Vic Croston was the best PLC programmer I ever met, and the day before Thanksgiving in 1996 he took all of us in the electrical department out for lunch at a rough bar with great burgers on the waterfront, called with no irony, "Skinhead's." The day before Thanksgiving is, statistically, the rainiest day of the year in the Puget Sound area and that day was no exception.
We had ourselves a round of burgers and a round of beers and a round of stories from the guys who had just returned from a startup in Ontario, then we piled back into Vic's F-250 and headed back to the shop.
When we pulled up outside, KXRX (Seattle's Best Rock, 96.5 FM) started playing Alice's Restaurant, and Vic was smiling broadly.
"What is this song ?", I asked.
"What is this song !?", he replied ? "You've never heard this song ? Well, it's about the war."
And we all sat in Vic's F-250 in the pouring rain with bellies full of burgers and beer and sang along with all eighteen minutes and thirty-four seconds.
And ever since then, at some point in the year, I'll be making a presentation and have a moment when I realize that I've got some slides up with color glossy photographs and the pictures and the arrows and the writing on the back of each one saying what each one was.
And I'll think of Vic, and the rain, and the F-250 on the day before Thanksgiving in 1996, and the lifetime that has elapsed since then in the blink of an eye.
Happy Thanksgiving, fellas.
