Category: 2001

  • THREE GOOD GUYS

    This is a short story about three good guys – Dick Lewin, Emory Wilbur and John Rosenburg. The villain is Henry Killingsworth, the man who ran AT&T Long Lines Department for many years. In supporting roles are my sister Verna, an aspiring opera singer. In other incidental roles we have Gannaro Papi, the conductor of…

  • THE RIGHT WAY; THE WRONG WAY; THE ARMY WAY

    In recent months, it seems to me that there is renewed interest in hearing from veterans of World War II. Perhaps it is the building of the memorial on the Mall in Washington. Perhaps it has to do with the thought that very few of us will survive the first decade of this century. There…

  • HARD BOILED EGGS

    This is a morality story about people I knew when I was President of the Federation of Long Lines Telephone Workers (Local #5) in St. Louis. Among other things, my job was to present grievances to the Company on behalf of the workers. At its peak, there were perhaps 800 to 1000 members of Local…

  • MISTAKEN IDENTITIES

    This is a seldom told story of mistaken identities, a nervous decorator, a Polish waitress, a Florida bon vivant and telling the time of day. That is quite of bit of ground to cover but with the help of my long time friend, Charlie Miller, I think we do it with ease. During the late…

  • LILA

    AT&T Long Lines had its headquarters at 32 Sixth Avenue in New York City. At its peak, that building housed about 10,000 employees with telephone operators accounting for about 80% of that total. Because the operators and the telephone craftsmen worked around the clock, the Company provided two cafeterias and one dining room. The dining…

  • FOUR GOOD GUYS AND A VERY BAD GUY

    When I sat down to write this essay, my intentions were to deal with four good guys. John Rosenburg, Dick Lewin and Emory Wilbur were all my colleagues when I was the Labor Relations Manager for AT&T Long Lines from 1955 until 1963. Lowell Wingert, the President of Long Lines, came later. Unfortunately, my efforts…

  • What to do about… GEORGE BUSH’S REBATE CHECK

    Last week, there arrived in our mailbox a life changing letter. It was a check for $600. In the first place, it was mailed from Austin, Texas which now seems to be at the center of Bush’s universe. The United States Treasury is on 15th Street in Washington, but for this purpose was moved to…

  • AN OPERA STORY

    The choir at Central Presbyterian Church in Summit has a number of outstanding voices. One of them belongs to Bill Dembaugh, a tenor, who is a retired school teacher. As a young man, Bill seemed headed in the right direction for a career as a tenor. He studied hard and wound up in New York.…

  • I’D BE ASHAMED

    This piece is being written largely at the request or demand of Miss Chicka. She makes editorial suggestions and tries to correct my grammar. And she does all the typing. So as you can see, I pay attention to her. After I wrote “Lillie,” the piece about my mother and my enlistment, Miss Chicka suggested…

  • THE GLUMS

    Since September 11, which only happened last week, I have had a fairly bad case of the “glums.” This is a new noun. The dictionary shows glum as an adjective meaning broodingly morose, dreary and gloomy. So I have constructed a neologism, a new word, a noun, the glums, to mean in a funk and…