Thank you, everyone

I woke up this morning thinking the answer would have something to do with a BEGIN block. It's amazing how much Perl (or anything) you can write and never have the opportunity to use (or understand) some elementary things

I ended up using a BEGIN somewhere in-between Khen1950fx and ikegami's suggestions.

bikeNomad's "Platform-independent Serial Port code" is quite clever, and I would have used it, but I intend to distribute my (Electronic Beer Brewery) code, and the less "things" there are, the less things that can go wrong down the road.

Thanks monks!

Dave