Rerun: Telephone Talk

Telephone similar to ones in kitchen and basementIf you grew up in Cape, you were in the land of EDgewater. If you lived over in Jackson, you were a CIrcle person. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are probably also going to be surprised to see that the telephone has a round thing instead of buttons.

Here’s where you can find out a little bit about EDgewater, CIrcle, RAmond, LOcust, TUlip and GRanite.

See, back in those days, the phone company, Ma Bell, was the only game in town. You leased the phone from them (and because of that, they made it so bulletproof that telephones and cockroaches were going to be the only thing left after The Big One was dropped). You didn’t have modular jacks: the phone was wired directly to the jack and the phone company was responsible if anything went wrong with it.

Like with the other rerun posts, click on the links to see more photos and get the full stories.

Extensions cost extra

You were charged by extension, and the phone company could tell by the voltage drop how many ringing phones you had connected, and they would periodically run tests to check for bootleg equipment.

One of my buddies had an illegal extension in his house. The phone rang and a Bell tech asked how many phones he had in his house. Fibbing, he said, “Just one,” and he ran to unplug the extra one.

The phone rang again. Same tech. “You just unplugged it, didn’t you?” he said.

I acquired a couple of spare phones over the years, but I hooked up toggle switches on the ringer so they (a) wouldn’t wake up the kids and (b) wouldn’t show up to that sneaky tech.

It’s all AM and FM

Malcolm Steinhoff w buttset 08-10-2008Most of you think I was always a photographer. I spent the last 13 or so years of my newspaper career as a telecommunications manger, a job I really liked, but was totally unqualified for to start out. I got it because I was a good project manager, understood construction, got along with other departments, knew how to live within a budget and, most importantly, had a staff who really knew what they were doing to keep the phones humming.

When I was invited to speak at a telecommunications manager conference, I said that most kids want to grow up to be firemen or rocket ship drivers or other dramatic things; very few proclaim, “Mom and Dad, I want to hang a butt set off my belt.” Most of us fell into the job like I had.

My first crisis

I had Mike, my No. 2 Guy, to ease me into the job and to kick me under the table when I’d start to say something dumb in a meeting. My first big crisis occurred when we had a planned building power outage that caused the whole place to go dark. We had one critical phone switch that suddenly decided that it LIKED taking a nap and didn’t want to wake up.

About four in the morning, two hours before the call centers were supposed to open, I asked Mike the question that all techs hate to hear: “Any idea what the problem is?” The obvious, unstated answer is, “No. If I knew how to fix it, we’d have all been in bed two hours ago.”

Mike, one of the best troubleshooters I’ve ever worked with, turned to me and calmly spelled out the facts of telephonic life. In fact they apply to every aspect of real life, too.

You’re going to have to follow this link to read his words of wisdom.

 Before cell phones

Boys talking on tin can telephonesI was more comfortable with this level of technology. I mean, how can you beat unlimited voice and data plans and no need for batteries?

Dropping a dime

Pay telephone booths near Scott Quadrangle c 1967We didn’t have phones in our dorm rooms when I first moved into Scott Quad my junior year. If we wanted to call home, we had to find a phone booth that worked, a real challenge because the phone company wasn’t diligent about emptying the money out of them. When they were full, they were full.

Like Buddy Jim Stone points out, we didn’t have helicopter parents back in those days because we weren’t connected 24/7. By the time you were able to call home, you had probably already worked out the problem yourself (or had forgotten it).

If you look at a closeup photo at this link, you can see that the price of a call had just gone up from a nickel to a dime.

Car phones coming to Cape

Achievement Edition Car phones 02-26-1966The big news in 1966 was that car phones were coming to Cape.

How times have changed (I hope)

1944 Cape Telephone Book P32 Restaurants - coloredThe 1944 Cape County Telephone Directory contains a jarring classification. Follow the link to see the not-colored restaurants in Cape.

Cheating Death to make phone ring

Lester Harris SW Bell repairman over the Diversion Channel 08-18-1965I’ve mentioned Lester Harris quite a few times in this blog. He was one of those dedicated Bell techs we all took for granted.

There was a telephone cable that spanned the Diversion Channel just east of I-55. From time to time, some nimrod couldn’t resist the temptation to take a shot at it. If he was halfway accurate, phones in Scott City and the airport would go dead.

Lester would walk the roadway until he found fresh shell casings that would give him a rough idea where he was going to find the break. Then, he’d strap on his tool belt, and climbing spikes to shinny up a pole to where he could hook his cable buggy over a wire cable that supported the phone wires.

Let’s put this in perspective. Phone wire is softer and more delicate than steel cable, but what is to say that some stray bullets haven’t nicked some of the wire strands that are holding Lester 60 feet above the Diversion Channel? In a perfect world, they would catch the shooter and send him out of the cable buggy to make sure it was safe before Lester got on it.

Lester was featured in the stock car racing post the other day.

Microwave towers

ATT microwave tower - Ridge Road - Jackson 08-09-2014The horizon used to be dotted with long-haul microwave towers like this one on Ridge Road in Jackson. Fiber optic cable has made them obsolete, and many have been torn down or repurposed as cell towers.

 

 

 

The End of Summer

Greenbrier Dark Cypress Area 09-23-2014These rope swings at the Dark Cypress Access Area boat ramp near Greenbrier aren’t going to see a lot of use until next summer.

The Missouri Department of Conservation says the Greenbrier Unit of Duck Creek Conservation Area is in southeastern Bollinger county.

The Conservation Department purchased this 460-acre lowland swamp to preserve a small portion of the 2.4 million acres of hardwood bottomland swamps that once covered the southeastern part of the state.

Situated between Crowleys Ridge and the Ozark Plateau, the swamp formed after the Mississippi River abandoned its channel through the region and shifted east toward Cape Girardeau. Runoff from the Ozark hills, heavy rainfall and overflow flooding from the Castor River floods the surrounding swamp.

Dark Cypress Tales

Greenbrier Dark Cypress Area 09-23-2014I grew up hearing tales of the Dark Cypress. It was an area where hunters would go in and never come out. While we were down there, Mother told me that my grandfather had been shot accidentally while hunting in the Dark Cypress and the bullet remained in his neck until he died decades later.

 

American Motors

American Motors S Kingshighway 11-02-2013I shot these photos of American Motors November 3, 2013, intending to do some research on the business, but I never got around to it. The building was on S. Kingshighway north of the intersection with South Sprigg and the old Viaduct Court. It was south of John’s Metal Iron and Salvage (AKA John’s Junk Yard).

It’s gone now

American Motors S Kingshighway 11-02-2013Mother and I took a quick drive down to Dutchtown Monday afternoon, made a quick turn on the old Highway 61 that leads to the Diversion Channel boat ramp to see how much the Mississippi was backing up into the Big Ditch, then headed north on Kingshighway.

When we got to where these photos were taken, Mother said, “Something’s missing.”

She was right. All that was left of American Motors was the parking lot.

Anybody remember anything about it? I’m sure I was never in there.

Allenville Fish Feeling Heat

Even though Cape temperatures hit 103 to 107 (depending on the sign) Mother and I went exploring in the Allenville area. I wanted to see how hard it would be to get to the Allenville railroad bridge that’s been in the news of late. In the process, I took pictures of the St. Louis Iron Mountain Railway tracks when I came across their crossings south of Dutchtown. They’ll be part of another story.

When we headed south out of Allenville on County Road 238, we came around a curve to see a pickup truck sitting in the middle of the one-lane bridge over the Diversion Channel. Well, it might be two-lane, but they’d have to be two bicycles or two REALLY friendly cars. Based on the skid marks and the way the guard rail is a little wavy, I’d say that some vehicles have not met those requirements. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

After a short pause, the truck crossed the bridge, we gave each other the wave you do in the country, and we went down Hwy N to check the railroad bridge. Looks like it’s going to be easier to get to it from the south than from Allenville.

Signs with bullet holes worry me

On the way back north, I decided to stop to shoot some pictures of the road bridge.

There must be members of a “well regulated militia” running around Allenville enjoying their Second Amendment rights to shoot at road signs where bullets would strike an oncoming car if they miss (or, based on the number of through and through holes even if they HIT the sign).

View downstream

This is where much of the water being drained out of Swampeast Missouri goes on its way to the Mississippi River just south of Cape. If the Mississippi backs up or there’s a lot of rain, this ditch could be 15+ feet higher.

Greens make it look cool

Don’t let those greens fool you. My shirt was soaked with sweat when I got back to the car. This is looking upstream.

Holy Cow! Look at the fish!

Now I see why the pickup truck was stopped on the bridge. The hot weather and low water brought what I assume to be hundreds of carp to the surface. Fish that could easily go 2-1/2 to three feet were snurfling along the surface like goldfish in a tank. (It’s worth clicking on these shots to make them larger.)

For you folks who complain that you never see a photo of me, that’s my shadow. I think it’s a pretty good likeness.

Turtle comes up for gulp of air

A pretty good-sized turtle surfaced for a bite of air, then slipped back under water.

Open mouths

I bet most of these fish could swallow a softball without straining too much. The bright object in the right center of the picture is a leaf floating downstream.