374: After a postwar ...
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 17 begins
In Which Herb and Lorna Come to the Brink of Despair
AFTER A POSTWAR SLUMP, the demand for slide rules began to pick up, and Edwin Berwick asked Lorna to return to work. At about the time when she began her new duties as supervisor of the cursor department at Hargrove Slide Rules, technology took another step toward the slide rule’s eventual obsolescence when the first programmable computer — that is, the first computer that could store a program in its memory — became operational: UNIVAC 1.
Herb never did become the top Studebaker salesman in the country, but he was the top salesman at Babbington Studebaker year after year, and that distinction won for him and Lorna several trips to South Bend, Indiana, home of the Studebaker company. During the dozen years or so after Bert and Ella and I left, Herb and Lorna had a new car nearly every year. They owned a 1949 Land Cruiser, a bullet-nosed 1950 Commander Regal DeLuxe convertible, a 1952 Commander State Starliner hardtop, a beautiful white 1953 Commander Starliner hardtop, a 1955 President State hardtop, a 1956 Golden Hawk, a 1958 Commander Provincial station wagon, and a 1960 Lark VIII DeLuxe convertible.
For some time, Herb had been developing a vague desire to do some camping. This desire was the child of another, stronger desire, the desire to make some of the dozens of useful campsite gadgets he had seen plans for in the handyman magazines he subscribed to. He was itching to get started on some of these.
One evening Lorna said, “Herb, you remember when we drew those arcs on the map and chose Babbington as a place to live.”
“Mm,” said Herb.
“Have you ever wondered what it would have been like if we had moved to West Burke, Vermont, instead?”
It was all the opening Herb needed. In the months that followed, he bought basic camping gear and built a wind-powered generator, a miniature refrigerator, an inflatable sofa, a campfire oven, collapsible cots, cotside reading lamps, and a Geiger counter hidden in a picnic basket, since it was possible to strike it rich with a uranium find, and if he was going to be tramping around in the mountains he might as well be doing something useful. The following summer they made a camping visit to West Burke. They returned every summer for the next fifteen years.
I remember those trips well. Bert and Ella and I went along on many of them. I remember a campground at the edge of a lake, surrounded by mountains. I wonder what I failed to notice, though. Did Herb and Lorna slip out of their tent on moonlit nights, row to the middle of the lake, and make love there? I don’t know. I used to sleep right through the night.
Piper Poker survived the war, at least in the Spotters Club. The Spotters continued to meet weekly, at the home of a different member each week. Sometimes, on evenings when the Club gathered at Herb and Lorna’s, Lorna would baby-sit for Bert and Ella so that they could go out to see a movie. At other times, she would go to visit one of her friends from work or she would go to Whitey’s and spend the evening with May. Piper Poker was the only game the Spotters played — until they began playing the stock market.
[to be continued on Thursday, November 3, 2022]
In Topical Guide 374, Mark Dorset considers Gadgets: Electronic: Computers: UNIVAC 1; Studebakers; and Foreshadowing from this episode.
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