In the latter half of 1986 Sue and I realized that a serious business required a better office space than our house in Rockville could provide. For one thing we realized that neither of us was a salesman, and the building offered no place for a salesman to work. It was also a little embarrassing to bring in clients, especially since we now had two cats in residence, Jake and Rocky.
Google took this photo of the west side of 178 N. Maple. The large building on the left was already there. Our space was in the addition on the right. The entrance to TSI was the white door on the far right on the other side of the wall.
At the same time Sue’s dad was in the process of converting one of his barns at 178 N. Maple in Enfield, two doors north of Sue’s parents’ house, into office space for the Slanetz Corporation. Sue worked her magic with him to design a headquarters for TSI there as well. The new building also was designed to serve as a headquarters for Moriarty Landscaping1 in the basement below TSI’s space.
This is the view from the south. The drainpipe in the middle roughly approximates the border between TSI and Slanetz Corp.
Two doors allowed access to TSI’s offices. The first was on the east side, where our space bordered on that of the Slanetz Corporation. The other was on the south side. It was eight or ten feet below the level of the office. From the door a staircase led up to the middle of TSI’s office space
That arrangement meant that a good bit of the space on the west side—between the staircase and the west wall—was essentially wasted2. There was not enough room for both a corridor and a work area.
The north and east sides of TSI’s area had no windows. The west side had two sets—the double in Sue’s office and another one in the wasted area. The south side had three windows.
I found some of the partitions in our basement.
Sue bought white wooden shelves that were deployed to create a corridor from the door on the west wall almost to the stairs. The programming and reception/accounting areas were partitioned into work areas with dividers.
South of the building was a parking lot that could hold eight or nine cars.
Sue and I were well aware that we had enjoyed a sweetheart deal in our lodging in the front house of the Elks Club in Rockville. Since January of 1980 we had rented—without a lease—a nice old three-bedroom house with another room that was large enough for an office for three or four people. We paid the Elks, as I recall, $300 per month, we had no lease, and no one ever bothered us. On the first of every month we put the check in an envelope labeled “Rent”, walked it up to the Elks Club bar, and gave it to the bartender. I don’t think that we ever missed a payment.
In October of 1986, Sue received the following letter from the Elks Club:
October 16, 1986
Sue Comparetto TSI Tailored Systems 9 North Park St. Rockville, CT 06066
Dear Ms. Comparetto:
This letter is to inform you of several changes which are taking place in the landlord/tenant relationship between the Rockville Elks and you. From now on, all correspondence is to be directed to the Chairman, Board of Trustees. Until April 1, 1987 this is David Mullins3 (address and phone number below), All correspondence should be directed to the Chairman at his personal residence. When a new Chairman takes over, you will be informed and given any necessary address changes. Normally, this will occur every April.
Rent payments are to made as they are now except that the full rent is to always be paid. Do not deduct for anything unless authorized by the Chairman – no other member of the Board of Trustees has this authority.
New rental rates will be taking effect as well (a lease is enclosed). Your new lease will run from April 1 to March 31. For your benefit, we are phasing in the rental increases until April 1, 1987 (when the new lease takes effect). Starting December 1, 1986 your new rent is as follows:
Additionally, you are now responsible for minor repairs and maintenance totalling less than $100. Starting with your new lease (4/1/87 – 3/31/88) you will receive a $100/moth rent credit if you meet the following conditions. First, the rent must be received on time (by the 5th day of every month). Second, all minor repairs and maintenance described above are to be taken care of by you. This credit may be deducted off of your rent payment. If you fail to meet both of these requirements you forfeit the rental discount for that month.
Please sign both copies of the enclosed lease and return them to me ASAP. I will sign one and return it to you.
David Mullins
We did not sign the lease. Instead, Sue negotiated a temporary arrangement with the Elks Club for us to stay a few months until we could find another place. We paid more than $300/month, but nothing close to $11004. Sue has told me that we actually paid them $600/month. Evidently they did not want to try to find another tenant.
We moved all of TSI’s stuff over a weekend in early 1988. I don’t remember if we hired a moving company or not. I don’t recall lifting desks, and so I suspect that we hired some local people to do it. If someone helped us, we might have been able to do it. The Slanetzes had an old grey pickup truck. My recollection is that I brought most of the computer equipment in my Celica, which was a hatchback.
On Friday we were doing business out of Rockville. On Monday our headquarters was in Enfield.
For a few months Sue and I commuted from Rockville to Enfield. Since we worked drastically different schedules—she is a night owl; I am an early bird—we always brought two cars.
This is the view from North St. looking north. Hamilton Court is on the right. The living room is to the left of the front door. The window to the right of the door is now my office. The double window is on the largest of the bedrooms, which is now called (inappropriately) Sue’s sewing room. The other bedroom is directly across the corridor from this room.
Near the office Sue found two houses that were for sale. We ended up purchasing the one shown above situated on a very large corner lot at 41 North St. in the Hazardville section of Enfield. From North St. in 2021 it still looked much like it did when we bought it in 1988. The maple trees were much smaller at that time, and the Burning Bush on the left must have grown to be ten times as large as it was then.
The lawn in 2021 undoubtedly had far more weeds. Both the previous resident and the one before him were reportedly landscapers. Their care for the lawn amounted to an obsession. One of them even installed a sprinkler system. The first time that I mowed the lawn with my new Sears lawnmower, I filled twenty-three large black garbage bags with clippings. It took me over three hours. For the second mowing I set the machine to mulching mode and never set it back.
I undid all of that TLC with a few years of neglect. As you can see from Google’s photo, it still looks fine.
The sidewalk was added on the south side between April 22, the day on which we signed the mortgage for $135,000, and some time in June when we finally finished moving in. On the west side of the house was a fence. Beyond it was a driveway and walkway leading to Hazard Memorial Elementary School, which Sue had attended decades earlier.
So, our lot actually bordered on only one other dwelling, 1 Hamilton Court.
Behind the house was a one-car attached garage. Between the house and the garage was an entryway that was about 10′ by 15′. We installed one of the Datamasters and the daisy-wheel printer on a long table in that room5.
The house had a rather small kitchen, a pretty large area for a living and dining area, one bathroom, and three small bedrooms. To that extent it reminded me of the house on Maple St. in Prairie Village, KS, in which my family lived from 1954-1962.
We had accumulated a lot more stuff during our years in Rockville. For weeks I filled up my Celica before I drove to work every morning and emptied it at the new place before I returned home. Even so we had to hire movers to move the big items.
Our bed went in one bedroom and another double bed appeared from somewhere6 in another, which was in theory a guest room. The other bedroom became a kind of library. The barnboard shelve were located there. It soon hosted another resident, Buck Bunny, as is described here.
This house, thankfully, had much more storage space—a full basement and an attic. That was only sufficient for a year or two. The garage was soon too filled with Sue’s junk for a car—or anything else—to fit.
This is actually the current door. The old one was fitted inside the square on the right.
We made one important improvement to the house. We installed a cat door in the basement window that was below the guest bedroom. Some wooden shelves were already in the basement near that window. The cats entered on the top shelf. I built a make-shift ramp so that they could easily get down, but they often preferred to walk to the edge of the shelf and jump from there to the washing machine and then the floor.
1. In 2021 Moriarty Landscaping still occupied the basement area of 178 N. Maple in 2021.
2. I wondered why the entrance was placed there instead of next to the east wall, with the steps outside. Sue said that she thought that it might have been a town requirement for two fire exits. My other question was why the staircase could not have been to the immediate left of the door.
3. In 2021 David Mullins apparently lived in Farmington.
4. $1100 might have seemed like a fair price on paper. However, there were at least three major drawbacks to the property: 1) The ceiling in the living room/dining room space was severely cracked. The middle was at least 6″ lower than on the edges. It was a pretty scary situation. 2) There was no shower on the floor with two bedrooms, only a bath tub. 3) The heating bills were outrageous. A great deal of the hot air went right up the staircase to the unused floor.
5. The garage and the entryway were eliminated during the renovation that is described here.
6. Prior to this move I had not realized that Sue was a hoarder. When I met her she had almost no material possessions. Over the decades she amassed so much stuff—mostly of no evident value or utility—that we could not invite people to the house, and when we needed a repairman or cleaner, we needed to scramble to make room.
TSI’s first, last, and best programmer was Denise Bessette. The beginnings of her career at TSI are documented here. At some point in the second half of the eighties she decided to finish her undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics at Smith College in Northampton, MA, and then get a masters degree in econ at Trinity College in Hartford. She lived in Stafford, which is forty-two miles from Smith and thirty-two miles from Trinity. She commuted to both schools. During this lengthy period Denise continued to work part-time at TSI. She also raised her son Chris. Frankly, I don’t know how she did it. She never seemed burnt out or exhausted.
After she graduated she returned to work full time. At that time I named her vice-president of application development. I also arranged that Denise could share a portion of Sue’s office. At the time I did not think that there was much more that I could do. The layout of our office in Enfield (described here) provided for only two offices. Sue had the corner office. The other one was used by our salesmen. I worked in the computer room.
This arrangement seemed to work fairly well for a while. In 1994, because of TSI’s “second crisis” (described here), Denise was able to establish herself in that office. A few years later Denise decided that she needed to try to work at a company in which she had more control over her situation. This prompted TSI’s “third crisis”, which is described here.
After that situation was very pleasantly resolved, Denise and I worked productively as partners until the company was dissolved in 2014. She was in charge of getting the programming and support done and hiring the technical staff. She also continued to handle the payroll. The administrative and sales people reported to me. I continued to do the sales calls, demos, installations, and training. I also spent countless hours researching alternative approaches to our way of doing business.
After TSI moved its office to East Windsor and installed a network with a connections to the Internet, Denise handled all phases of it and worked with our clients to establish and maintain access to their computer systems. I was more than happy to let her deal with those issues.
She also managed the people who cleaned the office and a few other similar functions.
Memories: Denise caught on to my style of programming faster than any other coder that we hired. I was somewhat upset when she went part-time to be able to finish college. The silver lining was that it was unlikely that she would quit before she got her degree, or as it turned out, degrees.
In the eighties Denise sometimes brought her son Christopher into the office. She stashed him in the supply closet. No, she did not shut the door. He seemed to be content with whatever she gave him to play with there.
I remember that on one occasion Denise invited Sue and me to supper at the house in Stafford where she lived with her husband Ray for supper. It was a very nice house with a deck. The heating was provided by one or two stoves that burned wood chips. I had never seen such a thing.
That was the only time that we visited them. If you are wondering whether we reciprocated the invitation, the answer is no. I am not sure why, but we almost never invited anyone over to any of our residences in Connecticut. We probably were still living in Rockville.
I played golf with Ray and his dad a few times. They liked to play at Grassmere, a short public course in Enfield with only nine holes. I seem to remember that one hole had a huge tree right in front of the green. If you did not hit your drive far enough, your only shot to the green was to try to hit a wedge or nine-iron over the tree.
When we hired Denise she was a smoker. In the late eighties she quit cold turkey at about the same time that Sue, Patti Corcoran, and my dad also quit. I don’t remember her getting irritable or fat during the drying out period.
On one occasion her kitchen sink got backed up because Denise poured instant mashed potatoes down it. I bought her a box of instant mashed potatoes as a memento. Later I kicked a dent in one of our cabinets when I got upset at a client. She bought me an inflatable Fred Flintstone to punch when I got angry. It is still in the basement in 2023, but I haven’t tried to inflate it in a few decades.
Denise knew that I read quite a bit. She was taken aback when I casually remarked that I did not enjoy reading female authors, especially ones in the science fiction or fantasy genres.1 On her recommendations I read several Anne Tyler books. They were all fairly good, but I had to admit that Breathing Lessons was close to a masterpiece.
I was always envious of Denise’s cars—a sporty Mazda when she started working for us and a string of BMW’s thereafter. When in 2007 I bought my sapphire blue Honda Accord coupe, she said, “That sure doesn’t look like my grandmother’s Honda!”
She was almost never ill in the thirty years that I worked with her. Then again, neither was I. I remember that she got an infection from inner-tubing on the Farmington River on one of TSI’s summer outings. We never tried that again.
Denise and I enjoyed a very productive trip together when we attended the IBM PartnerWorld convention in San Diego in 2000. The details are described here.
Denise drank mostly tea and Diet Coke in cans.2 She ordinarily just dipped the teabags in the hot water once or twice. I’ve never seen such a weak beverage. Her favorite was Earl Grey. I purloined for her envelopes of tea from the hotels at which I stayed. She seldom took a lunch break; she just grazed on what she brought with her.
At some point in the nineties Sue Comparetto, Denise, and I attended a performance of Carmen at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford. We all enjoyed the opera well enough, but I was disappointed that, as usual, Sue was late and so we missed the talk that was presented before the show.
Several years later Denise and I spent an hour or two at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. She wanted to show me some impressionist paintings. They did nothing for me. I am a Philistine when it comes to art.
Denise was afraid of escalators. She avoided them if possible. If not, she was very tentative. She did not like the moving sidewalks at airports, either.
When Christopher was in high school Denise told me that his best friend was a girl in his class. She alleged that they were just friends. Although this sounded preposterous to me, I kept my mouth shut.
Competition.
I remember when Christopher graduated from high school and was in the process of selecting a college. Denise wanted him to go to a good school in New England. He wanted to go to Penn State. I advised her to tell him that he would have a better chance with the girls at a local school. At PSU half of the male students were linebackers on the football team. I doubt that she took my sagacious advice. He became a Nittany Lion.
She especially did not like it when Christopher joined a fraternity in State College, but he somehow survived the experience, and Denise is now a grandma.
Their cottage was much smaller and a few blocks from the Sound.
Denise loved bodies of water—oceans, lakes, ponds, rivers, anything. She was always happier when she was close enough to experience a body of water through any sense. For years she and her husband Ray had a cottage in Old Saybrook near the Long Island Sound. Several times they took vacations in Aruba.
In 2013 Denise and Ray sold both their house in Stafford and the cottage and moved to Cape Cod. I saw her only a few times in the last year that we worked together and never since.
Business Relationship: For the most part Denise and I had a very productive relationship. Largely it was a case of staying out of each other’s way and (after I made her a partner in 1997) coming together in November and December to evaluate progress and distribute bonuses.
A blog entry about the agendas for the periodic meetings that the two of us enjoyed from 2001 through 2006 has been posted here.
Denise provided some needed organization and discipline to TSI’s approach to programming. My “cowboy coder” philosophy dictated that when I was at a client’s site, and someone complained about a problem, I would immediately investigate it. I often was able to fix it on the spot within a few minutes. This often made me a hero at the client’s office, but a pain back at TSI. It was not easy to isolate all of the things that I had changed, bring them back to the office in an orderly manner, and integrate them into the master copy of the system without disrupting processes used by other clients. Keep in mind that I installed thirty-six AdDept systems, and they were all running the same code.
I eventually had to refrain from addressing any problems at a client’s site. I documented them but did not change the code. … All right, I’ll fess up. Sometimes I could not keep myself from making changes that I was 100 percent certain would not interfere with what was being done at the office. Denise was not a bit happy when I did this. Perhaps we were fortunate that eventually our clients lost the willingness to pay for me to travel to visit them.
The only other point of contention between Denise and me involved research. Both of us knew that the platform on which we had built AdDept–BASIC programs on the AS/400–was considered obsolete by many people in the world of data processing. In most cases these people had veto power over a purchase of our system. It was generally a waste of time to try to persuade them that their evaluation was erroneous. They were hired as experts. We were just potential vendors.
Denise and I agreed that the ideal solution would be to move the whole system to the Internet to avoid the standards that were being established by IT departments. This approach is now called Cloud Computing. However, we were never satisfied that we could do it without man-years of work and considerable expense.
If there was no pathway to the cloud-based approach, the issue was whether the problem was BASIC or the AS/400. I thought that we should investigate the programming languages that coders were using on platforms outside of IBM. At that time the most popular languages were C and C++. C was somewhat similar in structure to BASIC. C++ was its object-oriented version. I spent some time researching the IBM version of C and concluded that a transition to C was possible but unquestionably difficult.
For reasons that I never understood Denise was quite upset at me for spending any time investigating this possibility. I had absolutely no intention of asking her to convert the programs. I was just trying to see whether it was a possibility.
The other side of this coin was Denise’s advocacy of converting all of our BASIC programs to a version of RPG, a language that was popular on the AS/400 but nowhere else, dubbed ILE.3 I never understood the reason for this, but it kept the programmers busy after the requests for programming began to dry up. So, for the most part I kept my opinions to myself.
After Denise moved to the Cape she only came into the office a few times a month. She was in rather constant communication by telephone with Jason Dean, who, at that point, was our only programmer. I liked it a lot better when Denise was in the office all of the time, but my philosophy had always been to take advantage of whatever time she could give me.
1. I need to explain this. I have no doubt that women can write as well as men by virtually any measure. In 2023 (as this is being written) they definitely dominate the publishing industry. However, I contend that women have a basic fantasy about being rescued, and men have one about being heroic. I contend that this is not cultural but innate. Nature, not nurture.
I find that reading about the latter fantasies more interesting than the former. Is that a crime? I have never like a science fiction or fantasy book by a female author. Several times I got suspicious in the middle of one in which the author used initials or a pseudonym and looked up the author used initials or a pseudonym. After looking the author up and discovering the secret I stopped reading. Before you ask, I have never read a single word of the Harry Potter books.
2. I always thought that cola from plastic bottles tasted a little better. For some reason the two liter bottles are always cheaper and usually on sale somewhere. I like both Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke equally. I always have bought whichever one was cheaper. After the business closed I switched to the caffeine-free versions.
3A 220-page document from IBM that aims to show why ILE is a superior approach can be viewed here.
My recollection of many of the events portrayed below was fuzzy. I was not even certain of the year (1998) or the time of year (autumn) until I found a dated document. Lacking a good way of pinning down the details, I needed to guess at or be vague about some things.
Background: For me the period from 1995 through 1999 was the busiest, most exciting, and most stressful of any that I spent working for TSI. It was also the most potentially terrifying period. Our marketing director, Doug Pease1, had hit the mother lode and put us in a position to dominate the market on which I had decided to focus our attention back in the late eighties.
Most large retailers, especially department stores, were organized into divisions, and each division was responsible for its own advertising. So, when a large retail organization decided to name AdDept as the preferred system for advertising, we would usually install a system at each division. In 1998 the May Company,2 which at the time had seven department store divisions, had already endorsed AdDept. Doug had also negotiated installations for the three divisions of the Tandy Corporation3 and he convinced the people at Proffitt’s4 Marketing Group (PMG) to purchase systems for six of their divisions. In addition to these, Doug had also made headway at several other potential clients such as Elde- Beerman, Gottschalks, and Macy’s West.
In short, TSI’s business was finally booming. The challenge was no longer whether the company could generate enough income to meet the next payroll. The question—and it was a very serious one—was whether we could meet our commitments to all of these new installations, almost all of which required significant custom programming.
There were a few other issues as well. The twenty-first century was approaching. AdDept had been made Y2K-compliant from the outset. We also had produced a version of the GrandAd system for the AS/400 that would work in the twenty-first century. We needed to convert all of the software that we used in TSI’s office as well. These undertakings were labor-intensive and required extensive testing. The details of those efforts are described here.
The company therefore faced tremendous challenges in providing the software and support for commitments that I had already made and for the prospective contracts that were almost certainly imminent. Furthermore, the person who had at that point done most of the AdDept programming, myself, would undoubtedly be devoting much less time to coding in the next few years.
I would be doing all the installations and on-site training. I also accompanied Doug on many sales trips. I gathered all of the requirements for new code and wrote the design documents and programming requests. I wrote all the marketing materials and anything else that needed to be written, as well. I also ran the business and extinguished the most serious fires. Last but not least, I did the great majority of the research on new hardware offerings and new software techniques. I still did quite a bit of coding, but I now relied on the programmers for most of it.
Steve Shaw.
Fortunately, I had a team of all-stars to help. Sandy Sant’Angelo handled the support line, which during the late nineties was nearly always busy. She was quite good at documenting problems and making the customers feel comfortable. The programmers were Steve Shaw, Harry Burt, and Denise Bessette. Steve and Harry were both good programmers, and they were both familiar and comfortable with TSI’s programming standards. However, they had little knowledge of details of the AdDept system or the way that retail advertisers worked and thought. Early in 1998 Steve Shaw surprised me by leaving TSI to take a programming job at the Phoenix Life in Hartford.
Denise was extremely dependable. She was also very meticulous in her work habits and thoroughly familiar with both TSI’s standards and most of the basics of advertising. She told me that she did not want to travel, however. Therefore, I could not use her for any of the trips that I made to clients.
The Known Problem: I always tried to keep the employees—especially the programmers—happy. The work at TSI environment was, I think, generally positive. The company had very few rules. There was no dress code at all, although I expected the employees to spruce up a little when customers came to our office for training. I wrote up a short document that listed what we expected of employees. My door was literally always open.
TSI paid the programmers pretty well, and by the mid-1990’s we had implemented good programs of health and disability insurance and a 401K with matching contributions. Although I felt a great deal of stress during this period, I tried to avoid putting pressure on the coders.
TSI’s corporate ladder.
I understood that there was one problem that was inherent to TSI and other small businesses: there was little or no room for advancement. I could reward people for good work, and I could try to make their work challenging and enjoyable. However, it they were ambitious and wanted to climb the corporate ladder, there was not much that I could do. I suspect that this is why Steve quit. Similarly, if they were interested in a position with more responsibility, my options were likewise limited.
I tolerated—and even encouraged—a certain amount of creativity, but after Sue left the office (described here) in 1994. I made all the important decisions. It wasn’t that I liked exercising power. I just reckoned that none of the programmers were interested in managing the business. I would have been happy just to code all day.
As good as the staff was, our upcoming workload was so massive that there was very little room for error. I knew, for example, that Sue and I could not consider another big trip until all the installations were stable, which might take years. I also understood that I had to keep the entire programming team intact if possible. As I have explained in other blog entries, I figured that every time that a programmer quit I lost at least six months of my own productivity between the time spent looking for a replacement, training him or her, and correcting all the mistakes. Furthermore, there was never a good time to look for coders, but 1997—just months before Y2K raised its ugly head—was one of the worst.
Harry and Steve were good programmers, but I knew very well that the key member of the team for the next few years was Denise. Losing her would be a catastrophe that I did not want to contemplate. I probably should have worried more than I did.
TSI’s Telephone System: Each desk at TSI had a unit like the one shown at the left. The company had many phone lines, but no one, not even Doug or I, had a direct line. TSI had two phone numbers that outsiders knew about. One line was dedicated to customers reporting problems or asking questions. That line was answered by Sandy.
The other number was in the phone book and on our letterhead and business cards. We disclosed it to prospects, vendors, and a few others. That line was answered by the administrative person.
There were also two rollover lines. If a caller called either the main number or the support number, and that line was busy, the phone would still ring, but someone at TSI would need to press the flashing button for a rollover line to answer it.
TSI relied on this phone system until the business shut down in 2014. Doug and a few others pressed me to get a more modern system in which each person had her/his own line. A couple of times I priced out these options, but I could see no advantage that was worth spending thousands of dollars. Besides, I liked our phones. In my assessment, they had one overarching advantage. They made it much more difficult for employees to initiate or receive calls from the outside. There was also a fairly strong incentive to keep non-business calls short.
Harry and Denise dressed up for a TSI Christmas party.
Denise Bessette: Denise was the first programmer that Sue and I hired in 1984. The details are posted here. She worked full-time for a couple of years and then part-time for quite a few years while she finished her undergraduate degree at Smith College and then earned a masters degree at Trinity College. In 1993 she became a full-time employee again. We let her use Sue’s office, which was better than her previous location, but it was still less than optimal because Sue never removed all of her junk after she stopped coming to the office in 1994. We also gave Denise a substantial raise. I tried to keep her in the loop on what direction the company was going, but I did not set up any kind of a formal process for doing so. I should have, but I didn’t. My excuse was that I was away on trips a lot, and when I was in the office I was exceptionally busy.
I should emphasize that, even though we had worked together for many years, Denise and I did not have much of a personal relationship. She invited Sue and me to her house in Stafford, CT, for supper once in the eighties. We never reciprocated, presumably because our house was always a mess. I doubt that in all of those years Denise and I had talked about anything besides work more than a handful of times.
During the time that Denise had worked at TSI she had occasionally received phone calls from her husband, her mother, or one of her sisters. She might have received one or two calls from other people. In the fall of 1998, however, even I, who would ordinarily pay little or no attention to such a thing, noticed that she was receiving numerous phone calls from a “friend” named Jackie.
Herberger’s: My most vivid memories of this period were when I was in St. Cloud, MN, the home base for Herberger’s a chain of eleven department stores, 1300 miles away from TSI’s office. At the time I was installing TSI’s AdDept system on a small AS/400 in the advertising department there. A more detailed description of the installation is posted here.
The offices were on an upper floor of this store.
I only visited Herberger’s a few times. The occasion that I remember the most clearly was certainly not my first trip there. It might have been the second or third. I remember that it was rather cold, but the weather did not approach the frigid levels for which nearby Frostbite Falls is famous.
In those days the only way to reach St. Cloud was through the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Northwest Airlines sponsored a shuttle service to the St. Cloud Regional Airport5. I can’t remember whether on this occasion I took that flight or rented a car and drove. I am pretty sure that I stayed at a hotel that was within easy walking distance of Herberger’s headquarters, which was on St. Cloud’s main drag, St. Gernaine St. I am pretty sure that I stayed two nights and then flew back to Connecticut on the third evening.
The main thing that I remember about my first day there was that I called the office several times to see if everything was all right. This was beyond unusual for me. On most trips, unless I needed help about some problem that I had encountered, I seldom called more than once. I have always hated talking on the phone, even if it was to people I liked. I liked all of TSI’s employees.
I don’t think that I spoke with Denise on any of those calls. However, I got the distinct impression that something was amiss. Although there was nothing particular that provoked alarm, the feeling of impending dread almost nearly overwhelmed me. I desperately wanted to get back to TSI’s office to discover the details so that I could deal with the situation. Of course, this was not possible. I had made a commitment to get the system up and running at Herberger’s, and I could not abandon the project because of a nebulous feeling.
After my first day at Herberger’s I ate supper by myself as usual. I don’t remember where I dined or what I did afterwards. I might have taken a walk. I might have read a book. I might have watched television. I do remember worrying.
I always got very tired after dinner. Every night I took a shower around 9:30 or 10:00 and then went to bed. I sat in bed for a few minutes reading a book. I almost never got through more than one chapter before the letters would begin to swim around on the page. I would then turn out the lights. Normally I was sound asleep within a few seconds.
St. Cloud in 1997 had newer cars, but otherwise it looked just like this.
Not this night. For a few hours I emulated Bobby Lewis—“Tossin’ and turnin'”6. I decided to make myself physically tired. There were not many choices available for nocturnal exercise. I dressed and put on my coat and hat. I then walked around St. Cloud for at least an hour. I did not go far. I just walked up and down the streets. None of the buildings seemed to have more than three stories. The only other thing that I remember noticing was a Maytag or Whirlpool store that sold appliances. I had thought that these stores—mainstays of my youth—had gone the way of the dodo, but they evidently still persisted in St. Cloud in 1998.
I eventually drifted back to the hotel and tried to sleep. I probably dozed off for a while before it was time to prepare for work. I remember that I ironed my shirt while I listened to Vivaldi on my CD player through my Bose headphones.
I was running on fumes that day. I chain-drank black coffee to try to remain alert. I took notes on all of the things that the Herberger’s employees said that they needed AdDept to do. I knew very well that Steve VeZain at PMG had already made it clear to me that no custom code would be provided for Herberger’s. Steve said that they needed to adapt to the system that worked for everyone else. I called in to TSI’s office several times on that second day, as well.
I flew back to Connecticut that night in an even worse mood than the foul outlook that these exhausting trips usually produced. On the one hand I was frustrated because the AdDept system did not work the way that the Herberger’s employees wanted it to, and there was nothing much that I could do to help them. They had no clout with PMG. They were, after all, by far the smallest division, and they were on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line. On the other hand I was also very apprehensive about what I would find out when I went into the office the next day.
The Denouement: On my first day back in the office Denise confided that she had been offered a job as IT director at a fairly small company that used an AS/400. I am not sure whether she would have any employees under her or not. Truth to tell, I did not care much what kind of job it was. My sole objective was to take whatever steps were necessary to persuade her to stay at TSI. I also learned that Jackie, as I expected, was a corporate headhunter for an employment agency.
I tried to talk Denise out of accepting the job. I emphasized how important I thought that she was to TSI. She asserted that she was mostly looking for something new. She had been doing mostly the same job for thirteen years.The best that I could get out of her was that she would think about it overnight.
Denise usually arrived at TSI’s office at about 9:007. The morning following our conversation I went outside to meet her in the parking lot. I was extremely nervous when her car finally pulled into the lot. She got out and immediately informed me that she had decided to accept the other job.
I cannot say that I was surprised, but I was still crushed. I couldn’t face going back into the office. So I went and sat in my car and moped. I felt as bad or at least nearly as bad as when Bill Davey and I just missed qualifying for the National Debate Tournament in 1970 (described here) or when Sue abandoned me to go to Alaska in 1973 (described here). No situation in the intervening twenty-three years came close to evoking this feeling.
I had no idea how to deal with this situation. We had mountains of work. I was in no position to take on more of it myself, and I could only squeeze a little more out of Harry. I had made commitments to several clients. I could not select one or two to work on and dismiss the others. They all had deadlines, and they had given us deposits or were long-time clients that I was not prepared to disappoint.
Sitting in the car was not helping. I drove to the Enfield Square Mall, parked my Saturn, went inside, and walked around. At that time there were some benches inside. I rested on one of them every so often. Eventually a plan coalesced in my mind. It seemed like a good idea; I just wish that I had thought of it earlier so that it would not appear that I was being extorted.
That evening I discussed my idea with Sue. I honestly thought that it would be as difficult to persuade her to agree as it would be to convince Denise. I was wrong. She understood the important role that Denise played, and she agreed in principle with everything that I proposed. She also knew that I was miserable.
I located the original written proposal that I presented to Denise. It was somewhat different from what I remembered. Here is what it said:
Denise as Principal:
Denise will have 25% share8 in TSI. The three principals will have monthly meetings to go over the results of the previous month vis-à-vis the business plan and discuss other issues. The 25% share will entitled her to a presumptive bonus of 25% of the profits after employee bonuses and SARSEP contributions. Denise will give up her commissions.
Denise will be given a budget of $125,000 for fiscal 1999. She will have six objectives:
Do what it takes to bring our staff up to strength.
Work with Doug to come up with a profitable and sustainable business plan for current products: fee schedules for programming and support, etc. The deadline for this is April 1, 1999.
Come up with a concrete plan for TSI’s next software (or whatever) product. The plan should include recommendations about whether it should be done inside of TSI-AdDept or in another milieu. The deadline for this is September 1, 1999. TSI will pay for necessary travel. Mike has several frequent flier round-trips to use.
Come up with suggestions to ease tension and make work fun for everyone. This involves removing the “Wag the Dog” orientation we now have.
Implement remote dial-in support and a LAN (TSI will pay for the hardware).
Get someone AS/400 certified or figure a way around it.
Suggestion: Use part of the budget to hire Steve back in a new position. I would like to get five man-days of programming/support from the two of you, but this won’t work if there is not a firm system in place to guarantee freedom from support calls. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to work from some other location (which requires remote dial-in support).
I met privately with Denise on the following day. She was stunned by the offer and very impressed. However, she had already made a commitment to the other company. Moreover, there was another employee at the other company whose fate was somehow linked to Denise getting hired. I don’t remember the details. In any event Denise accepted my offer, I got our lawyers to make it legal, and she called the other company and Jackie. Neither was pleased.
This the first page of TSI’s revised stockholders agreement.
When I spoke with Denise, I made it clear that the monthly meetings would actually include Sue only if Sue insisted on attending, which I doubted would happen often. When we actually distributed annual bonuses, we gave Sue a minimal one and split the profits 50-50. The “concrete plan” became AxN. I do not recognize the “Wag the Dog” reference, but within a year the company moved into a new office in East Windsor with a remarkably different atmosphere (as described here). The “someone” who became AS/400-certified9 was myself (as described here). Denise did not hire Steve Shaw back. Instead she hired Brian Rollet, who was something of a disappointment to her.
Denise and I worked together amicably and productively for another sixteen years. If she had not agreed to my plan, those years would have been been much less pleasant for me. I don’t know if I could have achieved half of what we accomplished together.
1. Much more about Doug Pease can be read here and in many of the blog entries about clients that he persuaded to purchase AdDept in the nineties.
2. TSI’s involvement with the May Company at the corporate level is posted here.
3. TSI’s dealings with Tandy Corporation are detailed here.
4. In the nineties Proffitt’s Inc. purchased all of those chains and turned them into divisions. After it purchased Saks Fifth Avenue, which already used AdDept, it changed its name to Saks Inc. TSI’s relationship with this company is described here. Separate blogs describe the individual divisions.
5. In 2021 this shuttle is no longer in operation. The only commercial flights from STC are on Allegiant Airlines. There are only two potential destinations—Fort Meyers/Punta Gorda and Phoenix/Mesa. Residents who want to fly anywhere else must somehow get to Minneapolis. Northwest Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 2005 and was acquired by Delta in 2008.
6. You can listen to the number 1 single on the Billboard chart for all of 1961 here.
7. Denise asked for this allowance when her son was young. It gave her time to get him off to school or wherever else he was headed. She also had a fairly long drive to Enfield and even longer to East Windsor. She often stayed late.
8. When TSI incorporated in 1994, Sue was given 45 percent of the stock, and I got 55 percent. The revised agreement left me with 40, Sue with 35, and Denise with 25.
9. IBM had implemented a new requirement for business partners. Not only did the software need to be certified, but also someone at each company must be certified by passing a test that was sales-oriented and a test that was more technical. I took both of these tests, as is described here.
When we were still living in Detroit, Sue Comparetto founded TSI Tailored Systems as sole proprietor. I helped her occasionally in the early days, but for the most part she did it alone. She never had any employees or, as far as I know, a business plan. She inherited a handful of accounts from her former employer. At first she had an office in Highland Park, a small and dangerous city surrounded by Detroit. Then, when TSI somehow obtained an IBM 5120 computer, she set up shop in the spare room in our house in Detroit.
Having the computer in Detroit allowed me to learn BASIC. Having access to the programs and listings from AIS, the company that wrote most of the software that Sue supported, allowed me to learn how business programs could be structured. We were self-taught. I had taken exactly one college-level programming class at Michigan in 19661; Sue had none. Neither of us had ever taken an accounting or marketing class. In fact, neither of us had ever even sold or helped market anything.
The partnership’s logo as it appeared on the first set of ring binders.
When we moved back to Connecticut, Sue registered TSI as a partnership. We worked together, but we never really agreed on who was responsible for what. I considered myself much better at programming than Sue was. I therefore expected to do the bulk of the coding (including software for TSI to use) and for her to handle nearly everything else. The way I thought of this was: she does the phone stuff; I do the computer stuff.
The first additional task that I felt obliged to take over was marketing. In Detroit Sue had never needed to find new clients. She was given a bunch of them, and she hoped that IBM would provide her with additional leads. When we moved back to Connecticut, however, we lost the ties with the Detroit IBM office, and it was difficult to make new arrangements. We had only a few clients and lousy credentials.
I copied company names and addresses from the Yellow Pages.
We scrambled to get a few custom programming jobs. I did nearly all the design, coding, implementation, and training. I pulled together a mailing list from phone books at the library and wrote letters to businesses that I thought might be interested in systems designed for our clients. We never made a lot of money this way, but it did generate some business. Eventually, IBM also gave us some leads.
We hired a receptionist/bookkeeper, Debbie Priola, and a programmer, Denise Bessette. The former freed up time for Sue almost immediately. The latter consumed quite a bit of my time for a couple of months, but eventually she helped a lot. Unfortunately, she decided to return to college and cut back on her hours at TSI. More details about the early years of TSI can be read here.
Enjoyable but frustrating.
Both Sue and I found most of the decade of the eighties to be enjoyable but frustrating. The programming was fun and very challenging. Almost all of TSI’s customers appreciated our approach. However, we never came up with a good way of monetizing our efforts. The ad agency system, GrandAd, did better than the “anything for a buck” approach that we had been forced to use in the beginning. However, our market was effectively limited to agencies that were within driving distance and were too large for a PC system. In that reduced market, it was difficult to make enough sales to get by. Eventually there were so few reasonable prospects remaining that a change in strategy was essential.
I was convinced that our future lay in selling AdDept to large retail advertisers across the country. There was no real competition, and there seemed to be a good number of prospects.
What about “sell”?
I don’t think that Sue agreed with this change in focus. She had always favored local businesses over large corporations when purchasing something, and I am pretty sure that she also preferred dealing with smaller businesses over dealing with corporate executives. The fact that both of our first two AdDept clients declared bankruptcy and left us with tens of thousands of dollars of noncollectable invoices reinforced her attitude.
Sue had always been a night person. I was the opposite. I always was out of bed by 5AM or earlier. I usually became very sleepy around 9:30PM. I then took a shower and read a few pages of a book in bed. I was almost always asleep within a minute or two of turning off the lights. I stuck to this routine for decades, and I still do in 2021.
At some point in the eighties Sue developed a sleeping problem. She liked to watch late-night television, but she almost always dozed off in her chair. She slept very fitfully, waking up with a start and then falling back asleep. This went on for a long time—months, maybe years. Finally she went to a doctor. He prescribed a sleep study. It was not a surprise that it confirmed that she had sleep apnea. For reasons that I have never understood Sue was reluctant to purchase and then use the sleep machine. The models sold in those days were big, expensive, and ungainly. Even so, breathing well while sleeping is critical to good health.
I suspect strongly that this long period in which she was not getting enough oxygen when she slept impaired her performance at work and elsewhere. She regularly came in to the office late—very late. She was late for appointments. She missed appointments all together. The books were never closed on time. She repeatedly put off providing the accountant with tax information, even though the company’s operation was not a bit complicated. There were many other issues, but the worst thing, from my perspective, was that she made employees call the people with whom she had appointments in order to make excuses for her.
To the best of my knowledge none of the people whom I listed relapsed even once.
In 1987 or 1988 Sue gave up smoking. At almost exactly the same time, Denise did, too. So did Patti Corcoran, Sue’s best friend, and, halfway across the country, my dad. This was like a dream come true for me. I had never taken a puff, but for years I had worked in smoky offices and had taken Excedrin for headaches. When TSI’s office was declared smoke-free, my headaches went away forthwith, and they never returned.
Sue, in contrast, had a very difficult time quitting. She put on quite a bit of weight, which amplified the sleep apnea problem. She was also more irritable at work and at home.
I must mention one other factor: Sue never throws anything away. Okay, if it has mold on it, or it is starting to stink, she will discard it. Otherwise she stuffs things for which she has no immediate use in bags or boxes.
When I first met Sue, she was renting one room in the basement of someone’s house. It was not cluttered at all. She seemed to have no possessions except a water bed, a record player, and a few albums. By the early nineties we had a house of our own with two rooms that had no assigned function, a garage, an attic, and a full basement. All of them soon became full of junk. Both of our cars had to park outside because the garage was wall-to-wall miscellany.
Fire hydrants!
Junk.
Really old junk.
Sue is not the only hoarder in her family. These photos were taken in the lot behind the Slanetz Corp. office.
TSI’s headquarters in Enfield was nearly as bad. Sue’s very large office was the worst. Strewn about were boxes and paper sacks full of correspondence and memorabilia. Her desk was always completely covered, and post-it notes were everywhere.
In the rest of the office stood several file cabinets. Of course, every business must retain records, and one never knew when the company might get audited. It was also critically important to maintain good records about contacts with clients and prospects, and our business, in particular, needed up-to-date listings of programs, which we had by the thousands. So, we had a lot of important paperwork.
No more mainframe announcements, please.
However, in TSI’s office could be found many other things, which by any measure were totally useless. One day I undertook to throw away the announcements that we constantly received from IBM about its products. These documents formed a stack about four feet high. 90 percent of these missives were about mainframe products. There was absolutely no chance that we would ever work with any of these machines. Even the remaining ones (all of which I intended to keep) were seldom of any value because the information might have been contradicted by a subsequent notice.
Sue asked me what I was doing, and I told her. She immediately got very upset and even started to cry. She just could not stand for anyone to make the decision to discard anything that she considered hers. I realized at that moment this was a reflection of a very serious problem. I put all the notices back in the file cabinet.2
1994 was a good year for J2P2, too.
1994: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
The business was finally taking off. Our new salesman, Doug Pease, was demonstrating that he was ideal for the job. The nationwide retail recession had ended. The retail conglomerates with money (or credit) were gobbling up smaller chains, and in most cases this worked to our advantage. We were approaching a position in which we need not ever worry about competition. Most of us were working very hard, but we were getting new clients, and it was exciting.
The problem was Sue. She was hardly involved in any of this at all. Her behavior was becoming really unprofessional. Doug complained about her often. She kept hiring assistants, and they kept quitting. I could not find out where we stood financially because our books were so out of date.
On a couple of occasions I was stretched so thin that I asked Sue to take trips to clients for me. I did not think that technical expertise would be involved. I just needed someone to find out what the users needed. The first one was to Macy’s East in New York. Sue never told me what happened, but the people at Macy’s told me years later that they had made voodoo dolls representing her and stuck pins in them.
The other trip was to Foley’s in Houston. Sue flew all the way there and then realized that she had brought no cash. Her credit cards had all been canceled by the issuers. Fortunately, she had a checkbook, and Beverly Ingraham, the Advertising Director at Foley’s, cashed a check for her.
In May of 1994 Sue and I took a very important road trip to Pittsburgh. We met with Blattner/Brunner, an ad agency (described here), and Kaufmann’s, a chain of department stores (described here). Both of these sessions went quite well. When we returned to Enfield, I was required to spend a lot of time working on the proposal for Kaufmann’s. It was the most complicated and difficult one that I had ever done, and if I did not do a good job of analyzing and estimating the difficulty of each element, we could suffer for this for years.
So, I asked Sue to follow up on Blattner/Brunner while I was working on Kaufmann’s. Sue had been there for the session in Pittsburgh. There was no one else I could turn to. She completely fumbled the ball. I was quite angry, but I knew that it would do no good to nag her about it.
On the other hand, I appreciated the fact that she was the founder of the company. These opportunities never would have happened if she had not started the ball rolling back in Detroit.
The day finally came when I just could not take it any more. I told her to go home and not to come in to work any more. There was no argument and no tears. She told me that I was making a big mistake and just left.
No one else thought that it was a mistake.
Within a day or so I approached Sue with the following arrangement: TSI Tailored Systems Inc. would be registered as a Chapter C corporation.
I would be president and have 55 percent of the stock, and Sue would would be treasurer with 45 percent. We would hire a new accountant to handle the corporation, and the bookkeeper would report to me. It would be my responsibility to make sure that the books were closed on time, and the taxes were paid on time. I would also do our personal taxes. We would fund the corporation with the difference between our accounts receivable and our accounts payable. If it needed cash (as it did a few times), I would loan as much as necessary to the corporation at a reasonable interest rate.
Sue was not happy about it, but she agreed to this. She did not even argue about the salary amounts that I set.
Amazon sells these.
Our new accountant’s name was Sal Rossitto2. He guided us through the transition. He advised us to set up an Limited Liability Company3, but I insisted on a true corporate entity that issued stock to its owners.
Setting up the new corporation was fairly straightforward. We had to open a new bank account. I found it to be a fairly simple matter to close the books every month within a day or two of the end of the month. We also set up a 401K with matching funds, a profit-sharing plan, and a good health and disability insurance plan from Anthem. None of this was difficult.
I am not sure who took over handling of the payroll after Sue left. TSI eventually hired Paychex to do it. Denise collected the time cards from the employees and submitted the requisite forms to Paychex.
Our accountants loved our Nov. fiscal year. They could work on our taxes in a less busy season.
I made one very good decision. We set our fiscal year to run from December 1 through November 30. We paid bonuses and made contributions in November. This gave all the employees the entire month of December to spend or save for tax purposes.
Dissolving TSI was a much more complicated task. Sue and Sal met often over the course of several months to unravel issues in the partnership’s books. I remember, among other things, some kind of ugly situation with regard to sales tax in California regarding the way that the installation at Gottschalks occurred. At the end of this process Sal confided to me that he now understood why I wanted to set up a real corporation.
The new logo as it appeared on invoices and letterhead.
We also ordered new letterhead. Ken Owen worked with me on the logo. I eliminated the stripes and the lean of TSI. The color around the TSI was pure blue. The colors to the left of that block went from a very light blue gradually darker almost to pure blue. The effect worked better on the computer screen than it did when printed.
For me the most important thing was to reestablish blue as the company’s color. It started with a light blue as shown at the top of the page, but over the years it had somehow evolved into something that was more green than blue. I hated it.
The next few years were boom years for TSI. I worked my tail off, and my travel schedule was a killer. I didn’t care. We had finally turned the corner, and the future looked very bright.
Life at home, however, was very difficult. Sue was obviously unhappy. She probably thought that I intended to dump her. I still loved her; I just did not want to work with her any more. I was quite sure that the company would do better without her.
displayed no interest in finding a job. This surprised me. She had had quite a few jobs since I met her. She really liked a few of them. She could summon up a great deal of enthusiasm about new projects, and she loved meeting new people. I could think of several occupations that she would fit very well.
Instead, she leased some space in an old office building in a questionable part of downtown Springfield, MA. She then fixed it up and rented it out to dance teachers who needed a place to give lessons. I don’t know how much of our money she lost on this venture. I am not sure that she even kept records of it. She certainly didn’t ask my opinion about it.
On weekends we still drove to Wethersfield to visit our old friends, the Corcorans, regularly. That helped quite a bit.
At one point Sue awarded herself a vacation. She drove to New Orleans to see a guy that she knew from high school who was into social dancing. She stopped at some other places along the way. I never asked her about what happened on this trip. When she returned she did not offer any details.
Eventually things got a little better. After the trip to Hawaii (described here) in December 1995 the situation became more tolerable for both of. At least we had some money to spend and save for the first time ever in our relationship.
1. The course that I took as a freshman at U-M taught a programming language that was unknown outside of Ann Arbor. It was called MAD, which stood for Michigan Algorithm Decoder. We wrote our programs on 80-column punch cards.
2. Perhaps you are wondering why I gave in without an argument. It was because I recognized quite early in our relationship that Sue was expert at playing the “Why don’t you …? Yes, but …” game described by Eric Berne in his best-selling book Games People Play. A pretty good write-up of the “game” is posted here. This is also the reason that I did not press her about the sleep apnea.
2. Sal Rossitto died in 2002. His obituary is here.
3. The purpose of an LLC is to protect the “members” from being personally responsible for debts and obligations undertaken by the company, but it is not as completely separated as a true corporation.
In the mid-eighties we finally took two real vacations, one in 1985 and one in 1986. We had such a good time on the first one that we tried to replicate the experience the next year, but, of course, it turned out to be rather different.
Sue and I discovered that we could spend a week in February cruising the Caribbean for only about $1,000. The price included air fare from Bradley to Miami. Curt Hussey had advised me that cruises were the best kind of vacations. You could do as much or as little as you wanted, and there was no hassle at all.
This plan suited me. I have always said that the only good thing about February is that it is short. We made reservations for a seven-day cruise on the Song of Norway, a ship of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL), in the western Caribbean. It would start and end in Miami.
By the end of 1984 the business seemed to be doing a little better. Hiring Denise Bessette and Kate Behart had worked out well, and we actually had a little money in the bank. We notified all of the clients that we would be gone for a week. We would try to stay in touch, but it might be difficult on some days.
We did no research at all for either of these cruises. We were simply looking for warmth, pleasure, and relaxation. There was nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but on subsequent long trips I totally changed my mind about the objectives of traveling to distant locations.
Who needs these?
Neither Sue nor I had a credit card. I don’t think that we would have brought hundreds of dollars in cash. We might have bought some travelers’ checks.
It is hard for me to believe in retrospect, but at the time we had no pets! So, all we needed to arrange was transportation to and from the airport. Perhaps one of the employees drove us to the airport, and one of Sue’s sisters picked us up. We might have taken a cab. Maybe we left one of the cars at one of the parking lots that surrounded the airport. Some offered weekly rates.
It was, of course, very cold when our plane took flight from Bradley in the morning and warm when we arrived in Miami around noon. However, the differential was not as great as the time that Bill Davey and I flew there from Detroit in 1970, as described here.
I remember that we were met at the airport by a representative from RCCL. I think that they provided transportation to the port. My recollection is that we were allowed to board pretty much immediately.
A photo of the Song of Norway in 1985.
The cruise itself got off to a rocky start. Somehow our luggage got misplaced. The staff told us that they would get it for us, but we would need to do without until the next day. This was a problem because the first night’s supper, which had open seating, was the only occasion of the entire trip that was designated as somewhat formal. Everyone else was dressed up. As it turned out, our attire was a pretty good ice-breaker. Everyone was sympathetic when they heard about our problem.
Fortunately, that was our last real problem. The rest of the cruise was absolutely delightful.
Sue told me that she recalled that there were only 750 passengers, but the ship’s passenger capacity then1 was actually 1,196. There may have been some empty cabins, but I do not remember a lot of empty tables at dinner.
We did not have our luggage that first night, but our employees (or maybe it was Tom and Patti Corcoran), ordered a bottle of champagne for our cabin. I think that RCCL gave us a fruit basket, too.
We got the cheapest cabin available. It had no view, twin beds that were pushed together, a small bathroom, and a desk. It was about as small as could be imagined. I did not intend to spend much time there. Sue complained about the size of the shower, but I found everything satisfactory. She also objected to the cabin steward going through her luggage every afternoon to find something sexy to lay out on her bed. My recollection is that nearly all of the cabin stewards were Filipinos.
The ship seemed gigantic to us, totally oblivious to the puny waves below us. By twenty-first century cruising standards, however, it was a canoe.
The ship each issued each passenger a credit-card sized piece of plastic. This card served as an identity document in getting on and off the ship and as the means of payment for anything on the ship. It was possible to avoid most expenses, but even a penny-pincher like me ended up spending hundreds of dollars on excursions and tips.
Although we eventually sailed as far west at the Yucatan Peninsula, the ship stayed on Eastern Standard Time throughout the cruise.
The ship’s first stop was at a private island owned by RCCL, now called CocoCay2, where the staff put on a picnic lunch. There were a few other activities in the afternoon as well, but there was nothing very elaborate. There were plenty of picnic tables, some volleyball courts, and some trails. Basically, it was just a place to relax for a few hours and get to know a few of our fellow cruisers. I took a little hike, but there was nothing much to see.
Back on the ship there were two seatings for supper: 6:00 and 8:00. I would have much preferred to eat at six, but Sue protested that she needed to get cleaned up and dressed, and she has never liked being rushed. So we ate at the second seating. The down side was that the after-supper entertainment was too late for a morning person like myself.
We ate at the same table every evening. Some tables were larger, but ours had only four chairs. Our dining companions were a couple from Wisconsin who were about our age. The same waiter served our table every evening. Ours was from Greece. I forget his name, but all four of us rapidly became very enamored with him. The menu changed every night. There were three or four choices for the entrée. The selection was good, the quality was good, and the quantities were unlimited.
Needless to say, the couple from Wisconsin were sheepshead enthusiasts. They were excited to hear that we had played the game, an event that is described here. We agreed to play with them as well if they explained ALL the rules to us. They listed them in a couple of minutes. I protested that I was certain that there were additional rules. They insisted that it was a simple game.
This time we got to the third or fourth hand before the first undisclosed rule made its appearance. Others soon followed. I am convinced that all people from Wisconsin are given at birth two sets of rules, one that they disclose to foreigners and one to mention only when they apply.
We were surprised that there was so much to do on the ship. In the movies there only seemed to be four activities on cruise ships: dancing, shuffleboard, sitting on deck chairs, and gazing at the stars in formal attire. On most days I tried to run on the Promenade Deck, but it was very boring. A lap was only about one tenth of a mile. Also, you had to dodge strolling passengers and be on the alert for slippery spots.
I had no interest in shopping in any of the ship’s stores or losing money in the on-board casino. I spent as much time as possible in the sun by the swimming pool drinking free Diet Cokes or iced teas.
Our route to Jamaica took us between Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Cuba. In fact, Cuba was visible on the starboard (or as we say in Kansas, “right”) side of the ship for most of the first part of the cruise and on the port side on the return voyage.
I don’t remember any high-rises in Ocho Rios in 1985. Unless you were looking for weed, the town was very dull.
The second stop was at Ocho Rios on the south side of Jamaica. West of the harbor was a large brick-red wooden factory that produced aluminum, which the locals pronounced with an extra syllable as the British do, from locally mined bauxite.
I don’t think that the water was flowing this fast when we were there. This looks dangerous.
Several excursions were offered. I wanted to climb the rocks at Dunn’s River Falls. I was surprised that Sue was willing to try this. She never has felt comfortable around open water. The rocks were as slippery as they looked. The suggested footwear was sneakers with no socks.
Our guide’s name for the excursion was named Philippe. His reply to almost any statement or question was, “No problem.” A group of us were driven by van from the harbor to the falls. We stopped once or twice. Philippe told us to get out and “take your lovely shots.” I did not have a camera, but I was happy to stretch my legs.
When we reached the falls, we formed a single-file line and held our neighbor’s hand tightly. Several people were to scared to try the ascent, but even Sue managed to get all the way to the top.
Sue took several photos of this and our other stops, but I have not been able to locate them.
The excursion took a few hours. After lunch Sue and I walked into town. I still had my beard and could have easily been mistaken for Tommy Chong’s younger brother. At least three times I was approached by people who offered to sell me marijuana. There were a lot of souvenirs on sale there. I might have bought a postcard or two, but no souvenirs.
I think that we took a second excursion in the afternoon, but this may have been in 1986. In any case we went green-water rafting on Martha Brae (MAR tuh BREE), a very slow moving stream. Our guide for this adventure was named Nigel.
The rafts were made of bamboo. They had seats toward the back for the passengers, but the “captain” stood in the front and directed the raft with a long pole. According to Sue our captain’s name was Tony.
The experience was very relaxing, but I don’t think that very many people would do it twice. On the road from Marta Brae to the harbor our guide pointed out a large dwelling by the sea. The house had belonged to Arthur Ashe, the famous tennis player who died in 1980. At least that is the way that I remember it. I could find no support for this on the Internet, but he had been dead for four decades when I googled it.
Most of the suppers had themes—Italian, French, Mexican, etc. Every meal was tasty, filling, and fun. The waiters and the other staff members dressed for the occasions. There was also music, and the waiters marched around and waved to the people at their tables. It was very festive, and, in my opinion they managed to make it fun without too much kitsch.
The third stop on the cruise was in George Town on Grand Cayman. Unlike most other islands in the Caribbean the Caymans are NOT mountainous or even somewhat hilly. They did not appear on the horizon until the ship was almost there.
The islands have an interesting history. They were discovered by Christopher Columbus on his third voyage. No evidence of an indigenous population has been discovered. For years the islands served as a haven for pirates. They have been a British territory since the middle of the eighteenth century. They have never had income, wealth, or capital gains taxes. We heard the story that the British king issued a decree that England would never tax them because he was grateful to the colonists for saving one of his family members.3 We did not learn about the slavery. When it was finally abolished in 1833, 950 Black people were enslaved by 115 white families.
In the eighties the Caymans had not yet earned renown as a place to hide dodgy funds. We were surprised to learn that the country had more teletype machines per capita than anywhere else on earth. In fact, even by then there were only two sources of income there—tourism and tax evasion.
The contrast between Ocho Rios and George Town was striking. Jamaica seemed like a very slow and backward place that had a few interesting attractions. The people all seemed devoted to selling knickknacks of no utility. Nothing had a fixed price. There were only a few stores. Transactions generally took place on the street.
George Town, on the other hand, was a clean and modern town. No one tried to sell anything on the street. I did not feel as if I had to keep my hand on my wallet.
There was not much to do in town if you were not interested in buying duty-free jewelry. I think that a snorkeling excursion was available, but it did not interest me that much. I probably would have enjoyed it, but I knew that when I left the water I would be shivering for a half hour or so.
If there is a ship in port, 7 Mile Beach is never this empty.
The spectacular beach by George Town is seven miles long. The hotels jealously protected their portions. RCCL had an agreement with one hotel that its passengers could hang around at the beach. That was good enough for me. After a once-around in the town, I parked myself on a towel on the beach and read a book.
Sue has always been averse to both sun and heat. She spent most of her time in Grand Cayman nosing around the shops.
The ship made two stops in Mexico. The first was at Playa del Carmen, which is south of Cancun. About half of the passengers departed from the ship in Playa. Of those most went up the coast to the resort town of Cancun. We joined the group that had signed up for the excursion to Tulum, an ancient Mayan city located about fifty miles to the south.
We had been warned by the cruise directors about the street vendors in Playa del Carmen. As soon as we set foot on land we were all set upon by people selling stuff, mostly extremely low-grade silver jewelry. It was a little difficult even to make it to our buses.
I have a few pretty clear memories of Playa Del Carmen. It seemed like a very poor town to me. Very skinny dogs roamed the streets. No one from our ship considered stepping into one of the stores. Based on the photos that I have seen on the Internet, I would guess that things have improved there at least a little.
The bus ride to Tulum was hot and boring. I think that they served Mexican Coke on the bus. The land was perfectly flat, and there were almost no towns at all. There appeared to be lots of trees, but none grew very tall. Only a few locals could be seen, and they all seemed destitute or nearly so. We saw very little traffic.
I don’t remember the town of Tulum at all. Apparently it has become a tourist destination in the intervening years. It certainly was not on anyone’s bucket list in 1985.
I remember the area just outside of the ruins. Flimsy booths were set up so that some of the local people of Mayan descent could sell things. I seem to remember that the main thing that they sold was cloth. There were no souvenirs.
The ruins area was, I am pretty certain, surrounded by stone walls. On the other side of the walls was jungle, not like in the Tarzan movies, but a sea of trees, none more than twenty feet high. On one side from the top of the wall you could see the sea and a lovely beach, but there was a cliff between the wall and the sea. Waves were smashing against the rocks. The beach did not look inviting that day.
We did not have a guided tour. We were told to meet back up at a particular time.
The big attraction was the temple in the middle. I climbed all the way up to the top and looked around. It was pretty impressive. We had already been told about the carvings of the “descending gods” that festooned the temple and some of the other buildings. Some people have taken this as an indication that the Mayans had been visited by extraterrestrials, who created these stone cities for them.
The ruins area was not very crowded. Almost everyone there was from our ship. That has no doubt changed in the intervening years.
From Tulum we drove up the coast to Xel-Há4 (pronounced shell-hah), which is a beautiful lagoon. I think that we ate lunch there. I don’t remember much about this place, but it had some facilities.
After lunch most people took a quick dip in the lagoon’s waters. I don’t remember if I did or not. I doubt it.
The bus then returned us to Playa del Carmen, where we took the ferry to the island of Cozumel. By that time it was the middle of the afternoon, and it was extremely hot. In those days, however, I could stand just about any amount of heat. I decided to walk by myself into the town of San Miguel, a resort town that was a mile or more from the harbor. Sue shopped at little stores on the pier.
There was not much to see in San Miguel. A goodly number of the ship’s passengers were enjoying drinks in a bar there.
I was happy that I made the journey. I got a little exercise, and I saw dozens of iguanas of all sizes. I stopped to watch them several times. Some were large enough that if they had made aggressive moves I would have been frightened. They mostly just sat on rocks, and they were all grey. Nevertheless, I felt the pure sense of joy that I have always seemed to feel whenever I unexpectedly encountered wild animals in their native habitats.
The last leg of the cruise was a long day at sea sailing past Cuba back to Miami. I am pretty sure that it took two nights and one day.
One of the highlights of the trip for me occurred on that last day. The cruise directors had announced that if anyone had purchased something at one of the stops and could no longer remember why they did so, he/she should bring the “white elephant” to the staff. They planned to hold an auction to try to regain something for the disgruntled purchaser. The auctioneer was very talented. He invented provenances and romantic attributes for each item, no matter how junky. Most of them were sold, a few at a profit.
Here are some other things that I remember from the 1985 cruise:
I went with Sue to a line-dancing class. She participated. Of course they taught “Achy Breaky Heart”, but there were not enough cowboy hats to go around. I watched for as long as I could stand it.
There was a midnight buffet every night. Since most passengers gorged themselves at all three meals and got little exercise on this cruise, I was surprised how popular this was.
The Viking Crown Lounge was one of the highest points on the ship. It was pretty much de rigeur to visit it, have a drink, and gaze at the horizon. We did, but only once.
There were very few children on the cruise. The cruise staff formed them into a club and arranged activities for them. For the most part the kids were invisible.
The cruise staff also organized activities and games at poolside almost all day long. I found them annoying. I wanted to read. Nevertheless, I was embarrassed that they stumped me when they asked who sang the hit song, “Winchester Cathedral”. It was the New Vaudeville Band. I should have remembered it. It was released in late 1966, when I was at Allen Rumsey House. If, God forbid, it had been on our juke box, I probably would have known it. I did not listen to Top 40 music in Ann Arbor.
A small newsletter was pushed under the door every day.
I think that our room had a TV. After we left Miami it showed only short films about RCCL, the ship, or ports of call.
The cruise staff conducted an orientation class about each of port of call. I went to most of them. They were not well attended. The guy giving the one on Ocho Rios emphasized that the town was a good place to purchase some straw if you needed any.
Sue went to some of the shows at night. She has always loved live entertainment of almost any stripe. I might have gone once.
Sue and I both had a great time. The trip itself was both relaxing and entertaining. I liked the fact that I had absolutely no responsibilities. Sue liked being able to set her own pace. She probably would have preferred cooler weather, but it does not really ever get cool in the tropics.
The timing was perfect. When we left, we were both grouchy with cabin fever. When we returned, it was almost time for Sue’s birthday and, shortly thereafter, spring. We promptly called the travel agent—another common occupation that has almost disappeared in the intervening decades—to go on essentially the same cruise in the following year.
The Viking Crown Lounge at night.
The second cruise was similar, but not identical. We flew non-stop to Miami again. We were met by the RCCL people again. They did not misplace our luggage this time. After the very first stop the schedule was almost identical.
The interior of the Viking Crown Lounge.
Over the winter two big things had happened at RCCL. The first was that the Song of Norway won all of these awards from World Ocean and Cruise Liner Society: Best Food, Best Crew, Best Housekeeping Service, Best Dining Room Service, Best Cruise Staff, Best Ship Activities, Best Shore Excursions, Best Overall, and Ship of the Year. They had sweatshirts made that bragged about that last one. Travel Holiday Magazine also named RCCL the world’s best cruise line.
The other big development was the purchase by RCCL of an isolated peninsula on the north side of Haiti5. The name was Labadie, but the company changed it slightly to Labadee. Our ship did not go to CocoCay in 1986. On the first day of our second cruise, the Song of Norway became, I think, the first cruise ship to visit Labadee.
Before we landed the ship was boarded by heavily armed Haitian soldiers. I don’t know what their function was, but they were more than a little scary. As far as I know, however, they did not interfere with any of the planned activities.
Tthe local citizens apparently knew that we were coming. A dozen or so rowboats surrounded us as we landed. Each contained two or three of the local people. They were trying to sell their art work. Their boats do not look at all seaworthy. These people were just doing what they could to survive a very bad situation.
None of that development was there in 1986. A clearing for a picnic and volleyball had been established, nothing more. The real world was on the other side of those mountains.
The time on shore was pleasant enough. There was not much to do.6 There might have been some hiking paths, but most people dared not venture too far from the picnic area.
Our experience here was remarkably similar to the one on CocoCay a year earlier. In fact it is difficult for Sue and me to distinguish between the two occasions.
We met our companions for supper after we returned to the ship and cleaned up. They were a couple from Long Island. Sue remembers that he owned a chain of garages there. I only remember that he ordered seconds of the main course at both meals that we ate with them. After that they arranged to join the first seating, and we ate by ourselves during the remainder of the cruise. I can’t say that we missed their company.
It was definitely never this bad.
The seas were a little high the night after we left Labadee. Many passengers got seasick. Sue felt a little woozy, but she did not get sick. I wasn’t bothered at all, but walking in the hallways was something of a challenge. The creaking sound that occurred whenever the ship rocked was rather spooky. By morning it was smooth sailing for the remainder of the cruise.
Sue and I decided to do something different in Jamaica this time. We signed up for a trip up in the hills to an old “estate”. I did not remember the name of it. Several of these places still offer tours, including Brimmer Hall, which is the only one that sounded at all familiar. I remember that it was a long drive through very hilly country. This was the first time that it occurred to me that islands in the middle of deep seas almost have to be mountainous.
Sky Aquarius: “We should love animals, not eat them, Jim.”
They definitely served us lunch in the plantation house. One of the offerings was goat, and I was courageous enough to try it. I would not say that it was delicious, but at least I did not get sick.
It was a worthwhile excursion if only for the fact that it got me to thinking about the geography, history, and sociology of Jamaica. The truth is that in the eighties I would never have thought of a vacation as a time to learn about other countries. I was just charging my batteries.
I knew that Jamaica had been a British colony. I did not know that in 1838 England abolished slavery, but there was never anything like reconstruction and no distribution of assets. It was more a case of “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”
I don’t remember what we did in Grand Cayman. We might have taken an excursion. I seem to remember something about turtles.
I did not think much about Grand Cayman’s sociology either. I don’t remember seeing many Black people, certainly nothing like in Jamaica.
Ixnay on the imbingclay.
The one excursion that we repeated was the one that featured Tulum and Xel-Há. We were a little disappointed. The area of the Tulum ruins was considerably more crowded that it had been the previous year. Also, visitors were no longer allowed to climb or walk on any of the ruins. I suppose that it is only reasonable to take every effort to preserve them for posterity, but it was still disappointing.
I remember a few other things about the 1986 cruise.
We did not fall in love with our waiter this time. He was nice enough, but I don’t even remember his home country. The waiters (I don’t remember even one waitress or cabin stewardess on either cruise) were from all over the world.
I have few memories of the other passengers. I do remember one fellow with whom we talked a few times. His wife never left the ship. She shopped for jewelry in the ship’s store.
On both trips the official photographer took lots of photos of us. They posted them in one of the public areas of the ship. The only way to get them to remove your photo was to buy it. We bought a couple on the first cruise, but not on the second.
The only obnoxious part of the cruise was the semi-mandatory tipping. The maître d’ and the sommelier both appeared at our table for the first and only time at the last supper before it was tip time.
We could not afford to go on vacation in either 1987 or 1988, but in 1989 …
1 .In 1977 RCCL took the Song of Norway out of service, cut it in two, and added a large new piece in the middle. This feat increased the ship’s passenger capacity by 40 percent. The ship’s fuel consumption was only slightly increased, and the seaworthiness was not affected at all. The ship was sold in 1996 to another cruise line. Over the next few decades she changed hands and names several times before being sold for scrap in 2013.
2. RCCL subsequently invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this island and turned much of it into a gigantic water park for its customers. It is now officially called “Perfect Day at CocoCay”, which makes me think that the company pronounces the last syllable like the letter “K” rather than like the word “key”. An aerial view is shown at the right.
3. Wikipedia says that this story is not true. The evidence cited is here.
4. The area that we visited is now called Xel-Há Park. It still has the lagoon, but it also offers a water park, a buffet, a zip line, and other diversions. The website is here.
5. Haiti was in the middle of a coup. The ruler, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, had fled to France on a plane supplied by the U.S. on February 7. He had named a commission to govern in his absence.
6. In the twenty-first century there are plenty of activities available on Labadee. A list of them is in an article posted here.
