When Silicon Valley Smelled Like Trees and Typewriter Ribbons
Summer 1973. I was locked inside our stuffy Isla Vista apartment watching the Watergate hearings. Afraid to leave. Outside was full of villains and hooshing mirages. John Dean sweating under the lights. I was depressed. Kevin was already planning our escape.
He'd heard San Jose had a good business program. He gave up on music. I gave up on Santa Barbara. We moved up north to Mountain View, into a cheesy little apartment complex with a pool. I thought it was cool.
I’d never really worked a real job before. Babysitting, Hamburger Henry’s, mopping for Mom. That was it.
The want ad was in the newspaper—where else? Clerk, part-time. Addison-Wesley. Sand Hill Road. A publisher.
The place looked modern. Trees, green lawn. Wide-open spaces. Low clean buildings. At the interview, the guy was impressed I’d done two years of college. Three, if you counted the time abroad. But mostly I screwed around there. I didn’t even have a degree.
My first task? Reading the newspaper. Clipping out relevant articles. Easy-peasy.
Then I became cashier in the canteen. Counted real money at the end of each shift. Wow.
Getting there was a problem. No license. Didn’t want one. I wasn’t like the others. I’d been to Europe, I’d seen public transport. So I bought a moped. It was more a mechanical metaphor than motor vehicle. And I pushed it more than it carried me. I spilled the gas-oil mix. Fumbled the spark plug gap with a wire and my thumbnail.
Inside, the offices clacked with IBM Selectrics. A sound like muffled popcorn. I loved it.
Eventually they put me on the switchboard. “Addison-Wesley, how may I help you?” You had to know all the bosses’ names. Plug, buzz, connect. If it buzzed, they were on a call. If not, you went ahead. So intricate!
One night, Kevin came home from his job at Hewlett-Packard. Working graveyard shift. All in white: suit, gloves, hairnet – the whole bit. But what got him was that cylinder thing he called an “ingot.”
There was this hot liquid in a metal barrel. Dark, shimmering –black mercury. Slowly, ever so slowly, a needle descended from above, like a magic wand. And the stuff in the barrel clung to it. It slowly hardened, crystallized. Then the needle was drawn back up – gently. A fat cylinder, like a little torpedo. Took hours – or days! Industrial alchemy. Ultra-sensitive. If anything shook – bam. All ruined. Back to zero.
Precision work. Gold bricks cast from black glass.
Paid well.
And they called it: silicon.
Back then, the Valley still smelled like trees.