(Remember, in 1973 even hand held calculators were ridiculously expensive. While they had come out just a few years before, a decent scientific calculator might run $300-$400. That was over 10 % of tuition, so you had to be rich to be able to buy one. Most professors wouldn’t even allow you to use one during your tests because that would favor the rich students, at least until the price dropped a few years later.)
Most undergraduate computer programming was done on this beast. The language was a flavor of Fortran, and the programs were run batch style. You actually typed your program on a card punch machine, one line of code per card, and then fed the cards through a card reader which stored the program in memory until it was your turn in the batch. If you had a thousand lines of code, you would have a thousand punch cards. One of the standard jokes was that you could tell a computer science major because they walked like a gorilla; the boxes of punch cards were so massive they dragged your arms to the ground.
After feeding your punch cards to the machine, you went away. Later in the day, or maybe even the next morning, you could pick up your printouts. Hopefully it worked. The odds were it wouldn’t. You would have a typo on one of the cards and the whole thing would be rejected. You would fix the problem and submit the cards again, which simply meant another card would have a typo. Screaming students bitching about typing were commonplace.
There were rumors that in the subbasement were computers which actually had keyboards and monitors, but these were just rumors. Nobody had ever seen them but some grad students.
The computer center was one of the few buildings that were open all night. Batch processing of programs went on 24/7. Also open until the wee hours was the library, which was actually in a converted Gothic cathedral on campus. A new modern library was under construction but wasn’t anywhere near ready yet. As I recall, it wouldn’t be in use until senior year. During finals week it and the Student Union would be open 24/7. I found myself an empty punch card machine and started typing in code that I had already written out long hand on paper. The program was one that was normally only taught towards the end of the semester, so it was fairly long. I was burning through the programming course, and Professor Nichols had agreed to let me take the follow on course independently when I finished this class’ assignments.
I spent the rest of the afternoon typing code and then going over to the library. I alternated between Amos Eat-Me and the library until the early evening, skipping the deliciousness of the dining hall. Later I grabbed something in the Rat. Back in my dorm room I found Buddy missing, but what the heck, it was a weekend and he was off somewhere goofing off. Mind you, it didn’t matter that he also did this the other six days of the week as well. The man was a serious student of moral dissipation. If they offered classes in that, he’d be magna cum laude!
I must have passed my first audition at Kegs, since the next morning at ROTC muster, Ricky Holloway, a junior in the ROTC program and one of the Keggers, invited me back for dinner. I thanked him and agreed, although I did mention I wouldn’t be able to drink and get too stupid on a school night. He laughed at that. Ricky was one of the supreme partiers of the frat, and his room was almost a shrine to marijuana. About ten years ago a couple of upper classmen had spent almost two years painting the entire room flat black and then covered it with intricately linked paisley artwork in neon green, red, yellow, and orange patterns. The room had been wired for sound and UV lighting. Ever since then the ‘Black Light Room’ had been passed down from generation to generation, with the residents morally obligated to keep up the tradition and care for the room. Whenever parents were around, the room was kept closed off, lest they get the wrong idea (well, actually the right idea) about what went on in there.
And so things went for the next few weeks. I made it a habit to visit Kegs on Friday and Saturday, and maybe a short evening during the week, and I noticed several other freshmen doing the same thing. Fall Rush was doing its job, and a new slate of freshmen were being groomed for an invitation to pledge.
The one really, really serious task I was overseeing had nothing to do with school. I was about to become a millionaire. I had managed to finish high school with my brokerage account right about $125,000. On October 6, the Yom Kippur War would kick off, and within weeks, OPEC would raise prices and cut production. Currently the price of oil was about $3 a barrel. By early 1974 the price would be up to $12 a barrel.
And I knew it. Shortly before I had left Towson and driven here, I had sat down with Missy Talmadge and outlined my future plans. She had been highly skeptical of my move into oil, which she thought was just one more commodity. I knew better; it was also the one single element which the economy of the world moved on. The only more important resource is water, without which we die. I knew the price of oil would quadruple, which would get me from $125,000 to $500,000. That wasn’t good enough. Missy and I worked out a series of derivatives and futures which was predicated on the rise in pricing. If the Arabs started shooting at the Israelis again, I was going to be a millionaire. If peace broke out, I would be bankrupt.
Peace didn’t break out. Yom Kippur was not a holiday the school closed for, and by Monday morning’s ROTC muster every military tongue was wagging over what was going on halfway around the world. We followed it closely in the Military Science classes. Ten days later OPEC starting playing games, almost doubling the price of oil overnight. That was only the start. I had left instructions for Missy to keep her nerve until the price hit $12 a barrel, at which point I wanted to dump everything and diversify. 1974 was going to be a disastrous year for the stock market. We were going to invest in Toyota and Nissan, sell short the American car companies, and buy stocks in Exxon and a few other oil companies.
Missy also suggested buying stocks in building supplies, like companies that made insulation, since people would want to insulate their houses more, but I declined. What I knew but she didn’t was that most of those same companies were about to face massive tort exposure related to asbestos. Many would go out of business entirely. Unfortunately I wasn’t sure when this would happen, but I didn’t want to go anywhere near asbestos, not even as an investor.
November 5 came and went quietly. I was now officially and legally an adult. It was a Monday, and after dinner I called home and said hello to my parents and Suzie. They had mailed some presents to my new PO Box address. There was even one from Hamilton, but when I told Mom to thank him for me, she gave me a very hesitant response. It was obvious he hadn’t actually gotten me a birthday present. They asked if I was coming home for Thanksgiving and I told them no; it was an eight hour trip or more by train or bus, and would leave me just a few days at home.
The only thing I did different that day was apply for an American Express card. Times were different then. The idea of unemployed college kids having credit cards was not even considered, but I had sufficient assets that I was sure I would get the card. Besides, American Express was not (at that time) strictly speaking a credit card. You paid off your balance every month — or else! — and couldn’t roll the balance over. Additionally, there were very few places that accepted American Express back in the early Seventies. It was almost entirely restricted to hotels and restaurants. On the plus side, no matter where I was in the world, I would always be able to get a meal and a bed, and that was sufficient for me.