiar with. Houston is, as cities go, not too bad as long as you can have air conditioning in the Summer. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston has a marvelous collection and hosted some equally wonderful exhibitions while we were there. The Alley Theatre has a talented resident company and attracts nationally known actors to fill some of the lead roles for special productions. Gregory Boyd the Artistic Director has a vision which challenges these fine actors to produce some of the best performances I have been fortunate enough to witness. Baseball fans are well served by the structure formerly known as Enron Field (now Minute Maid Park); the atmosphere is pleasant and that short left field fence makes for some exciting contests. Houston also has, as you may have read, problems with air pollution, drainage after heavy rains, mosquitoes, imported red fire ants, and if you are (or have) a dog, the fleas do not take time off in the Winter. Texas has great music as fans of Austin City Limits, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Jerry Jeff Walker, and a lot of less well known but equally talented musicians. No mention of Texas musicians is complete with a nod to Kinky Friedman who is sui generis. Some people in Texas sport a bumper sticker which says "I wasn't born in Texas but I got here as quick as I could." Texas is not so appreciative of people who move there and do not think everything is perfect. "If you don't like it here you can leave" describes the attitude most Texans adopt when it is suggested that something be done differently. In November, 2001 we decided to take a vacation, spend a few days in Illinois and have a huge family Thanksgiving at Heather's sister's house outside of Peoria. As we drove back to Houston, we realized that it didn't feel like we were going home but that we were leaving home. By the time we arrived back in Houston a plan had been formed to let Julia finish her Senior year and graduate in 2002 then spend the next 2 years trying to find a position someplace which has 4 distinct seasons and isn't large enough to have an NFL franchise. The ideal location would have been Springfield, Illinois but we weren't going to be that picky. Two weeks later, Enron was bankrupt.
Being no smarter than most of the other Enron employees, almost all of my assets were quickly devalued to zero. On paper it was a shockingly large loss of value. When I calculate the amount that could be considered out of pocket it wasn't such a large amount. Either way it was like the end of Zorba the Greek because everything became new again. I won't say it was a good time; it wasn't. Being 50, nearly broke, and unemployed is not something I can recommend to anyone. It helps to have been an archeologist because in that line of work you not only learn to live in the dirt, you can learn to eat it, too. We were helped by a network of friends and former co-workers. At the end of December I was contacted by the man who had sold OmniComp to Enron. He had completed his cycle of non-competition and was starting a company aimed at filling the needs of Faser® customers who had been left in the lurch when Enron decided to sunset the program in mid-2001. By the 2nd week of 2002 I was an independent consultant designing and building the data/object model for the new application. In mid-March, I received an offer from a division of the ElPaso Corporation to work on a project that was falling behind schedule and throwing bodies at the problem. Since the new product was reaching the milestone I had agreed to meet (2 weeks early!) and the new offer included more cash and a healthcare package, I was able to wind down my involvement in the startup project and go back to working at a desk more than 10 feet from the bed. The new project could best be described by a technical term which isn't suited for a family-oriented environment. Shortly after starting, I concluded that the real objective of the project was to transfer money from the corporate account to the account of the contracted project managment firm. Specification documents had to be delivered on time even if the content was garbage. Design documents had to be delivered on time even if the design was patently unworkable. Modules had to be coded and completed on time even when it was obvious that although they did what the specification said should be done, it wasn't anything that should be done. I took a few days off at the end of August to take Julia to Iowa to start at Cornell College. I took a day off to travel to Springfield, IL to interview for a position which would have been ideal but to my chagrin I was not offered the position. In early September I was called for jury duty. My supervisor advised me to lie in order to get out of it. I didn't and ended up on a jury for a murder trial and missed 6 days of work. Shortly after that I was advised that they were starting to "roll people off" the project and that my services were no longer required. The sense of relief was palpable. Even being unemployed was less stressful than working on that project had been. I wonder if the project was ever completed.
Back in the national workforce ready reserve, I continued to search for work concentrating on places with 4 distinct seasons and a fairly small population. Several of the people who had moved to Houston at the same time as I did, had moved back to Pennsylvania and found work in the State College market. One of them contacted me and advised me to apply for a position that he knew about at Penn State. I was reluctant at first -- false pride perhaps -- but followed through on the application. Julia came home for Christmas break and I had to leave to fly to State College to interview before she left to return to school. I was offered the position. Heather and I talked it over and decided that it would be a good thing to do so I accepted and was given a starting date at the begining of February. Obviously there was no way to actually move in 2 weeks time but I found out that she had been doing the legwork necessary to start the process of house hunting on the chance that it might be needed. She contacted a friend who remodels houses as a business. He graciously offered to inspect properties for her and offer his professional opinion on their soundness. We knew we wanted to return to the Penns Valley Area School District because we knew it to be
So now I am a "professional geek" for Penn State. I'm responsible for the systems that track facilities usage throughout the Penn State University system and the ubiquitous other duties as required. The house is a work in progress. The first year was devoted to infrastructure improvements like replacing the boiler which was old enough that the nameplate on it had no ZIP code and convincing the colony of bats in the attic to relocate elsewhere without resorting to wholesale slaughter techniques. Then there was the need to convince FEMA that the house is not in the floodplain and avoid the unneeded expense of flood insurance. We've recently begun to gut the kitchen in preparation for a modernization effort which should bring it up to late 20th century technology. Henry is doing better in this school than he was in the highly ranked Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District. Julia is now a Junior and in no danger of losing her scholorship due to poor performance. Joey the Shelter Dog has Sheba the Other Shelter Dog for a companion. The garden produced bountifully and the cellar is stocked with jars of tomatoes and other cannable stuff. The cupboards have a good supply of dehydrateable stuff. The freezer has its share of things from the garden and the cellar has enough potatoes to keep the wolves away by using them as ammunition in a trebouchet and still leave enough calories to sustain life until Spring arrives and the rest can be planted. We've managed to avoid any real tragedies but have seen enough to know that bad things can happen to people like us and are not confined to strangers we do not know. Despite a few rough years we are in a better position than we were before taking the side trip to Texas. We've had the opportunity to learn the value of friends and that it is a mistake to confuse comfort with security. A few months after moving in, I said something to Heather about whether or not a particular project would improve the resale value of the house and she said "I don't care. I'm done with moving. I'm going to die here." Sounds like a good plan to me.
The first week in October was our 35th class reunion. I allowed myself to ignore 25 years worth of reunions by convincing myself that there was nothing to be gained by going and that if there ever was a time when I had anything in common with the people I went to high school with that the ensuing years had wiped it all away. I was wrong. Mrs. Yuscavage is not the only teacher from CCHS who sits on my shoulder and keeps me in line. Mr. McCoy taught me the word ethnocentrism and continually reminds me that there is value to be gained by appreciating other cultures. Mr. Dee showed me how to see history as a series of events instead of a collection of disconnected dates. Mr. Grider taught the Civil War without ignoring the point of view of the Confederate States and that if you want to understand any issue will be helpful to consider opposing views as valid. Mrs. Tuck, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Kunemund, and Mr. Grimm showed me how Newton's universe works and gave me the first hints about how to use scientific methods to investigate things that don't seem to fit the theory. Mr. Beebe, Mr. Stapleton, and Mr. Cracovia showed me how numbers work. Mr. Marchak forced me to look at problems from many angles and to break complex objects into simpler ones. Everyone who was there was part of the experience. Everyone who was there had a part in shaping the outcome. How can I say that those people didn't matter? I am approaching the age my father had attained when he died. Earlier this year I learned that one of my co-workers from the Enron days had become one of the eary civilian casualties in Iraq. A few years ago a friend from graduate school days had the unenviable experience of having her 18 year old son be the primary actor in a murder-suicide. Friends have had children die from accidents and diseases that only happen to other people, not to people like me. It is increasingly difficult for me to ignore my own mortality. I'm not planning on it, but sooner or later the old guy with the scythe is going to drive up in "time's winged chariot" and the only thing that will remain of me is whatever is remembered by the people with whom I shared some part of my life. How could I not acknowledge the people who shared some of it in years gone by. Some of us didn't make it to the reunion because they have died. Thanks to Adele and Nancy's video tribute, we didn't forget them.