PART TWO----My Memories Of Being A Long Distance Operator

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I worked with some grand people at the telephone company. Great personalities, good hearted and kind. Some old and some young. We had it pretty good too. We had a kitchen waitress that would cook if we wanted anything. She cleaned up after us too. There was a small room down the hall from the operating room which was like a library where we could go to take naps. There was a bed and it always had fresh sheets on it. Very quiet in that far end of the building so we could nap if we were working a split or it was a late shift. One pretty young blonde was very social and started asking me if I would like to join a group of fellow operators who went out on the week-ends dancing and drinking. At first I didn't think I would because I was shy and rather aloof, but, as stories started leaking back at the fun they were having I decided to go. We went out to the Holiday Inn which was out by the airport. That was when disco was popular and we would dance to disco music and hang out with co-workers until sometimes 2a. and then go out to breakfast. So, there was many a Saturday or Sunday morning that I didn't get home until 3a. or 4a. If I had to be to work the next morning it meant I sometimes only got three or four hours of sleep. Most of us were fans of Saturday Night Line and I recall going in to work on many a early Sunday morning and taking turns reciting comedy bits from the show that previous night with my coworker setting next to me so we could stay awake. That was when John Belushi, Bill Murray, Jane Curtin, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner were the original cast of the show. One morning, probably because I was overly tired, I couldn't place a person-to-person call. The woman's name was Kitty Petty and for some reason the name struck me funny, got me giggling and I couldn't for the life of me announce the call. So I had to have the gal setting next to me take it over. There was a young man who came to work there who had really bad acne. No one wanted to set by him so I would. He started telling me of the stuff he was watching on cable. This was back when cable was new and not everybody had experienced it. I was one who hadn't. He was addicted and would stay up all night watching stuff on cable. He was a rather odd fellow. He also told me that he was 'collecting' credit cards. I mean like Visa's and Mastercards. All he could from different banks. I often wonder what became of him financially. And we would get old folks calling into to the operator sometimes every day just to ask the time, or just chat for a few minutes. There was a number they could call back then to get the time. Also one to get bible verses and different sayings too. One lady in particular would call in several times a day to ask the time. Over and over and over. But, this was a time when we took time for others and we were taught to be polite and considerate of others. Back in the 70's we hadn't heard much about gays, lesbians and transvestites and the like in our backward town of Boise, Idaho. The last thing we thought we would do is take a call from a transvestite with a double personality. Every once in awhile we would get a call from a man who was placing a call to his mother collect. The call would go something like this: We would pick up the call locally at a pay phone down town, usually the same one, close to the telephone company. A young woman with a rather strangely deep voice would request a collect call to a long distance number. We would put through the call, announce it and many times the woman who answered wouldn't accept the charges. The 'lady' placing the call would get mad. She would try the call again a little while later. When the woman at the other end did take the call you would hear a very definite change to the caller's voice. It would go from a strange, deep female voice to a very agitated male voice. It is the weirdest thing to experience. And, in our second floor room we could look outside and see a lot of the city. More than once we had seen this person, with a five o'clock shadow and dressed in woman's clothes, leaving the phone booth sniffling and dabbing at his nose. I often wondered what his story was. There was one gal named Mary that was so funny. I came to work one morning with a bunch of Polish jokes I had heard. Always trying to have something funny to say I shared these with her. She seemed to enjoy them, later I found out she was Polish. She invited me, along with the rest of the group, to the Christmas party she held one year. Drinks and merriment. But, the hit of the party were her gingerbread cookies. She had made a big batch of them thinking we could all decorate them. When she showed us the ones she had decorated we were aghast. She had made hers males and with big genitelia. Always the one to shock us with something she was doing or thinking.