After four years in the United States Air Force my discharge was coming up. They offered me a very attractive bonus to reenlist. I was a Staff Sergeant at the time, married, living off base, and receiving flight pay. The money was good, and we had just bought a new car. However, at the time my wife was pregnant. I told the Air Force that I needed 30 days, and I would then make my decision.
I started hunting for a job and low and behold on the 30th day the New York Telephone company offered me a job as an Installer-Repairman. They would train me, but it was a cut in pay. They said that there was plenty of overtime. Everybody told me that the Bell system was the place to be. If you were with them a couple of years, then your future was secure. So, I took the job, I went to school and became an Installer-Repairman. When I graduated, they put me in the field in Flatbush, New York. I thought I was doing well, and I still remember some of the things that they taught me like “Plan your work and work your plan”, and “You don’t know anything until you have found and fixed a problem.” Good advice. I was with a bunch of older guys, and they taught me a lot.
The company was right about the overtime because every weekend we had the opportunity to work. And the work was good. I found it challenging and I was outside, I loved it. There were some difficult times and a few of these I’d like to share with you.
I was in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, and I was to install a telephone in the basement apartment of a brownstone. The brownstones were fully attached. The telephone poles were in the backyard and each yard had a fence. I knocked on the door and a man said come in. I entered and found an old black man with gray hair, and he was mostly blind, sitting in a rocking chair. He said, “so glad that you’re here and I said “Sir, it is my honor, and I will install the telephone for you today”. So, I started planning my work: I had to go out to the pole, find the terminals and run the wire from the pole to the house, down to the house and in through the wooden windowsill, where I would put a connector. From there I would run inside wire to the location where he needed his phone. Plan your work, work your plan!
As I started to go into the backyard I found a bunch of dogs out in the yards, no people just fences. I quickly scurried up the pole and the dog was at the foot of the pole and he was barking and nipping and very angry. I found the terminals that I needed, and I connected the wire. I still had an angry dog to deal with. I peeled back the other end of the wire, and I connected it to the terminal. I did a ring back where I dial into the office, and it will send back a ringing signal. This is to test your work. I lowered the cable, and the dog came up to it and he wanted to bite something, anything. So, he bit the wire and as he bit the wire, he got shocked. This did not hurt him and was more like a cow prod. He yelped and whimpered away. I then found it clear to come down the pole and go back into the house.
I started to drill a hole through the wooden windowsill where I could bring the wires through the frame and into the house and connect it and run the inside wire. This was before mechanical tools, so I hand drilled, then I took the tack hammer, and I was tacking away. As I tacked, I would scare the roaches from the frame and the molding on the floor. I would use the tack hammer to kill the roaches, so I was tat- tat- tat very fast. The old man said to me “Son you don’t have to work so hard I’ve been waiting a long time for that phone”. I said, “yes sir” and continued my tatting but at a slower rate. I got most of the roaches except for the ones that went home with me. Quite often I would have roaches on my clothing, that’s why I didn’t wear any cuffs in my pants. I would take off my clothes in the garage and put them in a bag so I wouldn’t bring them into the house.
It’s a far cry from what we have today. But I did read Dick Tracy, and I looked forward to wireless telephones.
