This is what a REAL operator looks like ...

My Maternal Grandmother was a telephone operator from before WWII until about 1972-ish.

One of her last jobs was downstairs at a Wolff and Marx store in San Antonio in the Northside Mall.

She was also the "de-facto" store security. If they had a rambunctious customer the word was, "Go get Miss Bessie." And my Grandmother, Miss Bessie, would come upstairs and confront, not coddle, not cool down, but confront the unfortunate soul.

She chain-smoked Winstons, and always reminded me of Betty Davis.

Here's a pic of her.
 

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I once worked security at the entry to a major telephone company building. I cannot post much about the operators as it'd violate some board rules.

As a clue, I was once asked by an FBI agent to help apprehend one of the "ladies'" boyfriends, who was a federal fugitive.

Some of those operators were reportedly employed on the side in a very time-honored profession, and their "boyfriends" were pretty scary. The boyfriends were probably also sometimes their, ahem, business managers.

One interesting aspect of this sorry job is that another guard is the only one I ever saw who relied on a Ruger Old Army percussion revolver as his sidearm. All the gun he owned...

I wore a S&W M-64, which I thankfully didn't have to fire.

I'd like to say some other things about why these women were the almost exclusive operator and other 'phone company hires, but cannot do that here. But that experience and those I've dealt with on the 'phone over the years have left me with a very jaundiced impression of telephone operators. And that's just the domestic ones. Those located in India or the Philippines... well, let's not go there tonight. I don't want to have to chew any anti-acid pills.

Today's operators aren't much like those in TV Westerns...:rolleyes:
 
Only 16

RobertJ. said:
Mrs. Avery, Sylvia's mother. I'm a big fan of Dr. Hook, although I preferred their more twisted songs, like "Penicillin Penny" and "Freakin' at the Freaker's Ball".
Click to expand...

'Sylvia's Mother', 'Only 16' and 'On the Cover of the Rolling Stone' are my favorites. They had a veritable boatload of hit singles in the '70s. And they did get their picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone.
 
If only we could go back to the days of the Bell System, Western Electric phone equipment, Operators and Phone Booths?
No more texting and phoning behind the wheel and not having to listen to someone's phone conversation in the next booth over in the restaurant or the movie theatre for that fact. And maybe just maybe people would learn to talk face to face again! ;)
I really miss those days, new technology? Sometimes it just makes good things worse! :rolleyes:
 
We still had a crank phone in the late 60s. The operator had the switchboard in her own home. Calls after 9pm were seriously dicouraged.

When you cranked the phone you waited.....and waited.....then if you were really fortunate Fannie would answer the call and say, Allo, wait a minute.

An 8 party line, ring was long...short...long.

Once the 94 year old neighbor lady answered our ring and told the caller, they're not home, the garage doors open and their car is gone.

What do you mean they have phones you can carry around in your hand?
 
I still have an old black desk phone that I got out of my parents' attic and wired up with a new phone plug. I loaned it to my daughter, but she gave it back after the first time the phone rang. :D Something about the bell being too loud. She didn't have a clue how to turn the volume down.
 
When I was a kid of about fourteen there was an operator on our local exchange who had the sexiest, sultriest voice I ever heard other than Lauren Bacall (RIP). I would pick up the phone half-praying she would be the one who answered.

Then one day she was pointed out to me as she left work. Alas, she was old to my callow eyes (maybe 60, which I now consider young stuff), spherical, and ugly enough to stop a sundial.

My dreams shattered, I drowned my sorrows in cheese-and-onion sandwiches and vowed to be a less salacious thinker.

Didn't last, of course. :D
 
I always liked calling 'Barbara'

shouldazagged said:
When I was a kid of about fourteen there was an operator on our local exchange who had the sexiest, sultriest voice I ever heard other than Lauren Bacall (RIP). I would pick up the phone half-praying she would be the one who answered.

Then one day she was pointed out to me as she left work. Alas, she was old to my callow eyes (maybe 60, which I now consider young stuff), spherical, and ugly enough to stop a sundial.

My dreams shattered, I drowned my sorrows in cheese-and-onion sandwiches and vowed to be a less salacious thinker.

Didn't last, of course. :D
Click to expand...

A supplier had a lady who answered the phone and knew everything about the stock off the top of her head. She had a telephone voice like you describe. When I finally met her, she wasn't anything like I pictured her.

That reminds me of a TV show I saw where the telephone sex line talker was in a trailer park and looked like a hog with heavy eye shadow and curlers half hanging out of her hair, with a guy in a guinea 't' shirt sitting and watching the TV.
 
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I guess I'll have to share my telephone operator story. Had this not occurred...I wouldn't be here to write this.

My Mother graduated H.S. in 1943. Since her Father had died when she was just 9 years old (during the height of the Depression), her Mother had struggled to raise 6 children by herself. So in order to help her Mother, as soon as she was able, my Mother got a job in a munitions factory, assembling hand grenades. At some point after that, she got an offer for a better job (ostensibly) in Wash. D.C. But she hated it there, and left as soon as she could. I never was able to find out what exactly she did in D.C. All she would say was, "They told us we couldn't talk about it." Apparently since no one had ever contacted her to say that she could now talk about it...she never did!

Anyway, when she returned back to her home (small town in PA.), she got a job as a Bell Telephone operator. It must have been mid-to-late '44 to early '45 when she started. She had all kinds of stories about listening in to people's phone conversations (I believe she said they had to be "on the line" with pay phone calls, because they were the ones that timed their calls, and let the caller know when his time was up), and being responsible for sounding the alarm for the Fire Department (on either VE or VJ day, or both, she sounded the fire alarm when they got news that the war was over. I guess it was late at night, and a few people called to complain about the alarm. My Mother told them why they were sounding the alarm, and then disconnected them...she didn't care if they had a reply.)

But her favorite story was the one in which some young man was using a pay phone to call his girlfriend. My Mother liked the sound of the young man, so she would disconnect his call to his girlfriend in mid-conversation. He'd call again, and my Mother would connect him, and then disconnect him again. After a couple of times of that, he gave up, and just talked to my Mother. They were married a couple years later, had my brother 4 years after that, and a decade or so later, I was born. They told the story better, of course. He passed in 2008 at the age of 83, and she passed in 2011 at the age of 85. At the time of my Father's passing, they had been married for 60 years.

Tim
 
loknload said:
If only we could go back to the days of the Bell System, Western Electric phone equipment, Operators and Phone Booths?
No more texting and phoning behind the wheel and not having to listen to someone's phone conversation in the next booth over in the restaurant or the movie theatre for that fact. And maybe just maybe people would learn to talk face to face again! ;)
I really miss those days, new technology? Sometimes it just makes good things worse! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Good Lord man! Do you want to drive the younger generation nuts? What would they do if they couldn't text their friends? Can you imagine not being in instant touch with your BFF? They might have to learn how to write letters! They might have to see their BFF in person ... AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH! I don't know what the youngsters have done to you to make you wish that on them but you need to rethink your attitude.

Oh yeah uuuhhhh I'm uh with you. :eek::D:D:D

Forgot to add (I got lost in sympathy for the youngsters) While Lilly Tomlin was a caricature she wasn't far off. I worked around some of those telephine operators and the older ones could be SOMETHING.
 
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Knew some telephone operators back in those times as well and I have to admit that sometimes the voices did not meet up to the rest of the person? :rolleyes:
But those were the days when you spoke to a real person that knew which end was up and they were sitting in "your" local phone office, not somewhere overseas!
These junk Jap / Chinese cell phones,if Western Electric was making them they would be indestructible,and the before mentioned could never measure up! ;)
 
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rwsmith said:
'Sylvia's Mother', 'Only 16' and 'On the Cover of the Rolling Stone' are my favorites. They had a veritable boatload of hit singles in the '70s. And they did get their picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone.
Click to expand...

My favorite Dr. Hook song: "Living next door to Alice"

They were a great New Jersey bar band!
 
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