Origin Story

The Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, and the Apple II

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When I was in middle school, I loved going to the library. I’d volunteer there, and they had computers. Lots of them.

They were mostly Apple IIs, but there was one Apple IIGS, the “fancy” modern one. Looking back, it’s funny to think how high tech that seemed at the time.

The library had games, and the two I remember most were The Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (or one of the other Carmen Sandiego versions). I can’t remember exactly which ran on which machine, probably both on the Apple II at some point, but I do remember how much fun they were.

The graphics were awful by today’s standards, but that didn’t matter. The gameplay and the stories were great. Oregon Trail had those wonderfully stick figure graphics, and Carmen Sandiego was all text and deduction, but both were surprisingly immersive. They pulled you in.

Fast forward to now: there’s an Oregon Trail game on the Apple TV. My kids have played it. It’s wild to see something that defined a tiny part of my childhood sitting there as an app on the TV. And it’s actually hard, way harder than I remember. Maybe 11 year old me was terrible at it, or maybe I’ve just gotten soft.

The kids haven’t played Carmen Sandiego, but they’ve watched the Netflix animated version. So somehow it all comes full circle, a game I played in a school library on a beige plastic Apple II in Queens has become a glossy cartoon they stream in 4K.

It’s funny how that works. I can still picture that room at IS 227, the horse shoe setup of old Apple IIs humming away, green screens flickering, and me trying to ford a river without losing half my wagon party.

Some memories just stick.

The Story of My First Movie

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It’s pretty likely that the first movie I ever saw wasn’t actually the one I’m talking about today. What I’m going to talk about is the first movie I remember seeing. I don’t even recall being in the theater for the entire thing, but I know I was there because I have one vivid memory from it. Based on the release date and my approximate age at the time, I must have been pretty young. Looking back, the fact that this movie is the first one I remember says a lot about me.

If you know me, you might have guessed that the first movie I remember seeing in a theater was Star Wars: A New Hope. It came out in May 1977, which would have made me a little over three years old. I’m not sure how long it was in theaters, so I can’t say exactly when I was taken to see it, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume I was about three. Was that a movie a three-year-old should see? The short answer: probably not. And, in full disclosure, before writing that sentence, I looked up when I first took my own daughters to see a Star Wars movie in theaters—it was Solo, the Han Solo film. They were five, so I think it’s safe to say that three was probably a bit young. (I’m not a hypocrite on this!)

I don’t recall if my mom was there. She isn’t in my memory, nor is my sister. That’s why I think my dad might have taken me by himself. All I really remember is getting up—or maybe sitting down—during that scene where Darth Vader is choking the general who, frankly, was being a bit cross with him.

That’s it. That’s all I remember just that one vivid moment. But I have a pretty good feeling that it set the stage for my love of the genre. With me wanting to write more recently this was one of those topics I wanted to write about. It also should come first before me talking about other stuff about me slightly older anyway.

40 Year Old Ice Cream Anyone?

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The title says it all. This is a bag of 40 year old astronaut ice cream I got when we went to Cape Kennedy around 1983. Recently I did notice that bag is not vacuum sealed like it was when purchased. I am thinking it needs to go into a hermetically sealed container. I am afraid of the world ending bacteria that may be in it after 40 years.

Still it is a piece of my childhood so I did not toss it out. Yet….

The Story of My Dad and MASH

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Today is my dad’s birthday. He would be 78 today. I miss you dad. I thought today was appropriate to post this entry i had written a while ago and just haven’t scheduled to publish.

Growing up It felt like most people thought that my dad was a doctor. Big reveal he was not a doctor. He was what they call a physician’s assistant. The way he always described it was that he could do about 95% of what a Doctor does. The difference was that he needed a doctor to sign his chart versus a doctor being fully autonomous. The advantage of physician assistants is its two years of medical school versus four years of medical school to be a doctor.

My dad went through physician assistant School in the mid-70s. A few years after the movie and show MASH came out. Since I was born after the show started I cannot remember a time when he wasn’t watching it if it was on TV. I’m pretty sure that if i had ever asked ever he would have said that was his favourite show of all time.

For my dad I think it was more than a TV show. He enjoy it and thought it was funny yet I also think he felt the adrenaline rush of the glorified combat situation, even if it was a comedy. So much so that I remember during the first Gulf War he had offered to go into the field. I don’t know if it was at a field hospital or at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany however I know he discussed it to some degree. Retrospectively I am not sure how serious he was. I think on some level he wanted to go however on another it was never going to happen. In the end it never did. That never stopped him from thinking of himself as Hawkeye. I’m pretty sure that means one of his friends was trapper. And remembering this particular Doctor friend who he worked many shifts together when i was growing up they were as funny together as Hawkeye and Trapper.