From: masticol@cadenza.rutgers.edu (Steve Masticola)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Goodbye, Ed
Date: 8 Jan 93 17:51:37 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

I got word last night that a long-time friend of mine, Ed Maher, had
died a couple of months ago. Age 44. The Big C.

Ed may have been the last of the true hippies. He was pretty crazy. He
was also a technology freak; his special love was instrumentation. He
kept a cellarfull of vacuum-tube test equipment going long after it
should have died. He would wax eloquent over things like Tektronix 555
scopes and programmable unijunction transistors. He didn't like
computers because they were too cut-and-dried; no surprises. Analog
was his thing.

He liked old machinery, too. At his father's printing company, he kept
a whole roomfull of 1900-vintage Smith plunger envelope folders, Kluge
presses, paper cutters, conveyor driers, and the like going.  He
taught me the beauty of such machines, the true mania of the people
who had designed their systems of flywheels and push rods and
eccentric cams.  He used to build race cars, too; loved Triumph
Spitfires. Quit it when people started using the engines he had built
to compete against him.

I met Ed at a long-forgotten company called Barclay Analytical, making
a long-forgotton machine called Badap-1 ("The Audio Micro Computer!").
The Badap was a good idea and a neat toy, but had a lousy
implementation, and the company was mismanaged. Barclay folded; Ed and
I went to the parent company, Crown International, in Indiana. We
spent seven months in that sterile place, building Badaps in the
daytime, and hacking on 'tronics and bullshitting through the night.
Ed saved my life there, showed me that there were some things worth
living for, worth fighting for.

I remember him working on an optoelectronic dynamic range expander. He
had built it from vacuum fluorescent indicator tubes and photocells,
his own crazy-ass design. Gerald Stanley, Crown's resident mad genius
and the designer of their legendary DC-300 amplifier, thought it was a
neat idea too. Ed had bought a vacuum-tube curve tracer as junk, and
was using it to drive the indicators. It was the dead of winter, near
midnight. Pink Floyd was on the record player through a Crown amp and
Klipschorns.  (Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?) We
watched the tubes flicker, listened to the scope hum.  This was purest
'tronics, the heart of technology. This was home.

Ed took the dirty jobs. He preferred them. He more than once told me,
"Ed Maher can get dirty just looking at work." He didn't keep them
long - maybe a year or two at the most, then he'd have some fight with
the boss and get fired. The dirty jobs were what killed him.

He didn't take proper care of himself; seldom used respirators. When
he was working in a semiconductor factory, he used to get gassed
regularly by faulty and improperly cleaned equipment. Spent some time
in hospitals. It happens often to people who work in such places.

A year and a half ago, Ed was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer that had
metastasized to his brain. The doctors found asbesdos in his lungs.
They asked him to tell them about any chemical exposures; the list he
gave them was three pages long. For some reason, he seemed proud of
this fact.

I think Ed had a hero complex. His dad had earned a Silver Star, by
standing for three days in an icy river, under a bridge in German-held
territory, with a two-way radio strapped to his back. It probably
saved the lives of a lot of people, but cost him a crippling case of
arthritis in his legs.  I think Ed was trying to live up to his ideal
of his father.

The last I saw Ed was in August. He was wheelchair-bound and spaced
out on chemotherapy, angry at the world. I admit, I was angry at him,
for dying on me. But he was still fighting. Two months later, he
stopped. 

Ed gave up when his mom died; he had lost the only reason he thought
he had for living. His family tried to get me, but failed, because Ed
hand't given them my phone number and they didn't know where I was. I
didn't know about it until I tried to call him.

The world won't note Ed's passing very much, and a lot of people would
look down on him. He wasn't a pretty sight. He had shaggy hair, bad
teeth, and a red goatee that sometimes made him look like a close
approximation of Satan. But I loved him, I knew what his place was in
the world. He kept things holding together, just a little longer.

Goodbye, Ed. May God's love be with you.

-----

So, so you think you can tell
  heaven from hell
  blue skies from pain
  can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail 
  a smile from a veil
  do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
  your heroes for ghosts
  hot ashes for trees
  hot air for the cool breeze
  cold comfort for change
  did you exchange
					   a walk-on part in a war
					   for a lead role in a cage?
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