Chapter 1 

In December of 1977, I was 21 years old, seven months out of the University of Virginia and desperate for a job. For the last five months I had worked as an editorial assistant at the Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) in Arlington, Virginia, one of the countless Navy offices in a concrete jungle miserably misnamed Crystal City. The job was fun and exciting. It was also ending. I had been hired as a six-month temporary appointment, and this was my last month. My future looked awful.

That I had decided to make a career out of Federal employment was no surprise, or something I even thought about. My father was a bureaucrat with the General Services Administration, a civil servant like his father, and his father, and his father. All I knew was that I had worked for private companies during my summer breaks -- Zayre, the Alexandria Journal and Gazette, Airways Rent-A-Car -- and had no desire to ever work for one again. Federal workers were a lot more laid back than their private counterparts.

I had spent that day taking pictures of Supply Corps frockings, the ceremony during which naval officers get promoted. We printed a picture (a "grip and grin") of each and every one of these ceremonies in the newsletter, the What's SUP, and I spent a lot of my time coving them. It wasn't very tough, and I had been to so many of them that the Chief of the Supply Corps, a rear admiral named Gene Grinstead, started recognizing me in the hall. When I got back to my desk, there was a phone message to call a Paul Armstrong. The phone number had a 312 area code. Chicago.

"Paul Armstrong, please."

"Scott? Thanks for calling back. I'm with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare here in Region Five. Your name came up on the PACE list, and we have a job here you might be interested in."

I sat down and grabbed a pencil. A job! A year earlier, I had taken the Professional and Administrative Career Exam, the PACE, and placed fairly high. Even so, there were enough people ahead of me in the scoring that it had taken 12 months to get to my name.

"The job is with the Social Security Administration as a Claims Representative. You'd start in a three-month training course, after which you'd be assigned to work at one of our offices in Illinois. How does that sound?"

It was a job. I grabbed at it. "Sounds great. When do you want me there?"

"The training course starts on January 30, and is being held in Minneapolis, Madison, Wisconsin, and here in Chicago. Any preference?"

I was from Chicago originally, and knew that three months there would be like a year anywhere else. I knew nothing of Madison.

"Minneapolis sounds good," I said for no particular reason.

We talked a little more and hung up. The dark shadow of unemployment lifted from me. I had a job!

I was living with my parents at the time. They were happy to hear about the job. Mom asked why I didn't pick Madison for the training course.

"I don't know. What's in Madison?"

"We use to go there on summer vacation when I was a kid. It's a beautiful city. Besides, Minneapolis is so cold."

When I called Paul Armstrong the next day to confirm things, I changed my training course to Madison.

It was decided that my dad and I would drive to Madison, stopping in Chicago for a week to visit my grandparents. I finished up my job at NAVSUP on January 6 with a big expensive lunch at the Company Inkwell in Arlington, said goodbye to all my high school and college friends, and Dad and I left town at 4 AM, Monday, January 23, 1978.

The infamous Winter of '78 was upon us, and we had to stop at New Stanton, Pennsylvania to get a new thermostat for my '63 Rambler American. It was so cold out that the engine couldn't heat the thermostat up enough to circulate the coolant. By the time we got to Chicago, two feet of snow blanketed the city, the same snow that would later get Mayor Bilandic kicked out of office. We visited my mother's parents, and despite my grandmother's dire warnings about road conditions, we pressed on Friday afternoon to my Uncle Bill's house in McHenry for the weekend.

Saturday morning, with Uncle Bill and Uncle Dick riding chase in Bill's Scirocco, we had breakfast at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and proceeded on into Madison. All four of us spent the night in the Holiday Inn downtown.

The next morning I checked into the Highland Motor Inn as instructed by Paul Armstrong. The cold of Wisconsin was a definite shock after balmy Washington. About 1 PM, Dad and my two uncles drove off.

Here I was in Madison.

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