Making It

Len Andrews, an eighteen-year boy just graduating from high school in 1982 falls-out with Betty, his girlfriend, and wonders what he’s going to do with the rest of his life. He has a summer job with the post office but after that nothing. His father and mother are dead and his uncle suggests he helps him renovate a house. He does that at weekends and finds a full-time job in September where he is asked to use a computer and learn VisiCalc and WordStar. He quits at the end of the year to help his uncle renovate kitchens in an apartment building where he earns much more money but finds the work hard. His uncle dies and Len inherits his cottage on the Rideau River, some money and an old house which he renovates. He meets Chris and is hired by her parents to sell computers in their appliance store. This, in 1983, is so successful that Chris’s parents open a store to do that in Townsville then another in Brockville. Chris manages one and Len the other. They marry in 1984 and Len finds a way to make thousands of dollars a month with very little work.