During the '70's, everybody and their brother had a garage band imitating the Eagles, or Led Zeppelin, or one of the other big name bands of the era. We were inundated with 'Play that Funky Music, White Boy', 'Hotel California' and 'Stairway to Heaven'. And since I was, in fact, a white boy, I had absolutely no rhythm. In fact to this day I have very little, but I try. I'm best at slow dances. Of course, slow dances when you're 13 will ususally make you a bit flustered, with all those hormones raging. I went to few dances. My significant accomplishment was not getting expelled. On a more positive note, however, my fifth year in the West Garden Grove Little League I was a member of the 1979 Senior League champs, the Red Sox. I played mostly right and center fields, with stints at first base and catcher. In the Fall of '79, I moved to the big leagues - high school, that is. Pacifica High, home of the Mariners. It was pretty much a continuation of junior high, with pretty much the same people. My two best friends, Andrew Bose and Paul McGeorge, were in the marching band of all things, so I hung around the band room a lot. (And one time, at the band room...but that's a story for a different venue). I did meet some intriguiging people, and I think my true love for music really began to blossom here. Andy, Paul and I started banging around on the piano a bit. we wrote some stuff. Horrible, most of it, but some of it had potential.
I also had my first couple of real jobs during this last year in California; I was throwing the Orange County Register on not one, but two routes. Over 300 papers on Sundays. All of us paperboys met at one of the guys' house where we received the bundles of paper sections, put them together, and folded them up for a more efficient trajectory. And we also tended to get into a little trouble while we were waiting for the vans with the papers. My dad was only called by the police once to pick me up, though, I swear. The other job I had, and the one that probably is to blame for the last 25 years, is when I worked for the Summer at Spare Parts, Inc., where my father took a job as the Controller. They were in the garment industry. My dad had just bought a new Honeywell System 1 mainframe to do all the order tracking, and I got to do a whole lot of data entry work (and a few hours of Hunt the Wumpus) on the terminals, and a bit of the bootstrap and daily backups on the mainframe itself. Man, that thing was loud when it sucked in the tape reels.