2023 ViTNO Writer’s Contest – Entry #4 – “When My Father Took Me to Night Class”

Author: Anthony Albert
Date: June 30th, 2023
Category: Non-technical

In the summer of 1982, my father signed up for a night course at the local high school.  He wanted to learn about computers and maybe use one to help the family business out – specifically, with accounting software.  This is because my grandfather ran the family farm the old fashioned way – he “just remembered” most of the bills due and bills owed, and would hand-write bills out to collect or checks to pay his debts.

We lived in a small town with one major industry, a paper mill, which was by far the biggest single employer in town, and which brought in a lot of money to the town, so our school was relatively well off, and benefited from regular donations from the paper mill.  In this case, the high school received a half-dozen brand-new TRS-80 Model III computers.

I had enjoyed video games in the arcades and on home consoles, but when my father needed to do homework, the only way he could do it was on the school computers.  So he brought myself (age 11 or 12) and my sister (age 10) to the high school computer room, and with a little help from the attendant teacher, we were set up to play computer games on one of the two TRS-80 Model I computers that the school had acquired the previous year.   We played some games, among them Scarfman ( a Pac-Man clone ) and Scott Adams’ Original Adventure.  And then the teacher helped us type in some small games in BASIC from various magazines – nothing complex, just “guess the number” type games – and I was hooked for life.

Now I’ve been in the computer business in one role or another for forty years, and I tell people that it all started that night when I fell in love with a TRS-80, the night my father went to do his homework for his night class at the high school.

Anthony Albert

With really big thanks to that teacher, my father, and my grandfather, who did buy a TRS-80, eventually, and let me use it a lot.  R.I.P. all of you, knowing that you helped me find myself, a hobby, and a career.