Apple II Bits

Last week was my dad’s birthday, and someone asked me: had I ever gotten him a gift for the Apple II?

In fact, I had! It was one Christmas in the 1990s, and Dad was in his second decade of using AppleWorks on the Apple II to run the family business. We’d just upgraded our version of AppleWorks — one of many purchases we’d made from Quality Computers. Although I was still a minor at the time, it was not unusual for me to receive a QC catalog in the mail, call them to order something, and tell them to charge it to dad’s credit card, which they had on file. If the purchase was a game or something else that couldn’t be written off as a business expense, I would reimburse my parents from my allowance.

Even at that age, I’d already caught up to and surpassed my father’s familiarity with the Apple II and its capabilities. I thought I should use that experience to benefit his AppleWorks experience, so I bought AfterWork, a screen saver specifically for AppleWorks.

Screen savers are still ubiquitous, but primarily as an artifact of an earlier time when they served a necessary purpose. Today’s LCD monitors don’t run the risk of burn-in, but on a CRT monitor like the AppleColor RGB monitor on our IIGS, my dad stepping away from work for an hour to play Tetris could have disastrous results. AppleWorks 4.0 would blank the screen, but with AfterWork, fun animations would flood his display until he came back to his spreadsheets.

I don’t know that my dad appreciated receiving the gift as much as I did giving it. Most of my family see computers much like I see cars: a vehicle to get you from point A to point B. They don’t enjoy tinkering or playing with it or making it do fun, cool things for the sake of it. But I was nonetheless proud to give my dad something that integrated seamlessly into his workflow. I wasn’t trying to get him to use the Apple II in a different or "better" way — I just wanted his work day to be a little more amusing, and to give back to him a small part of the wonder and joy he’d given me by getting me into the Apple II in the fist place.

It’s been decades since I’ve seen AfterWork in action: I don’t have it installed in Sweet16, and there appear to be no screenshots or YouTube videos of it. What I can find online is a 1995 review of AppleWorks 5.0 by now-Juiced.GS staff writer Andrew Roughan, in which he states, "AppleWorks now includes the AfterWork screen saver and five sample modules. The full AfterWork package which has 21 modules is available separately." I’m left uncertain which Christmas I bought AfterWork or for what version of AppleWorks. But I’ll always remember it as a gift that represented something my dad and I had in common.

Last spring, I interviewed my father. The eight-minute video was to live on my YouTube channel, the focus of which is video games, so that’s what my dad and I talked about: his history with pinball, choosing to have Atari and Nintendo in a house where he raised four boys, and more. It was a fun opportunity to get to know my father better.

For Father’s Day 2015, I decided to revisit the topic but more in-depth. In the time since the original video, I launched the Polygamer podcast, which interviews marginalized voices in the gaming industry. My father, being a straight, white, cisgendered male, doesn’t sound like he’d fit that demographic — but when viewed as someone older than the average gamer, and who juggled gaming with parenting decades before the former became mainstream, he certainly represents an unusual perspective.

Since Polygamer is an audio podcast, it was easier to produce a longer interview than the video format allows. The range of topics my dad and I discussed thus expanded to include not only video games, but science fiction, Star Trek, and the Applel II. I was surprised to learn that Dad brought home an Apple II not as an accounting tool for use in the family business, but because he saw it as a curiosity that had the potential to reshape the world, and he wanted his sons to get in on the ground floor. This and other tales of the diversions and entertainments he’s enjoyed over the last seven decades made for a fun and fascinating conversation.

The entire episode can be found on Polygamer.net; subscribed to in iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your podcatcher of choice; or streamed below.

My thanks to my dad not only for taking the time to speak with me, but for making me the geek I am today!

When I think back to my childhood, there are two things I don’t remember ever not having: an Apple II, and video games. From computer games like Castle Wolfenstein and Choplifter to Atari 2600 classics such as Space Invaders and Adventure, I’ve always been gaming.

Having such entertainment opportunities is typical in the modern household — but thirty years ago? It was almost unheard of. Who decided I should grow up to be a gamer?

The answer is my dad — and to commemorate Father’s Day, I found out what makes him the family’s original gamer.

I’m so grateful my father gave me this opportunity to interview him. The subject matter may not be so serious, but it answered some questions I’d always had, like: how did we end up with a pinball table in the basement? (It was Gottlieb’s Spirit of 76, if you were wondering.) Why don’t you game much anymore? These questions were always in the back of my mind but never important enough to ask.

When I asked Dad if he had any specific memories of me growing up playing games, I thought he might remember how I excitedly relayed to him every plot point of the original Final Fantasy, one of my first RPGs, as I encountered them. Or how he accompanied me to the Nintendo World Championships in 1990, where I placed second for my state and age group. Instead he abstracted out the concepts of what made me unique in a family of gamers. I could never dominate an arcade machine like my brother Dave could with Q*bert and Pac-Man, but it’s true that I really appreciated the context and minutia of these imaginative worlds, which I don’t think I ever consciously was aware of until my dad said it on camera.

I expected this video to teach me about my dad, not myself. But Apple II user ionfarmer commented, "I really enjoyed your Father’s Day video and appreciated hearing your father’s video gaming experience, and by extension, your video game pedigree! That was awesome!" And Dave’s partner Dawn wrote, "The memories you capture are truly amazing ( listening to your dad talking about his childhood, and of course the differences between you and Dave).&quot.

So thank you, Dad, for this opportunity to remember that the Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Happy Father’s Day!