18

Established in 1930 by two immigrant German brothers, Carl and Christian Huff, the company known as the CC&G Trucking had slowly grown so that by the 1960's it was a middle sized corporation in the trucking industry. Destined to take over the role of chief operaing officier was RJ Huff, the only son of Carl. Under his father's urging, RJ attended the University of Pennsylvania to study a new field of applied mathematics known as Operations Reasearch. This new mathematics might solve the vexing problem faced by every trucker. Namely, Which was the shortest path from the pick-up depot to the de0livery depot when there are several alternative routes to take? To his father's pride, RJ studied OR and graduated with honors in the mathematics department at the U. of P. While attending college, RJ met, dated, and, immediately after graduation, married a fellow student, Alis Ramsey. Alis was raised in the stuffy mainline Philadelphia society but chose to earn a degree in nursing and to make it her profession. RJ joined CC&G, well prepared and ready to apply this absrtract mathematics to such a practical problem. However, as RJ evaluated the status of CC&G, he discovered that there were some serious, conventiomal problems that had to be dealt with first. All the paperwork operations of the company were still carried out manually and desperately needed to be automated by computer. RJ put a walk-on, mathematics savamt, Mary Brown in charge. Within a year she had gotten these these functions under her control. More than that, she had captured his heart. Those long sessions spent alone with him in isolation as they worked the OR problem had bonded them together more strongly than they could have ever imagined. He was trapped in a love triangle. Finally, there was serious trouble at the CC&G/Tampa depot. This depot handled all the tobacco transport along the eastern seaboard under an exclusive contract. This contract was about to expire. Its replacement would exapand the deliveries to cover the whole United States. The man in charge of CC&G/Tampa and the key man for competing for the contract, was Steven Rivera. One eveninig his body was found in an alleyway in Ybor City, killed mafia style. Read "18" to see how RJ uses his skills as a fly fisherman to evade death as he copes with the mafia infiltration of his company.