agility @ sea

Be forewarned, it’s long.

By Tim

In 1974 I was a wild 12 year old attending a large prestigious Catholic school in Cincinnati, Ohio called Summit Country Day. The lifestyle I had developed while living in Switzerland a few years’ prior had created some bad habits that eventually got me suspended from School a few weeks prior to my 7th grade summer break. Since we were moving to St. Pete in the fall. I had a clean break from school that allowed them to be a bit more lenient than they might have otherwise been. The details of what led up to being kicked out of school are really the subject of another story so I won’t go into further details here.

My parents were exploring their family ancestry in Ireland at the time of my suspension so I was home under the supervision of my Brother Craig and our full time maid Olivia. Olivia was sort of my nanny and I spent more time with her than my parents, but she didn’t really oversee my activities as you will find out. If you saw the movie The Maid, that did a pretty good job of capturing the social norms of growing up in a 13 bedroom, 10,000 square foot mansion while being supervised by Olivia. My Mom had a busy social calendar with PTA and other responsibilities, while my Dad spent most of his time at work and traveled frequently to build his Multinational Corporation, Burke Marketing Research. Being the 5th child of busy parents left me with a certain freedom that the other kids didn’t have. For instance, two years earlier my curfew was 11:30PM which I continually broke but without any repercussions. This was in Lugano, Switzerland where I was a day student at an American Boarding School. Needless to say, I could do just about anything I wanted. If there was a rule I would break it and for some reason I never seemed to get caught. On the rare occasion of getting caught, I paid a small price on one hand but was rewarded with the knowledge of limitless boundaries. I wasn’t what you would call a well-behaved child. Thank goodness that this stuff skips a generation.

Years later, I think this helped me start my own company, but it took many years before I learned to create boundaries of my own. There is something about being told that I can’t do something, or more accurately that something can’t be done, that awakens a passionate need to prove that it can be done. I don’t enter into this behavior blindly. Just like never getting caught as a child, I never want to get caught failing at something I was told couldn’t be done, but the thrill of succeeding in something that others thought would fail is much sweeter than ordinary success alone. The short story of my career is that I chose several times to embrace non-mainstream technologies that had a chance to become mainstream. The three big winners were the Internet in the late 80’s and Sun’s Java programming language in 1995 and Agile development in 2003. The Internet was considered an academic novelty that would never have any commercial success. It was considered good for email or sharing documents but would never amount to anything. Sun’s Java was declared dead by Microsoft dozens of times and to this day it’s still a dominate programming language. Agile development was the biggest bet and it took over a decade for it to mature into a truly mainstream development methodology but today, if you’re not practicing Agile, your likely not a competitive software company and of course, software is everything.

So back to the story, the first few days after “leaving” Summit Country Day I spent watching daytime TV. Shows like Bewitched, and The Andy Taylor Show, The Newlywed game show, were all popular at the time. My brother Craig had grounded me, but of course Olivia wasn’t what you would call a strict disciplinarian so while Craig was in Class at the University of Cincinnati I decided to amuse myself by taking my parents cars for joyrides. First of all, let me set the record straight. Family members have told this story for years, but they got one thing wrong. I did not use a phone book so that I could see over the hood. For years, whenever I came back to Cincinnati the first thing asked when introduced was, “are you the brother that took the car?”

After the exhilaration of the first day driving my Mom’s Cutlass Supreme I became emboldened even more. Soon after I was driving my Fathers Mercedes that we picked up in Switzerland a few years earlier and I was traveling to Hyde Park, Obrianville, Mt lookout, you name it I was there on some back road exploring. I had become very familiar with the roads because I had a Vespa and traveled great distances on it the prior year and a half since returning from Switzerland.

I distinctly remember one day in Mt Lookout in my Dad’s Mercedes when a police officer drove by and I was sure he would know that I was too young to be driving a car much less a Mercedes Benz 280se. The patrolman didn’t catch me and this fueled even greater confidence to explore. I would take friends for rides. I would get something to eat. It was just like I was sixteen with my license and I could do anything I wanted. These joyrides were all cast upon the backdrop of the dread I was anticipating when my Parents got home from their trip to Ireland. My father having grown up on the Family farm in Ohio was the traditional enforcer of discipline in our family. The biggest threat my Mom ever had was, “wait till you Father gets home.” Fortunately and unfortunately, Father wasn’t home that often and I got away with just about everything. But when I did get caught, Dad could put the fear of God in me and I was not looking forward to his wrath when they got home. So when things got about as bad as they could, what did I do, make them worse of course.

What else can I tell you about my joy rides? During my daily mini adventures driving around Cincinnati I used to burn rubber whenever possible. I would drive way too fast everywhere. I never once put gas in the car. I didn’t wear my seat belt. I always drove in the middle of the day, when other kids were in school. I was a very nervous when parking the car in the narrow “single” 3rd garage door at home. I loved the gear shifter in the Mercedes.
After joyriding for several days I became a fairly decent driver. I could pretty much do anything I needed to do and was growing confident in my abilities. My thoughts began to focus on the return of my parents and I increasingly became concerned that I would get the belt even thought I had never actually received that punishment, at least not that I could remember. I spent time everyday doing chores for my brother Craig as a punishment. I had to rake the lawn and as you might imagine from my description of growing up so far, it wasn’t a small lawn. To me as a child it seemed that we lived on a palatial estate with limitless land and woods in the prestigious neighborhood of Hyde Park. Having visited the house many years later I underestimated the magnitude of the house. It was over 10,000 square feet with 13 bedrooms on many acres of rolling hills. Raking the lawn was to me like digging a hole then filling it up and digging another hole. It was almost impossible to see any progress in this activity and it was impossible to feel any satisfaction of making headway. I think that was the point. So while sitting home, working in the yard, taking joyrides, waiting for the day of reckoning, I decided to take an extended joyride to where else but Florida.

Preparations for the trip were made in about 20 minutes. I “borrowed” two rolls of quarters from Craig that he had just gotten from the bank that he was going to use for a poker game he was planning and I’m pretty sure I ate a sandwich and I was off. I didn’t wear shoes but did were my favorite T shirt (an enormous Panama Red cartoon character smoking a joint) and a pair of shorts. I had shoulder length hair parted on the side and looked right out of the sixties but miniature because I was age 12. Attached is a picture a year or so later after a haircut for a class photo.

At first I did my usual route. I drove by friends houses to see if they wanted to joyride. After stopping at Jeff Rentschlers and Billy Brodburgers houses asking them to come along I found myself alone on this trip, which for their sake was a very good decision. I got on Victory Parkway which turned into I-75 south and was heading to St. Petersburg, Florida where Grandma Gillooly lived and I would seek asylum in her care.

My grandma, Agnes Gillooly was incredibly kind and looking back I think a kindred sprit. Bobbing along in the middle of the pacific in pitch black as I write this I feel another connection to this amazing lady who after high school crossed the Atlantic without chaperone on a ship to study music in France. She had true courage and was her own person. Growing up I remember her as the only person that truly accepted me regardless of the bad choices I made. She was the best and I loved her very much. See picture attached. This must have been taken my Junior year because in 12th grade I moved out, lived in a beach house, and grew a beard which I still have today.

Once I committed to go to Florida I found myself driving down Victory Parkway. This was a test I was just barely ready to handle at 12. The highway was four lanes wide and the speed limit was at least 55 mph, but few were driving that slowly. I got myself in-between two 18-wheelers and I was boxed in like a chocolate in a Russell Stover’s candy box. I made it past the truckers only to find going over the suspension bridge on those steel grates to be another new experience. Those old steal belted radials acted kind of funny on those grates and the car would feel like it was hydroplaning, I was scared. After the bridge, I was in Kentucky which was farther than I had every been on my Vespa scooter and at that point I know I must have been feeling like there was no turning back. As this point, I couldn’t return home without being caught for at least joy riding so I was determined to make it to Florida no matter what, no matter what.

Later I found out that my friend Jeff Rentschler’s Mom Susan told my brother that she saw someone driving a midnight blue Cutlass Supreme down their road at 80 MPH and that she thought it was Tim. Once probed, she also mentioned that I asked Jeff to run away with me, so at this point my brother must have known that I wouldn’t be home for dinner and that he wouldn’t be playing poker tonight. I liked Susan a lot also. I remember calling her years later to check in on Jeffrey and
unfortunately, Jeff was paying a debt to society but she still had the caring voice of a mother who loved her son and seemed heartbroken that we wouldn’t be speaking.

Once over the bridge on on my way down I-75 I stopped to pick up the first hitchhikers I saw. I have done a lot of hitching and though I would enjoy the company. This is a major interstate and it’s not everyday you see someone hitchhiking on an Interstate but this wasn’t everyday and these two kids we’re not what you might call normal.

The first thing I remember is that one of the kids was 16 and the other much younger, probably my age. When talking with the 16-year-old I had a hard time having a conversation and keeping the car at a constant speed and was weaving a bit. I still sometimes have this problem but it was becoming an issue so the 16-year-old insisted he drive and I obliged. I had already told him my story by this point so I’m sure he was a little afraid that I would run off the road or something stupid. They didn’t live too far from where I picked them up but they did live in a dry county. They wanted to go thought a town where they could pick up booze and I was happy to oblige. I know we got cases of beer and some hard liquor but what I most remember was that the trunk was full. I had images of the movie “Macon County Line” running through my head where there was an evil sheriff who setup a speed trap just before the Macon county line to trap moonshiners. He would turn on the flashers a few miles before the county line, the moonshines would make a run only to get pushed off the road on a hair pin turn and die a terrible death. We did drive past one patrol car but somehow we didn’t get pulled over and made it safely to the house.

I didn’t spend a lot of time in rural Kentucky but this was one of the strangest experiences I had as a child. First of all, they lived down by the river. To get to their house we drove down a very steep hill. At the bottom, we came upon a little shack with a corrugated tin roof. It was a one room shack and the two boys that I picked up lived there with their sister who looked 14 going to 18. She had very short cut off jeans, a halter top partially exposed and was nursing her baby. I had a range of emotions flood through my head having never seen anything like this before and when I got out of the car to help unload the alcohol she said something like, looky here, ain’t he kinda cute. At that point, I was still trying to comprehend the whole situation and I suddenly was terrified that something very wrong and terrible was about to happen. I ran for the car, locked the doors, and sped away from the tin shack down by the river only to be rejected by the incredibly steep hill that we had just driven down. So, I’m in the locked car, no where to go and the 16-year-old knocks on the window and says you have to back up the hill to get traction from the rear tires. Phew, I could now make my escape but unfortunately my driving skills in reverse, having never done it before, were lacking so ultimately, I had to trust him to drive me up the hill which he did happily.

Having narrowly escaped with my virginity and a sense of new found freedom I was driving fast again, on a gravel road in the back hills of Kentucky looking for signs to the highway. On one turn I tried to take a turn a little too fast and the back spun out. I was probably doing 60 and should have been going no faster than 30. I instinctively steered into the slide but now was spinning out the other direction. There was real drama here since this was a gravel road on the side of a hill without a guard rail. After about 4 such overcorrections the car slowed and I regained control. Phew, another tragedy narrowly averted. The story of my life.

I somehow found my way back to I-75 and was headed south once again. It was starting to get dark and I saw another hitchhiker so I stopped to pick him up. This time he was on the off ramp and was hitch hiking the way your supposed to on an interstate. He was a soldier on his was to Ft. Bragg I believe. He offered to drive so after I told him my story and I was tired after all the adrenalize I’d produced and consumed during the day so I slept in the back seat most of the night. He stopped once and filled the tank with gas but I essentially slept until we made it to the army base and he bid me farewell.

I didn’t see how we got to the base and was driving through town with all these military vehicles. At that time in my life the military and the policy were pretty much the same so I was very nervous that one would pull be over for underage driving but I guess I faked it well enough and made it out of town. I was a fair distance from the highway, low on cash, and almost out of fuel.

This is when my decision making skills and lack thereof really got the best of me. I was driving down a country road and decided to pull into a field to do donuts. I really don’t know what posses me to do that but I did it and immediately got stuck on the field. It was a plowed field anybody who had any experience would have known that a two wheel drive car can’t drive in a plowed field but I had to learn the hard way. So, I’m stuck in the plowed field and decide I need to get out somehow. I see that both back tires had spun dirt out to the point that the axle was sitting on the dirt. I needed to jack the car up, fill the holes and then I’d be off.

After jacking the car up and filling the holes multiple times I needed to change my strategy. The dirt just kept spitting out the back and I needed something more substantial to get traction. I found a section of a chain link fence, jacked the car up again and lowered it on the chain link hoping that it would provide more traction than soft dirt. We’ll it didn’t so I somehow got the clever idea that if I let some air out of the tires they would have more traction. That didn’t help. I had jacked the car up many times and exhausted the variation on a theme for that strategy so I changed plans. I remember seeing a gas station down the road a few miles back and would see about getting a tow. I didn’t want to walk so I borrowed a bicycle I found in a carport of a neighboring home and rode to the gas station.

Once there, I asked the attendant about a tow and he gave me a number to call. I went to the payphone, called and was told it would be $20 for a tow and since I didn’t have it, he wouldn’t come. I went back to the attendant and asked if he had any ideas and he suggested I ask the farmer next door to the field to use his tractor to pull me out. His name was Miller. Farmer Miller was home in his overalls, no shirt and somehow willing to help me out so before you know it, he had the tractor hitched up to the cutlass and was ready to pull. He had a hard time getting me out also but we quickly saw that it wasn’t so much the rear tires but the front ones that were in a hole that was making it impossible to move the car. After digging out tracks for the front tires, the tracker was successful and I was back on the road. This time however I had two rear tires with flats because I had let out all the air trying to gain traction on the chain link fence. I drove the car back to the gas station started filling the tires and one filled but the other had been ripped apart so I needed the spare. Shit, I had somehow lost the trunk key in the field so back on the bike to the field to sift though the plowed field to find the round key. Glad they change the car key systems to a single key not too long afterwards.

I didn’t find the key, it was getting late so I went back to the gas station to regroup and come up with another plan. I had about $5 so I couldn’t buy a tire. I was hungry so I got something to eat and had enough to make a phone call. In the phone booth, I called my brother R. Craig Miller who was entrusted by my parents to look after me and I seem to recall that he was pleased. I told him that I was OK and that I was just calling to let him know I’m fine and not to worry. I wouldn’t tell him where I was but soon after I started talking to Craig, a police officer rapped on the door to the phone booth. I open the door to greet the office and he asked me three questions.

1. Are you driving this car? No Sir.
2. Who’s car is it? My Moms.
3. Where’s your Mom? Why don’t you talk to my brother.

I have no idea what Craig said to him but shortly after that I was in a penitentiary. This wasn’t the Jail scene that you might see on a police drama, this was the kind of Jail with rows of inmates all in jail cells once after another with a single locking mechanism for a whole row of cells. I was placed in a private cell, thankfully. It had a steel toilet no toilet seat, small sink and a bunk bed. As soon as I was in the cell (imagine a 12 year old kid in shorts, no shoes and long hair) the man in the next cell he asked me if I like boys or girls. To this day, I’m convinced I gave him the only correct response which was silence. I was also afraid to use the toilet but slept pretty well on the plastic mattress and in the morning was greeted with the standard issue – black coffee and grits but “I wasn’t hungry”.

My oldest brother and Sister, Jeff and Kathy, came to my rescue but I suspect they didn’t see it that way. We went to a garage and bought a tire and drove back to Cincinnati. I’m sure they asked lots of questions but I don’t remember anything from the ride home. Years later, Jeff told me that the first words out of my mouth were, “If I hadn’t run out of money, I’d have made it.”