Life through college

I’ve had a pretty great life really.

Nothing dramatic or too exciting, and certainly not by explicit design, but I’ve lived in really nice places and enjoyed them well.

Big Picture overview:

I was a pretty good software guy back in the day and opportunities to move to different really nice places presented themselves to us for a few decades when I was young and “hot” :), first on the East Coast then we went for the glamor and opportunity of life out West!

Here is my story in brief, in one of those bullet lists the new WordPress makes me love so much:

• 1948-49 – Long Beach CA – Dad was in the army – I was born.
• 1950-54 – Springfield MO – pre-school
• 1954-66 – Louisville KY – grade school -> high school -> escape to a coast!
• 1966-71 – Cambridge MA – Harvard College + extra year
• 1971-75 – Adelphi MD – University of Maryland
• 1975-81 – Washington DC – U S Census Bureau
• 1981-91 – Encinitas CA – Superset Corp, then Zenographics
• 1991-95 – Larkspur CA – Autodesk
• 1995-05 – Mill Valley CA- Autodesk
• 2005-23 – Reno NV – contract programming, then retire
• 2023-24 – Chico CA – get sick
• 2024-… – Rohnert Park CA – be old

1949-49 – Long Beach CA

Dad was in the Army, assigned to a military hospital in Long Beach.

While we were there, my older brother died at age 9 or 10 of rheumatic fever (1949). This broke up my parent’s marriage.

So when the Army was ready to move everybody back to where they came from at the end of the war, our family was kind of a mess.

1950-54 – Springfield MO

The whole crew – Mom, Dad (now divorced), me and my sister – all moved to Springfield MO in 1950-ish, the area my dad’s people were from around.

All of us living in the same area was the easiest and cheapest way to maintain visitation rights and all that stuff.

The Freemans were minor gentry out towards Willard MO.
My dad’s cousins were doctors and lawyers, not farmers and train conductors like my mom’s people.

I was pre-school age, 2-6.

My mom was figuring out her life after suddenly becoming single.
She spent a lot of time with her best friend Marguerite.
I barely remember her, but here’s to you Marguerite for supporting my mom then!

1954-66 – Louisville KY – 1626 Ehrler Drive, 40213

Springfield was all about his family.

My mom wanted to be closer to her family. The closest civilization to where she grew up in English IN was Louisville KY, where she went to nursing school.

We moved there in the summer of ’54 when I was 5 years old, so I would start school at the school I would stay at.

Suburban Louisville was a great place to grow up. Most of the families in our neighborhood were Italian Catholic or German Catholic. In the big waves of European (white) immigration way back in the day, Louisville and our part of the midwest absorbed a lot of Italians and Germans, hardly any Irish Catholics for some reason.

[It was a shock to move to the Boston area where Irish Catholics rule the world. :)]

Also the single mom thing was pretty unusual in our neighborhood. I still remember a conversation that happened more than once when I would go to a new friend’s house where:

“Oh, where does your daddy work Johnny?”
“Oh it’s just me and my mom, my parents are divorced.”
… uncomfortable silence …

For me, it kinda had the best of both worlds – southern accents without the deep-south racism.

I was lucky to be growing up there when Wes Unseld attended the University of Louisville.

On the big night of a game me and my buddy Ekim (Mike) would …

• be dropped off at the restaurant by a parent.
• We would eat our Ranchburgers and get our tickets.
• Clutching our tickets,
  • we would walk across the field behind the restaurant to the Fairgrounds entry road clogged with game-goers,
  • walk under the freeway and past the parking toll gates
  • onward to Freedom Hall, the hallowed ground where UL basketball has been played for decades (“a great view from every seat!”)
• Unseld so dominated the freshmen on the other teams that each game was a curb-stomping.
  • We would enjoy it, then a parent would pick us up outside after the game!
• That season was 1964 – 1965.
  So I was a junior and Ekim was a sophomore!

What memories!

My schools in Louisville:

• 1954-1960 – John James Audobon Elementary
• 1960-1966 – Sally Phillips Durrett High School

Jefferson County was very busy building new schools for us baby boomer kids. They didn’t mess around with separate schools for middle school and high school: it was grades 1 through 6 in the first school, grades 7 through 12 in the second!

Going from cozy, safe Audubon Elementary to huge, overcrowded, under-staffed, lower class (redneck even!) Durrett High School was a major trauma in my young life!

I remember genuine fright venturing into the Men’s Room, where there might be seniors in James Dean white tees with rolled-up sleeves sneaking a smoke! I was the lowest form of life, a 7-th grader!

1966-67 – Cambridge MA – 55 Matthews Hall – Harvard College

Harvard College, bless them, gave me an opportunity to escape the heartland and head for a coastal city.
I never even came close to returning to the heartland for the rest of my life. I was bi-coastal until Reno in my last few years. Culturally, Reno-Tahoe (as they like to call it) is an extension of the Bay Area in my book.

Freshman year, Harvard assigned me to Matthews Hall, first building on your left as you enter Harvard Yard from the Square. Could not have asked for anything more Harvard-y than that!

Matthews is in the southeast corner of what they call “Old Harvard Yard”, the iconic quadrangle of red brick, ivy-covered buildings criss-crossed by diagonal walkways. I didn’t really appreciate it at the time so much, but it was actually really cool

1967-69 – Cambridge MA – Lowell House – Harvard College

So all of the freshmen men are thrown together for the first year, then they are scattered into the House system for the rest of their undergraduate years. In that era it was literally all men. The female persons were up the street at their own college – Radcliffe.

The house you were assigned to fell out of a complex weighing of competing needs including

• where you wanted to live,
• who you wanted to live with,
• whether a House wanted you,
• and whether the want the whole crew you wanted to live with, and …
• who’s left over!

I lucked out, I was assigned to an extremely cool room with my fellow Louisvillian Orest and two other compatible fellows on the second floor of Lowell House. The other two fellows had spent their high school years in prep school, so they were well adapted to dorm life.

It was four bedrooms in a row with the bathroom in the middle and a door at each end. I do remember it was centered over the side entrance on Plympton Street, so you would come out of Entryway N or Entryway O depending on from which direction you exit our suite!

Junior year, I hooked with four other fellows to share a really interesting room on the third floor. That is the top floor, so had a garret-ish feel.. It was one long living room on the west side, and five bedrooms on a row on the east. The windows were cut into the dormers to give it that “living in the attic” feel. 🙂

The room had a lot of potential, but we weren’t too compatible as roommates.

It’s pretty ironic that I liked the roommates that Harverd chose for me better that the ones I chose for myself!

1969-1971 – Cambridge – Terry Terrace – 21 Everett St

My future wife Laura graduated Durrett High in Louisville two years after me and moved to the Boston area that summer. I have a vague memory of a flat on Beacon Hill for one first summer, but sadly don’t remember more.

My senior year I moved off campus and we lived in a nifty apartment building right across the street from Harvard Law School, with the very cool name of Terry Terrace. :))

Summer 1970 I applied to one Psychology program and one Computer Science PhD program. I think I was rejected by Stanford Computer Science and didn’t like the Psych program I got into that much, so we stuck around a Terry Terrace an extra year. Laura could continue her schooling at Boston U and I would try my luck again in 1971!

That in-between year turned out to be a lot of fun!

I showed up for work every day at the William James Psychology Building to work for Professor Olivier.

Laura went to Boston University Nursing School and we hung out with the good friends we had made. Some through Harvard connections but mostly Louisville connections (long story…).

Oh and I played a LOT of basketball at the Law School Gym!
Law Schoolers are more intense than undergraduates (surprise!)

This ends my life in New England.

Life in the DC Metroplex starts in the next post.