Dan Mayer has been a life long friend. A native Baltimorian, he came from a big family of brothers. His father was an extremely interesting scientest and his mother an excentric musician. I always enjoyed visiting his home. I met Dan in the University of Maryland Television Workshop. There we started WOCR.

After the radio station project, Dan and I became room mates. I had a house and in order to make the rent, I needed to take on some room mates. But, first Dan lived in an apartment in a huge complex near the Baltimore Washington Parkway in Maryland.

I remember Dan's first job after the radio station was in car sales. I remember him telling stories of the high pressure sales techniques that were used to sell cars. The particularly on one occasion took the keys away from some couple and locked them in the showroom after the dealer had closed. It didn't take long for him to quit. Dan was an honest guy and I think this occupation was rubbing him the wrong way.

Dan and I used to enjoy Sunday afternoon BBQ. Usually we would meet an my house or his apartment and cook up some stakes and then lounge around the rest of the afternoon. This is where we came up with the idea of buying a cabin. Of course, any lounging around on a Sunday afternoon would include the detailed study of the Sunday Washington Post. There we found the advertisement that led us to buy our cabin.

Soon thereafter, we were making weekly trips up to Lost Valley. Each week was involved with planning for what we could get, buy or borrow to fix up our cabin. Actually, what we wanted to do was get back into lounging around again in the afternoon while we cooked steaks on the BBQ.

This whole process was easier when Dan finally moved into my house. We got along fine as room mates. We even had a couple of other guys staying there for a while. Mostly, Dan and I were the most similar. We enjoyed the same TV, food and of course both really liked my dog Rusty.

Dan's next job was with IBM. He had applied to a program where they would train him in the repair of their office products and finally was accepted. Dan was now officially a typewriter repair man. He was the guy in the suit that carried a heavy brief case styled tool box that would go from office to office fixing Selectric typewriters. In those days, the Seletrics were the hot set up. They were troublesome and needed repair all the time.

Dan went on into the repair of dictation equipment and then copiers. I remember we had an IBM copier at PBS. It was a highly complex device that they could never get going right. I used to complain about it to Dan and one day he decided to mention it to his boss. Sure enough, it was not long before IBM threw the whole force of their repair department at our copier at PBS. It never worked better after that.

Dan loved working for IBM and most of the rest of his friends didn't really see the attraction. IBM seemed like such a straight laced place and you had to wear a suit all the time. But he liked it and it made him happy. They did take good care of their employees. The rest of us had jobs where there was such an adverse relationship between employee and worker. Many times I envied Dan's job and the future he most definitely had there.

When I announced that I was getting married, Dan was going to have to move out of my house. Dan was terribly practical. He just moved into my Girlfriend's apartment when she moved in with me. We all stayed friends for many years thereafter.

Our circle of