[Editor’s note: The NY NY series will end with part 12 tomorrow. It’s even longer than the Moscow one, and I’m a little pressed for time tonight, so we’re doing this instead and switching it later]
I can’t ever remember having delusions of grandeur. If I had, my mother or my siblings – all older than me – would have deflated me. To start with, my parents worked virtually all their lives until they were hospitalized not long before their deaths. My oldest sister worked as a secretary for the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company and later for the government for perhaps 45 years. The other sister started out as a singing waitress in Joe Gonella’s Saloon until she married and wound up owning a string of greyhounds which she raced, largely unsuccessfully in Arizona and Florida. Those two sisters worked all their lives. They would have no sympathy for a younger brother who suffered from grandeur delusions.
My oldest brother owned a surveying company. He didn’t survey people for their personal preferences; he used a transit and rods to measure, for example, real estate and street layouts. The other brother was an insurance salesman who called on individuals as distinguished from large companies. He did his best work at night after the wage earner came home and had dinner. So those two fellows would have no sympathy for anyone afflicted with delusions of grandeur.
When I was 15 years of age, I went to work in filling stations. Now they are called service stations even though any level of service doesn’t exist any more. In the late 1930’s and early 1940’s when you went to a filling station, your windshield was cleaned, the oil and water were checked, tires were inflated and we inspected for worn fan belts and lights that had burned out. In the alleged service stations of today, just try to get your windshield cleaned. It won’t happen unless you do it yourself.
At my tender age, I always drew the dirtiest jobs such as swabbing the grease room floor at the end of the day. Changing tires and lubricating car chassis were not meant for dilettantes. People who did that sort of work had their clothing soiled. When fall came and it was time to put anti-freeze into the radiators, the old water and anti-freeze had to be drained. Most cars prior to the Second World War had petcocks that could only be activated by someone lying on his back, reaching up to turn the petcock followed by hot water running down the arm of the prone filling station attendant. The only consolation came when I went home in my dirty uniform when my father would say, “That boy is doing a man’s work.”
I first went to work at Carl Schroth’s station in Clayton, Missouri. Carl worked a 60 hour week as did his helpers. His main helper was Charlie Costa, a prince of a man. His second helper was Bob Litzenberger who had an entirely negative personality. Bob was angry at the human race, but he was sufficiently good at what he did that Schroth kept him on. The last two helpers were Carl’s stepson, Jack Frier, and my self. Jack and I attended high school and worked afternoons, evenings and weekends. This was a good place to learn about filling stations and automobile repair and to observe a good guy, Charlie Costa, and a man who was down on life, Bob Litzenberger. Nonetheless I learned a lot from those men and from Carl Schroth.
I did this work for quite a while because there were no other jobs available. Over the years, I applied to dozens of places in St. Louis and St. Louis County and no one was hiring. So I pretty much had to make the best of things by continuing to work at filling stations.
While I was in high school, I took four years of drafting. By my third and fourth year, I thought my drafting was pretty good. The teacher was Don Zoerb. On one occasion when I had skipped school and the principal found out about it, he penalized me. Zoerb said, “The wheels of Justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine.” In that case, the wheels of Justice ground me to a pulp. In any case, Don Zoerb was friends with an AT&T minor executive named Bob Mann. Mr. Mann was a fine fellow. So one day, Bob Mann called Zoerb and said he could use a draftsman. This was in September of 1941. So Don Zoerb told Bob Mann that Ed Carr might be interested in a job with the Telephone Company. So Bob Mann called me and I made haste to 1010 Pine Street in St. Louis and I was hired.
I was hired as a draftsman but new people had to serve an apprenticeship until a drafting table opened up. So I became the “Boy” referred to in the attachment hereto. Among other drawings, the drafting department made eight sizes of linen cloth originals of equipment and cable layouts, so when the blue prints were made, there were eight sizes of them also. And each had to be folded so that they would fit in files and so that they would open without problems. So I folded a lot. We had special tables with fold markings so the drawings would be folded in accordance with AT&T specifications. And I found files and took them to engineers. There are two routing slips on the announcement that I was the file boy. I knew everyone on those lists and I remember them to this day. I took files to all of them. Occasionally, I would be permitted to do a little drafting – but not much.
The fact that Frank Kennedy Steele, the Chief Draftsman, called me a “boy” didn’t really bother me. I was wearing a white shirt to work and I did not have to roll around on the ground in the coming anti-freeze season. And I had a shot at drafting, the discipline I had trained with Don Zoerb for. Incidentally, Don Zoerb is a consummate hero in this whole affair.
The Chief Draftsman was, as New Yorkers would say, “a piece of work.” He had attended the same high school in Clayton, Missouri that I had attended, although he was perhaps two or three years ahead of me. Frank more or less fancied himself as an artist. He wore the latest fashions in shirts and suits. As I recall him now, he is wearing a starched shirt with at least a 3½ inch or 4 inch collar. His hair was quite long by the standards of 1941. In spite of the “boy” letter, Frank Steele was good to me. I liked him and I learned from him. But vanity got the best of him. Not long after the Second World War broke out, Frank quit AT&T and started to set the art world on fire. I heard from him after the war. Apparently he was still working on the art world, but that world was giving Frank little comfort. As I say, I liked him even though others in the St. Louis office were turned off by his insistence that he be called Frank Kennedy Steele. Three names didn’t set well in the Midwest of 1941.
While I was the “boy acting as a messenger and file boy,” an incident with the ticket seller at one of the leading burlesque houses occurred. The letter is addressed as you can see to a Mr. Curtis, who was fairly high up in the Long Lines Department of AT&T in St. Louis. But Mr. Curtis had a boss and that boss liked to call his minions in from offices in places like Kansas City and Dallas to confer in his office. Remember, in 1941 there was no such thing as television or tele-conferencing. Having a long distance hook up on telephone lines was in its infancy and frequently did not work well. So the men came in from outlying offices for conferences.
St. Louis at the time supported two burlesque houses. There was the Grand Theater which catered to the middle class and the less than middle class. The other house was the Garrick Theater. It catered to the upper middle class and those who saw themselves as stars of tomorrow.
Now we need to take a small time out while I point out the difference in spelling between a theater in 1941 and today’s spelling of theatre. The reversal of the “e” and the “r” in the spelling of the names is an English affectation. I thought we fought the Revolutionary War to avoid that sort of atrocity but today, I regret to say that virtually every show place calls itself a “theatre” regardless of whether it is located on Broadway in
New York City or in the grand city of Dothan, Alabama. I’m sure that Ben Franklin, the old printer, would be appalled at the intrusion of English spelling with French overtones.
Having disposed of the English affectation, let us go on with the saga of why the Grand and Garrick Theaters are important. Before the war,
St. Louis was an open city with jazz, booze, late hours for saloons, prostitution and police payoffs. In short, all the things that make life worth living. It was a major port on the Mississippi River. When war came, the Army moved to close St. Louis. All things being equal, I liked St. Louis a lot better before the Army clamped down. In any case, the two burlesque houses operated from about noon until after midnight, every day. The Army never touched either one of the burlesque places. Those two houses were emporiums of culture which the Army accepted. Think of this. Sally Rand, the fan dancer from the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago, appeared regularly at the Garrick Theater. That’s about as good as it gets.
Now when the big boss wanted to entertain his subordinates from the outlying districts, he would often take them after dinner to one of the burlesque houses. He didn’t want to be told that the show was sold out so he bought tickets in advance before he called his conference. So this “boy,” age 19, was summoned into the big office and told to go buy eight or ten or fifteen tickets to the Garrick Theater. In those days there were no credit cards, of course. So I would take the cash from the big boss and set out for the Garrick Theater. I enjoyed these expeditions because I could look in windows and generally watch what a big city does to live from one day to the next. Some working class movie theaters and saloons opened early around 9AM, so I looked at them also. The man who sold the tickets at the Garrick Theater was not given to small talk. He more or less said, “Give me the cash and here are your tickets – goodbye.”
Well the big boss started to have more conferences than usual which meant that I would show up at the Garrick Theater ticket office fairly regularly. Finally, one day the ticket seller said to me, “Aren’t you the kid who was here on Monday and yesterday?” I said that was me – the boy messenger and file boy, age 19. In a week or two, the same thing happened and the ticket seller said to me, “Holy Jesus, Kid, you must be nuts about them dames.” I started to say that I was only buying the tickets for my bosses boss, but I thought better of it and I more or less agreed that “I must be nuts about them dames.”
Shortly after those episodes, a drafting table opened up when Frank Steele left and Bob Ohlemeyer was promoted to Chief Draftsman. I know Frank’s letter said that I was a “boy,” but I had a good time being a messenger and in a fairly short time after my hiring, I was back at a drafting table.
Being a draftsman may have ended my trips to the ticket window, but once in a while something happened to keep things interesting in the office as well. One such event was a matter of divine intervention into the affairs of the drafting department.
The St. Louis Division of the Long Lines Department was called Division 5. The drawings we prepared ranged from small 15” X 12”, called “A” drawings to very large drawings which would cover a desk top. Those were called “G” and “H” drawings.
Everyone knows that St. Louis is a sweltering place in the summer. In the 1940’s, of course, air conditioning was found only in movie houses. So our offices were like everyone else’s offices with windows opened as far as they would go and with the fans on.
We rented office space at 1010 Pine Street in St. Louis in the headquarters building of Southwestern Bell. This was one of St. Louis’ largest buildings stretching at least 25 stories. Our offices were on the 8th floor near windows to help us see when doing our drafting work. The blue print department was run by Southwestern Bell employees and was located on the 20th or 21st floor. The high intensity lighting needed to make blue prints caused the temperature there to go up many degrees. As a result, the blue print people were often short tempered and would shout at people like us.
To order a blue print, we would take an original drawing and prepare an order form. Let’s say we wanted 20 copies of drawing 5F-XXX. The order form would be attached to the original drawing, the drawing would then be rolled up and a rubber band was put over the rolled drawing.
For years, we had known that it we threw a paper airplane out of our eighth floor office in the summer, it would go upward instead of downward due to the thermal current, I suppose.
Well, one day in June or July of 1942, as always a hot one, the Chief Draftsman got an irate call from the blueprint room. Somewhere among all the obscenities, the blueprint guy wanted to know where we got off by sending him an unrolled original print without an order form. The Chief Draftsman looked at his record and said, “We don’t need copies of that original drawing; you made them this morning.” That enraged the blueprint people and we had to send our meekest internal messenger, a girl, up to the blueprint room to retrieve the drawing. I suppose that what had happened was that the drawing floated out the window of our office and was carried to the 20th or 21st floor where it floated into the blue print room. See, I told you that this was a case of divine intervention in the affairs of the drafting department.
At the time, it is estimated that Roman Catholics accounted for at least half of the population of St. Louis and surrounding suburbs. Those folks in the office considered the story of the floating original linen drawing a sign that Archbishop Glennon, the head of the St. Louis diocese, would be made a Cardinal. He was pretty close to 80 years of age when we had the floating incident.
The heathens among us considered it a sign that the St. Louis Cardinals would win the National League pennant and go on to the World Series. As a matter of fact, the Cardinals mauled the New York Yankees in the World Series by a score of four games to one in 1942. So score one for the heathens. In 1946 or thereabouts, Archbishop Glennon got his red hat, but he was then sneaking up on 85 years and death got him in less than a year. So score one for the faithful.
So you see, the floating drawing indeed was a sign of hope – for the secular and for the religious people at 1010 Pine Street in St. Louis. When air conditioning became popular, alas, miracles like this never came again.
Well, that’s the story of the notice that the Long Lines Department of AT&T had a boy to perform messenger and file service work in the
St. Louis Division Office back in 1941, and the story of a divine intervention at 1010 Pine Street. That was the start of my AT&T career. Before it was over, I worked 43 years for the Bell System including more than three years with the United States Army.
The road led to Kansas City, to Chicago, to New York, to Washington, back to New York and then finally to New Jersey. I am happy in retirement and I was happy while I was working. The letter about the boy messenger was written 60 years and seven months ago. And finally, I’m happy that I’ve lasted that long. And nobody calls me boy any more and no one has asked me about being nuts about them dames. On the other hand, I haven’t bought many burlesque tickets lately.
E. E. CARR
4-3-02
P.S. The T. W. on the attached letter stands for Ted Wozniak who died a few years ago. Ted determined the appropriate file for vital items like this. See the “61-6” notation. I just retrieved the files from the file cabinets. I was not skilled enough to determine what file should be used for important papers such as we have here. I simply took the files to the engineers who requested them. In my spare time, I bought tickets to the most upscale burlesque house in St. Louis.
Protestant preachers like Billy Graham, use all kinds of euphemisms to avoid saying a person has died. One such euphemism is called “giving up the ghost”. When I give up the ghost, I would like proper recognition to be given to all my accomplishments when I was “the boy” in the St. Louis Division Office. I am sure the New York Times will devote two or three obituary pages to this pre-war saga of dynamic human relations. And the preacher might find it informative, and titillating.
~~~
I hope Judy can find the attachment for this one! I had never thought to ask how exactly Pop got his start at AT&T, so this essay answered a question that I didn’t even know I had.
The craziest thing of all though is that in this essay, Pop learned a skill in high school and then was able to use that skill to land a job. No way does high school do anything like that now. I guess college is the new high school in that respect, but even there much of what people learn cannot be easily applied to a career unless you’re in a STEM field.
Here’s the attachment!