I turn 60 today.

I turn 60 years old today – July 6, 2017. I am the 5^th of the 7 Piette kids. I am almost exactly 2 years younger than my next oldest sister, six years younger than my next oldest sister, 7 ½ years younger than my next oldest brother and 8 ½ years younger than the oldest in the family. I am 4 years older than my younger sister and almost 6 years older than my younger brother.

So this is going to be about me. I am not generally comfortable writing about myself, but what the heck. I made it to 60, and I suppose that is something.

I was born on a Saturday, at 11:30 in the morning. A big boy for the time, seven pounds something. (I need to find the birth certificate or my baby book) They took me home to 714 S Pierce Ave in Appleton – the home where I grew up, and we only sold in 2015, 60 years after my folks bought the house. Roots.

My father worked for Kimberly Clark his whole career, and my mother stayed at home with all the kids. All. Those. Kids. I can’t imagine what it might have been like growing up in a small family. As a matter of fact, one of my earliest memories is when the whole family was driving around town. (that was one of our fun activities. Driving around town and singing. Songs like “There is a tavern in the town”, “Tie a yellow ribbon”, and “Blood upon the Risers”). One of the older kids look at me and said, “Dan, you’re the baby of the family.” I was, understandably upset (I was not yet four!) and replied “I’m only the baby until mom has another one!” Everyone laughed. (A bit of pronunciation here. We all called our mother “Mum”, but I can remember her distinctly telling me that when I write it down, I need to write “Mom”. Her wish…)

Starting School

We were (and are) a very tight family. We never had more than one car (our father car-pooled) and none of the kids has their own car until they left the house. Usually long after that, as well. That meant a lot of riding together. Another early memory for me was going to pick up sister Abbie from Kindergarten. So, she would have been five, and I would have been three. Hard to believe that was 57 years ago. Hard to believe that school is still around (Jefferson) and if still being used.

Jefferson Elementary School

Jefferson

I went to Jefferson for kindergarten as well. Here I am going to school:

I walked to school, as did all my siblings. It was about a half mile walk. But it was a half mile walk alone. Along a busy street. And I was five years old. We were taught responsibility early.

I generally enjoyed school, but kindergarten was tough. I loved being with my mother and never wanted to leave her. Here’s another early memory. I was still sleeping in my folk’s bedroom, in a crib. (How old could I have been? I just don’t know. The memory is clear, the circumstances fuzzy). Every night my mother would say to me, “Good night little horse” and I would reply “Good night sweet horse”. They my father would say “Good night, little horse” and I would reply “Good night, dumb horse.” And he would laugh and laugh. Man! Oedipal, anyone?

Grade School

St Mary’s was the local parish, where I was baptized, my father was baptized, and his father was baptized. They also had a grade school that covered grades 1 -> 8. I went there for three. All my elder sibs went the whole 8 years. I, however, had a speech impediment.

I lisped. And your mind works in funny ways. I never thought I lisped, and was never self-conscious about it at all. I can remember talking once with my buddy Rick Hauch (my best friend) and remarking that there are two kinds of thick. Thick like a tree that is very big around. And thick like when you don’t feel well. It was all very logical to me. He didn’t correct me or seem to think it was odd in any way. Another time, I was watching TV with my two older sisters. An ad came on TV for a new Chevy SS. They asked me what car that was, and I replied “It’s an SS” Which I imagine came out as “Eth eth”. They chuckled, and asked me to say it again. I said, “It’s an SS!” they asked me a third time. And I got annoyed at the repetition, but I still didn’t think I was being mocked. “IT’S AN SS” I shouted. Man, I thought they must be slow.

So I was back to Jefferson, the same school where I went to kindergarten, for the fourth grade. And speech class. There were a couple of us in speech class, and I LOVED my speech teacher. They took us out of regular class for a couple of hours a week. I don’t really remember exactly what I did, but I remember a couple of very specific things.

The first is that I swallowed wrong. Ha! I’ll be you didn’t know there was a right and wrong way to swallow, but evidently there is. Can you swallow with your mouth open? That is the right way to swallow (with your tongue) If you need to close your mouth (press your lips together)  to swallow, you are doing it wrong. So I had to learn how to swallow right.

The second thing I learned was that I have a very long tongue. (maybe from not using it to swallow when I was younger?) I know this because the school system brought me, and my folks over to Morgan, which is where the (what we call now) “special needs” kids when to school. But it was also where anything exceptional (like long tongues) were discussed.

I don’t know everything that was discussed in that meeting – I think I was kicked out for a while, but I have a distinct memory of the administrator telling my folks that my tongue was too long, and they recommended surgery to make it shorter. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, and no tongue cutting happened. At least that I recall.

The speech therapy stopped at the end of fifth grade – not sure if I would have just grown out of it, but there you have it.

Sixth grade was a big transition grade for me. I started the year as a mostly happy-go-lucky kid. My mother died in January of that year, and I ended the year (and Jefferson) rather introverted.

Trains

As a kid, we spent every summer in Louisiana with my maternal grandparent and innumerous aunts, uncles, and cousins. I believe that my mother really enjoyed these trips. I found them less pleasurable. But the trip down and back was always fun. Usually, my mother would travel with whichever of us little kids were alive and take the train down. We got on a Chicago & NorthWesten train from Appleton to Chicago, change stations in Chicago (I even remember sitting on the floor of one of those big old Yellow Cabs because we had so many people to transport) to the Illinois Central Union Station to take the Panama Limited all the way to New Orleans. We would have a sleeper car, and there is nothing better than lying in a bunk in a train and falling asleep to the clacking of the rails.

The Panama Limited

But one year, my sister Abbie attended summer school and threw the schedule off. Mel and Mark went down on their own first, then Chas and I went down together, and finally our mother, Abbie, and the two little kids.

I was 5, Chas was 14. As I said, we were more responsible back then. We didn’t get a roomette, just seats (it was a long trip). I can remember getting mad at Chas during one of the meals (they had Jell-O with peas in it. I didn’t like peas) and I walked all the way back to our seats alone. Chas let me go (not sure how he could have stopped me) and that was that!

We were picked up in New Orleans by Aunt Abbie and Uncle T, who then drove us to Franklin. I was very homesick until our mother came down. 

High School

I’ll skip forward to High School – Jr High was a three year period without much interest or regret. I was in orchestra (I started playing violin in fifth grade), did really well in math, science, and most everything but Spanish (which turned out to be ironic).

High School was in many ways a burden to get through. While I had a handful of great teachers (Thank you Mr Fanning and Mr Scribner!) and a great debate coach (rest in peace Mr XXX) by and large the teachers were just OK. I made National Honor Society as a junior, something that thrilled my father to no end. My debate partner and I took second place in the state tournament (we was robbed!) and I loved writing for the school newspaper. (Barb, if you’re reading this, I am sorry that I didn’t use an editor.)

That is "Tally Tower" in the middle of the image

(That is the Tally Tower in the middle of this image, where we put the paper together. I had a key, and a lot of free time. I spent many hours there)

As a summer job in high school I worked at St Mary’s Cemetery. Some famous residents there included my mother, my namesake, and Joe McCarthy. It was a good job at minimum wage. The next youngest person there was the sexton, who was 68. Needless to say, we didn’t work too hard. I think that is where I got my work ethic.

My official High School Graduation photo.

My unofficial graduation photo. That was in the paper. I don’t think I was paying attention to Kimberly Taylor as she gave her graduation speech. I think it had something to do with this not being an end, but a beginning

UW Madison

Moving on to Madison was one the great liberating events of my life. Being responsible for your own bad self is critical in anyone’s development, and I was ready for this move.

I lived in the Lakeshore Dorm, Tripp Hall – one of the old ones. My good friend Rick Hauch lived in High House, which I suppose it was.

My window was the second floor window

My first year at Madison we had four of the seven Piette kids living there – brother Mark, sisters Mel and Abbie, and me. We had the best time. It is reassuring to have so much family so close. Abbie left the following year, but Mel and Mark overlapped my time in Madison almost exactly. Mark and Mel had both arrived a year earlier thank I had (Mark had taken time out for the army, Mel got an undergrad degree at UW-M, or at least had a couple of years there)

I loved the University of Wisconsin. I loved the city of Madison. It was a great five years (which see). I enjoyed all my classes, I enjoyed the homework, I enjoyed the tests (Well yes. Yes, I did.) I was on the Dean’s List every semester I was a full time student. I graduated with honors (UW doesn’t distinguish which honors) and I was both sorry to go and ready to go.

My father help pay for school, but mostly I “Co-op’ed” which would probably be called “interning” today.

I started my first work in a mine in Marcona, Peru.

A Summer Intern at Hierro Peru

Engineering is really an applied science. So what you learn in school is really the start of what you need to know to do your job.

While I loved school, I knew that I wanted to get some field work under my belt as soon as possible. To that end I applied to many mining companies for summer jobs after my freshman year.

Not too many companies are eager to take on a kid with no real experience, so I did not get any job offers.

One of the other students, however, (Cesar Moreno) had a father who worked at Hierro Peru (formerly Marcona Mining Company, now Shougang Hierro Peru) in Marcona, Peru. He said that he would be able to get me a job as a summer intern working in that iron mine:

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I was just crazy enough to agree to this job.

When I told my father that I wanted to work the summer in Peru, where I would work six days a week and get paid next to nothing, and completely deplete my college fund, he asked me only one question: "Do you think this is a good idea?" I said yes, and then I was off.

I lived in the town of San Juan:


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with the family of my friend, in their house:

From UW Madison Mining Engineer

Though "with" them is sort of debatable. It turned out that his father (Humberto Moreno) had cancer, and had to get treatment in Lima. As Lima was about 500 km away, with no regular air traffic, I spent most of the summer alone - well, alone with a maid and a yard boy. It was a strange thing for a kid from Appleton.

But I did work six days a week, and was paid a dollar a day. Here I am on one of the P&H shovels:

From UW Madison Mining Engineer

You can tell that HS&E weren't really too high on the Hierro Peru priority lists.

I did have a hard hat, though.

The Marcona Iron Mine

I found another photo of the mine in Peru:

I only have black and white photos of that mine. I showed up in Peru with only about $100 in my pocket, and two rolls of B&W film.

I also celebrated the US Bicentennial in Peru. It was quite a trip.

Working in a Coal Mine

Come listen you fellers, so young and and so fine
and seek not your fortune in the dark dreary mine
It will form as a habit, and seep in your soul
'til the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal.

                                                                               -Merle Haggart

From Illinois

Since I spent all my money traveling to Peru, and working for free for six days a week, I had to find another way to pay tuition, room, and board. Luckily for me, mining was still an expanding field at the time. (Remember, oil prices were pretty high back then. And coal was a substitute for oil, and you know from econ 101 what happens next) So I was able to get a "co-op" job at the Consolidation Coal Company's Hillsboro Mine. (Co-op jobs generally lasted a semester. I took a semester and a summer each time.) So in January of 1997, I moved down to Greenville, IL, and started my work in the mine.

This was an underground mine (since closed down) that was mining Illinois Number 7 (Danville) Coal. This was part of a mine-mouth complex that served an Illinois Power plant. It was located just south of Coffeen, IL:


View Hillsboro Mine in a larger map

It was a good sized, and fairly old mine:

From Illinois

That is a map(looking down) at the mine. We did what was called "Room and Pillar" mining, where you took a bite out of the coal in long entries, and then cross-cuts leaving pillars of coal to hold up the roof:

From Illinois

The pillars were about 50' across, the entries about 16' wide. If I recall correctly we recovered only about 40% of the coal. Other techniques (Longwall mining) recovered much more.

The "continuous miners" were huge machines that chewed up the coal with teeth like this:

From Illinois

The miners themselves looked like this:

From Illinois

We would occasionally use a method called "Pillar Robbing" as we were leaving (retreating from) a section:

From Illinois

YOU can see the "robbed" pillars in the lower portion of this map. You can also see that we couldn't mine under cemeteries. Mineral rights issues.

The mine was about 700' underground. We had two "tipples" one for people, one for coal. This is the Man Tipple:

From Illinois

I spent about half my time underground, half surveying land rights, and half in the office:

From Illinois

We had a small staff, and this was a small town in southern Illinois:

From Illinois

Look at those tools on the wall. French curves, protractors, etc. We used those.

I was living there when Elvis died.

That's spelled K-E-Double M-Double ER

I stayed in Illinois for eight months - from January of 1977 to August of 1977. I then went back to Madison (and had a great apartment - I lived above the Chocolate Shoppe on the corner of Gilman and State):


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I stayed in school for two semesters - September 1977 to May of 1978. Then I had to go back to work to pay for more school. I ended up at the Kemmerer Coal Company in Kemmerer (that is pronounced "Kemmer"), Wyoming.

I don't have many photos of Kemmerer, for some reason I was shooting slides at the time.

I got to Kemmerer in June of 1977. There is an interesting story about my ride (I was driving a 1965 Mercedes 220S at the time) that you can see here.

At the Kemmerer Coal Company I was paid well to do real engineering "stuff". Mainly surveying. You were outside all day, wandering around the wilds of southwestern Wyoming, at about 8,000' elevation. IT was, at times invigorating, and sometimes very boring, depending on who the party chief was.


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We had a couple of young engineers there who did not really like to work too hard. So when I was assigned to one of their crews we took maybe three shots a day, and then spent the afternoon in bars. I figured that is how the real world works. Good training for a young engineer!

But when you worked with the Survey Chief you worked pretty hard. Now this guy - I will call him Bob Savage, because that is his name, was the original hard luck story.

Bob grew up in New Mexico, and had a hard luck childhood. (He must have been about 40 in 1978.) So to get out of the state, he joined the Navy. He wanted to see the world. The Navy made him a dental technician and sent him to the Mojave Desert, where he spent his pull cleaning teeth.

He ended up in Kemmerer after he flew up for an interview with the Mine Engineer. They got along fine, he was offered the job, and told to show up three weeks later. He returned to NM to get his family and things, drove back to Kemmerer and showed up at the appointed time.

When he got to the mine, there was nobody in the office. He waited, and finally some people started trickling in. He asked to see the Mine Engineer, and was met with a shocked silence. The Engineer had passed away in the intervening three weeks. Of course, there was no record of him being offered a job.

But they did need a job, and hired him, to his relief.

This bad luck extended to his whole life. Once, I was in the office with my crew (I was on e drilling crew at the time) and one of my guys kicked my truck out of gear leaving the vehicle. The truck rolled down, and guess whose car it ran into? You're right, Bob Savage's car.

Another time he was giving a fellow worker a ride home (the other fellow's car was in the shop) and had to stop and make a left turn he ordinarily would not make. The car behind him did not stop, and slammed into his car. The fellow he was giving a ride to was a big guy, and the car hit with such force the he broke the passenger side seat. No ticket was issued, and Bob had to pay for the entire repair.

Often times while surveying, we had downtime. We used that time to either play hearts (for money) or backgammon (also for money). Bob always lost. SO to make up his losses (which he didn't tell his wife about) he would throw the doubling cube on his FIRST ROLL!!! Now, if you ever play backgammon, you know that puts you in a sever disadvantage. I asked if he just wanted to raise the stakes, but that would not do.

Finally, while I was still living in Wyoming, Bob's wife joined some sort of a religious cult that did not believe in sex.

Poor bob.

I may have to make this post two posts.

This is the mine:


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That is the pit we called 1-U-d.

More in my next post. Where I will talk about this, too:

From Wyoming, Wind River Range, 1979

Kemmerer, Continued

Here I am in 1978, somewhere near the Grand Tetons:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

The apartment I rented in Kemmerer looked like this is 1978:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

and last week from Google Street View:


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I guess you could say that not too much has changed in Kemmerer in the past 33 years.

The Kemmerer Coal mine was unusual in a couple of aspects. First, it was still an independent mine. (It was later purchased by Pittsburgh and Midway)Second, and more interestingly, the coal was dipping to the west at about 17 degrees:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

and:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

That meant that we ran the mine closer to a classic "Open Pit" mine - with a high wall and a foot wall than a "Strip Mine" which moved "strips" of overburden to the side to get at the coal underneath.

Here is a good view of the "Big Pit" that you can still see in the satellite images from the previous post:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

Our main coal seam was 100' thick, high BTU and low sulfur. Good coal, in other words. Because it was good coal, it had been mined for years. Mostly, it was mined underground.

Because old maps were not reliable, we had to try and find these old mines with a drilling rig. One of my jobs in Kemmerer was to be the engineer on the void detection rig. It was a reverse circulation rig, which meant that the drilling fluid (mostly water, in our case) when down the annulus, and the cuttings came up the center of the drill pipe:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

It was an interesting job - my crew was two guys, Manny and Leonard. They knew much more about it than I did, and they certainly made me know it. It was fun, to tell you the truth.

The terrain around Kemmerer was not the most exciting in Wyoming. Here is a typical Lincoln County Vista:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

But you get a little farther away, say to Pinedale, and you see things like this:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

We were also near a ghost town named Sublette. It had been a trona mining town, but the trona played out:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

get a little father away, and you see some really spectacular things:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

The Grand Tetons, my favorite National Park.

also, Yellowstone:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

and some other relief nearby:

From Wyoming Images from Slides

Finally, here is a photo of my car at the time. One would imagine that a 1965 Mercedes 220S purchased for $450 would not be the best ride for someone working in a coal mine in Kemmerer, WY - a town of no more than 3,000 souls. In that, one would be correct. But the car made it there, and back to Madison with limited downtime.

From Wyoming Images from Slides

Exxon Minerals, My First Real Job.

1980 was a challenging year to be graduating from college for most people:

From Houston 1980

Unemployment was high, inflation was high:

From Houston 1980

and oil prices were the reason:

From Houston 1980

Oil prices and all natural resources were expensive. That made Mining Engineers one of the most highly paid BS degrees that year.

I was an odd sort of Mining Engineer, however. I loved cities, and disliked small towns. I liked the math and physics, and didn't really revel in the field work. I wanted to find a job that would let me have it all

I had four "site visits" and five job offers. Lafayette with ARCO. San Francisco with Bechtel. Houston with Shell. Gillette, WY with Exxon Coal. Last, late, and my first choice was Houston with Exxon Minerals. (Hard rock mining is the prize for most mining engineers. Most coal mines (unlike Kemmerer, below) are strip mines - little more than glorified earth moving assignments)

It was a hard decision at the time. The Minerals job was very late in coming, and I had already accepted the job in Gillette (yes, it is called "razor city"). Luckily, I could tell them with a straight face that another Exxon company wanted me. The Coal folks were not happy.

It was a great thing for me, though. When I showed up at the office, (Dresser Tower, Downtown Houston) I was in heaven:

From Houston 1980

My boss, Jim Grenias (God bless you Jim, wherever you are!) greeted me with a huge handshake and shouting "Christmas came early this year!" (I started 14 July, 1980) There are few memories I have that are better than that moment.

The reality was slightly less rosy. I was in new job in a brand new company that Exxon started to get into the mining business. Exxon had decided that they were not going to buy an existing mining company (like ARCO or Amoco did) but build a "world class"minerals mining company from scratch. That was us. (and Esso Eastern)

The mine I was assigned to was called Pinos Altos near Silver City, NM.


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It was a sweet little copper/zinc mine. How sweet? Well, the geologists did such a good job that they hit mineralization on the first diamond drill. And you could see it in the cores:

From Houston 1980

From Houston 1980

From Houston 1980

I cannot say where I got those photos, but they are photos of the core samples from Pinos Altos. Nice, eh?

I did engineering things like economic analysis of the mine, and then studies trying to figure out what kind of haul trucks to buy:



Now, is that engineering, or what? I even used calculus! When was the last time you used calculus in your job? (Note the date on that report. 5 Feb, 1981. 30 years almost to the day of this post)

The problem was that the mineralization was not nearly as extensive as we had hoped. And copper prices were dropping like a rock. ( $2,233/t in 1980 to $1,856/t in 1981.)

So shortly after I was told that I was to move to the mine and act as the Mine Engineer, the project was canceled.

Exxon was good, though. They told me that they knew what was best for me. Then, as now, those sorts of comments did not sit well with me. But in retrospect, they were probably right. They told me they wanted to get me into their computer group. In particular their data management function (A DB administrator, actually).

I told them they were crazy, that went to school to be a mining engineer, and a mining engineer is what I was going to be.

The story continues, and the irony becomes apparent in only a year or so down the road.

Moving To Colorado to mine Oil Shale

Pinos Altos was shut down because of low commodity prices. It was a small mine that would have yielded a small return. About a month after I agreed to move to New Mexico, the big dog from Exxon Minerals told us we would not be starting that project.

So now I needed to find another job.

Exxon Minerals wanted to make me a DataBase administrator, as I intimated in my last post. But I knew better - I wanted to be an Engineer.

So I called up the head of HR for the Colony Project. Colony was one of the big oil shale projects going on at the time:



Oil Shale (a misnomer. It has kerogen, not oil, and it was a marlstone, not shale) was a messy expensive way to get a liquid hydrocarbon. The highest grade shale we had was about 1 bbl/ton. That is right, about one barrel of oil per ton of rock. That meant that in order to produce the 50,000 bbl per day we were planning on we would have to process almost 70,000 tons of shale.

The capital cost for that project was going to be about $5 billion. Even a cursory glance at the economics shows that is not a good deal. So I should not have been (and indeed, wasn't) surprised about a year later when the inevitable happened.

In the meantime, however, I had a great time.

I was responsible for a couple of things - one was the selection of roof bolters:

From Some Old Photos scanned 10.29.05

From Some Old Photos scanned 10.29.05

These machines place "resin" bolts into the roof to help maintain its integrity. (ie, so it won't fall down). You would drill a hole,. stick a tube with an epoxy like paste inside (a plastic tube with two components that would remain soft when separate, but would harden when mixed together), then stick a pieces of rebar into the hole and spin it. You then press it against the roof with a header board (a 2x4) and let it set for about 30 seconds.

I was also responsible for getting the mine layout into the computer. This was 1981 remember, so it was a mainframe computer located in Houston - and we were in Denver. It was a painstaking exercise that never really worked out that well.

In the end, the mine was canceled. Probably a good thing, too. There would have been all sorts of deleterious environmental consequences to that mine. Water, dust, people.

I enjoyed living in Denver for that year, but fate would bring me back to Houston next.

Leaving Mining Behind

When the Colony Oil Shale project was shut down, on May 2, 1982 I knew my days at Exxon were numbered. I had had several run-ins with my boss (he had rules. I didn't like them. Plus, he was Canadian. And we all know what that means) and it was obvious that Exxon was getting out of the mining business. So I started looking for work.

I was lucky. Even in 1982, I was able to find good work. I was offered a job as an engineer with Goldfield Exploration to act as the mine engineer in their heap leach mine in either Lovelock, NV:


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or in Goldfield, NV:


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I have to say that I was not too excited about either prospect.

SO I took a job back in Houston (this is the second time I have moved to Houston) with a small software company called David P. Cook and Associates.

The Company delivered "time shared" software that calculated the economics of oil and gas wells. You told it how much oil or gas you would produce, how long it would be producing, how much it cost to drill, and the software would tell you how much money you would make.

We had a DEC 2060 main frame computer, into which the clients would connect using a dial up modem (originally an "acoustically coupled" modem that would deliver 300 baud, or 300 characters per second data transfer rate).

From Houston 1980

From Houston 1980

I was hired as a Customer Support representative. When clients would call to find out how to address a specific problem, then would talk to me. It gave me great insight to the oil and gas world. And the world of economics. And the world of software.

We mostly used a hardcopy terminal to run these evaluations - usually a TI 820:

From Houston 1980

I was convinced that David could tell the future. He was only 30 years old, but had taken the company public the year I joined. He also refused to use the money he raised to grow the company. He told me that he was sure that oil prices would crash, and the company would fail.

As you can imagine the stock price dropped from $16.00 to about $2.00 but he stuck to his guns. He was sued, and he had to issue additional shares to the original shareholders.

We were talking one day and he said that what the US needed at that moment was a video rental store that always had the video you wanted, didn't have pro, and could remember what you liked. We all laughed - it was obvious that Kroger's, or Walgreen's, or some other retail store would soon own the video rental business. But he went ahead and started Blockbuster Video anyway. Needless to say it was a great success.

In the mean time he spun off the software side the business. We got hit hard by two trends - much lower oil prices and personal computers.

This is a good example of a company not being able to adjust to externalities. The price of our products and services was dropping to almost nothing, and the demand was falling through the floor.

We adjusted a bit, but it was not really enough. I was let go in July of 1986, (into the teeth of the Great Oil Depression) and was looking for work again.