-
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…
-
THE OLD REXBILT BRIEFCASE
Last week, I was startled to read in New Jersey’s leading journal, the “Star Ledger,” that the deposed head man of Lucent, Richie McGinn, got a going away present of 12 million dollars. His Chief Financial Officer, Debra Hopkins, who had only a year of service with Lucent, got pretty close to 4 million dollars.…
-
THE BRENTWOOD, MO. HISTORICAL SOCIETY’S CONTRIBUTIONS
In the Midwest we are plain speakers. For example, turn to Carl Schroth’s letter to support my application to join the Army in wartime. (The Right Way; The Wrong Way; The Army Way”) He listed his Mobil Gas station as being at the corner of Clayton Road and North and South Road. Clayton Road was…
-
The Plaque
The news about 32 Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the America’s) came as no surprise. When AT&T Long Lines moved to Bedminster N. J. in 1977, the die was cast. The headquarters for Long Lines and its successor organizations was to be in suburban New Jersey, not in New York City. The news first appeared as…
-
THE PASTICHE
In recent months, a collection of essays has emerged from my participation in the Kessler Speech Therapy Program. As a general rule, these were travel experiences in various parts of the world. In effect, they were a little like a travelogue. And in nearly every one of those several episodes, the tone was positive and…
-
THE THREE I LEAGUE
When we were young, many of my compatriots had their sights set on a professional baseball career. Unrealistically, as it turned out. But we didn’t know that then. In the Midwest, one of the leagues to which we aspired had clubs in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa. And so it became the Three I League. It…
-
THE GREAT NEPAL ROBBERY
In an earlier episode of this great World Wide Travel Report, it was reliably reported that Cal Tuggle, Howard Pappert and I were headed for the mystic delights of Bahrain. Such as they are. And then on to India, Nepal, Bangkok and Kuwait, such as they are. You may recall the Blah, Blah Blah incident…
-
BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN
The world may be broken into three parts, as the French say, but for us in the Overseas business of the Bell System, it had a great many more parts. I found them all fascinating from the Indians, to the Saudi Arabians, to the various tribes in Africa as well as to the more familiar…
-
A NICKEL’S WORTH OF ADVICE FROM THE OLD GEEZER
My search for a high-paying job with bonuses and stock options is not a magnificent success story. Last year, I thought I had the New York Mets’ manager’s job sewn up, but they gave it to Willie Randolph largely because he is younger and he is a Brooklyn native. When the New York Knickerbockers demoted…