In a recent essay, I grumbled that it had been my misfortune to write about politicians for some time. I observed that writing about politicians is a sordid business. I believe that now is the time to write about some people I liked and respected.
In this new phase of my life as an essayist, I wrote about our beloved lap feline, Shannon P. Catt. So now I am free to write about other people who held my respect and admiration. Once in a great while someone who earned my disrespect and dislike will come along. But they are only incidental to what I will have to say.
From the beginning, or at least after the Army of the United States begrudgingly told me I could leave at the age of 23 years, it was my intention to find out what went on in New York City. A few months after the first big telephone strike in 1947, I drove from St. Louis to spend a vacation in the big city. An election to the presidency of the Union Local in St. Louis provided me with the opportunity to come on business to New York where the national headquarters of the Union was located. This national headquarters had to do with the Long Lines Division of AT&T which represented about 30,000 members. My journeys to New York started in 1948 and continued through the summer of 1951. So it was my good fortune to indulge my curiosity about the Yankees (boo!), the Giants and the Dodgers (a big boo..o.o.o.o!) and a lot of other events that took place only in what some people called the Big Apple.
No two ways about it, I was predisposed to like the citizens who call New York home. And the non-citizens as well. The New Yorkers who served with me in the Army were interesting people. The people from AT&T Headquarters who visited us in St. Louis were bright people. I never put New Yorkers down because they were depraved and unholy folks; on the contrary, I wanted to see a little bit of that depraved and unholy conduct for myself. Then or now, I always thought that a little sinful action was completely uplifting in its own way. My mother, with her constricted Nazarene and Pentecostal view of life, never visited me in the East. She would probably have regarded Broadway as dreadfully depraved. Her last child, namely me, would offer a differing view. He would say in robust tones, “Bring on the sin.” As I am sneaking up on my 80th birthday soon, perhaps it could be argued that a little sin greatly expands the life span.
I never set out on a campaign to get to know folks in New York City. It happened naturally over a period of years. For better or worse, I am a curious fellow. If someone from a different country comes along, I’d like to talk to him. Among other things, I have always been curious about how hotels and bars and restaurants and nightclubs are operated. So I asked some questions and before long, friendships developed naturally.
As improbable as it sounds, the reason I got to know restaurant owners, hotel people and a few entertainers goes back to my employment with the great American Telephone and Telegraph Company. I had better write about AT&T because it is believed – and I am a believer – that once AT&T sells its broadband services to Comcast this fall, some other company will make an offer for the remaining parts of the company and AT&T will become part of our forgotten past like Eastern Air Lines or the New York Central Railroad. Events conspired against the company, and dubious management decisions also had a major part in the prospective disappearance of one America’s best known names.
But, be that as it may, the fact is that every branch of AT&T was dominated by engineers, more specifically, electrical engineers. The president of the company and the vast majority of his reporting staff were electrical engineers. The head of the Long Lines Department was an electrical engineer as were the heads of regional Associated Companies. The same goes for Western Electric.
About the only places that escaped the engineering domination were the legal and the medical officers. AT&T believed that engineers could do any job so, from time to time, the accounting department was often headed by an engineer. Engineers were also found in influential or controlling positions in labor relations, press relations, personnel department matters, advertising and in the AT&T lobbying effort in Washington.
In point of fact, many of us did not buy the idea that an engineer could do every management job. In retrospect, there are those of us who believe that over-dependence on engineers probably led to the misfortunes of AT&T, starting in the 1970’s.
Now this is not a polemic against engineers – not at all. But as a group, telco engineers tended to be straight arrows. They got to work at 8AM and went to lunch with other engineers in the company cafeteria or dining room. At 5:30PM or 6PM, they caught a train or bus and went home. They rarely stopped at a bar in the railroad depot and they would shun the bar car on the train on the way home. And few of them told ribald jokes.
I’ve known hundreds or thousands of telephone engineers. At home, their tastes run to bridge, fishing and golf. On summer weekends, they enjoy cookouts. That’s wholesome enjoyment, but Broadway plays, concerts and nightclubs acts are usually not on a telco engineer’s agenda.
All of this worked out very well for me. I liked all the things that telco engineers disliked. And then or now, I can’t abide golf or bridge or fishing. I liked Broadway theatrical performances. I liked the restaurants that were found only in New York City. In short, I was attracted to the whole New York scene. When guests from out of town or foreign guests showed up, people would often ask me to help entertain them. Far from a burden, I felt indebted to telco engineers who gave me an opportunity to explore the mysteries of the Big Apple.
Now, with your permission, I will introduce you to a New Yorker who helped me with my work when I first came to New York City as a representative of the Union. In the beginning, it was the Federation of Long Lines Telephone Workers. After 1950, the FLLTW became the Communications Workers of America, which was usually referred to as the CWA.
When I came to New York on Union business in the 1948 to 1950 period, the President of the union was Robert T. Creasey. He had about 30,000 members in the Long Lines Federation. I haven’t seen Creasey for a long time but I suspect that he may have died from cholesterol poisoning or maybe he choked on a steak bone. Remember, you heard it here first that cholesterol poisoning is a deadly disease.
When I came to New York from St. Louis, we stayed at the Piccadilly Hotel on West 45th Street in the heart of the theater district. Creasey, who originally came from Dallas, was a meat eater. Only meat; no fish, no vegetables. If the steak dribbled off the plate because it was bigger than the plate, Creasey would say it was about right. And he had it cooked somewhere between raw and extremely rare. Creasey and I got along very well. On the other hand, I had grave reservations about his choice of restaurants.
I have never been a meat eater even though the opportunity to enjoy non-meat entries in St. Louis were fairly rare. But here I found myself with Creasey and his staff and three or four others who made up the National Board, hanging around the office at 45th Street and Eighth Avenue as dusk and evening approached. Someone would say that it was time to eat. Creasey would then suggest an old fashioned saloon in the next block above 45th Street on Eighth Avenue called Roths. We seemed to eat there three or four days a week, but it was where Creasey could get his overwhelming, rare steaks. My old colleague, Joe Darling, was equally revolted by the food at Roths, but the President had spoken so we ate at Roths. Somehow or other, our two votes never seemed to register when noses were counted.
Roth’s was a throwback to the 1920’s if not to the 1890’s. They contended that they offered a complete menu selection. In point of fact, Roth’s seafood was tired shrimp. His other non-meat entrée was chicken. The idea was that if you wanted to eat seafood, you went to a restaurant that specialized in fish. If your taste included a desire for exotic food, perhaps a Turkish restaurant would fill the bill. But if you wanted to eat steaks and chops and other meat products, you came to Roths.
Joe Darling and I tried everything. We argued that even if Creasey ate only large chunks of meat, at least we could find a different place to go other than Roths. No sale.
Prior to 1950’s, no one knew about cholesterol. I suspect that guys who ate enormous steaks looked upon themselves as macho men. Joe Darling and I were probably viewed as effete consumers of parsley sandwiches. But if Creasey kept on with his meat eating habits after we last talked with each other, I suspect that by now he must have succumbed to cholesterol poisoning. Too bad as he was a nice guy, other than eating meat at every meal.
In 1950, telephone workers across the country voted to form the Communications Workers of America, CWA. The head man of CWA was an old Washington, D. C. hand named Joe Beirne. Beirne was very well connected in Democratic political circles. Joe pulled off a deal with Maurice Tobin, the Secretary of Labor in Harry Truman’s cabinet. Creasey, who opposed Beirne and who was a rival of Beirne, was given a job as Assistant Secretary of Labor. Creasey accepted as he should have done. Beirne was in good shape as he got rid of a rival and a burr under his saddle in one swift move. For Joe Darling and me it was a day of liberation in 1950 with Creasey gone. We were free at last to eat in an establishment other than the fabled Roths.
Bob Creasey was a good man. Even before he went to Washington, he scared the AT&T Company with his competence. The Company rued the day when they had not promoted him to management years before. Later, I found out that my promotion to management in 1951 had quite a bit to do with the company wanting to avoid the same mistake. So aside from being a good guy, in a large measure, I may owe my progress in the company’s management ranks to old Robert T. Creasey.
With Creasey’s departure, I concentrated on seafood because I knew that in returning to St. Louis, few opportunities to eat lobsters, clams, oysters, sole and other fruits of the sea would be tough to come by.
And so we said goodbye to Bob Creasey. He came to CWA conventions and I met him once in Washington. His office was the size of a football field. I was glad for the recognition that came his way. He was a hard worker who put himself through evening law school in Dallas.
I suspect that Brother Creasey might be pushing 90 years of age by now, that is, if he succeeded in avoiding cholesterol poisoning. By staying completely away from meat or meat products for the past 15 years, and with the help of Zocar, my cholesterol is now about 150. I don’t know if this represents 150 watts or 150 kilobits or 150 pounds per square inch. I don’t know if the 150 is on the Fahrenheit scale or on the metric scale. So go ahead and laugh at my ignorance, but as I eat my watercress sandwiches, I will feel purified and sanctified. When my age reaches my cholesterol level, then I will start to worry.
E. E. CARR
MAY 31, 2002
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The first of a twelve-part series on New York living. To pick a few nits, I’ve never understood why so many people seem not to consider fish as meat. Yes, they’re primeval and roughly as unevolved as you can get for a creature with a brain, but all things considered the distinction between a salmon and a chicken is pretty negligible, sentience-wise. Of course, we know why Pop hated eating poultry, but still the distinction between seafood and cattle also seems pretty tenuous, unless you’re purely looking from a health perspective. Even then, fish are sometimes host to mercury and all sorts of wonderful chemicals that would put cholesterol to shame in the lethality department. I wonder if Pop ever tried fugu.