To San Francisco where I got a job with Trayer Engineering, a small electrical manufacturer. I spent the first several months working in the shop to learn the products. One day I had to go see a client so I showed up in a suit. Doug, the sheet metal foreman, said, “You’ll never get your hands dirty again.”

San Francisco was a great place to live even if the ocean was on the wrong side. Two great years of learning to be a father, designing switches, helping clients, seeing The City and trips to Yosemite. Then we returned to the Southeast. In Atlanta I went to work for Gold Kist, an agricultural cooperative. I commissioned chicken processing plants and feed mills, standing in piles of chicken guts in Alabama or muddy pyramids of soy hulls in Mississippi. All the while keeping my hands clean of course. Betty and I divorced. (Betty and I still get along ok, regardless of what she says.)

After nearly 10 years of designing electric chickens, I went to work for CH2M HILL, an engineering firm specializing in water and wastewater. I ended up mostly in wastewater doing a lot of field work (and keeping my hands clean). I got married again and quickly divorced. Starr turned out to be very smart, musically talented and had a hankering for science. I seemed to have a talent for designing wastewater plants (why couldn’t it have been ice cream factories?) and got to do so all over the Southeast. Starr left for Carleton in Minnesota in ‘89. I got married again. I led the replacement of the electrical system for Atlanta’s water source in time for the ‘96 Olympics (luckily nothing broke while the cameras were on).  I got divorced again. Developed a specialty somehow in designing wastewater treatment for Los Angeles. When Atlanta built four lane highways on both sides of my neighborhood, I decided it was time to leave.

I moved to Boston in ‘98 and went to work for Vanderweil, a local engineering firm. In Boston everything is within walking distance and whenever you want to do something, there seems to be something happening. Refusing to follow in her father’s footsteps, Starr graduated on time and moved to Boise (she’s still there). I designed an upgrade to a Lucent plant; the Lucent stock price followed my project in a curious manner -- the stock tracked the percent of remaining work. At nearly US$100 when the work began, it approached 12 cents as we finished. After that monument I went to work for AECOM in 2000 as the Chief Electrical Engineer in their water business. This gave me a chance to meddle in plant designs coast-to-coast as well as the Middle East and a few other places. I met Lucretia, who was keeping an Internet startup alive, and moved to Cambridge (hey, her place has an elevator), a subway ride from Boston.

In ‘10 I retired and have been busier than ever. Research on South Dakota fur trading posts.  Advocacy on climate change and energy.  Discovering that I can find anything ever printed in the Harvard libraries. Taking a couple of courses every term. Attending lectures by people I’ve wanted to hear. Traveling, including Florida.