Comment on this story

Connecting with history through ‘Central’

by Stephanie Piper

I have a little secret to share with cell-phone users everywhere. Want peace, serenity and lower monthly bills? Do what I do. Leave the bleeping thing off.

The way I see it, these gadgets were meant for emergency use only.

Breakdowns on the Interstate. Chest pains in the checkout line. Al Qaeda operatives at the front door. Those would be reasons to press the “on” button. Anything else is sheer frivolity.

I come by these sentiments honestly. My grandmother, a telecommunications pioneer, had a legendary respect for Mr. Bell’s invention. The telephone furnished her with a livelihood and a husband, in that order. It was a history she never forgot.

Orphaned at eight, Nana went to work at 14. The year was 1912, and the job market for female grade-school graduates was limited to store clerk, parlor maid or factory worker. But my grandmother had other ideas.

She answered a newspaper ad for a newfangled job called telephone operator. Eight years with the nuns had given her a soft, well-modulated voice and clear diction, and she was hired on the spot.

She learned to say “Hello, Central,” and “What number, pleeyuz,” and “niyun” instead of nine. She learned the rich, rolling names of the old-time exchanges, Trafalgar and Gramercy and Stuyvesant and Algonquin. She learned to run the switchboard and to patch through the rare long-distance call. Her supervisor wore roller skates, she told us, the better to speed around the room where Nana and her fellow operators operated.

One day when she was 16, she heard a male voice on the line. He was an AT&T technician, checking for bad connections.

But this connection was very good indeed. They began to chat, and he fell in love with her laugh and her wicked Irish wit. Soon he was calling every night.

A few months later, Nana took the train to Hartford to meet him. She wore a white suit so he would recognize her. They were married that spring.

Married women didn’t work in 1915, so Nana stayed home. She returned to her switchboard during the Great War. It was her patriotic duty, she said. In 1918, she retired for good.

Her loyalty to the telephone company never faltered. My grandfather stayed with AT&T. He rose to “the highest level you could reach without a college diploma,” Nana told us proudly. The phone company saw them through the Depression. The phone company helped to fund college for their three children. In 1948, my grandfather died at his AT&T desk.

Nana did not “pick up the phone” or “give you a ring.” The serious-looking black instrument occupied its own crocheted doily on her front hall table. “I went to the telephone,” she would say, “and asked for long distance.” She was, after all, a professional.

Once a branch fell on the power lines outside her house, and she was out of reach for days. A family rescue party arrived to find her undisturbed. We complained about the slow repair service, but Nana shook her head emphatically. They were wonderful, she said. They worked all through the night. They did their very best.

They were her people, and she wasn’t going to hear a word against them.

When Nana died at 93, cell phones were still a techie’s distant dream. What she would make of the beeping, chattering telecom age in which we live I can only imagine. You’re calling from where, dear? The movie theater? And is it on fire?

I leave my cell off, mostly. But when I turn it on, I think of Nana. I think of a day in 1912 when she signed up for the future. I think of history, and I think of progress.

Without the telephone, I would never have heard the lilt of her long-distance “Hello, Steph darling” every Sunday afternoon. Without the telephone, I wouldn’t be here at all.

May 13, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 20 © 2004 Metro Pulse