July 9, 2005 Burning my Candle at Both Ends

July 9, 2005 Burning my Candle at Both Ends

Just after my 36th birthday, I had one of those epiphanies that middle age men are said to have at about this time in their lives. For me it marked a full decade after completing my college education. How many of the milestones had I intended to pass were now behind me? What were the ones to come? And what were my chances of actually putting them behind me? The answer to the first question was that I had not passed the number I thought I should have passed. It was the second week of January 1982. I had flown to LAX from SJC the airport designation for the still-tiny San Jose Airport. The carriers based there with the largest number of flights had names like PSA and AirCal, commuter carriers flying Boeing 737-200s back and forth between San Jose and Southern California. LA was the first stop on a weeklong itinerary that would take me to Texas and back. My trip was largely to make potential advertisers aware of the new magazine Systems & Software, which had been spun out of a very profitable technical magazine serving the electronics engineering community. With the explosion in the late 1970s of cheap microcomputers—under $10,000, a bargain when compared to minicomputers and mainframes selling for $100,000 to over a $1,000,000—publishers were rushing magazines to serve this expanding base of new readers.

After touch down at Burbank Airport Monday morning January 11, 1982, I jump into my Hertz rental car—it’s 8:25 AM—and head for Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley south on Interstate 5—LA freeways are that important they are referred to with the definitive article “the”—to the 101—called the Ventura Freeway, a far more elegant name. At the I5-101 junction, I take the Ventura Freeway west to the De Soto Boulevard Exit. It’s 9:00 AM and since I’m running ahead of schedule I stop to have breakfast at the Denny’s near the exit. Afterwards, I make a series of phone calls to my east coast office and get tied up in small emergencies that I take care of at the expense of running late for my a 10:00 o’clock appointment. My editor, SK, will use half of the copy I’ve submitted last week, but needs another two magazine pages of content by end of the day Eastern Standard Time. I call a research firm I have written for and ask that an executive summary from one of their reports—not one I’ve written— be faxed to my office back east. It’s free publicity and they are more than eager to accommodate. After alerting my boss to look for the fax, I ask to be transferred to the editorial director, LM, who we both report to. I ask her for permission to travel to the UK for the week of February 15th to participate in a conference as a speaker. She approves the request and gives me another assignment to cover a conference in San Francisco the week of February 21st. I call my contact in London, RB, to let him know I’m coming.

I’ve spent a good 45 minutes on the phone—cell phones were not available then and all my calls were from a pay phone using a telephone credit card—the account number I knew by heart and could speed dial. My last call is to alert my host—an account executive with Simon Public Relations, an agency in LA on San Vicente Blvd near the Brentwood Country Club—I’m running late. I drive north on De Soto to Nordhoff Street. There I meet with a once well-know disk drive company, named after the demographic term for “mini city,” which would gained currency 10 years later for the many cities like Chatsworth, Woodland Hills, Simi Valley, etc springing up around metropolitan areas like LA. We discussed flux changes per inch and diameter of and number of platters per drive and the future direction of both—I know it sounds boring but it’s why you can get an infinite amount of MP3s on your Apple iPod today.

My late start at my first appointment puts me behind for my second one of the day. I call ahead to my host, an account executive from the Le Ance and Reiser, Public Relations/Advertising Agency based in Costa Mesa, California, who represents the company, From the disk drive company, I get back on the Ventura Freeway and head west climbing over the Santa Monica Mountains for a noon lunch appointment with the CEO of a suddenly successful microcomputer company that had skyrocketed to success and was now about to fall, though over a slightly longer time. I get started just before noon and take close to 45 minutes to reach my second appointment. The company was located in Thousand Oaks about 25 miles from where I was in Chatsworth on the Ventura Freeway just off the North Ventura Park Road Exit.

Two right turns after I exit from the freeway and I am at the office of the now-defunct company, the creation of the CEO, BH—an engineer—his wife LH, and a PR lady, CE. I’m about a half hour late. In 1978, BH and his wife were wandering around the West Coast Computer Faire, looking for the bits and pieces needed to build the microcomputer that would make them rich. They found all they needed and BH put them together, producing a computer that system integrators packaged with software and sold to small and medium size companies wanting to automate their inventory, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. I’m greeted by the Le Ance PR account executive and after he introduces me to BH he suggests we talk over lunch.

The PR AE drives us to the Hungry Tiger in Westlake Village nearby the company’s office. I know as well as everyone else in the small community we all orbit in that BH and his wife are breaking up. Over lunch BH and I talk less about business and more about what a married man does once he breaks up with his wife, for example, the finer points of negotiating with comfort women in Las Vegas and where one goes to find them. BH, like most of the rest of the industry, had just returned from Comdex held the previous November in Las Vegas and our conversation had begun discussing what we had observed that was new at the last gathering. Most of our business conversation centered on IBM’s entry into the small computer market. I asked what impact it would have on companies like BH’s. None was his unhesitating reply since the computer he was selling was going into a business while an individual would use the PC—totally different market and that was that.

The start of 1982 had signaled the passage of a milestone for the nascent microcomputer industry, which got its official start in the mid-1970s, when the Intel 8080 microprocessor was first announced to the world. It would take a couple more years for software to come available to make the machines built around the 8080 useful in business applications. The year 1982 saw the debut in July of 1981 of the IBM Datamaster—now that’s a name to conjure with—and the birth of the personal computer industry as we know it today. That same month Microsoft purchased the rights to DOS from Seattle Computer Products—the little company that could have become Microsoft—which would become PC DOS on the Datamaster—and MS DOS on every clone that came along in IBM’s wake. BH’s high-flying company had just been superseded though few at the time knew it, especially BH.

Observing the lament of a man who’s world had come apart at the height of his professional success was like watching a thunderstorm sweep across a vast prairie of suburban development on a 100-degree day and seeing a funnel cloud ripping up that carefully constructed domestic landscape at the same time. The demise of his domestic life was a metaphor for the decline of his professional fortune, though I’m sure he and his wife and their friend CE would walk away from the destruction financially sound. Lunch ran long as lunches do with DH taking more wine than was acceptable for a business lunch even back then. I had limited my intake to one glass, knowing I had at least one more appointment before the day was done not to mention a thirty-minute drive to get there.

We conclude lunch return to BH’s office and after thanking my host; I explain that I have to be getting back to the valley for another meeting. It’s 2:45 PM. I’m going to be nearly thirty minutes late for my next meeting at 3:00 PM. I get back onto the Ventura Freeway driving well above the speed limit heading east back over the Santa Monica Mountains to Chatsworth exiting at Topanga Canyon—essentially retracing my outbound trek—and heading north to Lassen Street, right five blocks to Deering Avenue and then right again. Despite my speeding, traffic on the freeway and getting lost at least once, I arrive an hour late. “Not a problem,” assures the PR account executive from Simon PR and he takes me in and introduces me to the VP of engineering. I’m visiting another disk drive company and we discuss more flux changes, disk sizes, and number of platters.

My ulterior reason for these visits is to gather information for the book I’m writing on the drive and its affect on the microcomputer industry. The book is one of the milestones I expect to pass and I’m on track to do so—it would be published the following year. Unlike my lunch meeting this third one of the day is information rich with details about the business as well as gossip about competitors that I plan to follow up on. The third meeting ends and I’m over an hour late for the last meeting at the Simon PR offices on San Vicente. The AE says he’s already called ahead to explain the delay and he’ll be happy to show me the way to agency—just follow him, which I do. With LA rush hour traffic, we manage to arrive at the agency just before 6:00 PM. Our dinner reservation is at 7:30 at a restaurant nearby, a surprise, my host at the agency, OR, a principle, which means he has nearly a carte blanche expense account for entertaining.

Besides OR, RS from the LA bureau editor for my sister magazine—the electronics journal—has just arrived. He will hear the agency pitch that I’m there to hear then join OR and me for dinner. Once the agency pitch is over—less than 30 minutes acquainting us with the agency’s clients and what they are doing in the next couple of months, we walk next door to the Corkscrew Restaurant for a drink before going to dinner. A round of drinks and some gossip about our betters in the business—who’s moving where, who’s going out of business, who’s sitting on a goldmine. Afterwards, OR takes us to the restaurant he’s been anxious for us to see. We arrive at Le Bistro and as we’re getting seated, OR explains that this is one of Groucho Marx’s favorite places—he likes the cheesecake here and prefers sitting on the second floor, where we end up hopeful of a glimpse of the comic. Before we get into heavy conversation, I excuse myself and call home to speak with my wife IM and my daughters ME and RD. We’re trying to get ME into an all-girls high school and RD hasn’t a care in the world.

After taking and bringing our drink order, the waiter returns with a pedestal atop which was placed a placard with today’s menu printed. He leaves us to study the menu then returns after an extended interval and takes our order. OR says the place is known for its veal dishes and he and I take one of the veal dishes cited on the placard. RS decides on frog’s legs. I like OR a lot. He’s an ex-Marine officer, though I never did find out if he served in Viet Nam—we are about the same age and he most likely did. He’s a bit taller than me, nearly six foot, lacks the hard look that most Marines especially officers have—I suspect he realized the look was a liability in the PR business and changed it. He is remarkable trim considering the dinners like the one we’re having tonight that he must eat far more frequently than me. RS is another matter, a tall Oklahoman, born in Southern California of parents who left the Sooner State for the Golden State, when, it’s hard to tell. RS looks to be about my age and if so his parents like mine spent their young lives in the depression. RS is a tall guy—over six feet—with a football player’s build that is beginning to grow in the middle. He came out of print journalism then did a stint in broadcast before joining the technical trade publications. He was also in the Navy where he learned electronics, like me.

By the time we order, the restaurant has filled up. We’re sitting between a party of four to our left—two elderly couples—and a party of six on our right three Asian couples. About an hour after ordering, the meal arrived along with a bottle of Chardonnay, which OR had requested be served with the main course. Another hour passes before the waiter clears away our dishes and we order coffee and dessert, a piece of that cheesecake that Groucho raves about. By the time we leave the restaurant it’s nearly midnight and I have to drive to Orange County where I have a guaranteed reservations at the Sheraton Hotel in Irvine, near the Orange County Airport, which is small like SJC and hemmed in by suburban development on three sides and the Interstate 405 on the fourth side.

By the time I get back to the agency and claim my car from their garage, I’m anxious about getting to the hotel and getting to sleep. I’ve been running late all day and it has continued into the night. Somewhere just before the 55 Freeway I see the CHP, red lights flashing in my rear view mirror and realize that I’ve been caught speeding. I have not had a speeding ticket in ages and this one shocks me into the realization that I’ve come to expect that I could make up time in transit, something I’ve been doing all day without much success. Bed and sleep would have to wait.