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jwgIn early spring of 1962 I had decided to leave grad school and get a job in the computer industry having taken several computer programming courses and had a part-time job at MIT in the computer center. And along with that I decided I would get a new car to replace my then-current used car - I don't remember what it was - probably about a 1956 something or other - Ford perhaps.
My choice was an MG-A; a flashy sports car and I checked out a nearby dealer.
I went on a job interview at Honeywell and got a verbal offer at the interview. The job was to write a code generator for a Fortran Compiler. On the way home I stopped off at a bank to get a loan application (I was going to secure it with some stock).
A few days later I got the offer in the mail. I called up the new boss and negotiated a start date in early June when the MIT term was over. (I had a camp councillor summer job they wouldn't let me wait until the end of the summer to start since the project was just getting started.) And then I went to the car dealer to purchase the car.
Below is not a picture of my car, but it looked like this. I really liked it. One of the downsides of the car was that it had a tiny trunk and very little space behind the seats so it wasn't very practical. Also the convertable top attachment to the windshield leaked a bit in heavy rain. The one speeding tiicket I got I am sure was because I was a youth driving a red sports car - I wasn't going any faster than other cars. It had a bit of engine trouble (the engine ran on for about a half minute when you shut it off); after a couple of years that required too many trips to be fixed so I traded it in for a red MG-B. The MG-B had more room in the trunk and behind the seats so it was more practical, and the top didn't leak. But it wasn't as cool looking.
I lived in an aparment in Belmont, Mass. One of my two roommates had a red Austin-Healy Sprite, and the other had a red Triumph TR-3. So we had quite a backyard where we parked our cars.
My choice was an MG-A; a flashy sports car and I checked out a nearby dealer.
I went on a job interview at Honeywell and got a verbal offer at the interview. The job was to write a code generator for a Fortran Compiler. On the way home I stopped off at a bank to get a loan application (I was going to secure it with some stock).
A few days later I got the offer in the mail. I called up the new boss and negotiated a start date in early June when the MIT term was over. (I had a camp councillor summer job they wouldn't let me wait until the end of the summer to start since the project was just getting started.) And then I went to the car dealer to purchase the car.
Below is not a picture of my car, but it looked like this. I really liked it. One of the downsides of the car was that it had a tiny trunk and very little space behind the seats so it wasn't very practical. Also the convertable top attachment to the windshield leaked a bit in heavy rain. The one speeding tiicket I got I am sure was because I was a youth driving a red sports car - I wasn't going any faster than other cars. It had a bit of engine trouble (the engine ran on for about a half minute when you shut it off); after a couple of years that required too many trips to be fixed so I traded it in for a red MG-B. The MG-B had more room in the trunk and behind the seats so it was more practical, and the top didn't leak. But it wasn't as cool looking.
I lived in an aparment in Belmont, Mass. One of my two roommates had a red Austin-Healy Sprite, and the other had a red Triumph TR-3. So we had quite a backyard where we parked our cars.
