A “Bell” Christmas to remember: In 1971, I left the Navy as an electrician on a Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) submarine to “surface” in my civilian life with “Ma Bell”. I bid out of the line gang around the middle of 1972 and took a switchman job in the Homewood, AL central office. My seniority placed me last in the work group. I was put on the night shift, of course. One Friday night in early November, the foreman of the 87X step-by-step Central Office, M.A. (Perk) Perkinson, left me a note….it read something like this: “Roy, this weekend, I want you to do NOTHING but run tests on our incoming toll selectors.” He continued, “There is a DET4 test set on my desk. If you don’t know how to use it, ask _X__ before he leaves his shift.” Well, _X__ didn’t really know how to use the DET4 and as I found out later only one of the dayshift switchmen really understood how to trouble-shoot with it. This could possibly have been the reason our ‘incoming toll call completion index’ was one of the lowest in the state. At any rate, for good reason, Perk was under fire from our District Manager. Perk told me to open trouble tickets and leave the selectors busy for the day shift to repair. My job – he emphasized – was to find the troubles. I felt a stirring, my Navy trouble-shooting experience kicked in. I loved a challenge, but couldn’t believe how easy this one was. The DET4 was simple to operate and was an excellent test set. Monday morning when ‘Perk’ walked thru to survey his central office domain, the incoming toll selector bays AND the “upstream” selector bays looked like Christmas had arrived early in Homewood. Red and yellow busy tools hung everywhere. I had trouble finding enough busy tools. I quit making trouble tickets that weekend and started a list on one of those yellow legal-sized steno pads. I left it on Perk’s desk with the DET4 - a little worried I might get in trouble for skipping the opening up of trouble tickets. ‘Perk’ called me out early that Monday on the evening shift, I found him with the DET4 in his hand. I was more than a little worried. The day shift had released some of the selectors with a “no trouble found” (“NTF”) diagnosis. He asked me to show him how I found so many troubles. I did and in the process we made several of the “NTF” switches busy again. Before he left for the day, Perk told me my night shift assignment until further notice would be full time testing and repairing of incoming selector switch troubles . He had me to run the DET4 tests all the way from the incoming toll selectors to the “connecter switches”. Well, this assignment made me real popular with the rest of the guys because he assigned another person to work nights with me. Any Switchmen reading this knows how that went over….. THE junior man (in the entire switching universe) assigned to train senior men ???? Right! … I quickly found out, first hand, the meaning of “old school”. But, hey, they couldn’t complain too much. They were on overtime for a couple of weeks until the next shift schedule was posted for selection. That’s when the grumbling really started. About the third week of November, ‘Perk’ said, “Do not make any more trouble tickets.” I was instructed to “find and fix” the troubles as I went. I loved it! I worked hard and the other guy on nights grumbled as he (mostly) oiled switches. By the time the C.O. monthly index results came out in late December, we had ”jumped” up near the top in our district for (successful) toll call completions. Our District Manager, Bill Gresham, called ‘Perk’ to his office to find out what had happened. Perk lamely tried the old “ replaced some faulty plant register meters” excuse. It didn’t work, and Perk knew it. During the meeting with Gresham, Perk said he came clean with him. Tongue-in-cheek, he said to me that he blamed everything on the junior man. Then he laughed and said it was the first time he had ever been chewed out at the start of a face-to-face meeting then complimented with a pat on the back as he was leaving the meeting. Later, Mr. Gresham came to the Homewood C.O. (his office was in the Vestavia C.O. building). We talked and he asked me about my background and thanked me personally. He told me he was going to put an “atta boy” entry in my personnel record. He did. Later, Perk thanked me for one of the most memorable Christmas seasons he had ever experienced at work. But the old timers avoided me like the plague for several months. Most of the senior guys (no pun intended) eventually allowed me to “pick” their brain and tolerated my presence to some extent. I could handle the treatment because it was a lot like qualifying on a nuclear powered submarine. All in all, it was the end of a good year and the start of a marvelous journey. SXS, XBar, ESS, Mini-computer Operations, Data Transport. I have no regrets. It all seemed like Christmas. Does anyone else have a “Bell” Christmas story to tell??? Please share it.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 21:43:03 +0000
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