GROGGY, my Macintosh blinks a few times, then yawns and comes to life. "You have 14 new messages." I can be certain that at least one of those is from my dad.

The Internet has changed the way we communicate here at UMass and around the world. It can put us within reach of anyone, anywhere, anytime. It has also induced my dear old dad, at the distinguished age of sixty-nine, to do something he vowed his entire life never to do: buy a personal computer.

Now, Daddy is a frugal Virginia dairy farmer and has little patience for any machine without a diesel engine that he can rebuild in a day. He pounds a living out of hard, red clay and always had, he said, as much use for a computer as for a hole in the head, and I soon learned that any attempt to enlighten him on the subject was futile. I couldn't have dragged my parents into the computer age with a John Deere.

I remember watching Mamma spend hours logging figures into a worn ledger, writing out checks in her elegant script to cover farm expenses, dismissing my pleas that she at least think about keeping her records with a computer. I remember standing with Daddy in a lengthening line at the auto parts store where the clerks were struggling with a computer crash, and the wry, gloating smile that appeared on his face at the sight of technological failure.

I remember the bewildered look on Daddy's face a few years ago when I announced my decision to buy a new Macintosh, and how he furrowed his brow and scratched his head when I explained all the things I planned to do with it. He couldn't have been more bemused if I had been buying a salad shooter.

But everything changed when my folks visited about six months ago and I gave them a brief tour of the Internet. A member of their church was working as a missionary in Mongolia and my parents had copied his e-mail address from the weekly church bulletin. We e-mailed him and he replied the next day. Suddenly, Daddy's interest was piqued. He reluctantly took control of the mouse, slowly and deliberately moving the cursor across the screen and very carefully clicking on each button as I navigated for him. He needed a truck for the farm and we found a web site advertising used trucks for sale. We got up-to-the-minute election results from their hometown newspaper's web site. I could see the gears of Daddy's imagination grinding away, as he pondered what could be. He was hooked.

Within days Daddy bought himself an IBM and I was on the phone with him every thirty minutes helping him install software, hook up the printer and modem, solve conflicts, and cheer him up after he was cussed out by his PC for trying an invalid command. Then the e-mails started streaming in. Updates on farm and family news, travel plans, forwarded messages from friends and relatives and, of course, the weather.

"Locally it got as low as 8 to 10 some places and close to zero a little farther west."

Suddenly, Daddy is the family crier, sending out bits of electronic news and gossip. He's even managed to get Mamma involved, albeit in a slightly underhanded manner. Daddy claims he can't type so he enlists her to peck out each message while he dictates.

Now my dad is creeping along on the on-ramp of the information superhighway, with one hand on the wheel and the other fumbling with a map, but gaining a little speed and confidence with every e-mail. The Internet has its detractors, of course, and I'm sometimes counted among them, but I've seen it perform a miracle by making my dad computer-literate and e-mail-proficient. Slowly, Daddy is finding that his computer is good for other tasks, too. He is becoming a master at solitaire.

illustration - Cynthia Fisher