Going Back in Time

I got a call yesterday from someone I hadn’t heard from in some time.  But she then sent me a photo that went back over 4 decades.

From the time I started college in the summer of 1967, I worked in the FSU Computing Center.  It was an odd mix of people, the majority of whom were serious computer geeks.  Most everyone learned how to juggle because FSU had a circus and one of them was in it.  It was a great job and I missed many of the people who were graduating soon after I started.

Quite a few of them went to Mountain View, CA, to work for Control Data Corporation, since that was the mainframe computer we had at the time.  (It took up a large room and had a raised floor for cooling.  It was less powerful than most of the laptops we use today.)

My friend Marilyn, also in the above photo, and I have an interesting history.  She was in graduate school in math when I entered college as a freshman.  We at one point were dating the same guy, who also worked there.  We shared clothes, lived together one summer, and always got along well.  I took a computer class from her and discovered she was learning the material just days before teaching it.  (Neither of us ended up with the guy.)

She taught me how to cook.  More importantly, she taught me how to drink, making just about the best 7&7 I have ever had.  I taught her how to make men’s shirts and altered her wedding dress for her.  

We’ve stayed in touch all these years, even though she lives on the West Coast and I live on the East Coast.

So I wasn’t totally surprised when she contacted me.  But the photo sent me down memory lane.  It seems the old Computer Center crew is having a reunion in San Francisco in August and people are digging through memorabilia.  The funny thing is I don’t even remember being at FSU for a Computer Center tour in April of my senior year in high school.  

Of course I will go.  I was already looking for an excuse to visit my son and to see the collection of Impressionist paintings of the (Gertrude) Stein family at the SF MOMA.  So now I have yet another reason to go west in August.  It will be so interesting to find out what these people have done with their lives!