Remembering one of those moments when the light finally dawns
The year was 1977 and I was a journalism student at Northeastern University with a new “co-op” internship assignment to cover the town of Maynard, Mass., for the local newspaper, which was then known as the South Middlesex Daily News.
Maynard is the smallest town in Massachusetts, geographically speaking, covering a tad over five square miles. I knew nothing about the community and couldn’t have found the little speck on a map before my editors told me to go there and make my mark.
That meant talking to as many people as possible so I’d get to know the place. My first few days on the job I kept hearing about a deck, or something called deck; deck this, deck that; it seemed not an hour went by without someone – a cop, Town Hall secretary, an elected official, someone — mentioning this deck.
Finally, embracing the notion that there are no stupid questions, I asked a townie to tell me about the deck and where I might find it.
“Oh, DEC, you mean Digital Equipment Corporation.”
At that moment, I felt as though there are indeed stupid questions.
And I quickly learned that DEC and Maynard were essentially one and the same, as the company Ken Olsen founded in 1957 was then thriving and ensconced in an old wool factory – “The Mill” to locals – that consumed much of the downtown area.
If you haven’t yet seen the news, Olsen died Sunday at the age of 84.
