Goodnight Dave

I grew up in a family where the men worked hard. Really hard. Through example and genetic disposition I inherited this foundational characteristic. My father Rod and grandfather Percy (see photos below) ran a family-owned business, the Crater Lake Dairy in Klamath Falls, Oregon. They bought raw milk from local dairy farmers and turned it into cheese, ice cream, butter, cottage cheese, buttermilk, sour cream and homogenized milk. They had a fleet of trucks that delivered these products throughout the Klamath Basin.

My father and grandfather worked what I used to call the 6-6-6 Plan. From 6am to 6pm, 6 days a week. Very few vacations, no three-day weekends, and (most importantly) no complaining or whining. It was what it was, and it seemingly never ended.

Margins were thin and competition, even in a small isolated southern Oregon town, was surprisingly intense. We lived a good middle-class life. My mom drove a Buick with the license plate MAM444. But more than this, we were rich in heritage and a strong sense of purpose and belonging. I was blessed to have a wonderful childhood as the launch pad for my life.

I started working at the creamery during the summer of my 12th year. I worked a regular 8-hour shift and did lots of grunt jobs. Eventually I became the assistant ice-cream maker and, after receiving my driver’s license at age 16, I drove a large highway delivery truck full of dairy products and restaurant supplies up through a mountainous route of small stores, resort restaurants on beautiful lakes and tucked away Boy Scout camps. I was responsible for managing these accounts, increasing sales and keeping them as happy customers.

Sensing that I would eventually be a businessman, one day when I was still quite young, I snuck into my dad’s office and found his business cards. They were very normal and straightforward: Rod Murray, President, Crater Lake Dairy, Klamath Falls, Oregon with an address and phone number. I really needed business cards of my own, but I had no job title and … I was just a kid. But then I had an idea. I took a handful of his business cards and carefully threaded them through his typewriter one at a time. I was worried that I might get caught. 

Directly above his name, I typed these two words on each card: “ Son of ”. Finally I had legitimate business cards. There would be no stopping me now!

Which takes us back to the Mac Group in 1984. The pace really picked up during that summer. It is hard to imagine the number of projects and people that needed to be managed, directed, coordinated, modified, refined, redirected, etc. We were building a worldwide eco-system for the Mac that required computer store dealers, hundreds of third party software developers, training and promotions and advertising, relationships with small start-ups like Adobe and third party hardware vendors, inventing an innovative college marketing program that would eventually sell thousands of Macs to students who would grow up loving the Apple brand, and much more. This was a complex system moving very rapidly with many disparate parts and pieces. Not only did I need to understand and see all the interactions, but I also needed to bring together seemingly random or unrelated pieces in new ways for increasing consumer awareness, acceptance, demand and ultimately more sales.

Around this time I acquired a small traditional hard-shell Samsonite briefcase. It would look really dorky today. I assumed it was just what I needed, but it was quickly sidelined. My assistant, a wonderful older woman named Jennifer, scrapped the briefcase and began putting all my work into a large Costco-sized cardboard box. And I would put it in the back of my car and head home for family dinner around 6:15PM. As the summer moved forward I would often have two cardboard boxes, each filled to the brim full of work.

My routine was to have dinner with Joyce and the kids. And then I would help bathe the kids, put on their pajamas, play with them, read stories, say prayers, and tuck them in bed. I loved being a father of young children and miss this period of my life! Then I would visit with Joyce. As a young mother she would be tuckered out after a long busy day and she’d go to bed around 9PM. And then it was time for my second shift. I would get my box (or boxes) and begin with the first piece of paper on top of the pile. Even though we were selling computers, we did not yet have email, so almost everything was still hardcopy. 

I had read many books about effective time management. But none of those schemes or principles mattered. There was only one cardinal rule and it was: You don’t go to bed until every single piece of paper is properly read, annotated and ready for the next day. No need to prioritize. I had to know all the facts, all the intersections, all the relationships, all that was going well and especially all that wasn’t going well. I needed to go to bed with this settled in my mind so that I could be refreshed when I got to my office at 7:30am the next morning. I felt like an air traffic controller with a thousand planes in the air going this way and that. So it was simple: At 9PM pick up the top piece of paper on top of the pile and keep working until both boxes are empty. In those days we had one TV in our house. It was a small set – probably a 12 inch screen. I would turn it on for background companionship and then I’d get to work.

Like my father and grandfather, I had the capacity to work, and I mean really work. And I had the energy of youth to do it. And I loved what I was doing. For the next 18 months this was my typical pattern. In those days Johnny Carson came on from 11:30 – 12:30pm and David Letterman started his show at 12:30. At 1:30am he would end his show every night by saying, “Good night folks” (and I can still hear in the intonation of his voice in my mind). Many a night I would look up from box #2 and would say out loud, in our little house in Los Altos where my family had been asleep for hours, “Good night Dave.” I have felt a strong bond of friendship with David Letterman ever since, though I’ve never met him in person.

Thanks Dad and Grampa for your great examples of hard work. I hope I have carried the Murray name forward in a way that you’d be pleased.