Time in Ohio's Marion prison wasn't too bad. I managed to get a good job working as the clerk for the prison's pre-release counselor. Most important to my future the job gave me access to my first personal computer, a Radio Shack TRS-80. There wasn't any software for the TRS-80, but it was loaded with the Basic operating system. It was the first computer I'd ever seen and I was fascinated by it. At the time the home computer industry was in its infancy, but being locked up in Georgia where there were no TV's, newspapers, or magazines, I was ignorant to the developing computer industry. The TRS-80 changed everything I believed about myself. I'd went through most of my life thinking I was stupid. I believed I'd failed second and seventh grades because I wasn't capable of learning. Yes they'd made a big deal about my IQ and about my off-the-charts score in Abstract Reasoning, but none of that translated into any thing I could use in life. High test scores were meaningless. A ninth grader with a car was not a bight kid. A ninth grader with a car was a big oaf with a learning disability. I was that ninth grader and I was stupid. Within a few days of playing with the Radio Shack computer I began to appreciate the utility of all that IQ, and especially the usefulness of a powerful abstract reasoning. The computer convinced me that I wasn't stupid at all. I just hadn't been exposed to the right tools. I knew immediately the computer would be my tool. I knew that with a computer I could unleash all that I was meant to be.

We lacked software to make it do anything other than play games, but one of the games was written in BASIC. BASIC is a non-compiled language, which, among other things means that if you have the game, you also have the source code. So I could see the game software's code. The actual program that made it work. We didn't have a manual on how to program in BASIC, or anything else. Inmates weren't suppose to learn to program computers. The Ohio Department of Corrections had a deep rooted belief that an inmate learning to program would be a bad thing. Like we'd be able to digitally rob a bank or launch nuclear missiles, or something else. Ironical, prison officials have the same mentality in 2016. Prisoners still aren't allowed to program computers or to learn to program computers. We're not even allowed books on programming.

Back to 1981: So I had access to a computer with games written in BASIC, but no instruction manuals. Remember this was years before the internet, even before cell phones. This was the first computer I'd ever touched and it was far from the machines you use today. This computer didn't have a hard drive, or even a floppy disk. To load or save a program you had to use a cassette tape. On the computer you typed in the command: RUN BLACKJACK. The screen would then respond with: Press Play on tape player. Then you'd press play on a normal cassette tape player and the small game program would take fifteen minutes to load. My point being this was a very early personal computer without a great deal of power. But it did have BASIC.

I began studying the source code for the game. At first it looked like Sanskrit to me. Some of the programming terms were obvious, like GOTO, STOP, RUN, IF THEN, but others were not so obvious. BASIC is run in sequential blocks, so the first line would be numbered 10, the second 20, and so on. It was easy to understand code like: "IF 250 = 'Y', THEN GOTO 855, ELSE GOTO 1250. Meaning, if line number 250, which was a keyboard input, equaled the letter Y, then skip everything else and go to line number 855, but if the input is anything else, then go to line number 1250. Some of it was simple and easy to understand, other code was not so simple. After a few days of studying the game's code I began to figure out what I was looking at. In a few weeks I wrote my own simple program from scratch. A month later I wrote a program that operated as an address book. After six months I wrote my first application program. It was a program designed to aid a collection agency in their efforts. (A convict there had done this on the street, so I used his business model to design the software.) When this guy said, "You could sell that to every collection agency in the country," a light went on in my head. Computers might actually be good for something besides games. Of course I wasn't the only one to figure this out. A fellow named Bill Gates and another named Stephen Jobs were both a few steps ahead of me. Still, I thought it was a great idea.

Now to the awkward part of this story. Sorry Mary, but I have to tell this one or the time-line falls apart. While at Marion my wife visited me as often as she could, which was regularly. One of the perks of visits at Marion is that a couple could manage some...private time. Everyone in our family is aware of this because our second child was conceived during this time. Everyone at the prison knew this too, which was a little awkward when I went to the parole board with a week old son. There were a lot of knowing grins and raised eyebrows, but no one seemed upset about it.

Clayton Lee Waager was born February 20, 1982. He began life with a rare birth defect. So rare there's not a proper name for it. We commonly refer to his condition as having half a heart. This defect is caused by multiple disorders: pulmonary valve stenosis, common atrium, and single ventricle-Complex. What it means is that his heart never functioned right. In his life Clay had five open heart surgeries, the first at 10 days old. Doctor's have told us he wouldn't survive the night so many times we learned to ignore them. In 2010, the medical personnel performed CPR and were unable to find a pulse for 30 minutes in the emergency room, but even that didn't stop him. After a few days in a comma he returned to a normal life. Our first son's life is an extraordinary one, a story you will hear more about later.

Before I saw the parole board Clay had survived his first surgery. Everyone at the prison including the parole board was aware of the situation and the circumstances. I'm not sure if I'd have made parole under normal circumstances. Maybe. But with the out pouring of sympathy for both Mary and Clay not only did I make parole but they made sure I was released in record time. I walked out of the prison -- legally this time -- March 30, 1982, 38 days after Clay's birth. Mary waited for me outside the prison with our anxious four year-old daughter Emily and our newborn son Clay. Mary drove me home, which was a small two bedroom rented house in Masury, Ohio. A tiny community on the Pennsylvania border. So close that the drug store a hundred yards from the house was half in Ohio and half in Pennsylvania. They sold both state's lottery tickets at different ends of their store. It felt like a new beginning, and in many ways it was.

When released on parole the parolee has to find a job immediately. Mary had been barely surviving so I certainly needed to find a job and learn to be a man, one responsible for his family. Despite this, I never looked for a job. While I'd been in prison Mary had been clever in her survival. When we had our greenhouse Mary had learned how to make silk flower arrangements. She was very good at this so I had sold some to my floral customers. While I was in prison she used this talent and sold her silk flower arrangements to local grocery stores. The stores were a better market than florist because a florist was capable of making their own, where a store wasn't interested. In this my wife taught me a lesson in market selection. When I got home Mary had an excess of finished product ready to sell and a fair inventory of raw product to be produced and sold. Rather then look for a job, I went to work selling silk flower arrangements with Mary.

In a matter of weeks my product line had increased enough to call myself a manufacture's rep. I had a rather diverse product list. I sold Mary's silk flower arrangements, single serve packages of fudge from a company in Philadelphia, socket sets from Taiwan, and cases of motor oil from a petroleum jobber in Pennsylvania. All things I could sell to grocery stores. I realized we'd outgrown our "warehouse facilities" when unloading a tractor trailer load of fudge. Mary came out of the house and asked where I planned on putting all that stuff. In the house, of course. But the house was already packed with everything else. There wasn't any room unless we all moved out.

My plan had been to make enough money to get into the computer business. We had been accumulating funds, but were far short of enough. With Mary's revelation that we'd out grown our home/warehouse I had a decision to make. We could either keep growing (which would have been easy to do) by renting warehouse space, or we could make the move to where I really wanted to be. Computers. I decided to move forward. Rather than bring in more inventory I began selling off all that we had and banked the profit. When that was done I drove over to the IBM office in Youngstown, Ohio and applied for a job. I'd learned a lot about computers. I could program in BASIC and I'd read every Bite Magazine (the only computer magazine of that time, I think) cover to cover for the past two years. I believed I could make up for my lack of actual experience with deep industry knowledge. As confident as I was, IBM was less than impressed. I was pretty upset with IBM for not giving me a chance so I decided to compete with them. To be fair this had always been my plan. I just wanted the job to gain some experience first.

I'm not sure of the exact time the IBM PC was released, but it was in this time frame. At the time you couldn't sell the IBM PC unless you were an IBM dealer. Apple had the same deal. Only Apple dealers could sell their computers, the same with Radio Shack and their TRS-80. There were a few lesser important computers on the market, but none would work for my needs. The final player was the largest seller of small business computers at the time. This will surprise most of you but that company was Commodore Computers out of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. I read up on Commodore and their line of computers then reached out to the company. A meeting was set up with their Ohio Dealer Director at a Bob Evans Restaurant in Cleveland. Commodore lacked a dealer in Youngstown so I was confident I could secure that territory. The only obstacle to overcome was that I was $23,400 short of the $25,000 needed to pay the dealer fee.