Landing A Catch

46

By December Nineteen Seventy-Nine, my father was spending time away from the home during some evenings. It turned out he'd found himself a girl friend, the first in several years. He excitedly confessed to me that 'Roberta' was the hot girl of his High School class and she was now available and he thought he had a chance whereas, back then, he didn't. Seeing her as a sort of Red Neck Princess, as part of his method of wooing her he suddenly bought and wore long sleeved red plaid flannel shirts. As he had never worn anything like it during my life time, I had to fight back the urge to laugh every time I saw him 'dressed-up' like that as it reminded me of the Monty Python 'Lumber Jack' song.

When Christmas came and it was time to see my mother, I put all of my clothes back into the one suitcase I had come to New England with and wore the old puffy jacket to the airport and carried it with me on the plane. Once set down in Colorado, my mother thought it was time I got a new coat.

In the intervening few months she had moved to a new, one bedroom, apartment and this meant my stuff was gone. She told me how she gave away all my games and toys since I hadn't wanted them anymore. Whatever made her sleep at night. I was gung-ho to sleep on the couch, but she had bought a roll away bed for me to use during the week and a half I'd be there. Also, she seemed to hope that my not as older brother would come down Christmas Eve and stay overnight on the couch himself. The roll away was more of a steel trap; both ends would fold-up making it a four foot high, two foot thick and three foot wide cage. With the ends folded down 'it was a bed', though with the steel hinge base smack in the middle, it was more of a torture device. I found the only way to sleep on it was on my side with my hips just beyond the steel bar and ribs just above it. It was like sleeping in the back of the car, except less comfortable.

Mother had found a new grocery store to work in since the one she'd started at just four months earlier. As she was working all but Christmas day, this meant I got to enjoy the apartment and its surroundings... Mainly just empty weed fields on the eastern outskirts of town. I somehow talked her into picking me up during her lunch hour and taking me to the Radio Shack of the previous Summer where Ralph worked and was happy to see me again and let me use the display Trash-80, still with the desk. I'd spend the afternoon there, then mother would pick me back up on the way home from work. For this small accommodation during my stay, I thank her. Not wanting to wear out my welcome, I was doing every other day there and on the second afternoon a large man stepped up behind me as I tried out a game I'd just coded. He said, ''Hey, if you think that's cool, you should come over to my place and see the games I have...''

Given his long hair and long beard, he could have been mistaken for a biker except that he wore jeans and a tee shirt. I told him I had to wait for my mother to pick me up at four thirty, but he assured me he'd have me back by then. So I gathered my things and hopped into his truck off to his house. Once there, he lead me up some steps to an older house in the downtown area, inside he brought me to a dark room in the middle of the base floor and had me go in first. He turned on the light which was pretty much a bulb hanging by a chain from the middle of the ceiling -- For some reason, when I tell this story nowadays, people start to get really nervous and cringe for fear of what happens next, but I need to explain that I was from rural New England and my parents had never expressed any concern about me talking with people I didn't know -- So anyhow, we get down on these really low seats, it might have actually been some cushions on the floor, and on this coffee table was a fully tricked-out Trash-80. By fully tricked-out I mean it had the Expansion Interface, this clucking box to the side called a floppy drive, whatever that was, and a printer.

Turned-out the floppy drive was a much faster cassette recorder for loading and saving games. And he loaded-up and showed me quite a few. Many of them were the text based games that I'd seen before, some called 'adventure games' where it gave you the description of a room and you got to either pick up or leave stuff there, then move to another room. But some were graphics oriented and more dynamic than anything I'd seen before on a computer. Behind the computer he had a few cassettes of a game called 'Interlude' and I asked him what that was, but he felt I was too young to see those games. When I noticed we'd passed three thirty, I mentioned I needed to get back to the Radio Shack before my mother got there.

So he got me back to the store a bit after four and stayed with me noting the many other games he had while I settled back down into the display desk. I expressed enthusiasm and he gave me his number and I wrote down his name at the top, 'Jeff'. He left soon after and not knowing how long I'd have to wait until mother arrived, I started to load the game I had been working on. When she came, I hopped in the car and, as we were driving to the apartment, I told her of my exciting day and she just about had a heart attack and told me I should never have left the store and gone with someone I didn't know. I told her I did know him, now, and had his name and phone number. Once back at the apartment, mother promptly snatched the phone number from me and gave him a call to give him a piece of her mind. When Jeff mentioned to her that he was married, mother asked to talk to his wife and soon calmed down. She said I could see him again the Saturday before I flew home that Sunday. But I was told in no uncertain terms: When at the Radio Shack I was to stay there until she picked me up!!!!

I did see Jeff that Saturday and picked some cassette based games to see. As we waited for them to load, we'd chat and he showed me his record collection of all these bands I hadn't heard of before; he would play a few songs off of one as he pointed out a few prized albums to me. A few hours later, it was time to go, have a final meal with my mother and pack for the flight home.

My father and Roberta picked me up at Logan airport and brought me back to the house. Once there I was surprised with the present my father had gotten me for Christmas. It was soft under the wrapping, not like a box with paper over it. I eagerly ripped the wrapping-off to find it was a set of long sleeve red plaid flannel shirts. My hands shook in revulsion as it dawned on me that this wasn't a present from my father, but a present for my father as he apparently thought he needed me to 'dress-up' as a lumber jack as well to finally land his catch.

I dropped the plastic wrapped shirts to the nearest side table and mumbled that I had to go and unpack my suitcase and fled the room. The shirts lay untouched on that side table for the next three to four months collecting dust until they finally, thankfully, disappeared.

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