Part 15 — The Flood
Friday, July 29, 1972
“So where are you taking me?” Paul asked.
“We’re going to an Iowa City icon,” I explained. “I guess it started out as a small theater in an old mill, but that was a long time ago, before it moved to its current location. It’s still a dinner theater, but tonight they’re having live entertainment. They’ve had some name acts perform there in the past.”
“So who’s gonna be there tonight?” Paul asked.
“Never heard of them, but they’re supposed to be good,” I replied. “Folk music, I think. I’m told the food’s excellent. The Mill is known for their spaghetti, but they have excellent sandwiches, pasta dishes and pizza too, all at a reasonable price.”
Our friends were eating back at the dorm and then going on a clandestine outing to see A Clockwork Orange. A lot of the SSTPers were planning to see it over the weekend, and if the theater asked for proof of age, there could be trouble.
There was no way Paul could get away with claiming to be eighteen. He was only thirteen and he looked his age. I wasn’t all that interested in seeing the film anyway, so I decided to skip it and spend the time with Paul. The real reason I was spending the night with Paul, however, was that it was a chance to go out on a real date with him before we went our separate ways.
Indeed, our time was short — in just a week, I’d be returning to Indianapolis. Paul would be going back to Council Bluffs, a part of Greater Omaha, and then he’d return to the University of Iowa a few weeks after that to begin his life as a college freshman. My mom and I would be taking a vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and then I’d begin my final year of high school. Unlike Paul, I’d yet to begin the process of selecting a college for my undergraduate education.
It seemed unlikely that we’d run into any of our friends tonight, but we weren’t talking any chances. Rather than leaving from our dorm, I had Paul meet me in front of the Engineering building after his last class of the day. We had a bit of time to kill before the restaurant opened, so I gave him a tour of the Engineering building, including the home of KRUI, the student-run independent radio station, which broadcast programming from an antenna that rose from the building’s rooftop.
At 6:30, we walked the few blocks to The Mill’s downtown location. It was raining, so we used our umbrellas. I would’ve loved to have shared an umbrella — It would’ve been romantic — but in the unlikely event that someone we knew saw us, it would not have turned out well. Hell, queers got beaten up and killed for less. Not that we were queer, but why take a chance?
I didn’t think it likely anyone from the SSTP would see us in any case. Friday dinner was included in our room and board. Not many teens would pass up a free dinner. However, I was more than willing to pay for the chance of a night out with the boy I loved. Not that I had much money to spare. I’d brought very little with me and had had to ask my mom to send me more, to cover the cost of going out with friends on the weekends.
Entering the restaurant, we were quickly seated at a table for two. After being seated, Paul and I declined the request to order drinks for the evening. We decided not to chance ordering beer. In fact, we confessed to each other that we didn’t really even like beer. As far as soft drinks were concerned, why spend a quarter on a drink that costs a dime in the store?
Opening the menu, they had a great selection of mostly Italian foods to choose from. There were some great-sounding pizzas, but we’d been eating a lot of pizza lately with the guys and I was in the mood for something different. Spotting something I’d not heard of before among the appetizers, I asked aloud, “What’s a quesadilla?”
“It’s pronounced kay-sa-DEE-a, not kwes-a-dil-la,” Paul corrected me, “and it's Mexican. It’s a round, soft tortilla sandwich, stuffed with lots of melted cheese and things like black beans, chicken or beef, and cut into triangular wedges. According to the menu, it comes with sour cream and guacamole. You do know what guacamole is, don’t you?”
“There isn’t much Mexican food in Indianapolis, but yeah, I’ve had it before. It’s delicious.” What I didn’t tell Paul was that the first time I had it was with Dr. Ellis during one of our lunches. “The quesadilla sounds good. Would you like to get an order to share?” I asked.
“Sure, I could definitely go for that,” Paul answered. “Since it’s their specialty, I gotta try the traditional spaghetti dinner. Something tells me it’s a lot better than what they serve at the Quad.”
“For sure,” I agreed. “I think maybe I’ll get the lasagna. We eat spaghetti a lot at home, but I doubt my mom even knows how to make lasagna. Sometimes they have it at school, and it’s not that bad. Something tells me The Mill’s lasagna will be a lot better, though.”
“If it isn’t, you should ask for your money back,” Paul replied and we both laughed.
Our server brought us the quesadillas right away, but warned us the lasagna would take a while, as it was made fresh and had to bake for close to an hour. That was fine with me, as I was in no hurry for the night to end. The quesadilla was incredible, but it didn’t last long with a pair of teens devouring it.
As we finished off the appetizer, we talked about our hopes and dreams. Paul had been swept away by James Van Allen, but his interest in space exploration went back years, to when he was barely out of diapers. “Have you heard of Carl Sagan?” he asked me.
When I shook my head ‘no’, he continued, “He’s a professor at Cornell. An astrophysicist with a major interest in planetary science and exobiology. He’s like, only 38, and he’s been involved with the space program since the beginning. He was the one who designed the gold-plated plaque mounted on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. It’s supposed to depict things another intelligent life form could understand, in case the probe is discovered out in deep space.”
“Like that’s ever gonna happen,” I replied. “There’s light-years of space between us and the nearest star. A foot is like a light-nanosecond. Something like ten quadrillion Pioneer 10s would fit between the earth and the nearest star.”
“The nearest star is the sun,” Paul interrupted.
“You know what I meant,” I chided my boyfriend. “Finding the Pioneer 10 probe in deep space makes finding a needle in a haystack seem trivial. Hell, it would be easier to find a diamond, the size of a single grain of sand, on the entire surface of the earth.”
“Perhaps,” Paul countered, “but finding a needle in a haystack is a lot easier if you have a metal detector. Who knows what kind of technology another intelligent species might have. Anyway, you can’t fault Sagan for trying.”
So if you’re so interested in what this Sagan guy is doing, why aren’t you going to Cornell?” I asked.
“Because I can start college here in Iowa right now, because my parents can afford the in-state tuition as opposed to the tuition at an Ivy League school, and because Iowa’s astrophysics department is renowned, thanks to James Van Allen and the department he’s built.
“What about you, Jeff?” Paul asked.
“Well, it would help if I knew what I wanted to do,” I replied with a laugh. “One thing I’ve learned from the summer here is that I don’t want to go into computer science. I’m not even sure engineering would be right for me. I’m more interested in the basic sciences and discovering the unknown.
“I guess I’m more interested in physics than the other sciences. I’m definitely not interested in biology, or in chemistry, other than where it overlaps with physics at the quantum level. Dr. Van Allen’s talk really opened my eyes to the science of cosmology. So much so that I really think that’s what I might want to do. However, I’m definitely limited by my finances too.
“Since my dad died, what he left my mom hasta last her the rest of her life. I can’t expect her to contribute much to my education. I have survivor benefits through the age of 22 — a pension from GM and Social Security — but those will actually make it harder for me to qualify for financial aid. I can afford in-state tuition, but not the tuition at an Ivy League school. Unless I qualified for an academic scholarship, I’d be shit outta luck, and those are extremely hard to come by.
“Neither Indiana University nor Purdue are known for their astrophysics programs. However, tiny Butler University is renowned, and I have an in there with Dr. Dixon, the guy who teaches me advanced physics on the weekends. At least at Butler, I could save the cost of room and board by living at home. I already have a car…”
“You have a car?” Paul asked.
“Yeah, you rode in it when we went out to dinner with my mom. It was my father’s”
“Oh…”
The food arrived and Paul and I continued to talk, right up until the live entertainment began. We found out a lot about each other and I came to appreciate the difficulties he’d experienced in growing up with kids who were always much older. Summer camp was his only salvation, ’cause no one knew he was years ahead of them in school. “Much of what you see is an act,” he explained. “I’ve learned to project confidence when what I really feel is just the opposite.”
Later that night, we returned to our dorm room and made love, well into the wee hours. We were really dragging when we headed down to breakfast in the morning. I slept through a good part of the weekly symposium. If our friends noticed, they didn’t say anything, but then they were busy talking about the movie A Clockwork Orange. In a way, I regretted not seeing it with them, but I wouldn’t have traded my night with Paul for anything.
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Tuesday, August 1, 1972
“This is it?” Dr. Ellis asked as I handed him a copy of the final report for my project. I’d come early for lunch as he’d asked, since we were gonna travel to Cedar Rapids, a half-hour drive away. I nodded my head in return as he started to leaf though the pages.
“I’m really impressed by the way you put this together,” he went on. “I’m curious, how did you manage to get your graphics into the report? You did this using a text editor, right?”
“I used LineEd, which made it particularly difficult. It’s too bad there aren’t any character-based editors…”
“There will be, very soon,” Dr. Ellis interrupted. “One of my graduate students is working on one. He might be willing to let you try it out if you have the time.”
Laughing, I said, “If only I’d known last week, but now, it would probably only slow me down. I did figure out how to incorporate non-ASCII characters, such as Greek letters, and italics, neither of which are supported as ordinary text. I couldn’t print them on a teletype, but the line printer attached to the 360 could print them out.
“I dumped the graphic plots to an ASCII matrix, which I sent to a separate text file in my account. Figuring out how to do that was a challenge to say the least, but after that, it was easy to insert the resulting text files into the report. Line drawings were another matter. I had to draw those by hand and leave space for them in the report. I used a copier to superimpose the two.”
“I can’t even tell,” Dr. Ellis replied. “This is very impressive work. I’ll have to read it, and maybe we can discuss it later. In the meantime, let’s head to Cedar Rapids.”
Dr. Ellis drove a Toyota Celica. It was the first time I’d ever seen a Japanese car up close, let alone ridden in one. It did seem to ride nicely, although it was much smaller than what I was used to. It was a two-door coupe with bucket seats and a four-speed manual transmission. I’d never known anyone who didn’t drive an automatic, so I was fascinated by the way Dr. Ellis worked his way through the gears.
I asked him about the car and he explained, “The Celica is Toyota’s answer to the Ford Mustang. Like the Mustang, it’s a sports coupe with enough muscle under the hood to give the driver a sense of limitless power, short of crossing over into race car territory the way something like the Corvette does. I really wanted a Mustang. I really wanted to love the Mustang. The styling is classic, the name’s iconic, and it’s guaranteed to turn heads… but I’m an engineer.
“The moment I popped the hood on the model on the showroom floor, I couldn’t help but notice the misaligned seams, the gaps that are filled with grease. Grease, of all things. I like to tinker with my cars, but I don’t want to pull my hand out, only to find it covered in slimy black goo. The Mustang is a wonderful driving machine, but the specs are too loose and the manufacturing process, particularly with regard to quality control, is terrible. If that car had been a senior design project from one of my students, I’d have given them a failing grade.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that as Dr. Ellis continued, “It’s obvious that Ford isn’t interested in building a quality product. If anything, they want the car to fall apart, so you’ll buy a new one every few years. All four American car makers seem to operate the same way. Better to design the parts with sloppy tolerances and give the guy on the assembly line a grease gun to fill in the gaps, than to design with tight tolerances that minimize wear and tear. They don’t want their cars to last. They don’t think anyone’s going to compete with them on quality, except luxury imports like Mercedes. That’s where they’re wrong.
“The moment I popped the hood on the Celica, I knew I had to buy one. The Celica was everything the Mustang was not. Toyota builds their cars the way I would build them, with tight design tolerances and a manufacturing process that’s focused on quality. I couldn’t find a single manufacturing defect anywhere. Contrast that to an American car, which has an average of seven manufacturing defects. They’d rather waste the time of their dealers and their buyers on unnecessary trips back to the dealership to get them fixed. Heaven forbid they should actually fix the defects before the car ever lands on the showroom floor.
“It took me a bit to get past the imagery of Japanese goods being cheap and poorly made. If this car is any indication, Toyota, Datson, Honda, Mitsubishi and Subaru are going to bury the American car companies.”
After a brief period of silence, I responded, “You know, my dad was a manufacturing engineer for Delco, which makes the electronic components that go into GM cars and trucks. He used to gripe that he was constantly having to come up with manufacturing strategies to compensate for components that were poorly designed. I can totally relate to what you said. The one thing my dad couldn’t do was to send a component back to the engineers for them to redesign it — not unless it was necessary to correct a design flaw that might result in serious injury or death — and even then, GM preferred to wait until someone really was killed before they issued a recall.
“Dad was killed in an industrial accident on Christmas Eve, three and a half years ago. GM says it was Dad’s fault. I know better. It was an equipment malfunction. The plant manager said as much when he came to our house to tell us what had happened. But try proving it.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your father, Jeff, but I’m not surprised. Boeing and McDonald Douglas routinely deliver planes with known design flaws, preferring to work on fixes while the planes are in the air, rather than delaying the delivery of a new aircraft until the fix is already in place. Mark my words, but it’s only a matter of time before there’s a plane crash caused by a faulty design that the manufacturer knew about but had yet to fix.”
“I don’t think I could handle that,” I responded. “I don’t think I could handle the corporate world.”
“Why do you think I ended up in academia?” Dr. Ellis asked. “Seriously, you’re a very bright young man, Jeff. Clearly, you’re not destined to be a grunt engineer working in the trenches for some soulless corporation. You’ll get a PhD in whatever field you choose. Perhaps you’ll do a post-doc, too. Of course I’ll write reference letters for you, wherever you choose to go. I’d strongly encourage you to look to the coasts for your education and not limit yourself only to engineering. MIT, Cornell, Stanford, Berkeley and Cal Tech would all be lucky to have you.
“And don’t tell me you can’t afford them. You need to apply if you’re going to have a chance. With luck, you might just get a full-ride scholarship to your first-choice university.”
“That’s a lot to think about, Dr. Ellis,” I replied. By then we’d arrived at the restaurant, and we went inside.
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Wednesday, August 2, 1972
“He took you to Cedar Rapids for lunch?” Greg asked as we waited in line for breakfast. “That’s like an hour, round trip. That was awfully nice of him.”
“Yeah, it was,” I agreed. “We spent a lot of time talking about cars, of all things, and about my plans for the future.”
“What kind of car does he drive,” Steve asked.
“A Toyota Celica,” I answered. “He thinks the Japanese are gonna bury the American car makers.”
“That’s probably not all that far-fetched,” Steve replied. “In the U.K., they view American cars as rather poorly made. Of course there’s Bentley and Rolls Royce, but for the masses we have Rover, which is locally made in Oxford. Of course there’s also Volvo, Saab, Volkswagen, Mercedes and Audi from the continent. We just won’t mention Fiat. From what I hear, Japanese cars are becoming popular on the other side of the pond, too. Unless Ford, GM, Chrysler and AMC put more into making quality cars that don’t rust out and are built to last, they really will be left in the dust.”
“That’s pretty much what he said,” I replied. Reaching the serving area, I grabbed a tray and added a stack of pancakes with butter and syrup, a serving of two eggs, over easy, with whole wheat toast, two strips of bacon and my ever-present Earl Grey tea.
“According to the paper, there’s a risk of flooding today,” Gary announced after we were seated.
“Flooding?” Kyle responded. “Why would there be flooding? It rained a little bit yesterday, and we’re expecting more rain today, but it isn’t that much. Maybe an inch.”
“It’s not the rain here that’s the problem,” Gary explained. “They’ve been getting deluged in other parts of the state and farther up north, feeding the tributaries that feed into the Mississippi. That could lead to the Iowa River backing up, and with the rain falling farther upstream, the combination could cause the river to crest above flood stage.”
“Well that sucks,” I replied. “What are we supposed to do about it? It’s not like we can build a dam to keep the water away.”
“I guess you need to keep your eyes open,” Greg answered. “Keep your eyes on the weather and watch for flooding before you get trapped on the other side of the river. I don’t think we need to worry about flooding over here. We’re up on a hill, but downtown is pretty low-lying. The same is true for the medical center. If it looks like the river’s gonna flood, we all need to get back over here ASAP.”
“That sounds about right,” Brandon agreed.
“Then let’s get to it,” Kyle said. “We need to get our work done before we end up needing to swim home.”
We all quickly finished our breakfasts, dumped our trays and headed out to our various classrooms and labs.
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I’d completed my research report and given a copy to Dr. Ellis, but I had yet to present my results in front of an audience. Starting tomorrow, all of the participants in the Research Track would be giving ten-minute presentations in front of the entire group of SSTP program participants, as well as any of the program faculty who wished to attend. Each presentation would be followed by five minutes for questions and answers. Of course, Dr. Ratcliffe would be there to evaluate each presentation and to make comments of his own. I’d turn in my final research report to him at the start of my presentation.
I’d spent so much of my time working on preparing the report that I’d barely begun to work on my presentation. Much of the material from the report would end up in the presentation, but I needed to prepare tables, charts and graphs for display. Most presentations at scientific meetings involved the use of 35mm slides, but that involved enlisting the professional services of a graphics department, and there wasn’t a budget for that, nor enough time.
It was one of the secretaries in Dr. Ellis’ office who pointed out to me that photocopiers could be used with letter-sized transparency film, suitable for use on an overhead projector. That fact opened up endless possibilities to me, but copier use wasn’t free. Each departmental unit was issued a counter that had to be inserted, to ensure proper billing of each copy. I had to ask for the counter every time I used it.
Xerox had a virtual monopoly on plain paper technology. Photocopiers were complex machines that could only be rented and serviced by Xerox. The machines broke down so frequently that it seemed the service techs spent their lives onsite. Because of the cost, copiers were usually shared by everyone in a department or even across departments. Adding insult to injury, Xerox changed a fee for each copy made; hence the need for the counter.
However, with so many people using each copier, there was often a line of people waiting to use it. Etiquette dictated that one made their copies as quickly as possible. Setting up transparency film took time. I couldn’t make an endless number of copies in the hope of getting perfect illustrations. I needed to plan everything out in advance so that each illustration came out right the first time.
If I’d started earlier, I’d have done all of this after hours, but I had to finish today, and — with the possibility of flooding — I needed to work quickly. The first step was to use the line printer in the computer terminal room to generate my illustrations on paper, much as I’d done with the report. Deciding what to include, formatting it, printing it, revising it and printing it out again and again took me the entire morning.
I should have stopped for lunch, but I couldn’t take a chance I wouldn’t be able to get back into the building. As it was, the secretaries took off right after lunch as the predictions for flooding worsened. That should have been the clue that it was my time to leave as well. At least they let me keep the copy counter, trusting me to return it in the morning. And there was less competition for use of the copier as the time went on.
By the time I finished, there was hardly anyone else in the building. I used my key to open the department chairman’s outer office door and dropped the copy counter into the center desk drawer of one of the secretaries. I then went to my office and placed my transparencies in my desk drawer for safekeeping. I took the paper copies with me, folded and in my pocket, to use for practice back in my dorm room.
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Locking the office behind me, I went to take the elevator down to the ground floor, but it never came. After waiting several minutes, I gave up and took the stairs. I usually entered and exited the building through the ground floor, which was slightly below street level, but I never made it to the bottom of the stairs. There was water in the stairwell below the first floor, so I headed back up and exited through the front of the building. Fortunately, the street was dry. However, as I headed around the corner, the street sloped downhill, disappearing under water. Fuck!
Backtracking, I took an alternative route that took me up some steps to the terrace that wrapped around the main library, but when I reached the other side, my route was blocked by standing water. Continuing around the terrace, there was a ramp for use by bicycles and wheelchairs that took a slightly more elevated route, but even that dipped into a stretch of sidewalk that was under water. At least from there I could see the rest of my route, which was dry.
Unsure of what to do, I realized that if I waited any longer, the water might rise further, trapping me on the library terrace. I had to get back to the dorm, even if it meant wading through water. Not wishing to ruin my leather dress shoes, I took them off and rolled up my pants legs as far as I could. Holding a shoe in each hand, I waded into the water in my stocking feet, careful to avoid stepping on anything sharp. The water came up to my thighs.
Once back on dry ground, I removed my soaking socks, used my hands to dry my feet as best I could and put my shoes back on my bare feet. The Iowa River was lapping at the bottom of the Burlington Street bridge and the current was swift. Had the water been over the top of the bridge, it wouldn’t have been safe to cross, as the current easily could have swept me away.
The walk back to the dorm was uneventful, but I could only imagine what I looked like, with my pants legs rolled up and wet, and carrying my wet socks. Paul was waiting for me in our dorm room. When he saw me, he hugged me tightly before I even had a chance to close the door. Anyone could have seen us, but we didn’t care.
“I was so worried about you,” Paul began. “Not that I thought you’d drowned, but I had visions of you being trapped in the engineering building and unable to get out.”
“That actually came close to happening,” I related. “When I finished getting my presentation ready, I headed to the elevator, only it never came. Instead, I took the stairs down the five flights to the ground floor, only to find my way blocked by water. I went back up to the first floor and got out that way, but even so, I had to wade through two or three feet of water to get to the Burlington Street Bridge.”
“That was dangerous!” Paul responded. “What if there were downed power lines under the water? You could’ve been electrocuted!”
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” I replied. “I was more worried about stepping on cut glass. The main thing was I needed to get back to see you… and to practice my talk. Speaking of which, I have my presentation right here,” I said as I pulled out the pages from my pants pocket. “I need to practice with these tonight. I’ve made copies of these onto transparency film, and I’ll use those with the overhead projector when I do the real thing.”
“That’s actually very cool,” Paul responded.
“It was a secretary who suggested using the copier with transparency film,” I explained. “I’m beginning to appreciate that it’s the secretaries who actually do all the work at a university.”
“Did you stop for lunch?” Paul asked. Already, he knew me so well.
“Nope, and I’m starved,” I replied. “I’m actually desperate enough to grab a snack out of one of the vending machines to tide me over until dinner, even though it’s only a half-hour away.”
“The vending machines have been picked clean,” Paul responded. “The kitchen at the Quad is partly under water and they closed the cafeteria. At least I was able to get my lunch at Burge. The Bio-Med kids didn’t get lunch — not unless they chose to pay for it at the hospital cafeteria.”
“What are we gonna do for dinner?” I asked.
“Word has it they’re setting up a makeshift kitchen on the floor of the field house,” Paul answered. “I’m not sure if they have seating, though, other than in the stands. You wanna see if the others are in Greg and Gary’s room? We could head over there from here.”
“Yeah, lets,” I replied, “but maybe I better change into some dry clothes first.”
“Ya think?” Paul said and we both laughed.
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“This was really clever,” Greg exclaimed as he took a bite out of his sandwich.
“It’s not like there was much else they could’ve done,” Garry responded.
“Yeah, but by setting it up like that, the students ended up doing most of the work of preparing their dinners,” Greg went on.
We were all seated in Greg and Gary’s room and munching on the sandwiches we’d made. Because of the lack of stoves, they couldn’t serve anything hot, so the kitchen staff resorted to bringing in foodstuffs that could be used for making sandwiches. They set up long tables with various kinds of bread and heaping platters of rare roast beef, turkey, ham, and cheddar, Swiss and provolone cheese. They had sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles and lettuce. There were buckets with packets of ketchup, brown mustard, yellow mustard, mayonnaise, relish and tartar sauce, and bags of every variety of potato chip. Lastly, there were baskets with apples and oranges.
The kitchen staff kept replacing the platters as they were emptied, so there was plenty of food for everyone. We each took a paper plate and made two sandwiches, heaped high with a little of everything. I took a bag of barbecue chips and one of sour cream and chives chips, as well as an apple. As we exited, there were banners on the wall saying the Quad cafeteria would be open for breakfast in the morning, which was good to hear. That had to mean the flood waters were already receding. We walked back to the dorm with care and each found a spot to sit in Greg and Gary’s room, where we could eat our creations.
“I don’t remember anything in the SSTP brochure mentioning how we’d experience a flood,” Steve quipped, causing us all to laugh.
“My research mentor said that flooding is a frequent problem here,” Kyle interjected. “Much of the university is low-lying and the basement of the hospital, in particular, always floods. There’s a lot of expensive equipment down there that the flood insurance doesn’t cover, so every flood costs them a small fortune.”
“Student Health is in the basement,” I noted. “I wonder if all of the paperwork I had to fill out when I set up my allergy shots was ruined.”
“I would hope they’d keep that stuff above the water line, but who knows,” Paul responded.
“Anyway, it seems they’ve been talking about flood mitigation for years,” Kyle went on, “but every time there’s a flood, once the waters recede, the legislature puts it on the back burner and the funds are never approved. It’ll probably take a record flood with massive cleanup costs before they’ll do anything.”
“Typical,” I chimed in.
As he polished off his sandwiches, Kyle said, “Listen guys, I hafta practice my research presentation, so I’m gonna vamoose.”
“Same here,” I chimed in as I finished the last of my food.
“Are your talks tomorrow?” Brandon asked.
“I don’t know,” Kyle replied. “They haven’t posted the schedule yet.
Paul started to get up with me, but I stopped him and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend an hour going over it alone. I’m not ready to present in front of anyone. After an hour, your criticisms would be greatly appreciated.”
“Sure, Jeff,” Paul replied. “I’ll see you in an hour.”
