The Hollow Men - Episode 29
The year 1984 goes by in a flash: Drew completes his Bachelor's degree, attends a few graduations, starts graduate school and contemplates imitating John Steinbeck in search of America.
Last week in Episode 28 the year 1983 draws to a close as Drew completes his first semester at UT, and with Sam riding shotgun, goes home for Christmas.
The Hollow Men is the second collection of not quite true tales of Texas. If you have recently subscribed and like to read things from the very beginning feel free to start with The Cold Days of Summer, the first collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Each episode of The Cold Days of Summer and The Hollow Men contains a link to the previous and next episode so you can easily move through the story line.
Things moves slow until they move fast
New Year's Day 1984 was spent with Mark, Jack and Sam watching the Texas Longhorns lose 9-10 to the Georgia Bulldogs in the Cotton Bowl. Texas was leading the game 9-3 with a little over four minutes in the game when a muffed punt gave Georgia the ball deep in Texas territory. Georgia quarterback John Lastinger ran 17 yards for a touchdown and the final score of the game. Texas wound up with an 11-1 season. The three humans had to drink a lot of beer that evening to get over that one. Sam dealt with the loss by chewing on a rawhide bone.
The spring semester went like the fall but with slightly better results. I once again took 24 hours but this time made A's in five out of 6 classes and wound up with a 3.83 GPA for the semester. I now had a total of 108 hours. I signed up for 12 hours in the summer to complete my Bachelor of Arts in Literature.
Sam and I developed a habit of taking a short morning run every day. During the week we ran before I went to school. On the weekends we would sleep in a little longer, but the first thing we did in the morning was run. She loved to run and didn't need a leash by this point. She had learned to stop when I stopped and knew when to heel, come or stay. While we ran she ran right alongside me, keeping steady with whatever pace I set. We ran through the neighborhood every morning unless it was raining (Sam didn't like to be outside in the rain) or too cold (I didn't care too much for the cold).
Turns out Sam also liked to play golf, or at least accompany me when I played golf. I first learned this by hitting chip and pitch shots in the backyard one afternoon after class. I grabbed an 8-iron, a wedge and a handful of balls and went into the backyard. Sam followed me with interest. I dropped the balls in one corner of the yard and took a few loosening swings holding both clubs. Sam watched sitting on her haunches. I set up to hit a chip shot with the 8-iron, aimed at the other corner of the yard and swung away. The ball came out low with run and bounced on down the yard. Before the ball came to a stop Sam was up and running full blast after the ball and deftly caught the ball in her mouth on a bounce. She then trotted back over to me with the ball still in her mouth. She lay down a few feet away and began to gnaw pleasingly on the golf ball. I walked over, took the golf ball from her, dropped the ball back on my pile and got ready to hit another chip shot. As soon as the ball left the club face Sam was on the run and again caught the ball in her mouth off of a bounce. She trotted back to her spot, lied down and gnawed on the golf ball. This time I let her gnaw. I wanted to see what happened when I hit another ball. She looked up for a second but didn't get up. After all, she already had a ball, what would she do with two? I hit the rest of my pile while Sam happily watched and gnawed on her golf ball. Then I went to the other end of the yard and hit pitch shots back to where I had started from. Sam watched the balls fly but she wasn't interested in them. It seemed as long as she had her own ball to gnaw she was content to the let the other balls fly. I was using Surlyn balls, a very hardy plastic. A full swing with a golf club couldn't cut a Surlyn ball so I wasn't worried about Sam tearing one up.
Over the next few days we practiced in the back yard. As long as Sam had a ball to gnaw she was content. My next step was to see how she would behave on a golf course. The Hanckock golf course didn't get much play during the week. I thought it would be nice to have Sam along for company. To be on the safe side I called the golf shop to see if they had any problem with me bringing Sam along. They didn't, so on a pleasant Thursday afternoon in March Sam and I drove to the golf course. Once there and out of the truck Sam was very interested in what was going on. She sniffed constantly, picking up all the smells you come across at a golf course. She walked in to the pro shop with me where I paid my green fees. She walked around the pro shop, checking things out and didn't find anything too out of order for her tastes. The pro watched her and said she was a good looking dog. I asked Sam to smile, she did and the pro had a good laugh, saying he had never seen anything like that before.
It was a quiet day on the course and there was no one on the first tee or on the first hole at all. After a couple of practice swings I teed a ball and hit my drive. Sam took off like a shot running after the drive. I walked after her. She ran full blast all the way down the fairway. I had hit a good long drive. She got to the ball, picked it up, turned around, saw how far she had run, saw that I was walking towards her and decided to start gnawing right where she was. Once I caught up to her I dropped another ball in the fairway, took a practice swing and hit my second shot, just short and to the left of the green. Since she had her own ball to gnaw she watched the ball fly away but didn't chase after it. I picked up my bag and started walking towards the green. Sam watched me for a moment and then trotted after me, ball in mouth. That's how the day went. I would hit a shot, we would walk after it. I would get to my shot. Sam would lie on the ground and gnaw her ball while I picked my club, set up and hit my shot. Then we would walk again. On the greens Sam would lie just off the green and gnaw her ball while I finished the hole.
After nine holes I stopped at the grill. I could never turn down a golf course grill, almost every one I've been to knows how to fix an excellent hamburger. I ordered a double patty burger, fries and a Coors. Sam followed me to my table where I opened up the burger, pulled out one patty and chopped it up for her. I put the patty pieces on a napkin and put it on the floor for her. She ate contentedly, was finished long before I was and bided her time with a few french fries I gave her. With our meal complete we cleaned off our table and headed back out to the course for another nine holes. Right off the tee was a water spigot and while I washed my hands and took a drink she bit at the water until she had her fill.
The second nine holes went like the first nine. Sam had her ball to gnaw while I played and we walked the nine together. Once we finished our 18th hole we went to our truck, climbed in and drove home. I now had a new golfing companion, someone I would play with every Thursday, weather permitting, the rest of the semester.
May of 1984 I had three graduations to attend. Two of them were at Texas Tech. Bud was graduating with his Civil Engineering degree while Lyle was graduating with his BBA in Management. The next weekend I was in Corpus Christi to attend Robert Anders' graduation. All of the Anders attended, even Rick. I sat next to Rick during the graduation ceremony and he was quiet, other than a very low volume humming. He smiled at me once or twice and even playfully punched me in the arm when Robert walked across the stage. Afterwards we all ate dinner at the restaurant Robert worked at. I could tell from how the employees treated Robert that he was well liked and respected. I spent the evening with the Anders back at their hotel until around 10:00 pm when I went back to my hotel. The next morning we all met for breakfast and by 12:00 noon I was driving back to Austin. The two weekends I was gone the Belton’s took care of Sam for me.
I graduated with my bachelor's degree in Literature in August of 1984. Mom and Dad attended the ceremony but Elizabeth, Bud and the twins stayed in Lubbock. Elizabeth was working on her English degree while Bud was working full time for the Texas Department of Transportation. Elizabeth expected to complete her degree this coming fall and sometime after that they planned to move the Tyler brood back to Odessa. While I didn't have much family at the graduation ceremony, Jack and Mark were there and I was very surprised when Jason drove in from Houston to be at the ceremony. That evening we had a good dinner at the Nighthawk restaurant and afterwards Jack, Mark, Jason and I stayed up late in the night talking over old times at my house. Sam, after enjoying my leftover chopped steak from the restaurant, gave up on our discussion a little after 11:00 and found a quiet spot to sleep the night away.
I was now a college graduate, but I did not have any firm plans for the future. I decided to go to graduate school and signed up for 12 graduate hours in the fall of 1984.
Up until this point I had hand written all of my papers, but there was a revolution going on at the University of Texas. Earlier in the decade, IBM legitimized the personal computer industry when it introduced the first generation IBM PC. In reaction, a number of companies got into the PC business, including a new company founded right on the UT campus. I first heard about PC's Limited from one of my fellow students.
“There's this kid in the dorms who builds and sells computers. He buys the individual components, then puts the pieces together and sells the computers. The computers are just as good as the IBM PC and cheaper.”
I took a look at the PC technology, found it interesting, decided to give it a try and bought a PC from PC's Limited. I learned about the operating/file system MS-DOS, and bought an early version of WordPerfect, a word processor. Once I bought a printer I started typing all of my papers. I learned to touch type on that computer, mostly by writing papers. I never took any typing lessons so I wasn't a traditional touch typist, but I did actually use all of my fingers, well, at least most of them. I also played around with programming. Being on the UT campus, I had access to the university computer labs. I decided to take some computer courses while I worked on my graduate degree.
In the fall of 1984 I completed all 12 graduate hours with A's and one introductory computer programming course. I signed up for 15 more graduate hours and another undergraduate computer course the following spring. In December I traveled to Lubbock, this time to see Elizabeth receive her second degree, a bachelor's in Education.
I stayed in Austin for Christmas, mostly because I just wasn't that interested in being in Odessa. I bought plenty of nice gifts for the twins, Elizabeth, Bud, Brutus, Mom and Dad and sent them via the U.S. Mail. Sam and I spent a very nice, quiet Christmas, save for a few hours when Billy had to show both of us every single gift he had received.
In February of 1985 Bud, Elizabeth, Mary and George moved back to Odessa. Bud had transferred to the Odessa office of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT). They bought a small house on the east side of town, almost within walking distance of the TxDOT office on loop 338.
My spring semester required a lot of work but I kept up with it all and by the middle of May 1985 I had 27 graduate hours, needing nine more, six of which would by my thesis, to complete my graduate degree in Literature, with an emphasis in American Literature of the late 1920's through the 1930's. Add to that I had learned a little about programming in FORTRAN and C.
I could have finished my Master's that summer, but I decided to take the summer off and drive around Texas with Sam. Consider this my homage to John Steinbeck's “Travels with Charley in Search of America.”
Author’s note: I have had a few people want to know how “Rick” and I set up VP Tanks and what happened to Rick. Hmm, this is “a collection of not entirely true tales of Texas.” In other words, this is fiction grounded in hopefully just enough truth that it seems real.
Because of the length of the chapter “The smiling dog,” I broke it into three parts: Episode -27 “The smiling dog,” Episode 28 -“An Odessa Christmas,” and Episode 29 - “Things move slow until they move fast.” The phrase “Things move slow until they move fast” comes from Pat Ares, a friend of mine who recently retired from Exxon Mobil.
My first job out of college was at Exxon Production Research Company in Houston, Texas (yeah, the place where the “The Cold Days of Summer” and “The Hollow Men character Jason Klein works - see, truly these are truly not quite true tales). I worked there for two years then joined IBM. I spent another four years at Exxon Mobil (2016 through early 2020) as a consultant. It was strange but encouraging (it reinforced I made the right decision to resign from there in 1983) to see how little things had changed since I had been at Exxon nearly 40 years before.
One day over lunch I mumbled about how little things had changed at Exxon and Pat’s response was “things move slow here until they move fast.” That was a very wise and elegantly succinct statement - sort of capturing the essence of system dynamics (how small but continual changes seemingly transform into large changes) in a single sentence.
Next week, in Episode 30 of The Hollow Men, Drew and Sam travel to the Texas Gulf Coast, find a land of bent trees and Drew is reminded of something Matt Johnson told him.