Les started his business in Prineville Oregon. I happened to land a retrofit job to the hospital in Prineville a number of years back. The staff gave us a tour ahead of starting the job and when we were going through the patient rooms, we entered one that was very large and had a separate bedroom to it. The staff was silent and reverent, then whispered "this was Les' room". Apparently, the extra bedroom had been another patient room and was for his wife in his last days. That says a lot for how the community thought of him.
Very common situation for those coming up during the Great Depression. My Dad never finished the 3rd grade. Mom, the smarter one, got through the 6th. Both were born around 1910. Back in East Texas, cotton fields commanded lots of hands. That apparently was more important than schooling... After all, where could one make more than $0.50/per hundred than picking cotton? That held true until the CCC came into being with FDR.
yep, I was one of those... Bought one of the first creaming 9600's for a mere $1000. Boy was I put out when they shortly came out with the 14.4. My home-grown Chat Channel became outdated overnight.I remember being the first person I knew to upgrade to 14.4kpbs ca.1993. Others still running on 2400 - 9600 baud modems thought I was going to break the internet.
If I recall, the 14.4's (and later 56k's) didn't work on some phone systems, of the time. There was a scramble to upgrade some of this telephone system equipment, as the faster modems were coming out, and some regions kept up better than others. If you lived in one of these regions, your 14.4k modem would connect just fine, but at 9.6k bps. Those were some expensive concessions, at the time.
