| There are strange things seen at a big machine |
| by the men who moil for muons. |
| The various factions have interactions |
| that would make quarks spit out gluons. |
| The Meson Hall lights have seen queer sights, |
| but the queerest they ever did see |
| was that night by the beam of M13 |
| when I computerized John B. |
| Now, John was raised in the ancient days |
| when computers were only a dream. |
| The numbers he'd pack on an envelope's back |
| were astonishing! . . . so it now seems. |
| When microprocessors became our oppressors |
| and FORTRAN IV-plus was invented, |
| he thought of the lot as a mechanist plot |
| to drive J.B. Warren demented. |
| One midnight our team was taking beam |
| and fitting the data on line. |
| The computer was busy! The noise made us dizzy |
| as it hummed and beeped and whined. |
| If we opened our door then the Meson Hall roar |
| assaulted our sanity. |
| It wasn't much fun, but the only one |
| who didn't compute was John B. |
| Later that night as we stood packed tight |
| 'round a rack of defunct nucleonics, |
| the oscilloscope screen cast a glow of green |
| on the tangle of wires and 'lectronics. |
| He turned to me and, "Jess," said he, |
| "I'll retire next year, I guess, |
| and if I do, I wonder if you |
| might consider the following request: |
| "When I move to my farm, it would do you no harm, |
| and is even dictated by prudence, |
| that you should enhance the effects of your grants |
| by looking after my students. |
| It's not my displacement, it's the thought of replacement |
| by a computer that ruins my day. |
| So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, |
| you'll maintain my PHA." |
| Now, a colleague's neurosis is fine in small doses, |
| but this was a wholesale batch. |
| So I promised that night to preserve pulse height |
| off-line techniques, with one catch: |
| I made John swear this burden to bear: |
| that he'd program the PDP |
| to pick and to happily polish each apple |
| that grows on the trees of J.B. |