During our time at Central I held a general feeling of good will towards nearly all fellow students. I admit those who wore skirts baffled me, but I can’t remember disliking anyone. If you had asked me then, I would have said that I knew most of my classmates. Now, I’m getting to know at least a little about dozens of folks who were mostly just names to me a half-century ago. I know I knew precious few then.
I think Dave Mihalick and I were together in John Armstrong’s physics class but we didn’t spend much time together other than that. I lost track of him after high school until the fall of 1966 when I went to work in the Tube Mill office of Industrial Engineering at CF&I. It may have been a puzzle that started our real friendship. Whatever caused it, I’m grateful.
Dave was a graduate of Colorado School of Mines and had worked at Electric Boat, the company that made nuclear submarines in Connecticut. I was a college dropout who had gotten drafted and got out of the army Valentines Day of 1966. I got a 90 day temporary job when I got home and then went to summer school. Several important things happened that summer, one was that I discovered that I needed to earn some money, so I went back to CF&I.
Probably before I got my first paycheck, Dave brought a puzzle to work. The fourth sentence starts “The monkey’s mother is twice as old as the monkey was when the monkey’s mother was one-half as old as old as the monkey will be when the monkey is three times as old . . .”
I remember spending way too much time working on it, periodically looking around to see if I was just about to be fired. I finally finished it with a mixture of relief and accomplishment.
Less than a year later I got married, and then returned to college at CU. Though Dave and I occasionally talked about a very small joint stock investment that we’d started, we almost lost contact again, even when we lived a few blocks apart and our daughters worked on a joint science project in middle school. Dave thought to reward them for the successful completion of the project so he took them to the Belvedere to celebrate. He generously offered to let them order whatever they wanted and was chagrined when they both choose lobster. He claims to be still making payments on that dinner. Whether the science project had anything to do with it, Dave’s daughter, Salem, is a pharmacist and my daughter, Hillary, is a doctor.
Dave also remembers that he was ”walking home from church one Sunday morning when a runner ran past me shouting, ‘What is the age of the monkey’s mother’s son?’ I thought ‘What in the hell!!’ Then after a moment’s reflection, I said to myself, ‘That must be Jeff’. And, of course, it was.”
I’d see Dave at least every five years at reunions and at one, perhaps the 30 year, we talked about the puzzle. Dave mailed it to me. I frankly don’t remember if I was able to do it. Then just a few days ago Dave was talking to his grandson about puzzles and found the old monkey and his mother problem. He sent it to me again. I’d forgotten how to do it again. I thought I’d be able to write a few equations, but I gave up and used trial and error. I got the answers though, probably faster than the first time. I admit that I was driven because I didn’t want such obvious proof of mental decline.
Dave generously answers my questions from time to time and we did collaborate on the successful search for Regina, but I want to make it clear that Dave and his wife Joan did nearly all the work on that. The recent puzzle episode was just an affirmation of what has become a rewarding relationship.
If you’d like to see the puzzle, email Dave at jmiha2428@aol.com or me. If you want to share a hard one, send it to him. I’ve fooled myself into thinking I’m still OK.
Jeff Arnold
