My mom and dad never visited Sue and me while we were living in Plymouth, MI. They visited us only once after we moved to Detroit. That uncomfortable experience was described here. We did not visit them in Kansas City much either. Our excuses were that we had very little money, and we were busy trying to build a company. Their excuse was that my dad was working.
If they were smart they flew, but my dad was not averse to long drives.
In 1982 my dad retired. What little I know about that event has been chronicled here. At some point in or around 1983 my parents decided to visit New England. Both of these pieces of new disconcerted me. “Lucy, let me ‘splain.”
My parents treated me exceptionally well. It would be absurd for me to complain. They provided me with everything that I needed to survive and in fact thrive. I never have understood exactly how they did it. They had next to nothing when I was born.
Driving would be much easier than it was in 1959. Practically the entire route would be on Interstates.
Nevertheless, being around them made me more and more uncomfortable as I got older. They very seldom got angry at me or disciplined me, but they were both devout Catholics who never ate meat on Friday and never missed mass on Sunday or a holy day “of obligation”. Although they never mentioned anything about it to me, they certainly must have disapproved of the fact that Sue and I were living together. They may also have been cognizant of the fact that I had become a skeptic almost overnight in the late seventies. They probably had had several “where did we go wrong?” conversations about me. However, I did not worry much about that aspect of our relationship. I expected them to avoid these subjects while they were in New England, and I certainly would as well.
The thing that bothered me was below the surface. I called it “The Curse”1. My parents had taught me an eleventh commandment: “Thou shalt be the best.” They repeatedly insisted that they did not care what I did with my life, but they wanted me to be the best. Not the best that I could be, the best period. The only good thing about The Curse was that it had no time limit.
So, at this point I was thirty-four or thirty-five. My dad had already retired, and my parents were traveling around the country doing who-knows-what. The business that Sue and I were running was still a shoestring affair. Our income was low, and our prospects were at best mediocre. I was light years away from being the best at anything.
When I was on my own, I could easily postpone the assessment of my progress towards the superlative. When my parents were around I wasn’t sad or angry, I was just uneasy. They never said anything about it. They were just there.
Old Sturbridge Village.
In point of fact I remember very little about their trip. They definitely had a car, but I cannot remember whether they drove up from Kansas City in a reprise of the great eastern vacation that was described here. They might have flown to Connecticut and rented a car. Sue’s memory was no better than mine in this regard.
The four of us definitely spent a day at Old Sturbridge Village, which is a recreation of a New England village from the 1830s. Sue and I still had the Plymouth Duster, which could easily hold four. Either Sue or I probably drove. I remember that it was rather chilly. So, it was probably spring or fall. I was uncomfortably cold, but my parents seemed to enjoy the experience.
I am pretty sure that the four of us ate at the Bullard Tavern that was located on the grounds of OSV. My parents thought that the meal was great. I did not like what I ordered, but I don’t remember the specifics. I just know that I never went back.
I don’t think that my parents stayed with us in Rockville or ate any other meals with us, but I might be wrong. I am pretty sure that they drove to Maine and perhaps a few other spots in New England before heading home.
1. The Curse is described in a little more detail in my analysis of the “First Crisis”, which is posted here.
When we moved into the Elks Club’s front house in January of 1981, Sue and I possessed an IBM 5120 computer, a lot of hope, and not much else. Our new dwelling had a spacious place for an office and two extra bedrooms in case we needed to expand. I think that we set the 5120 up in the office with a table and a few chairs. I don’t remember where we obtained the furniture. Sue probably scavenged odd pieces from somewhere. I remember that Sue eventually had a big wooden desk in the spare bedroom.
Downtown Rockville: Crystal Blueprint is on the right.
We also had little in the way of office supplies. Fortunately, Crystal Blueprint & Stationery, a nicely stocked office supply store was in downtown Rockville within easy walking distance. I remember walking there often to pick up a copy of the local newspaper, The Journal Inquirer, from the metallic yellow box, and some index cards or an accordion file from Crystal Blueprint.
That shopping center1 also contained a grocery store called Heartland Food Warehouse and a men’s clothing store, Zahner’s.
Our first EVP.
Our first employee was Nancy Legge, a debater at Wayne State who came to visit us in Rockville during the summer of 1981, as described here. She stayed with us for a week or so after her traveling companions left. We put her to work stuffing envelopes for a mailing. I don’t remember if we paid her, but I do remember giving her the title of Executive Vice President of Sales Promotion.
Our first full-time employee was Debbie Priola, who had been employed by one of our Datamaster clients, National Safe Northeast. In 1982 (I think) Sue hired her to answer phones and to do bookkeeping and other clerical functions. I do not remember that Sue interviewed anyone else for the position, but she might have.
Debbie drove to Rockville every morning from New Britain. She was a smoker. Throughout most of the eighties so was Sue. So, I learned to live in a smoke-filled environment.
By the time that we hired Debbie we certainly had access to Datamasters. We may have kept manual books for a month or two, but we soon used the Datamaster for Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and General Ledger. Sue was in charge of all of this, and she also did the payroll.
Debbie was really into celebrities. She brought copies of People and Us magazines to work and read them at lunch and during slow periods.
Debbie possessed a trait that I found unbelievable. She was a very good artist. She explained that she saw shades of colors rather than objects. I was (and still am) the exact opposite. I hardly even notice what color things are. I had no problem working in the same office as Debbie, but our radically divergent views on so many things might have made it difficult for me to work closely with her on projects. Fortunately, I don’t remember ever having to do it.
I found it in the basement.
I remember that for Christmas one year Debbie bought me a book about Laurel and Hardy. I guess that she must have heard me praising W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers and concluded that I liked all old-time comedians. I don’t.
After she had worked for us for a while she got a new boyfriend, who, I think, was trying to start a business of some sort. At some point—I think that it must have been 1985—he prevailed on Debbie to loan him some money. She did, but part of what she gave him was TSI’s money. Sue discovered the discrepancy when she closed the books at the end of the month. She confronted Debbie in private. Debbie promised to pay it back, and she did. At that point Sue fired her.
I had never fired anyone, and up until then neither had Sue. In my opinion she did a very good job of handling this difficult situation.
In the eighties the best way to reach prospective employees was a help-wanted ad.
We finally had enough business in 1984 to justify hiring a programmer. This time I placed ads in the two local newspapers, the Hartford Courant and the Journal Inquirer, which covers the eastern suburbs of Hartford. I don’t have the text of the ad, but I am sure that we described it as a starting position and requested applicants with some programming experience. It also mentioned that familiarity with BASIC or the Datamaster would be a plus, but we did not expect anyone with such a background to respond. We interviewed two people in our office. Both were women in their twenties.
If it had been left up to me, I would have hired the other lady (whose name I long since forgotten), but Sue was very impressed with Denise Bessette, who was married and lived in Stafford. Denise either called us after the interview or wrote us a letter that indicated that she really wanted to work for TSI. So, we asked her to come in again, and I agreed that we should hire her.
At the time Denise was working for Royal, the typewriter company. At the time Royal was trying to break into the personal computer market. She wrote small programs to demonstrate to prospects the potential of the system. The programming language that she described to me was incredibly primitive, probably to compensate for the memory and storage limitations of the hardware. In those days it was difficult to get a PC to do anything more complicated than a simple game.
At one time Royal was a major employer in Hartford.
I assured Denise that the programming environment that TSI used was much more powerful and was also much easier to use. I don’t think that we even talked with anyone that she worked with at Royal. She may have just been a contractor there. I am certain that I talked with no one. Sue might have.
Denise also smoked. In the eighties the pernicious addiction seemed to be more prevalent among young women than young men. Almost everyone whom I knew who smoked and was my age or younger was female. I don’t know why.
For a while TSI had four employees, and the other three all smoked. During this period I experienced headaches pretty often. I carried Excedrin with me wherever I went.
Before we hired Denise we had bought a Datamaster with a letter-quality printer. When she was in the office, I let her use the computer. I worked on it before she arrived—I was usually in the office by 6AM—and after she left. When Denise was in the office, and I was not training her or explaining a new project, I wrote out new programs by hand or edited program listings. If the weather was good, I went outside in the courtyard behind the house to work in the sun on a card table.
At night I printed listings of programs. I had written a Datamaster routine that accepted a list of program names and created a text file with a list of commands that could be executed to print the listings for the designated programs one after another. Occasionally the paper would jam. When I awoke I fixed the jam and then had it resume printing. I could work on the computer while the printer was active.
Our listings, by the way, were on continuous 8½x11″ paper. We filed them by program number in accordion files for the client. When I visited the client I brought the accordion files in a sample case.
I spent most of the first few months of Denise’s employment helping her learn BASIC and the tools available on the Datamaster. Within six months she was up to speed, which I defined as meaning that her efforts were saving me more time than I spent explaining, checking her work, or redoing what she had done. Six months may seem like a long time to reach the break-even point, but most programmers whom we hired never ended up saving me time.
Denise primarily worked on TSI’s software for ad agencies. It was difficult enough to teach someone the agency business. There was no need to get her too involved in the vast array of other businesses that are described here.
Denise had a very young child, Christopher (NOT Chris), when we hired her. When he got a little older she brought him to work occasionally.
Denise wanted to be a Smithie.
After she had worked for us for a few years, Denise asked us if she could shift to part-time. She wanted to finish her college education and get a masters degree. She told us that she had applied to prestigious Smith College in Northampton, MA, and had been accepted to study math and economics.
At this point Denise was a very valuable member of the TSI team. She understood how I approached projects, she appreciated the need for consistent programming structures, and she had learned enough about advertising to make many decisions on her own. I informed her that TSI would take as many hours as she was able to give us. However, I knew that it was likely that I would need to hire another programmer, which meant, in the best case, six months of reduced productivity from our #1 programmer, me.
Denise and I worked together for thirty years. Giving in to Sue on the decision about who should be our first programming hire was probably the best choice that I ever made. My life would have been unimaginably different if we had hired the other candidate.
Our third full-time employee was Kate Behart, who lived somewhere west of the river near Hartford. We wanted to hire someone to help with marketing and administrative tasks that neither Sue nor I wanted to control. I don’t remember interviewing her. Sue must have done it.
We later learned that Kate had changed her name. It was originally Sally Stern. She didn’t get married, and she was not in the witness-protection program. Rather, because she did not get along with her father, she did not want to be associated with him.
Kate was into some New Age stuff. We later discovered that she also used the first name Saige in some of her activities in those areas.
Kate was picky about what kind of chair she used. We let her pick one out, but she brought in a pillow to sit on when she used it.
I guess that this is a thing.
I never saw any of Kate’s cats, but she was definitely a cat person. She told all of us that she liked to pick them up and smell their fur. I can understand that impulse better now, but at the time I had never owned a cat. I am not sure that I had even petted one.
The most peculiar thing about Kate was her interest in Connecticut Lotto, which the state instituted in 1983. She had bought a book that contained strategies for playing the numbers. She allowed me to read it. I told her that it was utter hogwash. Although she was a pretty smart person, she seemed to believe the book’s claim that “hot” and “due” numbers existed. These games are incredibly bad investments. If they weren’t, states would not rely on them for revenue.
I upset Kate quite a bit once. We drove to Boston together to make a presentation to a potential client. I used the phrase “guys and girls”. She was greatly offended. She considered the term “girls” demeaning. Maybe so, but once the word “guys” left my mouth, I could think of no better way to compete the thought. No one says “gals” any more.
Kate once sent a letter to an ad agency in New Jersey on TSI stationery. She did not ask me to approve it, and, in fact, I had no idea that she ever wrote letters to prospects on company letterhead. This one made some claims about a software company based in Dallas that specialized in ad agencies. Some of the statements were not true. Kate evidently misunderstood something technical that I had said in the office.
The president of the offended company sent me a letter complaining about Kate’s letter. It threatened legal action. I was shocked to learn what she had done. I told Kate that I needed to approve all correspondence and told her that the company was threatening to sue us, which they were. Kate was suitably contrite. I sent out a letter of apology to both the prospect and the software company. We heard no more about it.
Kate worked with us for several years. I don’t remember why she left, but I think that we parted on amicable terms.
Our phones looked like this, but they had a few buttons on the bottom
My strong impression of the first few years of TSI was that Sue spent them on the phone, and I spent them on the computer. By the time that we hired Denise we had ordered a second phone line and installed Contel telephones. I think that we still had only two receivers, one in the office and the other in the spare bedroom, which had become Sue’s office. There was a rollover feature from one line to another, as well as a way to put clients on hold. My recollection is that we used this system until we moved in 1988.
We were never able to communicate directly with our Datamaster clients’ computers. If a problem needed to be fixed immediately, we had two choices: drive to the client’s or talk someone through keying in program changes over the phone. Sue drove to F.H. Chase pretty often, and I was on the road in the Hartford area several days a week. One car—the Duster—was no longer enough.
This car looks very familiar. I think that my Celica was this color, and Sue’s was darker.
In 1982 we both went shopping for cars. We decided to purchase Toyota Celicas. At the time there was a self-imposed quota by Japanese auto manufacturers. There was only one person at the first Toyota dealership that we visited. He was sitting at a desk reading a newspaper. He did not budge when we entered. We had to walk to his desk to get his attention. He told us that they had no cars. He wasn’t even interested in talking with us.
Eventually the market loosened up a bit, and we were both able to purchase new cars. The idea of bargaining for a better price was never even a consideration. Both cars had standard transmissions. Sue’s had air conditioning. I would never have paid extra for such a frivolous feature in an Arctic state like Connecticut. I don’t remember precisely what either car looked like, but I remember that I loved to drive mine.
TSI still used continuous multi-part forms for billing and statements for as long as we stayed in business.
Sue established a relationship with a gentleman at Desco Data Systems, the company in East Windsor that provided the computer used by Sue’s sister Karen at their father’s company. I don’t remember his name, but he specialized in custom forms. He did a good job in providing us with web-mounted letterhead and multi-part invoices. We recommended him to all of our clients, and most of them used him for their custom computer forms. I never heard a bad word about him, and our customers were not shy about complaining about problems.
Jim Michaud in action!
Our IBM customer engineer was Jim Michaud, who lived in Rockville. I remember that he came to our office on several occasions, but I cannot remember why. I cannot remember any serious problems that we ever encountered with any of our Datamasters. Maybe there was something that he needed to do when we initially took delivery on systems for our clients.
I also remember that Jim had two cars with vanity license plates: ICANOE and IKAYAK. They both had roof racks.
1. Crystal Blueprint stayed open in that location until 2018. Heartland and Zahner’s (which still operates stores in neighboring towns) moved out much earlier. I remember walking into Heartland one day and being shocked by its half-empty shelves. It closed shortly thereafter.
2. I think that Jim Michaud is still active in the sport of white-water canoeing. He has a Facebook page devoted to his photos. An interview with him in 2015 is posted here.
Sue and I had a pretty full life outside of the Wayne State Forensics Union. Continue reading →
Sue’s Jobs
Brothers Specifications: One of the main reasons that we moved to Detroit from Plymouth was so that Sue could be closer to her job at Brothers Specifications. The company employed a diverse group of people to provide detailed information to the federal department of Housing and Urban Development about abandoned houses in Detroit. Unlike virtually every other local enterprise, as Detroit’s deterioration increased Brothers’ business improved.
The founder and president, Bob Begin1 (accent on first syllable), was a former Catholic priest. Several other employees were also formerly part of the Catholic clergy. In a way, Brothers was a lot like the Wayne State Forensics Union (FU). Many social activities designed to promote camaraderie among the employees occurred. Most of these people knew how to party.
Sue and I both bowled on a team in a league that included a lot of Brothers people. I do not have strong enough wrists to bowl very well, and so I was often frustrated. Sue was good friends with a young woman named Carol Jones who worked at Brothers and was on our team. She threw a very slow back-up ball, the first that I had ever seen.
Carol got married to a guy named, I think, Jim, who was a designer or engineer for General Motors. We went to their wedding, and Sue took a lot of photos. Here are a few of them.
We went to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Empire Strikes Back with Carol and her husband. In both cases Sue and I had no idea what either movie was about. We both like Encounters better. Of course, our opinion might have changed if we had seen Star Wars2.
Sue was riding in Carol’s car one day when their car was T-boned at an intersection by another vehicle. Neither Sue nor carol was injured, but it was a scary situation for them. The car that hit them was fleeing the police. The people in the car had guns, and the police had rifles. The cops screamed at Sue and Carol to take Carol. Just another day in Detroit. Other scary situations are described here.
Brothers also had a slow-pitch softball team, and they let me play on it. I no longer had my magical swing from the days of the Mean Reserves, but at least I got some exercise. We played our games at Softball City, a huge complex at 8 Mile and State Fair. Our manager was Frank Yee, Sue’s boss.
This is the signal that tells the runner to stop at the base he is on or approaching.
I remember one event very vividly. At the time I prided myself on being a smart base runner. Frank was in the coaching box near third base. I was on first base when someone hit a line drive to the outfield. As I ran to second I saw that no one could catch the ball on the fly. I rounded second. Frank gave no signal, and so I kept going. As I approached third base, Frank stuck out his right hand toward home plate.
Everyone who has ever watched a baseball game at any level knows that there are three universally recognized signals for third base coaches: 1) Both hands up: stop here; 2) Both hands down: slide and stop here; 3) Windmilling with one arm: keep running past this base. Holding out one hand means nothing. Never has; never will.
I kept going and was tagged out. Frank reproved me. “You missed the sign.”
I was furious at him. If he did not know the signals, what was he doing in the coaching box? After a few games I stopped taking it so seriously. We had some talented players, but some guys on our team did not even understand the rule about “tagging up” after a fly ball.
I found a photo album of Sue’s time at Brothers. Here are some samples.
Sue made two good friends at Brothers, Paul DesRochers (pronounced like Durocher) and Eddie Lancaster. We visited Paul several times for supper. He introduced us to rib steaks, which, at the time were much cheaper than T-bones or porterhouses. He also taught us about heating up plates before putting hot food on them.
Eddie was a big guy and an athlete. There was a volleyball net in the side yard of the building that housed Brothers. One evening after work Eddie and Sue were playing on the same team, but he accidentally smashed her in the face and broke her nose. I had to take her to the Emergency Room. Trust me; Emergency Rooms at Detroit hospitals in those days were not pleasant places.
After Eddie left Brothers he moved to Brooklyn. In 1981 he invited Sue and me to his Halloween party there. We decided to attend, even though it was a long drive from our house in Rockville. Sue dressed as Peter Pan, and I came as a nerdy college professor, i.e., sans costume. I cannot say that I enjoyed it much. Hanging around with drunk strangers in costumes was not my idea of fun.
Highland Park is a rhombus bordered on all sides by Detroit.
Gene and Henry: At some point in 1979 Sue tired of working for Frank. She accepted a position at a company run by two guys named Gene Brown and Henry Roundfield. They had both been salesmen for IBM who had decided to work as semi-independent agents specializing in marketing the low end of IBM hardware. Their company had a name, but I don’t know what it was. In the late seventies they sold a few 5110 computers3 together with IBM’s Construction Payroll package to local bunsinesses. Their offices were in an abandoned auto dealership in Highland Park, MI.
Gene and Henry did not seem to anticipate that their operation would require much technical knowledge. After all, IBM’s ad for the computer quoted a user who claimed, “If you can type and use a hand-held calculator, you have all the skills necessary to operate a 5110.” The company had two other employees—a part-time young man who liked to play with the code and a secretary/receptionist named Bubbles whose previous experience was at a topless joint.
They hired Sue to help their customers make necessary changes to their software, which was all written in the BASIC programming language. She soon determined that there were a few problems. One of their customers also wanted some accounting software. Gene and Henry had the customer license the general ledger and accounts payable software sold by AIS, a software development company based in Overland Park, KS, the town in which I had gone to grade school. Gene and Henry also installed this software in other systems that they sold, but they did not purchase additional licenses from AIS.
There was one additional problem. If anyone ever changed any of the code, as was easily done on the 5110, it almost certainly violated the license agreement. The young man whom Sue replaced had modified the programs, and Sue was expected to do the same.
No developer would fix any problems if the code had been modified without an open-ended purchase order. Even then, the customer’s problems will be the developer’s lowest priority. No one wants to clean up someone else’s garbage.
Gene and Henry had quite a few customers, but many of them were unhappy with the software. Sue’s job was to learn the two systems and make the customers happy while Gene and Henry … well, I don’t know what they planned to do.
Eventually Gene and Henry realized that they were in over their head. Before the customers began to get the tar and feathers ready, they offered Sue a proposition. She could set up her own company as a programmer who maintained the systems. They would give all of their customers to her. She could even have an office in their lovely headquarters in the murder capital of the United States. Sue decided to go for it. She registered a DBA for TSI Tailored Systems4, an entity that survived the dog-eat-dog environment of software development for thirty-five years. Sue then purchased a used steel credenza and somehow transported it to the office in Highland Park.
Sports
Jogging: Throughout our time in Detroi. I jogged a few miles two or three days per week pretty consistently whenever the weather permitted. Wayne State had a jogging track. When I ran there I often saw a professional boxer (whose name I don’t remember) work out there. He ran about as fast as I did, but he had weighted gloves on and punched the air as he ran. Debbie McCully ran on the track with me there a few times in the summer of 1978.
Sometimes I just ran around the streets adjoining our house on Chelsea. Occasionally I ran in Chandler Park. Once I stepped in a hole there and turned my ankle. I had to limp home. That was not fun.
Golf: I played golf at least once with Scott Harris and his father. Scott and I might have also played together once.
I played once with Kent Martini and, I think, Jerry Bluhm, as well. I remember that Jerry remarked that he had never seen anyone swing as hard as I did. I am not sure that that was meant as a compliment.
Baseball/Softball: I played one season on the team sponsored by Brothers Specifications. I have a vague recollection of substituting once or twice on the team that Debbie McCully’s boyfriend played on.
I am pretty sure that I went to one Detroit Tigers game in Tiger Stadium. I don’t remember who was with me. The Royals might have been the opponents.
Football: I saw the Lions play once in the Silverdome in Pontiac. It was more like going to a movie than attending a football game. I did not feel like I was in any way involved in the action. Even the games in the old Municipal Stadium in Kansas City were more intense. I don’t remember who won the game that I viewed or even who played against the Lions.
I did not attend any Wayne State football games or U-M games. I was still addicted to watching the Wolverines on television whenever they appeared.
Cars
My recollection is that both Greenie and Sue’s Dodge Colt went the way of the Dodo in 1979. Greenie was fine if I could get it started, and I brought it in several times to address this issue. The repairmen were stumped. In the end I paid $50 to have it towed to a junkyard. Sue put at least two new engines in her Colt before it threw its last rod.
This Duster does not look at all familiar, but I know that we had one like it.
Sue bought a gigantic Plymouth Duster. Unlike our previous (and subsequent) cars, this one had automatic transmission.
I don’t know why Sue bought it. Neither does she, but she thinks that someone must have given her a deal. Also, it was considered a good idea to own an American-made car in Detroit in those days.
My most vivid memory of this beast was the time that I had to change its right rear tire in a sleet storm on a steeply sloped ramp of an exit from the Ford Freeway. It kept falling of of the jack. Although I did not get injured, I was definitely not in a good move when I finally reached home.
Trips and Visits
Bettendorf is the lighter area on the right. The red arrow points to the Tall Corn Motel’s location in Davenport
At some point my sister Jamie got married to Mark Mapes. They lived in Bettendorf, IA. They had two daughters together, Cadie and Kelly. I think that Cadie was born on October 31, 1977. Kelly was a couple of years younger.
Jamie once told me that she had invited me to her wedding, but neither Sue nor I remember receiving an invitation. We did get an invitation to come visit them in Iowa. We did so in (I think) either the summer of 1979 or 1980.
We took the Duster, and Sue did most of the driving. Our clearest memory of the trip is the motel that we stayed in. It was called the Tall Corn. We stayed one or two nights.
I think that Cadie was an infant. I don’t remember if Kelly was around yet. it seems to me that we attended some kind of athletic contest, but the memory is very dim.
The gigantic menu of the Golden Mushroom.
I think that after the visit we drove directly back to Detroit. We did not make a vacation out of it.
My parents came to visit us once in Detroit. They liked our house a lot, but they did not like the neighborhood at all. They were visibly upset at the loops of piano wire that several businesses had put on the fences surrounding their property and the bullet-proof cashier’s cages. Neither of these was commonplace in Leawood, KS.
I am pretty sure that the four of us drove to the Renaissance Center, where my parents could feel a little safer. We may have even gone inside one of the towers.
I remember that we also drove up to Southfield to the Golden Mushroom for supper. Since Debbie McCully waited on us, I think that this visit must have occurred in 1978. She got all of our orders right without writing anything down. My parents and I were very impressed that she could do this. I don’t remember what I ordered, but I do recall that it was delicious.
On at least one occasion we visited Damon Panels at his home in one of Detroit’s northern suburbs. I remember him telling me that he did not know whether anyone had paranormal powers, but he was certain that nobody who had them had ever been on the Tonight Show. He gave me a short rendition of how he had watched Johnny Carson and James Randi foil Uri Geller in a live performance.5
I bought Randi’s book about Geller and devoured it. I was astounded. Before he became world-famous for his amazing psychic powers Geller had been a professional magician who performed many of the same tricks. Not only that: the guy who helped him with his magic act later assisted with his psychic miracles! Clearly Geller was (and still is!) a fraud.
I did some more reading on the subject, and it had a profound effect on me. I not only stopped believing in psychics. I stopped believing in anything. I stopped going to mass cold turkey. One Sunday I went; after that the only time was for my relatives’ funerals. I became a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic. I took a first-negative approach to life. I say “I think …” a lot but almost never “I believe …”
Damon also came with us on a visit to Greenfield Village, the open-air museum built by Henry Ford in Dearborn. We had a very pleasant time there.
The cat did CADO’s training.
We made one trip to Enfield to see Sue’s family. I think that we took a commercial flight to Hartford from Metro Airport. We stayed a week or so.
By that time Sue’s sister Karen had married Buzzie LaPlante and had just given birth to their son, Travis. Sue’s dad, Art, had purchased a CADO computer from Desco Data Systems6 to use in their businesses in which Karen was employed. Art asked us to help Karen get it set up and functioning correctly.
Sue and I took a look at it, but its approach was so different from what we were accustomed to that it was difficult for us to be of much assistance.
The system that they bought had very little RAM, maybe only 3K! Each program module therefore had to be very short, and dozens of modules had to be linked one another to get anything done. Debugging was virtually impossible without a map of how the modules were connected. It seemed very primitive to us.
I am pretty sure that we flew back to Detroit in Art Slanetz’s airplane. It was fun to fly in his plane. I remember that we had a very good view of Niagara Falls.
The only scary part was the landing at Detroit City Airport7. Art just sort of positioned the plane at a forty-five degree angle from the runway and let it fall. Although this was not the primary airport for the Detroit region, it was a lot busier than the one that Art was accustomed to using. He made some kind of mistake, either in not notifying someone or not doing it the required way. After he landed the guy in the tower made him report there. Art was definitely embarrassed.
I think that Art just gassed up his plane and flew back to Connecticut. I have no recollection as to how Sue and I arrived back at our house, but it was a short drive. Maybe we took a cab.
But what about the pets? Since we took an airplane to Connecticut, we could not have brought them along.
We still had Puca, but he was not a major concern. He had gone without food and water for longer periods than a week. Besides, who could we ask to snake-sit? I don’t remember if we had any mice at the time. I certainly did not kill any, and I also don’t remember releasing any. We would not have left them with anyone, and we would not have left them alone in the house either.
We certainly had some guinea pigs. I am not positive, but I think that we gave away at least two of the baby guinea pigs to a Filipino family that Sue knew from her job at Brother Specifications. Sue doesn’t remember his last name, but the people at Brothers called him Fil. I think that we might have left Charlie and Loretta with Fil’s family event though Sue was afraid that they might eat them.
We kept in touch with Elaine Philpot after we moved to Detroit. Sue often went to see her perform, and I went with her when I could. Elaine and her daughter also came to visit Sue one time while I was on a debate trip. Sue took some photos.
Food
Most of the time Sue and I ate at home. We had to drive a long way to get to a decent supermarket, but if we only needed one or two items, a local market was less than two blocks away. We took turns cooking. We bought a small hibachi that we used when we wanted steaks or hamburgers.
For fast food we went to Taco Bell or KFC, but our favorite local place was on Gratiot Avenue, the weird street that runs at a forty-five degree angle to all the others. This small restaurant had no waitresses. You ordered your meal at a counter behind which or four roasts—beef, pork, chicken, and ham—that they would slice to order. The also had a selection of vegetables, breads, and desserts. It was simple but delicious.
Once when we reached the front of the line I spotted a mouse on the counter near a juice dispenser. I consulted with Sue as to whether I should seize it by the tail—I was quite adept at the maneuver—and show him to the staff. She advised against it, and I concurred.
The best thing about Detroit was its restaurants. There were outstanding restaurants of every description in the area. I am sure that we must have occasionally stumbled into a restaurant with mediocre food, but I cannot remember ever having done so.
The best pizza restaurants were Shield’s and Buddy’s (as described here), but we enjoyed really good pizza at several other locations as well.
Bagley St. in 21st century Mexicantown.
For Mexican food it was worthwhile to make a trip to the area of town that we called Mexican Village, which is also the name of the largest and oldest restaurant there. We usually patronized another smaller restaurant in Mexicantown, as it is apparently now called. I don’t remember the name. We also frequented a less authentic establishment in Livonia. The attraction there was the strolling mariachi band.They even had a trumpet player. Sue liked to sing along to Cielito lindo.
The other ethnic attraction was Greektown. At least four or five Greek restaurants that fiercely competed for patronage. They were all good. We definitely had a favorite, New Hellas8. Sue was in love with the moussaka that was served there, as well as quite a few other dishes.
Greektown has changed dramatically in recent decades. The local establishments have been outnumbered and outflanked by chain restaurants. The proximate causes of these changes are Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers and a towering casino that dwarfs the traditional two-story buildings. I don’t think that I would recognize the area at all.
Parties
When Sue was working at Brothers Specifications, she sometimes invited people over to our house on Chelsea. This usually occurred when I was out of town.
I threw two parties for members of the FU in the basement of our house. The theme of one of them was “Once a novice always a novice.” Everyone was invited to tell the most embarrassing story of his/her experience as a novice on the debate circuit. I told about how my knees knocked together in my first high school debate. It was a victory, but it was followed by fourteen consecutive embarrassing losses with at least two different partners. I think that the people in attendance voted someone’s novice story as the best, but I don’t remember the details.
The big event was my thirtieth birthday party. I sent invitations to everyone in the FU. The theme of the party was that since I was turning thirty, I could no longer be trusted. The attendance was good. I got some cool gifts, including a framed portrait and an action figure of Wonder Woman, both of which still adorn my office. The star of the party was Debbie McCully, who showed up in a Wonder Woman outfit.
There are photos of this event somewhere in our current house. If I locate them, I will post them.
I bought myself a present on that same day, the “Basic Set” of Dungeons and Dragons. The game became something of an obsession with me and a lot of my friends, as is described here.
Television
Sue and I did not watch a great deal of television while we were in Michigan, but I remember that we got hooked on at least four of them (in addition, of course, to the two Wonder Woman shows).
The first episode of Dallas was aired on April 2, 1978. I am not certain that Sue and I watched it, but I am quite certain that we watched most of the subsequent 356 episodes. For us one of the highlights was the theme music played at the beginning of the show. I always whistled along and most of the time at least one of the guinea pigs would whistle with me.
My favorite character was the patriarch, Jock Ewing, with his gigantic Lincoln Mark V sporting the EWING 1 license plate. My favorite line occurred when J.R. was about to crush Cliff Barnes: “You’ve got to leave a man some dignity, J.R.”
The worst moment in the show’s history was when Bobby Ewing was brought back with the explanation that the previous season was a dream.
Moe Green.
One benefit of living in the Detroit area was that the strongest television signal came from the Canadian station CKLW. We found a few interesting shows there and one outstanding one, Second City Television, also known as SCTV. This show had many outstanding comedic actors, most of whom went on to enjoy stellar careers in the U.S. Most people whom I knew in Detroit never watched CKLW. I told many of them about SCTV.
My favorite characters were the McKenzie Brothers, Moe Green with his “Dialing for Dollars” quizzes, and Bobbie Bitman, the sideman who became an acTOR and a direcTOR. Our favorite line was John Candy’s, “It blowed up good; it blowed up real good.”
The public television station carried episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This was another show that I discovered on my own while desperately spinning the dial while searching for something watchable. I alerted many people to the brilliance of the Pythons.
There were many recurring bits that I loved. Some, such as “The Larch”, were never explained. Others, like the tennis-playing blancmange, were beyond ridiculous. At the time my favorite was probably the “Ministry of Silly Walks”. I had a tee-shirt that portrayed it. A woman once saw it and mistook me for a missionary.
Over the years, however, the “Spanish Inquisition” sketch (another tee shirt) has proven to have had the biggest effect on my life. My all-time favorite line on any show was “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to the Pope! Um, I’ll come in again…”
Everyone loved Saturday Night Live. I thought that the quality fell off after the first few years, but Sue still watches it with great regularity.
My all-time favorite television episode was on none of those shows. It was episode 8 of season 4 of the Bob Newhart Show, “What’s it All About, Albert.” Bob’s first patient, Mr.Carlin, has reverted to his original symptoms. Bob is ready to quit his practice, but instead he seeks out his mentor, Dr. Albert, played by Keenan Wynn with a white beard. He claims to have discovered the secret of life. Bob takes out a notebook and pencil. “Golf,” says Dr. Albert. “G-O-L-F, golf.”
1. In 2020 Bob Begin and his family had for over three decades been running a winery and bed-and-breakfast in Old Mission Peninsula the long narrow strip of land north of Traverse City that separates the two bays. You can read his story here.
5. The whole painful event can be viewed on YouTube here.
6. Desco had a building in the industrial park in which I ran after work at TSI. The building was left unoccupied for many years after Desco went out of business. I don’t know the current status.
Don’t call it City Airport.
7. In 2003 the name of the airport was changed to Coleman A. Young International Airport. That is quite a mouthful for an airport that in 2021 has no scheduled commercial flights. It is still listed as an asset on the city’s books, however.
8. The New Hellas in Greektown closed in 2008. An unrelated restaurant with the same name subsequently opened in Farmington Hills.
U-M’s speech department knee-capped its debate program for the 1976-77 school year. I finished up my masters degree and applied to George Ziegelmueller at Wayne State as a PhD student. I was accepted. My new career as a graduate assistant started in the fall semester of 1977.
This lot is where our house was. The tree was not there when we lived there.
When I took the job at Wayne State, Sue was already working at Brothers Specifications in Detroit. It therefore made sense for us to move from our apartment in Plymouth to Detroit. We could get a lot more for less money, and both of our drives would be shorter. We rented a house at 12139 Chelsea, near City Airport (now called Coleman A. Young International Airport) and Chandler Park. We had at least twice as much space as before, and that did not count the full basement with a large wet bar.
At the time of our move I still had my little green Datsun 1200 hatchback. Sue’s Colt had been abandoned after it threw its third rod. She bought a gigantic Plymouth Duster to replace it. We called it the Tank; neither of us had ever owned a full-sized car before. I vividly remember changing one of its tires on an upward sloping exit ramp on the Ford Freeway in an ice storm. I got the card jacked up, but while I was loosening the bolts the jack gave way, and I had to start over. I was in a really rotten mood when I finally arrived home.
Sue and I had no complaints at all about the house on Chelsea. The rent was unbelievably cheap, and the house was well-built and comfortable. Furthermore, we lived there for quite a while without incident. The house to the right in the photo was occupied by a couple named Freddy and Juanita and their holy terror of a son, Fre-Fre, who used to throw rocks at me when I mowed our lawn. We were friendly with everyone in the neighborhood. When we moved in during the summer of 1977, all of the houses on both sides of the street were occupied. By the time that we left in very late 1980 several houses were empty and two or three were boarded up.
The first troubling incident occurred on New Years Eve. Sue and I were watching New Years Rocking Eve or one of the other countdown shows. We heard a fairly loud sound that could only have been a collision between two cars. I went outside and saw that our Plymouth Duster, which, as always, we had parked on the street in front of the house, was now sitting up past the sidewalk into the bushes in Freddy and Juanita’s front lawn. The left front bumper was a little dented, but otherwise it seemed OK.
The boy who lived directly across the street, whose name neither Sue nor I can now remember, told me that he had seen the car that crashed into ours and pointed up the street. I jogged up to where the car had just parked. I memorized the license plate number and the address of the house that the people in the car had entered.
Then we called the police. They came, but they were not much interested in pursuing the matter. They went to the house that I indicated, but the man who claimed to have driven the car said that our car pulled out and struck his car. He was allegedly sober, but the other man was not. Even though I told the police that there was an eyewitness, they said that there was nothing that they could do. Hey, it was New Years. No blood, no foul.
The second incident was at the office that I shared with Pam and Billy Benoit in Manoogian Hall at Wayne State. I was there in the evening because I was scheduled to teach a three-hour speech class in the College of Lifelong Learning. The next morning we all realized that some stuff was missing from the office. We called Wayne State Police. The lady who investigated noticed that the door had been scratched by some kind of tool. Evidently someone forced it open. That was a relief to me. The stuff the Benoits had lost was more valuable than what I lost (I don’t remember the items—a radio, I think). I am notoriously absent-minded, and I feared that I had forgotten to lock the door.
That week all of the doors in the building were outfitted with steel plates that were designed to prevent anyone from tampering with the locks.
Our house in Chelsea was attacked three times. The first time was in 1978 or 1979. While Sue was at work and I was at school, someone broke the glass on our back door and entered the house in broad daylight. They took the television, the Panasonic stereo unit that was also in Bob’s apartment on the Bob Newhart Show, and the AR-15 speakers.
We called the police, but they would not come because the perpetrators were no longer there. They told us to come to the precinct station to fill out a report. Since we did not have insurance, we could not see that that would accomplish anything. We did tell our landlord. He commiserated with us, and he replaced the glass on the door.
The second attack came when I was alone in the house taking a nap. I was awakened by a crash of glass that seemed to come from the back of the house. I kept my aluminum softball bat near the bed for just this eventuality. I walked swifty towards the back door brandishing my bat. The guy must have heard me; when I reached the door, he was running through our back yard toward the alley. I was disappointed. I planned to look him squarely in the eye and then swing at his knees. What if he pulled out a gun? Well I was still bullet-proof at that point.
I called the police and the landlord. The former gave me the same answer as previously. The latter replaced with plexiglass all the windows facing the back yard.
When I told some of the people at Wayne State about this incident, Gerry Cox took me aside and said that he and his 9mm handgun would like to move into our house for a little while. I declined his offer, which was serious.
By the time of the third attack late in 1980 we had replaced the television and the stereo system. This time when I came home I found the entire back door in the basement at the bottom of the steps. The plexiglass had held, but the hinges had not. This time the house was ransacked. Our brand new television and stereo were gone, but, thank goodness, they did not touch our computer and printer. They were both very heavy, and at the time it was pretty much unheard of for anyone to have a computer in the house.
This time the police came. They were especially interested in the fact that the mattress had been removed from the bed. The investigator told us that they were looking for guns.
This attack was a blessing in disguise. At that point we had already decided to go back to Connecticut after Christmas. The burglary gave us fewer things to move, and the insurance money just about covered the cost of moving what remained.
Sue learned about our last problem before I did. She received a call at home from the police. They informed her that someone had stolen the battery from our car, and they had it at the precinct station near Wayne State. She called me at work. I had driven the Duster that day and parked it on the street near Manoogian Hall.
This was, as I recall, my very last day at Wayne State. I persuaded someone to let me use his battery to help jump-start the car. That worked. I then very carefully drove a couple of miles to the precinct headquarters. If the car had stalled, I would have been stranded. There was no battery in it, and I had no means of communication.
I parked and stepped inside. I had to sit around for quite a while before a detective could talk with me. He said that the theft had been witnessed through binoculars by a Wayne State cop positioned on the roof of one of the buildings. She had called the DPD, and they apprehended the thief while he was still carrying the battery. He told me that the perpetrator was also wanted for grand theft auto.
I asked him for the battery. He said that the police needed it as evidence. I insisted that I needed the battery. My car was parked outside, and there was no battery in it. Furthermore, we were leaving town within the week, and we absolutely needed the battery. He still tried to claim that the battery was evidence, but when I pointed out that they had an eyewitness, and they were actually going to prosecute the guy for the auto theft, he relented.
The property officer led me down to the area where all the “evidence” was kept. There were two batteries in the cage. Neither was tagged. He asked me which one was mine, and I pointed at the JC Penney one. If I had pointed at the other one, I am sure that he would have given it to me. I had heard that every year the DPD had a big event in which it sold all of the unclaimed property. There was no way that anyone ever intended to use my battery as evidence.
I had no involvement whatever in the most serious incident. I was home watching Wonder Woman while Sue went to a nearby drug store for something. When she stepped inside the door, a guy with a gun told her to go to the back of the store and sit on the floor. She did so. Eventually, the guy left and the police came. Sue told them that she didn’t know anything, and they let her go.
She was still pretty upset when she arrived back at the house. She said, “I couldn’t believe it. I walked into the drug store right in the middle of a robbery. The guy had a gun!”
I replied with great compassion, “Really? You sound a bit unnerved. You missed a great Wonder Woman. They showed Lynda Carter in a bathing suit.”
There was one other major problem with living in Detroit—the snow. The city plowed the main streets, but it never maintained the streets in our neighborhood. The years that we lived there were characterized by cold and snowy winters. For weeks after a snowfall the streets had two cleared ruts a foot or so wide. Essentially every side street became one-way. Getting from our house to a main road was often a real challenge, especially for my Datsun, which was the absolute worst car in bad weather.
We did not have a problem with rats at our house, but other parts of the city did. The city purchased small steel dumpsters for every residence. The lids were rubber or plastic. Ours was back by the alley. Not long after these dumpsters were in place, somebody discovered that it was fun to put a lit M80 in one and shut the lid. The dumpster survived with no difficulty, but the lid was blown to bits. Pretty soon the rats had easier access to the garbage than ever.
