HSD Inc.

 

Autumn started Meadowfound in the Manitou Spa building while I was at Udorn. Meadowfound was located in the suite now occupied by the wine shop and was the only business in the Spa. But since Meadowfound brought traffic to the building, other businesses started moving in. Before I came back from overseas Meadowfound moved into the southwest corner of the Spa, later occupied by Adams' Cafe. The Spa was in terrible shape. Shorts in the electrical system would bring showers of sparks out of the walls and breaks in sewer pipes would bring cascades of sewage down from the ceiling. But the rent was reasonable.

Meadowfound's retail shop and clay studio were in the Spa, but Autumn had built a large gas-fired kiln in the back yard of our house at 20 Grand Avenue — about where 11 Spencer is now located. Our two-car garage was where clay items were glazed and finished for firing. At one point a neighbor who lived up Spencer complained that it was unsafe to have the kiln in the neighborhood. He thought it might explode. A couple people who knew what they were talking about finally convinced him the only danger was that the kiln might implode during a firing and ruin its contents.

In 1975, while I was at Great Falls, Autumn bought 727-729 Manitou Avenue which became the Meadowfound building. For decades the building had been occupied by Jesse Jackson, a plumber. Jesse and Dick Rayer, who owned the local TV shop, had been working on a deal to buy the place. Autumn moved fast and made the purchase even though George Lewis, an old-fashioned banker at Bank of Manitou, wanted her to wait to make the loan until I was home. After Jesse moved out Autumn brought in a crew and built a large opening between the two sides of the building. She also isolated the back of the western half with a glass partition so people could watch the potters working at their wheels in the studio. The kiln was moved to behind the building.

The back part of the eastern side of the building was to be my office when I came home for good. Clint rebuilt the room and installed overhead fluorescent lighting in a drop ceiling for me. He went to the fuse box and shut down the circuit that served the office, but when he went to make a connection he nearly got knocked off his ladder. Jesse had had a pipe cutter in that room that kept blowing fuses, so he'd bridged the circuit directly to the mains.

At the turn of the twentieth century the Meadowfound building had been the Manitou Springs post office. There was a hatch in the floor on the western side. Underneath was a crawlspace with a collection of post office boxes and other treasures from the building's early life. There were uninsulated pipes in the crawlspace, and in the winter, if you didn't keep a slow stream running from a bathroom faucet, the pipes would freeze. A couple gas ceiling-mount furnaces kept the place warm in winter, but without air conditioning the interior could become uncomfortably hot in the summer. We installed a couple swamp cooler systems that solved that problem. In the dry Colorado air the swamp coolers were better than refrigeration; you needed to keep windows or doors open for the system to work properly.

About the time I got home for good in April, 1977, Autumn's brother, Bob, made me an offer. Bob was half owner of Diack Controls, a company that produced sterilization monitors and controls. Bob had started a line of label guns and specially printed labels separate from Diack that could be used to label and date sterilizer packs and would withstand the rigors of steam sterilization. The big advantage of the labels Bob had invented was price. They were considerably less expensive than their competitors.

Bob had reached a crisis point in his relationship with the other half owner of Diack. Both Bob and his partner had inherited the business from their fathers*, but instead of working in the business Bob's partner wanted to take the money and run. Bob was about to drop the labeling operation in order to have time and energy to save Diack. He made me a deal under which I'd take it over and split the profits with him.

Bob named the new branch "Hospital Services Division." I incorporated it as HSD Inc., and started sending ads to hospitals all over the United States. We sold a lot of label guns and labels, but one thing holding back sales was that hospital administrators had a tendency to buy a complete line of products from hospital suppliers who plied them with dinners and drinks. Price seemed to be a minor consideration. Nonetheless, the business went forward. Bob came up with an ink that could be used on Bowie Dick tests (Google it). I found a local printer who could supply the right paper for the tests, and had him print them with the ink Bob provided. Hospitals turned out to be slow payers. I soon got to the point where I was requiring payment in advance from several hospitals in New York, since getting them to pay was next to impossible.

Microcomputers were beginning to appear. I'd been fascinated by computers since my weeks at RAND Corporation in 1956 (See Correspondence with Ben). The two main microcomputers were the Radio Shack TRS-80, and the Apple 1. I came close to buying the Apple, but I could get the TRS-80 and accessories from a local Radio Shack store, and in early 1978 I bought one with 16 kilobytes of 8-bit memory and upgraded it to 32 kilobytes. I found later that I was the second guy in the Colorado Springs area to own a TRS-80.

Dave Wood, a local techie who was doing microcomputer maintenance, got a bunch of local computer buffs together and we'd have meetings once a week or so and discuss what we were up to. I started doing serious work on my machine, though products on Radio Shack's BASIC ran slowly. I learned Z-80 assembly language, which ran much faster than BASIC, but was very time-consuming to write. Since there was no book on Z-80 assembly language most of the learning process was based on guesses. All I had was a sheet that listed the instructions and told what they do.

In 1980 a Denver outfit named Apparat came out with NEWDOS/80, which was an infinitely better operating system than Radio Shack's TRSDOS. I bought a 12 megabyte external hard drive from Apparat and was sure I had enough storage for the rest of my life. About the time NEWDOS/80 appeared, Radio Shack came out with the Model III, which was a step in the right direction. I sold my Model 1 and bought a Model III. About the same time, Gary Kildall came out with CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) which was a step up from DOS but wasn't as universally used as DOS.

One of the members of the computer discussion group was Andy Anderson. Andy had started a company that brought business buyers and sellers together. He'd introduce a prospective buyer to businesses of interest by sending out brochures on the businesses, and send letters to businesses with lists of prospective buyers. He had people making comparisons by hand between what the buyers wanted and what the businesses had to offer. By then, I'd been teaching DOS, BASIC and CP/M at most of our meetings. Andy asked me if I could automate the matching process.

I created a system in BASIC I called AUTOCOMP (Automatic Comparison). It worked well, and was able to print letters to businesses and buyers. Andy ran it twice a month. But since it was running in BASIC it took about 18 hours for a complete run. I'd gotten Andy to set up his equipment with some heavy duty power line surge protectors, but there was a tire shop next door and when the shop turned on its retread machine the displays on Andy's CRT's would shrink to about a third their normal size.

Peak InfoSystems, Inc.

About the time I was developing AUTOCOMP the government came up with a raft of new hoops that manufacturers and sellers of equipment used by hospitals had to jump through. The documentation requirements alone were a real nuisance. I was running out of time to handle all this, and HSD wasn't making enough money to warrant going on with it. Bob agreed and I shipped the HSD equipment and inventory to my nephew, Robert. HSD, Inc. then officially became Peak InfoSystems, Inc.

One afternoon I was heading down Manitou Avenue toward Colorado Springs. As I approached the US 24 overpass the light turned amber. There was no stop line on the pavement and I was sure I was in the intersection when the light went amber, so I kept going. But the amber light stayed on for what I later timed as two seconds, then went red. A Manitou cop who'd been hanging out on El Paso came zooming down with overheads going and siren blasting, pulled me over, and gave me a ticket. It was a classic traffic trap. I went to court. The cop claimed I'd given him a bunch of lip after he pulled me over. I denied that, and pointed out that the amber light had been shortened to two seconds, and that there was no stop line to tell you whether or not you were in the intersection. I paid my fine. The next day I checked again and found the amber light had been lengthened to four seconds. It was the last straw.

That fall I ran for the Manitou Springs council seat from Ward One. During the year before I went overseas I'd been a member of the Kiwanis club, and I'd gotten to know several of the city's leaders. Now I spent a lot of mornings eating breakfast at Boots' and Ann's restaurant, which was where the local political powers hung out. Before he and his wife, Ann, started the restaurant Boots had been the Manitou Springs police chief for many years. He knew where the bodies were buried and he knew just about everybody in town. Boots and I got along well and I think he was one of the reasons I won my election handily. Shortly after I took my place on the Council the young cop who'd pulled me over resigned and left town, though I'd made it clear I wasn't after him. My beef was with the chief, who obviously was ignoring that kind of traffic trap.

About this time, the computer discussion group lost Dave Wood. The son of a Radio Shack store manager, who was a member of the discussion group, got hot and heavy with Dave's wife. They decided to get Dave out of their way. One night Dave's wife sent him out to the back yard to get something. The store manager's son was waiting, came up behind Dave, grabbed him, and slit his throat. He botched the job. There was a fire station directly across the street from the house. Dave ran there and the firemen rushed him to a hospital. He was in the hospital for several weeks. When he came out he had a huge, red, scar across his throat. Shortly after he got out of the hospital Dave moved away. His wife and her boyfriend are still in prison.

One of the people who attended the computer group's meetings was Dan Sullivan, the guy who started Colorado Technical College, now known as Colorado Technical University. The college originally was located in the building that now houses the Business of Art Center, but by the time I came home it had been moved to a complex on Elkton Drive behind Garden of the Gods Road. Dan asked if I could build an automated billing system for the college. I told him I was sure I could. He then asked if Dr. John Zingg, head of their computer science department, could assist. I agreed. John was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who'd started the computer science department at the Air Force Academy. We quickly became friends.

The program was to run on a TRS-80, Model III. Microsoft had come out with a reasonably good COBOL, which unlike BASIC could be compiled and would run much faster, so we used COBOL for the system. I wrote most of the code but John caught some of my inevitable errors and wrote a couple of important modules. Along the way John convinced me I ought to get at least an associate degree at the college. I still had G.I. Bill financial assistance coming, so I signed up. It turned out to be a lot of fun. You can read about some of it in Correspondence with Ben. In that letter I implied that we wrote the billing system for the IBM PC, but that's not right. The school was still using the TRS-80 and both FORTRAN and COBOL were available for it.

Not long before I got involved in the school I'd bought a copy of Kernighan and Richie's book on the C programming language and found it fascinating. A couple outfits came out with C compilers for the TRS-80. I bought one and began writing compiled shareware. At some point John saw that C was going to be important in the future of programming and asked me to teach a course in it. He was one of the students in my class, but after the first week he dropped out. He felt that C was too low-level, unlike, say COBOL. What he was missing was the fact that you could build routines in C, test them, and put them into a library from which they could be linked automatically into later programs and used over and over again. It was the first step toward object-oriented programming.

Another attendee at the computer group was Ernie Johnson. Ernie owned Stanford Art Glass, a glass fabrication business located in the building vacated by Colorado Tech, that nowadays houses the Business of Art Center. Ernie and I hit it off and soon became close friends. I built some software for Ernie, and Ernie, who was a gifted machinist, started to do computer repair work on the side. In 1979 Ernie and I attended the first COMDEX (Computer Dealers' Exhibition) in Las Vegas.

During my first two years on the city council the mayor was appointed by the council. Early in my term George Miller, the mayor, was unseated for a reason I've now forgotten (over my "no" vote) and Elaine Paul was appointed in his place. I came close to being appointed instead of Elaine and there was a group in town that was worried I might be appointed after the next election. The city's charter commission was dominated by this group. During my second year there was a recall that removed three members from the council. The recall election included a proposed revision to the city charter that would eliminate one council seat and substitute a mayor elected at large every two years. The revision passed.

In the fall of 1979 I ran for mayor with the capable help of Chuck Smith, an architect who'd become a good friend and who was my campaign manager. I ran against Elaine Paul and, thanks to Chuck, won handily, even though there'd been some pretty nasty politicking going on. At the time Sophie Cowman, Manitou's excellent wood sculptor, was hanging her backpack in the carriage house on our 20 Grand Avenue property. Among other slanders my opponents claimed I was running a house of ill repute in the carriage house.

I was mayor for the next six years. I ran twice more but didn't have to campaign seriously after that first election. During my six years as mayor Colorado Springs's mayor, Bob Isaac, and I worked together on a number of projects. We always got along, but we didn't always agree. At that time the state constitution called for an overall sales tax limit of eight cents. Colorado Springs and Manitou each had a tax of three cents, the county had a tax of one cent, and the state sales tax was three cents, making a total of seven cents. At one point the county decided they wanted to add another penny. If they did that, we'd lose the ability to raise our sales tax if we needed to, and some of the things being mandated by the feds and the state made us afraid that might become necessary. The county's proposal included a kickback to the cities and Bob Isaac thought we ought to go along with the idea. I disagreed. I got our council to pass a one cent sales tax increase on first reading. It would take a second reading before the tax could go into effect. We never had a second reading, but it stopped the county from going any further.

Early in my first term the city's finance director resigned. We hired Jim Pratt to replace him. Jim and his wife hailed from New England and came to Colorado because their daughter was a competitive figure skater training at the Olympic Center in Colorado Springs. As soon as he took over Jim discovered that the city had several million dollars in a checking account at Bank of Manitou. He immediately bought short-term government bonds with most of the money. During his first year, by that move alone, Jim actually made more money for the city than we paid him. The Manitou residents who were stockholders in the bank — some had been councilmen in earlier days — were angry. One afternoon Ken Baird, the bank president, came busting into my office and dropped into a chair across from my desk. He was smoking a cigarette and he dropped a smoldering ash on my carpet and burned it. Ken was furious about what Jim had done, and he advised me that if the city overdrew its checking account there'd be hell to pay. We continued on Jim's financial path and the city never overdrew its account. A couple years later the city manager quit and Jim became a very competent city manager. At a party many years later, when all of us were long out of government and politics, I told Jim that hiring him was the smartest thing I did as mayor. And I meant it.

In 1981, IBM came out with their PC. Knockoffs came on the market almost immediately. I bought a Columbia PC, which had some advantages over the IBM machine and was a good deal less expensive. I still had my TRS-80 Model III, but a C compiler for the PC came along almost immediately and I switched to doing most of my work on the Columbia.

In 1982 Manitou's merchants put together a partnership which, along with the Chamber of Commerce, was designed to boost the town. At one point the group decided to hire a promoter. They found a guy with a reputation as a capable booster, brought him to town, and on the night of March first, put him up in the Cliff House. He was a "reformed" alcoholic but he decided to celebrate his new job with a drink. He got bombed out of his mind, fell asleep in bed with a cigarette, and burned the Cliff House to a shell. Nobody was hurt though a couple of our volunteer firemen came close, but the new promoter was out of a job. Cliff House's owner brought in Chuck Murphy whose company beefed up the Cliff House shell and sealed it off, but for years after the fire the Cliff House shell was a problem for the council and with occasional drifters getting inside, a threat to the neighborhood.

The council had some interesting characters. Councilman Bruno Rancis had come to the United States from a Communist country. Bruno suggested the council put together a commission to produce a disaster assistance and evacuation plan in the event of Soviet attack. I told him that if a nuclear detonation went off over Cheyenne Mountain we wouldn't have anything to worry about; we'd be gone. Bruno replied: "I know those people. They will miss."

The state of the Cliff House was a constant concern. A house had been built on the cliff directly above the shell of the building and it would be in great danger if some hobo started another fire. I tried to get the building condemned so we could remove it, but there was a lot of resistance, and a lot of tedious discussion in council meetings about the situation. One night Leila Miller stood up and said, "Mr. mayor, if they try to tear down the Cliff House I'm going to lie down in front of the bulldozer." I thought for a second and said, "All right! I get to drive the dozer." Eventually Cliff House was rebuilt and once again became, as it had been in the early part of the twentieth century, one of the jewels of the city.

I think the most important thing I did as mayor was to get Manitou's bars under control. During the two years I was a councilman we were having problems with bikers, who'd pretty much taken over the Townhouse Lounge and Royal Tavern. The year before I came on as mayor we'd hired a new chief of police named Harry Greenman. Harry was a superb street cop. He began to make headway against the bikers, but we continued to have trouble with the bars serving drunks and minors. I started pushing to enforce the law and Harry's cops started catching violations. When a violation came before the council we'd have a hearing on the establishment's liquor license. Over the next year or so we closed every bar in town temporarily except for The Keg. Scotty, The Keg's owner, got the message quickly and cleaned up his act. We closed Townhouse for a month over the loud objection of Roger, its owner. But during his down month Roger spruced up the place. When it reopened the bikers were gone and he had a completely different, much more lucrative clientele. Years later he admitted the shutdown was the best thing that ever happened to the place.

In 1984 Ernie Johnson introduced me to Bill Witt, a brilliant computer hardware designer. The three of us would lunch together once or twice a week and discuss the state of the computer business. A couple years later a friend introduced Bill to Steve Hyde. Steve was an accountant who'd gone together with two MD's in the seventies to start Peak Health, an HMO. Each of them had put up $10,000, hoping to multiply their investments by 100 within ten years. Eight years later they sold the company for many millions. Steve decided to start a company to make music tapes with tunes selected by the buyer. He hired Bill and me to build the system.

The system we built worked beautifully but the marketing, controlled by Steve's wife, was a fiasco. She spent a lot of money putting a full-page ad in Readers Digest. But the music was rock, which didn't quite fit the Readers Digest readership. Then she hired the company that advertises Sears Siding. The company came up with a beautiful brochure, of which I still have copies, and mailed it to a large list of people who'd bought rock music by mail in the past. Nothing happened until a week or so after the mailing when we got a call from a lady who wondered why she'd had to pay postage to get the brochure. The company had sent out the entire mailing with insufficient postage. Paul came down from Denver and suggested Steve sue the marketing company, but Steve had had enough, and we closed down.

After the tunes project closed Bill Witt went to work at Cirrus Logic's R&D facility in Broomfield. Cirrus was designing a new disk drive that could be programmed in firmware by the vendor. At Bill's suggestion they hired me to build a graphical interface for the programming system. After the tunes project I'd learned C++, and I built the interface with it. Once the interface was complete Cirrus decided their programmers needed to learn C++ and they hired me to teach it. These stories are in Correspondence with Ben, so I won't repeat them here.

Autumn closed Meadowfound in the eighties and rented most of the building. In 1992 we sold 20 Grand Avenue and bought 45 West Boulder in the Park Place condo complex on Monument Valley Park in Colorado Springs. I rented a suite of three offices in the building at 31 East Platte Ave. Autumn moved into the third office and began doing desktop publishing. I was developing shareware and still doing upgrades on Andy anderson's business software but by now we were spending winters in Florida, so I couldn't take on more continuous work. A year later Autumn moved out of her office to work at home.

Not long after Autumn moved out, 31 E. Platte sold to a trio of local developers who had visions of making a killing on real estate. They jacked up the rent and I moved my office a block down Tejon to 29 E. Bijou Street. I rented a second-story suite of two rooms in the northeast corner with a total floor space of about 500 sq. feet. My offices fronted on Tejon, and Acacia Park was kitty-corner from the northern room. I didn't need that much space. Later on Bob and Ron Thomas moved into the larger room and started what eventually became Via Health.

Windows had come out in the early eighties. The first versions were pretty flaky, but by the time Windows 95 came along usable PC "operating systems" had boiled down to Windows or Apple DOS, which actually was an Apple superstructure running on top of a version of Unix. Finally, when Windows 2000 came out, we had a real 32 bit, multi-tasking operating system.

In the early 2000's, Tom's Resource Geoscience (RGI) was doing contamination remediation and the state had a reimbursement system that would pay for various kinds of remediation. The state office that was running the program wanted a complete plan with estimated costs before it would approve reimbursements. But their reporting requirements were designed by people who had never worked with remediation in the field and they were awkward at best. Tom was going to have to hire an additional person just to deal with the problem. He asked me if we could automate the reporting. It was a big job but it was doable and we did it. We called the system RCG+. I tried to market it around the state without a great deal of success, but finally, in 2007, Tom set up a briefing on it for the people at state and I sold the system, source code and all, to the state of Colorado. A year later I closed down Peak InfoSystems, Inc., and retired for real.

 

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* Phyllis corrected me on this. Bob didn't "inherit" the business from his dad. He paid for it over a period of time.