AN AIR CONDITIONED SUMMER
 

     The term ended with a good series of finals for C T.  He
wasn't particularly fazed by his sixteen credits worth of
testing, and his success in finding a "good" summer job
pulled him forward.  School wasn't expelling him so much as
vocational opportunity was pulling him.

     His father was in the automotive brokering business,
which was a fancy name for the new genre of super-salesmen
who dealt in large numbers of used cars over the metropolitan
area.  Auto dealers had learned to cooperate and offer
prospective car buyers a larger choice by combining their
selections of "previously owned" vehicles and paying small
but acceptable commissions to a middleman when the right
purchaser found the "right" car.  Mr. Prime started as part
of a comic used-car dealership whose television commercials
rivaled the humor of the situation comedies they were
sponsoring at times.  He wasn't entirely ready for the switch
to big business, then, when he heard of the concept of
brokering at a trade convention and decided to place his
capital into it.  In one year, he sold out to his minor
partners and put on a different, dignified face, and bought
several three-piece suits.

     His first requirement was the services of a listing
firm.  A friend from the Navy had started a bare-bones data
processing company in the 60's when cost-efficiency hadn't
been developed, with the lumbering discrete transistor and
magnetic core hulks called "computers."  Little by little,
however, Ron Lerman found that he could turn a profit, just
by keeping at it.  Recently, he was overrun with companies
needing his services, those of entering, storing, retrieving,
and distributing data records for real estate, medicine,
business, publishing, and in the case of Mr.  Prime's
fledgling brokerage firm, used cars.  They were at a baseball
game on a warming Friday night, early in the season, when Mr.
Lerman declared, "Ron, I need some help with my company this
summer.  Everyone wants vacations.  Do you know where I can
get some terminal operators to do data entry and who might
want to learn a little wordprocessing?" A vendor leaned over
the two of them, nearly spilling Pink Flamingo Mustard on a
business deal.

     "You know, Mark, my son C T is coming home this summer,
and I don't think he has anything lined up yet."  The crowd
picked up with a roar.  A swing and a miss and the visitors
were retired 1-2-3.  Thousands of viewers on the TICKET
network would be going to the kitchen for a beer.

     "Can he type?"

     "Why sure!  They teach that to all the kids now.  They
have to grow up using computers like we old timers didn't."

     "Well I need two people full time.  If I could get him
starting in June, I'd take him.  Why don't you call him on
Monday."

     C T picked up his dorm room phone.  Only in recent years
were phones installed in all the rooms; before, cramped phone
booths down the hall were used.  The new dormitories to come
should rightfully resemble current resort hotels.  That is,
if the American GNP should continue as the current
Administration was driving it.  "Hello," C T said as he put
his backpack down.  He was just leaving for the physics
library.

     "C T!  It's Dad!  I've got some news I think you're
going to like!"  Mr. Prime was very convincing.  C T had
grown resistant to his well-developed enthusiasm.  But it
could be sincere this time.  He was the flesh and blood of
the man, after all.

     "What is it?"  He tried to keep himself restrained.
It's not nice, he thought, to place your studies ahead of
your own Dad, who was paying the bills.

     "I've got you a good summer job with Mr. Lerman's
computer company.  It's data entry, on terminals--clean work
indoors.  It's air-conditioned and pays $4.85 an hour!  He
needs people because of the big business he's doing these
days.  People are selling more and people are buying more,
and he has to make sure they find each other.  My company
uses him.  I know I told you that."

     "I'd love it.  As soon as my finals are over, I have
some time to go before then, even.  See if Mr. Lerman can get
me in as soon as May 15."  He knew he needed to find summer
employment, but didn't know the job hunting game very well.
He was putting off the ugly task on hopes that "something"
would come up.  What a father, indeed.  He would buy a used
car from him.

     It was a joyous voyage home in the sedan, when Mr.
Prime brought his son home for the summer.  "How do you like
living at school, now that you've been through it for a whole
year?  I never got the chance.  It was the Navy, then into
selling cars.  'See Ron Prime for a Prime deal.'  None of
your great studies for me." He handled the wheel masterfully,
as though he had driven every car since the Model T.

     "I think it's great.  I like the guys on the floor
pretty much, although they're a little rowdy at times."  That
was true.

     "Oh, you should have seen me and Mr. Lerman in Tripoli,
back in 1956!  We nearly started a war right there!  But that
was a long time ago!  Now you've got your job coming up.  I
hope you like it."  The fields along the road were advancing
into their lush summer growth, and the clumps of trees were
starting to lose their flowers and become singularly green.

     "This is a standard QWERTY keyboard and cursor keypad,
C T," Mr. Lerman later instructed in his data processing
compound.  The floor looked like it just as well could have
been the ceiling.  The network of ventilation ducts and
conduits required the false white tile surface.  C T compared
it to the massive terazzo and concrete floors of the Millikan
Lab building and Schrodinger Hall.

     "I've typed an awful lot in middle school, and they had
a few old PETs laying around in the science and language arts
rooms when I was in high school.  I think they must have real
PCs by now."  C T beamed the best he could in the bright
fluorescent light.  He knew what he was talking about.

     "Well then, you'll be all set.  You go through the
records in this paper file basket where they come in and
enter them onto magnetic tape in the back room.  Sometimes
you'll be doing your Dad's work."

     "If I need help when you're not here, is there someone
I can talk to?"  C T was being very pragmatic in his new
capacity as a college student.  Mr. Lerman was an important
man, so if there was some other lower-level worker around, he
would prefer to bother him.

     "Samantha works midnights, and she'll be off in about 45
minutes.  Why don't I have her come here and get you to a
good start...Samantha!"  A well-dressed black woman appeared
from around the corner to the tape drive room.

     "Yes, Mr. Lerman?"  She worked midnights, but certainly
hadn't lost any self respect.  C T liked the look of her
integrity.

     "This is Ron Prime's boy C T.  He's going to do data
entry this summer for us and needs to see what to do.  I want
you to set him up."

     "OK. C T...what do those initials stand for?"

     Not again, C T thought.  "It's just two letters, C. and
T.  Like the 'S' in Harry S Truman."  C T thought he might
fill those letters out and go to court and have the
name...not changed...but appended?

     "That's a really fine name,...C T...I like that!  Let's
get going.  My baby will need her feeding when Charles goes
off to work."  She sat with him patiently, in the capacity of
her job.  C T knew from this point that people do work in the
world, and not just in recreational capacities like building
a loft.  As the sun made its trigonometrically ordained path
to midway between south horizon and zenith that summer and
then left to the celestial equator for fall, C T spent his
time earning wages and respect.  When he started school at
the University that fall, his skin was stark white.