From college to ComputerLand

1978

My fabulous and brief college career

I set off for college in the fall of 1977. I had an excellent scholarship and great SAT scores. I also was 17 years old and had no idea how to be a college student or live on my own. It turns out that my college habit of skipping class most days and playing poker every night was not the best plan. High school had been a breeze; college was actually hard! After just half a year of college, I dropped out, which kind of sucked a lot. I was majoring in Computer Science when I bailed out of college, so I brilliantly concluded that I must hate computers. (It turned out I did not actually hate computers. In fact, I liked them better than some humans.)

Always Be Computing

I quit college and came home in disgrace. I needed some kind of win. A good friend got me a job as an usher at a movie theatre, and I was happy to have it. I learned how to operate a commercial popcorn machine. Once, it was my turn to climb up on the very high marquee outside to change the titles. Once was more than enough; I was terrified. And even though I “hated computers”, one day I wandered down the street from the theatre into a store with the fabulous name ComputerLand. It was pretty cool. They had computers you could fit on your desk! Computers you could buy for a few hundred dollars. I got excited about all of this. Maybe I didn’t hate computers after all. So I abandoned my promising Hollywood career as a movie theatre usher and got a job as a “Software Technician” at ComputerLand of Denver.

A business card with the name typed on a typewriter: the pinnacle of sophistication.

I can get it for you retail

The best-selling computer we had was the Apple ][. Which I coveted but couldn’t afford to buy until I borrowed money from my Dad. Even though I was a nerdy tech, I was expected to also be a salesperson at ComputerLand. So they sent me to sales training. I was 18 years old and I didn’t know anything about selling. I assumed every customer walked into a store already sure whether they were going to buy something, and knowing exactly what they wanted. Boy, was I naive.

But there actually were a few customers like that. A guy walked in one day and said he wanted a top-of-the-line Apple ][ system. I sold him a computer with 48K RAM (the most you could get), 2 floppy disk drives, a printer, and a monitor. I think it came to over $3000, which was a very big sale for us. His name was Barry Rumack, and he was a fairly well-known person in town, a prominent medical doctor. A few years later, I was watching the movie Airplane! and was surprised to hear that the doctor (played by Leslie Nielsen) was named Dr. Rumack. It turned out that the real Dr. Rumack, my Apple ][ customer, used to live next door to David and Jerry Zucker, co-creators of Airplane! They named the character after him. Small world. Adjacent to greatness again.

$3000 worth of Apple ][ gear in the early 1980s (printer not shown).

I had a great time working at ComputerLand. I got to learn about the latest Apple stuff right away, and then enthusiastically sell it to my buddies. But eventually, the Apple-ComputerLand relationship turned sour. Yes, Mom and Dad were fighting. And I set off for other adventures.