Tombstone, Bisbee and Polymorphism
I’m in Tombstone, drinking beer at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon. I don’t know why I’m surprised but I can tell from their accents that the two guys at the end of the bar come from Glasgow. My home town.
Jerry is yammering on about American football, trying to explain the rules to me. He’s from Dallas where the oldest building is 100 years younger than my local pub. “That’s a first down” he says pointing at the television. “Now they’ll try to kick a field goal for three points”. Some other stuff about three yards gained and two to go. Next the game is stopped for a commercial break. It’s all very confusing.
I ask him about the thing that has intrigued me the most. “Why does the referee keep throwing his handkerchiefs onto the pitch?”
“That’s a penalty flag and he’s an umpire.” That’s me told.
“I like the bits when the guy who catches the ball gets chased all over the field.” I say. I’m doing my best to feign interest.
“That’s the wide receiver.”
We are in Tombstone today because we have a conference in Tucson tomorrow. A gathering of IBM’s brightest minds on the subject of Object Orientation. I flew in from London yesterday and, to be honest, I’ve no clue why I’m here. Something about a big announcement. You see, I’m a marketeer and it’s my job to make a story out of all the obscure, baffling and inter-twined gobbledegook that the boffins get excited about. I’m still in therapy from the last global announcement.
Let me be crystal clear. I’m not a boffin. I’m not even a half-boffin. Crikey, I don’t even speak boffin. However, I do understand it and can translate it to English. Which is ironic because, as a Scot, I can barely speak it in a way that anyone other than another Scot can understand. To be succinct, I specialise in boffin to non-boffin marketing. It’s a job and I get to see the world. Well, I get to see airports and conference centres.
“So Jerry, tell me again why this is important”
In addition to being a sports fan Jerry is some kind of OO expert. I like him. He’s a witty and popular speaker on the conference circuit. Somehow, through some kind of black wizardry, he makes it all sound interesting. And no matter what town we are in, he always knows where to get the best beers.
“You remember that objects are grouped into classes? And that they are encapsulated, meaning that what happens inside them is private. Unless they choose to share what they do with other objects.”
“Yes, Kind of.”
“Well, the announcement tomorrow is about polymorphism”.
“Great. That’s a zinger if I ever heard one.” I make a mental note to check if there are any early flights back home. I don’t want to, but I feel duty bound to ask. I know I’m going to regret it. “What is polymorphism?”
“Do you want another beer before I answer?”
The afternoon continued in that vein. Polymorphism, it turns out, is to software what an imitation cow call is to a bull moose. Very attractive. Also, not what it claims to be. We watch the rest of the game, I ask more stupid questions and then we take a scenic detour to Bisbee.
The old mining town is much colder than I thought it would be. I read about the 1906 disaster at the Copper Queen mine. A deep underground fire and inadequate escape routes killed at least 16 miners. Further reading suggest that it wasn’t the only tragedy to hit Bisbee. Some of them self-inflicted.
My grandfather was killed in a mine in Scotland when a section of the tunnel collapsed at Cumnock Colliery. I only have short blurry memories of him. I do remember him telling me that in the winter sun-up and sun-down was when the men were underground, meaning that for the working days of the week they were in the dark. Not too dissimilar to my own job. Sunday was the only chance to get some winter rays. Go to church or play football? It must have been a tough call.
I’m in bed but the time difference and the anticipation of the day ahead is keeping me awake. Polymorphism. I wonder what my grandfather and his mining chums would have made of it.
The Next Day
We are all gathered, mingling, slapping backs, shaking hands and talking loudly. It’s an American thing. I notice, not for the first time, that the world of software development is very masculine.
The plenary session starts. I had fed the organisers a line. ‘From small talk to Smalltalk’. Really? I used to be well paid to produce that kind of nonsense. Jerry was brilliant as usual. He talked for an hour on all manner of OO wonders, always in control, always deftly working the crowd. I only fell asleep once.
The day is concluded with interviews and drafting early copy while the whole experience is fresh in my mind.
Jerry shouts “Hey, let me introduce you to each other”. Howard, it turns out, is the new boffin on the block for expert systems, something I thought had died a death and was buried alongside space hoppers and tape decks. He was relentlessly enthusiastic about how AI would change the world. IBM would have to stay in the game. He kept going on about something called Watson. I thought he was mad but I thought all boffins were mad.
The next day I’m flying to Chicago and then London overnight. We are doing 500 miles per hour but for me it’s a rare moment of stillness when I can think deeply about my next steps. If there was anything I had learned in the world of high tech it was that you had to stay ahead, you had to keep moving.
In my grandfather’s day the coal face, no matter how much you chipped away at it, stayed the same. For sure, it reduced, got narrower and less abundant, but it never changed in composition. For coal miners the knowledge gained at 16 years old served you well at 50 years old, even as the body let you down. In high tech you didn’t want to linger too long in the bathroom in case you came back redundant.
Gentle turbulence nudged me awake. Howard drifted into my mind. There was something about him. Something that shouted, ‘I am the future’. I was glad we swapped details and promised to meet up in Milan next year. The rest of the flight home was uneventful. The best kind of flight.
@ Copyright 2026 Steve Gillies. All rights reserved.
Steve Gillies 
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