One Ringy-Dingy

My Vocation

Although my parents had great hopes for my future since I had scored well in assorted aptitude and IQ tests, I found the 12 years of school to be the most boring thing I could imagine and successfully resisted their pleas that I continue my formal education. After all, I could get a job at the Telephone Company where my big brother worked and get the magnificent sum of $1 an hour.

When I went to work at the Chesapeake and Potomac (C&P) Telephone Company in 1956, service hadn’t grown much from the time of Alexander Graham Bell. Party lines where the norm, mostly 4 parties to one line and up to 8 in rural areas. That meant that if any one of the parties was on the phone, no one else could use it. Also, if you picked up the receiver, you heard what the other people were saying. They could hear a “click” of course, and if another “click” indicating you had hung up was not heard quickly, you might be asked politely to “get off the line.” Incoming calls were also blocked. Your hope was that you got on a line with other people who didn’t use the phone much.

C&P was a subsidiary of AT&T (Ma Bell), the communications giant of the time, which has pretty much been slain by regulation and competition. Those were the days when ANY trouble with your phone service was fixed rather swiftly at no extra charge. Later, C&P became Bell Atlantic and then, sometime after I retired, has become part of Verizon.

In June of 1956 I was hired to be a “cable splicer’s helper”, one of those workers who hang on a pole or work in manholes putting wires together. Before I got to my first job location, someone in personnel discovered I was only 17, thus too young (by law) to be out on the streets. I became a “mail boy” by default. My career as a mail clerk was interrupted by a six month stint in the Air Force Reserves where I was trained to be an Air Policeman. Basic training and AP school were both at Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas. That took 4 months and the last 2 were spent at on-the-job training at Manhattan Beach Air Force Station, New York City. No, I never shot anyone.

Upon returning to C&P, I was sent to do maintenance work of various sorts in “Central Offices.” These are the places your dial tone comes from. Ten years later, I was tested for management potential, passed, and subsequently promoted into the land of bosses.
About three years later, I was promoted for the last time to the “second level” of management, where I was a boss of bosses. There I remained until my retirement at the ripe old age of 47, free to pursue my next career, bridge bum.

Free at last