At the pre-bible study meal on Wednesday night, I sat across from Jason. I’ve sat with him, eaten, and talked with him before, but never asked about his blindness. He faithfully comes to the Wednesday night men’s bible study. After a while you don’t notice the dark glasses and folded up white wooden cane under his chair. He’s just part of the group.
But tonight I said, “Jason, it’s Bill.” I try to identify myself when I sit down with him. And then I asked, “Can I ask you about your blindness? Have you ever had any sight?”
He smiled and told me he had been born blind. “In fact, when I was born, they had to remove one of my eyes. I’ve never been able to see.” He added, “But I really got messed up when I lost my hearing.”
Jason continued, “When I was a teenager, I would put on my headphones and listen to heavy metal music way too loud. My mom could never get my attention. I guess I overdid it. Now I’m paying for it.”
He then told me about a time when a nurse wanted to check his vision. “She wanted me to read a line of letters on the wall. I had to explain to her that I couldn’t see anything. Boy, was she embarrassed!”
One week, Jason made a pot of chili for the Wednesday night meal. It was delicious. He explained, “My mom taught me how to cook.” She was a good teacher. He has won a few chili cook-offs.
I’ve gotten to know a few of the blind who attend this church. Emily sings with the worship team, equipped with braille songsheets on her music stand. Ricky, with just a little bit of peripheral vision, does a lot of long distance running. Billie had her golden retriever assistance dog in church with her. Yes, of course, I stopped by to say hi to both!
Engaging with the blind is a great reminder that this world is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s also a reminder that God is doing everything needed to restore it. Jesus gave us a taste of that, giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and getting the lame back up on their feet.
Can you imagine what it will be like when the first thing you see in your life is Jesus?
As I approached three years of working at Bell Labs, a colleague, Fred H. came to me and asked if I would come with him to Austin, TX, and be a part of a startup company. We had worked together on some projects and he wanted me to come and be his programmer.
I was flattered, the offer was more than I was making, and I was bored with R&D that had no deadlines, few priorities, and from my point of view, not many goals. I was encouraged to get my master’s degree electrical engineering so I could be promoted to the next level. But after I took a few classes at Rutgers, I knew my heart wasn’t in it.
At this new company, I would work with engineers who were making deep oil well pressure monitors. I would be programming in 8086 assembly language. The challenge of a new project and traveling to a new place to live appealed to me, and I accepted the job.
Looking back, this decision changed the whole trajectory of my life. Just two months after moving to Texas in January 1982, the company went out of business. The founders had found better places to invest their money. I worked another job at Houston Instruments for a few months, but most of my time in Texas was getting ready to go to seminary in Fort Wayne, IN that fall. Three and a half-years in the real world showed me that I enjoyed my work with the church more than any of my programming work. I was young and single with enough money to live, so I enjoyed my eight months in Austin.
I wasn’t journaling during this chapter of my life, other than to keep track of my running mileage. So these past four blog posts have all been from memory, which in some moments is vivid, and others foggy. My other career served me well in pastoral ministry, giving me insights into the working world of church members. However, once the congregation found out I had been a computer programmer, I got more questions about tech than about theology. My phone rang about everything from, “My printer won’t print” to “My screen is frozen” to “How do you change the font?”
And once a tech guy, always a tech guy. Even in retirement after thirty-six years of full time ministry, I still get questions about bluetooth, wifi, printers, fonts and formatting. The blessings of my first career still echo in my life today.
The Bell Labs office in Holmdel, NJ was stunning, designed by architect Eero Saarinen. There’s a joke about an employee who brought a guest to show them their officed. Wowed by the structure, the guest asked, “How many people work here?”
“About ten percent.”
About six thousand people worked at that labs location. But I worked at an overflow location in West Long Branch, NJ, not far from Asbury Park and the Jersey shore. As I reflect on the three years I worked there, there were times when we really didn’t work that hard.
The loosely-defined work day was 9 am to 5 pm. However, upon arriving, getting coffee was a priority, enjoyed while reading the newspaper in the cafeteria or at your desk. The New York Times was the go to paper, but the Asbury Park Press showed up on a regular basis.
There was plenty of time for chit-chat about current events, family, past and upcoming meetings, hobbies and other interests. Typically, I had run a program before leaving the night before. Upon arriving, I had to get the printout from the computer lab and see what bugs I needed to work on. On the way, I would stop by and chat with others in my group and department. I would get to meet their colleagues from other departments. Before you knew it, it was time for lunch.
Sometimes I brought a light lunch since I often went out for a run during the lunch hour. The cafeteria was pretty good, and sometimes we would go out. The Western Electric guys were a little rougher around the edges, and liked to frequent some of the bars on the boardwalk. I remember one place they took me, the Blue Dolphin in Long Branch. It was a dive on the ocean, complete with go-go girls, pool tables, and a juke box. The dancers weren’t naked, but they were ugly. The food (mostly burgers) was edible, and a few beers later, we were ready to go back to work.
After lunch, I’d run another iteration of a program and visit with other coworkers while I waited for the printout. Later in the afternoon, I’d run the program one more time, and head home.
We had to turn in a weekly time card, but that was just to track paid time off. No one really paid much attention to our coming and going. Apparently in research and development, at least in the early 1980s, productivity wasn’t a big deal. As long as someone in the organization produced something, it was all good. Bell Labs had the reputation of producing one patent per day. A lot of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and programmers, could ride that wave with ease. And we did.
One of the reasons I left the labs was that I wasn’t doing much and what I did didn’t matter much. That was my perspective from the bottom of the food chain.
The early 80s was ground zero for the running boom. I ran a lot in my twenties, as did a lot of my coworkers. Since our office building had showers, I would run during lunch hour. A high school track across the street was the perfect place to run 220 and 440 intervals. Just beyond that was a hill that I ran repeat sprints on. I would meet up with a lot of running coworkers at races up and down the Jersey shore every Saturday.
A few of us really got into biking, too. I rode my bike (ten miles one way) to work on good weather days. I met a few other bikers at work and we planned and completed a century ride (100 miles) through central New Jersey. It’s amazing how much time you can spend talking about bikes, gears, derailleurs, and wheels.
In one of my offices in West Long Branch, there was a wall sized chalk board. Instead of being covered in mathematical formulas, my coworkers and I used colored chalk to create a fantasy world of buildings, people, plants, and scenery. Everyone would stop by to add something to the mural. Somebody somewhere has a picture of our masterpiece.
While I don’t remember too much about my actual work at Bell Labs, I remember much about the people I met and all the time I spent not working!
I began working for Bell Laboratories in February 1979. My department was titled Network Modeling. At the time, AT&T had a monopoly on long distance telephone service in the United States. Just about every call was made on their equipment on their networks. Network modeling involved coming up with algorithms to figure out how much equipment was needed to handle long distance demand and how much it would cost. Since every call traveled over copper wire through switching offices, a lot of equipment was involved. Remember, this was long before the days of cell phones, wireless carriers, fiber networks, and unlimited calls and data.
Since every phone call traveled through AT&T equipment, the justice department had filed a lawsuit to break up the monopoly. The purpose of my department’s network modeling was to show that breaking up the Bell system would make long distance calls unaffordable for most people, and therefore was not in the best interest of the nation.
Engineers and mathematicians in my department would come up with ways to determine and present how much equipment was needed and how much it cost to handle all the telephone calls being made across the country. Then people like me would code computer programs to analyze this information.
Since I was totally new to this, I really appreciate the time the others in my department took to explain how it all worked. Every explanation began with, “You have two wires…” Every phone had two wires that would connect to a local switching office to connect with other switching offices to the two wires of the other person’s phone.
When hired, I thought I would be working for Gerd Printz, but when I arrived, I was put in Ron Skoog’s group. I had a title: Senior Technical Associate. It sounds impressive, but it’s only one level above the lowest tier of employees. There were plenty of levels above me, all those with masters and Ph.D degrees.
They handed me half-inch thick printout on 11×17 tractor feed printer paper filled with thousands of lines of Fortran code. It was my job to finish the coding, test it, and write it up. I worked alongside many group members who were level higher than me. I’m amazed I remember so many of their names: Joan Bazely, Pam Turner, Ted Ahern, George Askance, Joe Scholl, Gina Langlois, Lachsman Sinha, Eric Grimmelman. A few guys from Western Electric who knew a lot about equipment in the field were around the office a lot, too.
I had an office, a CRT terminal to work on, and shelves filled with IBM manuals. I would work on the code, test parts of it, and then have to go down to the computer room to pick up printouts of what I had worked on.
Once I had the program up and running, I wrote it up for internal publication and made a presentation to some who were higher up the organization who were preparing to go up against the justice department.
Our network model was a stepping stone for my next assignment. Now we began to look at how solar flares and electromagnetic pulses (EMP) would affect telecommunications. If an enemy detonated an EMP device over the United States, it could disrupt communication. But how much? And for how long? Some of this project must have had a connection with the Department of Defense, because I had to get top secret clearance. I felt pretty important for a moment, until I realized no one was going to tell me any secrets.
Anyway, to study this, we found a long distance cable between Aurora, IL and Clinton, IA that was perfectly east and west. I programmed an HP minicomputer in Basic that we installed in Aurora. The staff there would send us a cassette tape filled with data every week that we would analyze along with solar flare activity. I don’t remember what we learned from the whole effort, but it was a fun project to work on.
While I was working on those projects, I go to see other Bell Labs facilities in Holmdel and Murray Hill, both in New Jersey. Those are the places where engineers and scientists invented transistors and lasers, and developed digital communication. I also got to go the main switching office in Manhattan to see all kinds of different phone switches in action. For three years I was a beneficiary of the massive amount of money AT&T poured into it’s research arm. I met a lot of brilliant people and learned so much from them.
My West Long Branch Bell Labs location looked something like thisIBM 360s – check out the size of the hard drive disks!
I was sitting eating supper with some of the men in my small group when Jim, across the table from me, asked, “You’re from south Florida, right?”
I chuckled, “Almost. Not south Florida. I grew up in south Philly.”
Knowing that I’m a retired pastor, he asked, “Did you serve a church in that area?”
“No, I left there after high school to go to college in Lancaster. Then I worked for Bell Labs in New Jersey for a few years before I found my way to the seminary.”
The mention of Bell Labs sparked interest at the table. “What did you do there?”
I explained, “I was a programmer, working with a bunch of people who were way smarter than me. Like the guy up the hall who developed digital voice communication for Apollo 8. I worked on some projects for the antitrust case against AT&T, and then some telephone network survivability studies.”
One of the guys asked, “Whatever happened to Bell Labs?”
“AT&T lost the antitrust case and had to spin off Western Electric, a bunch of Baby Bells, and Bell Labs, later renamed Lucent Technologies. But that was after I had left them for another job.”
That brief discussion brought back memories of my first career at Bell Labs after graduating from Franklin and Marshall College in 1979. At the time I did not realize how prestigious the labs were. I was an overconfident graduate from a small liberal arts college with a degree in math and experience in programming in an organization filled with geniuses.
Keep in mind that programming in the early 80’s was Fortran, Cobol, and PL/1 on big old IBM 360s and 370s, with disk storage the size of forty-five pound barbell plates and long term tape drive memory. (IBM’s first desktop computers were released in August of 1981.) I could also program in Basic, which would come in handy a little later on.
My programming portfolio included compiling some survey data a friend of mine collected for the college radio station, some statistics for the basketball team, and some numerical analysis for some math classes. In retrospect, that doesn’t seem like much. But it was more than many of my classmates could do.
I only had to take three classes in the fall of 1978 to finish up my degree a semester early. I spent most of that fall applying for jobs. With just a manual typewriter, I cranked out dozens of cover letters to send out with my resume. I don’t remember how I found out where to apply for jobs. I must have found opportunities in math and science journals. I really swung for the fences, applying to Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, Lawrence Livermore in California, Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, New Jersey Bell, and a load of other places I can’t remember. I think I also sent away for master’s programs at universities all over the country. I had a pretty impressive collection of college catalogues. I had no idea how I would get there or pay for more education, but I would worry about that later.
I finished up my course work and moved back home in December of 1978. The next six weeks dragged on as I waited to hear from someone, anyone. Finally, at the end of January, I got a call from New Jersey Bell and Bell Labs in the same week, inviting me to come and interview.
My interview with New Jersey Bell came first. I drove up the NJ turnpike from south Philly to Newark. First, I took a test of general knowledge, simply math problems, vocabulary and grammar, and current events. After talking with a few people, I was taken to a room with about a dozen other interviewees to work on a test problem. The problem was a math and physics exercise about telephone poles and lines and cables. Wrote up my answer and headed home.
The Bell Labs interview was much different, lasting two days, talking to people from four different departments. They offered to put me up in a hotel in the area, but it was less than an hour away, so I elected to drive up each day. The first day of interviews was at the Holmdel, NJ location. It was impressive inside and out. I don’t remember much about the first day of interviews since I didn’t go to work at that location. The second day of interviews was in the Holmdel overflow location in West Long Branch, NJ.
I interviewed with two different groups in a department called Network Modeling. Just so you know, I had no idea what that meant. I interviewed with Gerd Printz and Ron Skoog, two group supervisors. They brought along Ted Ahern and Pam Turner, two of the group members I would be working with. I also talked with Bill Ross, the head of that department. As I sit here writing this, I am amazed that I remember these names from forty-four years ago!
Could I actually land a job there? I had no idea. But a couple of weeks later, a offer letter came in the mail and I had my first post-college job. I was on my way to Monmouth County New Jersey, my first apartment and life on my own.
Now that I’ve written this much, I think I’ll write about working at Bell Labs and leaving there in two subsequent parts.
I thoroughly enjoy every time we get to have some of our grandchildren for an overnight. I never had the chance to sleepover at a grandparent’s. I just didn’t get to spend much time with them or know them very well. But I get to see some of my nine grandchildren at least once a week.
This past Saturday, two of my grandsons (ages 8 and 5) stayed with us while their parents celebrated their anniversary. I think it’s interesting how we spent our time together.
First, we played a lot of basketball. On the way home from picking them up, we stopped at a craft fair not too far from our home. Not much for kids except for food. I was pretty excited about an outer perimeter of food trucks. Tacos, BBQ, fries, cajun, hoagies, kettle corn – and Chick-fil-A. Guess what they chose? Yep, chicken, waffle chips and Powerade from the Chick-fil-A trailer. (I got a 6″ hoagie. And I know what a “hoagie” is since I grew up in Philadelphia.)
When we got back home, it was basketball. I have a moveable hoop to set up in the driveway. The older guy has a season of rec league behind him, so he’s a pretty good shooter. The younger had to work hard to get an lighter ball through the hoop I set at eight foot. But they were out there for a couple of hours.
After that, snack time. Apples, Taki, and goldfish crackers tided them over until supper time. You’ll notice that food plays a major role in their lives at home and away. Don’t worry, they burn off all the calories.
After snack number whatever, I showed them a cool motorized engine we bought for our wooden train set. I helped them build a couple of loops and they sent long lines of cars around and around the inner, outer, and middle loops.
“Can we go outside?” Of course! Guess what kept them busy for the next hour? Pine needles. Our yard, flanked by two wooded lots, is full of them. The two boys spent the next hour raking and gathering pine needles to fill up the play fort and bury the younger grandson. My yard? Raked and looking nice!
Supper time! As I made my always delicious homemade pizza, they snacked on apple slices, Taki, grapes, and goldfish crackers. I was lucky to get a couple of slices of pizza. They doused their slices in red pepper flakes, Italian salad dressing, parmesan cheese, and ranch dressing. Yum.
Once that was gone, we got ready for the pre-bedtime movie. I gave the younger one a quick bubble bath and the older decided on thje 2018 edition of “The Grinch.” As soon as we started the movie, I heard fervent pleas for “popcorn.” Okay. I microwaved a large bowl for each, and we laughed through the movie.
Once the movie was over, we brushed teeth and fought over who would sleep in the top bunk. Younger had it last time, so it was Older’s turn. After brushing teeth, the two yawned through the Lord’s Prayer, and it was lights out (with a sound machine).
Whew. We were exhausted. And it was only 8 pm! These two grandsons only have two speeds: 100% or fast asleep. My wife and I knew we better turn in early. Before you know it, the sun would be up and they would be awake!
I know we’re still a month out, but I’ve been enjoying the Christmas yard decorations on my daily neighborhood walks. This one yard especially caught my attention. The longer you look at it, the more interesting things you’ll notice.
Initially I was happy to see the holy family right up front. While there are a few scattered here and there, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are generally outnumbered by snowmen, penguins, the Grinch, Santa and reindeer. Oh, and did you know they are New York Yankees fans?
Santa is here too, standing guard by a “Happy Holidays” candy cane and a “Let it Snow” sign (yes, even in Florida). Another Santa is off in the distance on the front walk. Large nutcrackers are posted on each side of the front door. Off to the right, not yet inflated for the night, is a Christmas Mickey Mouse. Colored lights frame all the roof edges. And then there is the virgin Mary, in traditional blue, with a white poinsettia in front of her.
I have to give them credit. They have a lot of bases covered. But not everything. I’ve got some other yards I’ll show you soon who feature even more seasonal characters.
Just when I though everyone had a flat screen TV, I saw this in my neighbor’s trash this morning.
As I came around the corner, I first saw the box. I see a new television box on trash day at least once a week. These folks got a modest sized 32 inch “As I came around the corner, I first saw the box. I see a new television box on trash day at least once a week. These folks got a modest sized 32 inch “full HDTV” model. I’ll bet it cost them less than one hundred dollars.
And then I saw their old TV. An old, heavy, tube model from a few years ago. I honestly thought that no one had those anymore. Do you remember carrying those monsters from one room to another? Even the smaller ones, like this model, were heavy (at least fifty pounds) and awkward. At 8-10 pounds, I could lift this one between my thumb and forefinger.
We had deeper furniture and larger entertainment centers to have these in our living rooms. By contrast, this one is no more than one inch thick. I can hang it on the wall like a framed picture.
New TVs are increasingly thinner, lighter, brighter, sharper, smarter and have great sound. The leap from this old curbside TV to the new probably blew them away. Welcome to the twenty-first century.
Oh, and by the way, your new TV will be obsolete in a few months.
My wife, younger daughter and I decided to run a 5k race this morning. It’s the first race I’ve run in I know don’t how long. I looked through some old journals, but haven’t been able to pinpoint the last time I ran a road race.
I signed us all up online last week and paid our entry fee. While five-mile races cost an average of $5 in the 1980s, I had to cough up $35 each for this race. Of course, you get a t-shirt (this year’s was bright orange!), a medal, electronic timing, and some of the proceeds supported a local food bank, so I guess that’s not so bad.
The fairly mild fall Florida weather suddenly turned cooler last night, and I woke to a fifty degree morning. Now I have to decide what to wear. It’ll be cool while waiting for the start, but I’ll generate plenty of heat once the race starts. Shorts for sure. My rule of thumb was always a t-shirt down to fifty, and a long sleeve t-shirt if it was colder than that. I never wear anything on my legs unless the temps dip below freezing. It’s been a while since I ran, so I opted for a long sleeve t-shirt with a light short t sleeve on top. Once we got going, a t-shirt would have been enough, but this worked.
We arrived about twenty five minutes before the start time. Many runners were already there. And they were dressed in everything imaginable. The male high school cross country runners were in shorts with no shirt. The season had just ended and they were in top shape. Quite a few runners and walkers were in tights, shirts, coats, vests, hats, and gloves. I saw lots of turkey hats. One woman had her head poked through a large cardboard thanksgiving dinner table, set with plates, silverware and fake food. I saw a few runners wearing tutus, too.
When we noticed the crowd drifting towards the starting line, we followed. Suddenly, a siren sounded and we were on our way. Everyone had to funnel through a ten-foot wide inflatable starting gate, so we didn’t really begin running for about ninety seconds.
We settled into a comfortable thirteen-minute-per-mile pace as the sun appeared above the tree line. It turned out to be a nice day for a run. The course took us through live oak canopied streets, sidewalks, and trails along the intracoastal waterway and then back towards the starting area. Cups of water were available at the halfway point. I always take advantage of the water, even though it was only a three mile run. The course was well marked, and lots of sheriffs deputies were out to control traffic and keep an eye on the runners.
We only took a couple of short walking breaks. We passed many walkers who had started toward the front of the pack. We were passed by many serious runners who had gotten stuck in the crowd behind us. It always takes about a mile for the crowd to thin out and you find yourself among those running your pace.
Without any split designations, I could only guess how far we had run. Suddenly (at least for me), we rounded a corner and there was the finish line. We all finished together in the vicinity of forty minutes. Race results were online by the time we got home, letting us know we had all finished in the top half of all who came out today. The overall winner was a young man who finished in just under fifteen minutes. I believe he was one of the local high school cross country runners. The last person crossed the finish line just under the one hour mark.
This was my wife’s first official race. My daughter had run a few before. And I ran a lot of road races in my twenties. When you run with a crowd, you often do better than you would alone. Once you’ve finished, you start thinking about your next one, training more, and running faster next time. And of course, no matter how hard or easy the race was, it gives you an excuse to eat whatever you want for Thanksgiving!
Waite for it... 