Gary and Brooks

I came back to Twin Falls after I left the Air Force. While in the bank I had worked for I was talking with the operations manager who would later die from his bad living. He told me he bank was considering acquiring a computer system for its accounting work. This was in the very early 1980s and few banks of that size had their own computers, instead paying larger banks or companies with the money to buy and operate the multi-million dollar mainframes required. Minicomputers - essentially small mainframes - becoming available in the sub-million range made it feasible. He asked me if I was interested in coming back and having nothing better to do just then I accepted.

It was pretty slick, a refrigerator-sized cabinet, some big printers that could spit out thousands of pages of 11x15 greenbar paper in a couple of hours, terminals on the desks and teller counters. Everything was checks then, direct deposits and other electronic transacions being a ways off. so we had a couple of what were called proof machines that sorted the checks, deposits, ledger tickets and such into different bins and wrote the data onto tapes that the couputer could read. I came in about noon and stayed after closing to run the reports and run the checks through the proof machines again to sort them so they could be filed the next day.

Had the place to myself except for one or another of the officers coming in to do something, like a secretary. Lot of that. I was upstairs in the computer room and didn't pay much attention to them. Didn't pay that much but I figured on getting another job a some point. What they call PCs now were just beginning to proliferate and I liked working with them. Learning computer languages was actually easier than learning human languages - something I was good at - and I had a good bit of free time.

While in the Air Force I had a roommate that worked in what they call IT. He worked a night shift I used to hang out in his shop. Learned COBOL which was what most businesses used, especially banks. The NCR mini had a COBOL compiler and a BASIC interpreter, and a IBM PC-XT the bank used to communicate with the Federal Reserve branch was installed. So I automated things so much I had a lot more free time.

I usually had one of the bookkeeping staff stay for a couple of hours to help to the check sorting. It was a bit touchy and if you weren't careful something could get out of sync and the thousands of checks would be missorted and you'd have to do it all again. There were a couple of kids, just out of school, each of them helped me for a while before going on to a full-time job, one a teller and one in bookkeeping. They were about the same age, just out of school.

They couldn't have been much more different. Gary was a quiet kid, little guy kinda nerdy-looking, wore glasses. His dad was a Kroger manager years before when I worked at the Kroger store that got closed because of union. I don't know if he went to another store like a lot of the employees did or went to work somewhere else. He was managing another grocery store in town, I believe it was one of those small regional chains like Piggly Wiggly. In the old Wal-Mart store. It closed suddenly and it took a while for the word to get around why. Seems one day while he wasn't there one of the assistant managers found his wife blowing the produce department manager in the back and went to the office and told the customers. On the PA. Attention Piggly Wiggly customers, my wife is blowing one of my employees in the back of the store. The store eventually was bought by another small grocery store chain.

I never got people with no self-control. Maybe I'm weird about sex. Whever we had the first class on sex, sixth grade I believe (we were about to be in junior high on the campus with the older kids so...) we were told that sex isn't dirty. I beg to differ, sex at the best of times is not squeaky clean even if it starts out that way. Sweat and body fluids and smells and such. Doing it in restrooms or other less than sanitary places doesn't improve matters. And no, I couldn't (along with my partner) shower and brush our teeth beforehand, but if you don't just have to have it immediately on any opportunity, reminds me of cats and food. I never had one could sit and wait a minute or two while I get the food in the container and set it down. Jumping up on the counter, sticking their head in the dish and getting food on their head. It's like if they don't get started it may not be there. Like children. Some people are like that about sex. But some people have problems with food, liquor, other stuff.

Okey-dokey. Gary was a quiet kid, pretty smart. Talked about screwing his girlfriend a lot, about drugs. He was dealing but I didn't know it at the time. Pretty much everbody was using. Including Brooks.

Brooks was seriously cocky, why I don't know. If you wanted to know how smart he was you didn't need to ask, he'd tell you. He talked about sex constantly, from his talk I calculated he was getting it twice a day and he wasn't doing it at work like the management. That would make him a busy boy at night. He had a kinda cute little wife, both of them about twenty. Seemed nice, I wasn't around her much, but quieter.

Talking about sex that much didn't leave much time for drug talk, but he was a regular consumer. He and Gary didn't pal around together as two guys about the same age might. Brooks didn't seem to think much of Gary. They were both dealing, I guess when you use a lot you might as well make some money on the deal. Gary told me regularly that Brooks was gonna get busted, being so careless. Brooks said the same thing about Gary. They were both right.

Before I got around to seeking employment elsewhere I came in one day to the news that Gary had been arrested for selling coke. Twice to an undercover state police type. Came to his apartment where he and his girlfriend were with a warrant and took him away. Even then you'd be in some trouble for selling weed, coke was gonna put you away for a while. Of course his employment was terminated immediately and I didn't see him for a while, anyway he had a trial coming up at some point and that would be a few months.

Brooks did the told you so thing. And talked about screwing, I don't know when he had time for his wife, or if she knew or cared. Or if he was lying most or all of time. Not hard to guess. He did put his hands on any marginally attractive woman that got close, or try to. Whavever he was still there when I left some time later.

One of two of the owners of the little company that built the bank's software was pretty sharp. Someone from one of the little Silicon Valley startups showed them a Unix box, one of the plethora of Motorola 68K-based systems. They were capable of replacing the big boxes like our NCR at about a tenth of the cose. More importantly they used Unix as the operating system. Unix is about 200-1000 times as sophisticated as the old mini and mainframed stuff. I already knew something about it it made my job even easier. I could work for about two to three hours a night, most of the time I was waiting for the printers to spit out the reports.

The work was easier but the pay didn't improve. I was doing some coding projects that brought in some extra but figured it was time to get serious about money. The software developer occasionally asked if I was interested in working for them but I wasn't sure about the idea as my soon-to-be former employer was a customer. I'd become less happy with the management and having one of the directors kids come to work there thinking he knew everything and not liking me much anyway because his little sister was the other honor student in our graduating class... Small towns. The guy with the bank in Red Springs had opened a new bank in Twin Falls. It was actually the headquarters even though the bank was still chartered with Red Falls, the banking laws being what they were. They wanted their own computers and asked invited me to work for them.

I accepted and the pay was better but after a few months I decided to move. I didn't like the system they bought even though it was a DEC but DEC hadn't gone to Unix yet. So the next time I was talking to the folks in Springfield I told them I was interested. More than doubled my pay. Double 20K doesn't seem like much today but was pretty good money back them. So I spent the next six years there, until the partnership broke up and the company went under. But...

Brooks and Gary? I heard about them now and then, usually when visiting on weekends. Gary got about as lucky as a guy should ever hope to. The state police investigator that busted him was in a helicopter looking for marijuana patches. Good thing I wasn't still doing that. Helicopter crashed and killed him. For the trial he would have had to show up and testify that he made the buys. They could have gone ahead and maybe gotten a conviction but it was by no means a sure thing, so he got a sweet plea deal. Eight years suspended. He'd have to be a good boy for a long time but he wouldn't be in prison.

I saw him after he was arrested and he told me he was working for a small lumber company chain. A while back I looked him up and he's still there. I'm just guessing he didn't do anything else bad enough to to to prison. Anyhow he seemed like a pretty decent kid and I hope he's doing all right.

How long Brooks avoided the consequences of his bad behavior I don't know. By 2015 he had a conviction for manufacturing/delivering a controlled substance. Whether weed is still in that category I don't know. In Arkansas probably so. These days it's likely to be meth or various pharma stuff. I see that his recent trips to the big house have been for meth and other stuff. About two years ago it was meth and coke and he got ten years. He's sixty or so now, his future doesn't look real bright.

I long ago quit trying to figure out why people do what they to. I drove drunk two or there times, one day I thought about what would happen if I even just got a DWI, much less killed someone. Other than me - I wouldn't be worrying what anyone thought. But Mom and Dad would have been mortified and ashamed to be around their friends and neighbors. And if I'd killed someone I sure didn't expect I could live with myself. But one of my classmates - a pretty bright guy obviously being in H section - and adecent sort got one DWI after another. He'd no more than get one license suspension finished - later a prison sentence - he' do it again. Finally he had a wreck, killed a husband and wife. Got eight years. He died eleven years ago. Seems he was married and had several children. Seemed like a good kid, hope he got some stuff sorted out eventually.

Then I wondered about Gary hearing that the cop that was about to put him in prison for years had perished. What would I think if I was in that situation and I just might be off the hook because someone died?

And that's about all I know about that.