A Summer in Iowa

Part 11 — Punching My Way to Success

Friday, June 23, 1972

As the Friday research forum let out, I joined the stream of boys heading back across the river to grab some dinner. Kyle walked right with me, but we were soon joined by a group of SSTPers who were in the Physics track and who’d just finished their last session of the week. Paul and Gary were soon at our sides. There was still a symposium scheduled for tomorrow morning, but then the rest of the weekend would be ours to do with as we pleased.

Work on my project was coming along about as well as could be expected after just one week. Glen had been helpful in getting me going with my research. I now knew where the computer teletypes and terminals were located in Engineering, how to log onto them, how to create and edit computer files using LineEd, a line-oriented text editor.

I was just getting started with learning how to use punched cards. The card punching room and the IBM 360 computer itself were in the East Hall, which was a separate building four blocks north and west of the engineering building. I was not looking forward to trudging back and forth between the two buildings, carrying a box of punched cards in the rain.

Although the process of punching a line of code onto a punched card was not unlike using a typewriter. It was way too easy to make mistakes. There was no backup key or erase button. If you made a mistake, you had to remove the card from the card punch, throw it away, insert a new card and start over. The worst thing was if you didn’t realize you’d made a mistake. You wouldn’t find out about it until the compiler found the error and rejected the entire stack of cards.

My first attempt at writing a program had just one line of actual code: PRINT (‘HELLO WORLD’). It was a classic first programming exercise, except that it didn’t work. The compiler reported the error, ‘Illegal character in line 5: variable expected.’ Okay, what was the illegal character, and why did it expect a variable when none was defined?

I tracked Glen down and asked him what the cryptic error message meant. He said, “You can’t use a character string as an argument in the print command. Some compilers will let you get away with it. Some books even show examples of it, but it isn’t part of the Fortran IV standard. You need to declare a variable as a character string, set the value to ‘HELLO WORLD’ and then print the value of that variable.”

Well that sucked. I needed to add two extra lines of code, just so our compiler could understand the obvious. So I resubmitted the program with the extra instructions on extra cards, then came back an hour later to find that the compiler still reported an error, ‘No printer specified in line 7.’ Why did I need to specify the printer? The compiler sure had no problem finding the printer when it came to printing the error message.

To make a long story short, I had to submit my tiny program seven times before I finally got a printout with a single line of print at the top of the page, saying, ‘HELLO WORLD’. Each submission had to be placed in a queue with many other submissions, so I had to wait an hour or more each time to see if it worked. That alone took the better part of a day. The one consolation of having so much downtime was that it afforded time I could put to good use in writing my research proposal, which was due next Friday.

When we met for lunch on Tuesday, Professor Ellis gave me a list of ten problems to solve by computer. He said I was free to add to the list if there was time, but he doubted there’d be enough time. We discussed some of the concepts of computer algorithms and the differences between a fixed allocation programming language like Fortran and a dynamic one like Algol. He ordered taco salads from a Mexican restaurant. It was the first time I’d ever had a taco salad, and I really liked it.

When we met for lunch on Thursday, we discussed metrics for success as we enjoyed Reubens from a nearby deli. I’d never heard of a Reuben before and would’ve thought sauerkraut in a sandwich would be disgusting, but it was delicious. The Reubens were greasy though. We settled on using the number of times I needed to submit each program to obtain a valid result. It was the only practical metric that could be applied.

The course Dr. Ellis had me taking was fascinating. I was learning about AND gates, OR gates, NAND gates and NOR gates, and how combinations of them could be used to manipulate binary numbers. Just the task of multiplying two binary numbers could take several clock cycles. I was learning a lot, but I quickly realized that computer hardware design wasn’t my thing.

Finally, the week was over — except for tomorrow morning’s symposium. As the four of us walked along the upper deck that took us around the perimeter of the main library and onto the bridge over the river, we talked about our plans for the weekend. There were no formal events or social activities planned for the SSTP over the weekend, so we’d be on our own.

Other than breakfasts, we’d hafta forage for food from somewhere other than the student cafeterias. There were still options on campus, including the hospital cafeterias and the Student Union. However, we all agreed we should take advantage of the opportunity to explore the many restaurants in Iowa City. Perhaps we could go bowling or see a movie or two. The one thing that appealed to none of us was to pick up food at a grocery and prepare it ourselves.

When we got to Rienow II and our dorm rooms, Paul and I wasted little time dumping our stuff off in our room. We were about to head up to Greg and Garry’s room when there was a commotion in the hallway outside our door. One of the kids in the room next to ours had set a glass ashtray on the floor in the hall, and he was scraping the grey stuff off from several sparklers into the ashtray. Other kids were just standing around, watching him.

I guessed he’d bought the sparklers at one of the many roadside stands selling illegal fireworks for the upcoming Fourth of July holiday. I didn’t see the point in what he was doing until he pulled out a book of matches from his pocket and lit a match. Did the idiot think he was gonna set off some fireworks in a dorm hallway? I thought kids in the SSTP were smarter than that.

When the powder ignited, the intense white flame that resulted told me it was way too hot for the ashtray. That was confirmed a moment later, when the ashtray broke in two and the carpeting ignited. Like idiots, Paul and I just stood there and watched as the sparkler powder showered sparks into the air, burning a hole in the hallway carpet, down to the concrete underneath.

At least the kid who lit the fire had the good sense to grab a glass of water from his sink and pour it on the flames. He did it repeatedly until the fire was out. In retrospect, throwing water on a pyrotechnic fire was dangerous. The right thing would’ve been to smother the fire with something like a wet towel. In any case, the commotion brought the floor supervisor, followed a bit later by some firefighters who verified that the fire was out. They removed what was left of the incendiary material.

The next morning at the symposium, we learned that the kid who pulled the stunt had been expelled from the university and was being sent home with a substantial bill for replacing the damaged carpeting. Those of us who watched, however, were given a stern warning that we were partially to blame. The incident might not have happened but for there being a ready audience. It was a sobering thought.

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Saturday, June 24, 1972

“Well, that was different,” Larry exclaimed as we rose to exit the lecture hall after the Saturday morning symposium had taken place. “Who would’ve ever thought that Star Trek could be controversial?”

“Universal translator aside, I always did think it strange that everyone spoke English perfectly enough for it to be lip-read,” I related. “I never gave much thought to the way Klingons, Romulans and every other intelligent life form the Enterprise encountered had technology similar to ours. It took billions of years for humans to evolve on earth from the slime, yet somehow all the different species in the galaxy had developed warp drive and transporters at about the same time? I don’t think so.”

“If there’s intelligent life elsewhere, it’s separated by so much space and time that we may never encounter it,” Paul chimed in, paraphrasing what one of the university professors had said. The panel discussion that had just wrapped up was certainly lively, and we all had lots of ideas of our own.

“So we know that the egg came first, before the chicken,” Larry chimed in, “but we don’t know where ribosomal enzymes came from, ’cause there were no ribosomal enzymes to transcribe them from DNA in the first place.”

“That’s why people have religion,” Gary opined. “If people can’t explain how life began, then there must have been a god to create it.”

“So how did God manage to compress billions of years of evolution into just six days,” Paul countered, “and how come there’s no mention of the dinosaurs in the Bible?”

“Some of us do believe in God,” I noted.

“I’m not saying there is no god,” Paul went on, but the religious nutcases either try to reconcile science with the Bible, or they claim that science is a lie. Science doesn’t lie. It’s the only way to get to the truth. It’s the Bible that has to be reconciled with science and not the other way around.”

“That’s an excellent point,” I agreed. “I think the fundamental flaw in Christianity is the assumption that the Bible is the literal word of God. Almost certainly, it was written by man based on centuries of mythology that was handed down by word of mouth. It wasn’t until Gutenberg invented the printing press that there was a way to mass-produce perfect copies of the Bible.

“But even if the Bible was the absolute word of God, it was still copied and recopied for centuries by hand. Let’s say you’re Joe Biblewriter, living in the Holy Land in ancient times. You’re painstakingly copying the Bible from one scroll to the next, when you come to the phrase, ‘And the seasons changed as the earth made its way around the sun.’ You’d have probably thought, ‘That meshuggeneh Moses. He screwed up when he transcribed God’s word.’ So you’d fix it. A copy’s only as good as the copier.”

“Which is why Xerox copies look so crappy,” Kyle interjected and we all laughed.

Three guys I didn’t know came up to us and Larry greeted one of them, who had straight shoulder-length hair and a somewhat dark complexion, “Hey Raj. How’s things?” Then turning to the rest of us, he said, “Guys, these are Raj, Frank and Steve. They’re in the Bio-Med track.”

“Hey,” Greg responded as we all nodded our heads.

“And these bozos are Greg, Gary, Kyle, Jeff and Paul,” Larry continued as he pointed to each of us.

“Nice to meet you guys,” Raj responded and the others nodded their heads. “You guys got any plans for the afternoon?”

“Not yet,” Greg replied. “We were just getting to that.”

“There’s supposed to be a really great pizza parlor on Bloomington Street,” Raj suggested. Then lowering his voice, he added, “Rumor has it they don’t check for IDs. What say we head there and see if we can get a large table. As early as it is, we can probably get one, maybe after the lunch crowd thins out. We can order a few large pizzas and several pints of whatever’s on tap. They’re supposed to have a great arcade too.” Was he really suggesting we drink beer? Not that I was interested in drinking alcohol, especially after what happened with my cousin, but I was as curious as any teenager.

“You guys okay with that?” Greg asked.

We all nodded that we were, but then I realized there could be a problem and I asked, “You think they’d stop us because of Paul? He’s only thirteen and I’m not going anywhere without him.”

“I hear ya,” Raj replied. “If they stop us because of Paul, then we’ll go someplace else, but there’s strength in numbers. They’re not likely to look at any one of us individually if we’re part of a large group…”

“Which is why you approached us,” Greg interjected.

“Exactly,” Raj replied. “We won’t find out unless we try.”

“Then let’s do it,” Paul exclaimed. “Lead the way…”

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“So what can I bring you boys, a young woman who didn’t look much older than we were asked us once we were seated.”

“What’s on tap?” Raj asked with a smile.

“As close as we are to Milwaukee, do you need to ask?”

“Aren’t we just as close to St. Louis?” I asked.

“We only serve real beer in this establishment,” she replied. “We don’t serve swill.” Not that I knew my beers, but I didn’t think Budweiser and Michelob would be considered swill by most folks.

“In that case, we’ll take three pitchers of Miller High Life to start,” Greg told her with a laugh, then asked, “Do you have any specials or combos for pizza?”

“Our meat lover’s pizza is epic. It has ground beef, sausage, pepperoni, Canadian bacon and a hot barbecue sauce. Our Hawaiian pizza is particularly good. It’s loaded with ham, Canadian bacon, pineapple, green peppers, extra mozzarella and a sweet honey barbecue sauce. If there are any vegetarians in the group, we have a veggie pizza with mushrooms, eggplant, artichokes, broccoli, zucchini, peppers and onion. It’s amazing. Of course Iowa is known for its taco pizza.”

“Taco pizza?” Kyle asked.

“I know, tacos are Mexican and pizza’s Italian,” our server explained, “but a local pizzeria had the idea of slapping taco fillings on a pizza crust and well, it’s traditional now.”

“Would three large pizzas be enough for the nine of us?” Raj asked.

“Probably, but you can never have too much pizza.” She sure knew how to sell pizza!

“You guys wanna order a meat lovers, a Hawaiian, a veggie and a taco pizza?”

“All I know is I’m starved,” Kyle exclaimed, “but yeah, that sounds great.” We all agreed and our server left to place the order. Moments later, she returned and placed a frosty mug in front of each of us. They looked big enough for the Jolly Green Giant. I wasn’t sure how I was gonna drink that much, but then nobody was saying I had to. She set three pitchers down on the table. By the time we’d passed them around, they were all empty and she took them away.

“So, where are you from, Raj,” Greg asked.

“I’m from Omaha,” he answered.

“Really!” Paul exclaimed. “I’m from Council Bluffs.”

“Small world,” Raj acknowledged. “As you can probably guess, my parents came here from India to study in the states. Dad got his Ph.D. at Purdue and Mom got hers at the University of Colorado. They both got post-docs at the University of Utah, where they met, but Salt Lake City wasn’t exactly the best place for a couple of Hindus. Not that Omaha’s great, but it’s a whole lot better than dealing with the Mormons. So now they both teach at Creighton University and we live in Carter Lake.”

“That’s in Iowa,” Paul pointed out.

“Technically, yeah, but most people have never heard of Carter Lake,” Raj responded. Then he turned away from Paul to explain to the rest of us, “Carter Lake used to be on a peninsula, east of the Missouri River; hence it was part of Iowa. Then in 1877, a flood cut through the narrow isthmus, changing the course of the Missouri, but the state boundaries were already set. A crescent-shaped lake formed in what had been the river bed, and the town took its name from the new lake, Carter Lake.

“It’s a nice, suburban town, where you can have a house on a lake and go boating, practically from your back yard, yet it’s near downtown Omaha and an easy commute to the university. The only problem is…”

“The airport,” Paul chimed in.

“Yeah, the whole house can vibrate when a large jet passes nearby. At least the flight paths for takeoffs and landings don’t pass directly over us. It’s actually pretty cool to watch all of the activity from our boat. How many people can do that?”

As everyone else had already started drinking their beers, I took a sip of mine and, God, it was vile. I thought it looked like and tasted like piss. I didn’t want to look like a dork, though, so I took another sip. By the third sip, I could tolerate it and almost found it to be refreshing.

“How about you, Frank?” Greg asked.

“I’m from La Crosse,” he answered. “It’s a small city on the Mississippi and the home of the main undergraduate campus of the University of Wisconsin. The Madison campus gets all the attention, but La Crosse is where the university was founded — and it’s not where my parents teach,” he added with a laugh. “My father’s a professor in the Ethics department at Viterbo University. It’s a Catholic university run by the Franciscans.

“I’m from a large family. I have four brothers and three sisters, and I’m roughly in the middle of the pack. My mom’s a good Catholic stay-at-home mom, although she subs for English classes on occasion. Me, I’m the black sheep of the family — a fallen Catholic who wants to study psychology.”

“Steve?” Greg asked.

“You can probably tell from my accent that I was born on the other side of the pond, as Brits call the Atlantic. My mum was a Rhodes scholar — that’s a one-year fellowship program at Oxford for Americans. She met my dad through a mutual friend, but Mum was supposed to go back to the States and Dad was an engineer at Rover. Rover’s a huge car company in the U.K. They export Land Rovers and Range Rovers to the U.S., but they make all kinds of cars and trucks for sale in Europe.

So they got married and settled down in the City of Oxford, where I was born and spent the first eight years of my life. Mum always wanted to return to America, so Dad got himself hired by Ford in Cologne and transferred to Detroit, where we’ve lived for the past six years. Talk about culture shock! Anyway, I’m a junior in Grosse Point North High School and hope to finish early and go to the University of Michigan in the fall of ’73.

The pizzas arrived as Steve was finishing up, so I was saved from having to talk about myself for the time being. The pizzas were more of an extra-large size than large and were cut into twelve slices each. There was enough for each of us to have a slice from each of the four pizzas, with an extra slice or two for anyone who wanted it. I started with a slice of the meat lover’s and a slice of the veggie, both of which were among the best pizza I’d ever had.

I was surprised at how well the beer complemented the pizza and found it a refreshing way to wash the pizza down. My beer consumption increased dramatically as we ate. Eventually, we did get back to introducing ourselves for the sake of the new folks. Steve asked me if I’d been to the Indy 500 and sheepishly, I had to admit that even though I grew up there, I’d never gone to the race.

As we continued to enjoy our afternoon, we bantered back and forth and trash talked as we slowly made the pizza disappear. Eventually, the pizza got cold, but we didn’t care. We ordered another round of beer and damned if I didn’t drink my share. If it affected me, I wasn’t aware of it, but the absorption of the alcohol was slowed by the food, and I had the whole afternoon to metabolize it.

I was surprised that the restaurant allowed us to tie up a large table for hours, but then we kept ordering beer, ate a lot of pizza and spent time at the pool tables and in the arcade. I totally sucked at pool and at pinball, but had a lot of fun trying, nevertheless. We talked about anything and everything, from the war in Vietnam to the upcoming presidential election. We discussed space exploration, the possibility of faster-than-light travel, and we debated whether or not it would ever be possible to build a sentient thinking machine like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Later on, we ordered an assortment of cannoli for the table as a dessert along with coffee or in my case and Paul’s, Earl Grey tea. Finally, we settled up the bill, which came to an astonishing thirty dollars each, tip included. Still, I couldn’t think of having ever had a more enjoyable afternoon.

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Back in our room, I was surprised how my clothes smelled of cigarette smoke. None of us had smoked and we were in a non-smoking section, but the smell on our clothes was pervasive. We’d worn school clothes too — button-up shirts, bell bottoms and sneakers. Doin’ the wash tomorrow was definitely going to be a priority.

“Even my skin smells of cigarette smoke,” I said as I finished getting undressed.

Approaching me, Paul sniffed my head and said, “Your hair does too, very strongly.”

Sniffing his, I said, “You’re right. You know, I usually can’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke and even consider myself allergic, but it didn’t bother me at all when we were in the pizza place.”

“That’s because you were having fun. You weren’t even thinking about it.”

“I almost hate to wear my robe with my skin smelling the way it does,” I related. “The robe is dry-clean only and I don’t want to have to have it cleaned.”

“So just wrap a towel around your waist,” Paul suggested. “That’s what I’m gonna do. It’s nearly midnight and if there are any girls visiting this floor, they’re not gonna be wandering the hallway.”

“I guess you’re right,” I agreed as I wrapped my bath towel around my waist and grabbed my soap, shampoo, conditioner and deodorant. We both headed out into the hall and although there were a few guys wandering the hall, including one who was noticeably drunk, no one gave us any trouble.

I was tempted to suggest taking our showers together in the same stall but thought better of it. Although nothing would’ve happened between us, if someone happened upon us, our lives would have been destroyed.

Once back in our room, we hung up our towels and put our stuff away. We were both naked and had we followed our usual routine, we would’ve jacked off on our own beds as we watched each other and then gone to sleep. However, for some reason I felt restless. I was sure Paul felt it too. We both had raging boners, but then that wasn’t usual when we were about to jerk off. My heart was racing and I was flushed. There was no doubt that I felt excited, but it was more than that.

For not even a week, I’d spent every waking moment that wasn’t involved with my research project, with Paul. We ate together, dressed and undressed together, told each other our deepest thoughts, jerked off together and spent all our time with our friends together. In that moment I realized that every thought I had when we were apart was one of wondering how Paul would react to whatever I was doing. He’d become like a brother to me, but it was even more than that.

It was Paul, however, who came up to me and pulled me into a tight hug. I hugged him back. I couldn’t help it. I could feel his heart racing too. Looking down into his emerald green eyes, I asked, “Paul, do you feel what I’m feeling?”

“If you mean do I feel frightened, excited, hot, chilled and strangely calm, all at the same time, then yeah, I feel all of those things.”

I continued to look down into his eyes and he looked up into mine. His lips were right there but I was terrified of the thoughts that screamed in my head. I knew I wanted to kiss him, but kissing Paul would undeniably be queer, and I didn’t want to be queer. I couldn’t be queer, but there was no denying what I was thinking. What I was feeling was something else. If I were queer, I should’ve been feeling wanton lust, but that wasn’t what I felt at all. Oh, I felt horny alright. The boners pulsating between us confirmed that we both felt horny.

I’d never experienced love before — certainly not for someone outside my immediate family — but I had no doubt that what I was feeling was love, and that thought terrified me. In that instant I knew that I’d fallen head over heels in love with Paul. It was a forbidden love, but that didn’t make me feel it any less. I worried that Paul didn’t feel the same way. I sort of wished he didn’t, ’cause then I could have walked away. But looking into those beautiful green eyes of his, I knew he was feeling exactly what I felt.

Tentatively at first, I moved my head ever so slowly down toward his. I gave him every opportunity to back off or push me away, but he didn’t. Instead, he leapt up to meet me and our lips made contact. His tongue pushed against my lips and finally getting the hint, I let him in. I pushed my tongue into his mouth and our tongues gyrated, side by side.

Maybe it was the alcohol that lowered my inhibitions enough for us to express what we were feeling. Perhaps tomorrow I’d have my regrets but now, in this moment, I had none. I was in love with a boy and he was in love with me. We were in love and all was right with the world.

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Sunday, June 25, 1972

I felt like I was about to fall off a tower. There was something squirming right in front of me, but it was pushing against me and there was nothing behind me but a vast void. Suddenly, I was falling and then I awoke just as I reached the bottom of the tower and was about to crash into… a cold linoleum floor.

As consciousness returned, Paul asked, “Jeff, are you okay?”

As the fog slowly cleared from my brain, I saw Paul’s glorious green eyes peering down at me, and I remembered snuggling up with him in my bed. Finally, I responded, “If we keep this up, our friends are gonna wonder why I’m black and blue all over.”

“I’m sorry babe, but I‘ve never slept with anyone before,” Paul replied. “These beds aren’t big enough for the both of us.”

“No, they’re not,” I agreed. “I wish we could buy a bigger bed, or maybe push the two beds together, but then everyone would know. We just can’t chance it.”

Getting up off the floor, I continued, “Much as I enjoyed what we did in bed together all night…”

“You mean all morning,” Paul interrupted.

“Smart ass,” I responded. “You know what I meant. Speaking of which, it’s getting late and we need to get going.”

“Why? What time is it?” Paul asked.

Looking at my alarm clock, I answered, “11:36.”

“Shit, we missed breakfast,” Paul exclaimed as he sat up in bed and stretched, with his arms over his head. The pose was extremely erotic, but I was still coming to terms with thinking a boy was sexy. My dick seemed less uncertain as it started to respond.

Before I let my horniness get the better of me, I said, “It’s Sunday, babe. They serve breakfast until 2:00. Obviously the university knows the excesses students go to on Saturday nights. Of course they probably don’t have in mind what we did last night.”

“Don’t be so sure, Jeff,” Paul responded. “Of course it’s more common that boys and girls get together, but what we did is more common than you think. There’s a report that was done by Alfred Kinsey…”

“I’ve heard of it,” I interrupted. “The Kinsey Report. He was a professor at Indiana University, but I could never figure out what the report’s about or why it’s such a big deal.”

“I’m not about to ask for it at the public library or worse, at school,” Paul explained, “but it’s a study of male sexual behavior. There’s also the work of Masters and Johnson at the Washington University in St. Louis. They interviewed thousands of people confidentially. From what I’ve heard, nearly half of men have had at least one homosexual experience. I guess that includes having fooled around as kids, but something like ten percent still do as adults.”

“That’s good and well,” I countered, “but it doesn’t change the fact that most everyone thinks it’s sick and perverted. Besides, it’s illegal.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Paul responded. “You know there was a riot in New York a few years ago. Queers are starting to fight back and they’re fighting for their rights.”

“But this isn’t New York,” I replied.

“That’s for sure,” Paul agreed, “and I’m not really queer. I don’t want to dress up like a girl. I don’t act like a girl. I’m sure I’ll eventually get married and start a family of my own.”

“Same here,” I chimed in, “but that doesn’t change the way I feel about you.” Taking a deep breath and saying the words aloud for the first time, “I love you, Paul, more than anything. I wish we could spend the rest of our lives together, but in five weeks, you’ll go back to Council Bluffs and I’ll go back to Indiana.”

“I love you too, Jeff, but you’re right. We both have lives to return to. We’ll go our separate ways. That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun though, and what we did was so much fun. Why don’t we skip breakfast and spend all day in bed making love?”

“I’d love to, but our friends might notice, and then the shit would really hit the fan. Besides,” I went on, “we have things to do. The laundry is one of them. Our clothes from last night smell of cigarette smoke. And if the smell in here is any indication, we’re going to need to change the sheets a lot more often. Otherwise everyone will know what we’ve been up to. I’m gonna run out of towels too if I don’t do the wash.”

“The voice of reason,” Paul replied as he got up off his bed. “Fuck, why’s the room spinning? And suddenly I feel nauseous. I’m not sure I can eat breakfast.” I was a bit surprised by his cussing, but then I remembered how I felt the first time I got drunk. Strangely, I didn’t feel the least bit hung over this time, but Paul was smaller than me, and the alcohol might have had more of an effect on him.

“Hangovers aren’t fun, but you’ll feel a lot worse if you don’t get some food and caffeine into you,” I explained as I held him.

“This feels nice,” Paul responded, and then he kissed me passionately and I kissed him back. We barely made it to the Quad in time to get some of the meager food that was left.