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CVA66snipe, first please give your Dad a hug for me and thank him for his years of service. AT & T and the old Bell companies served my family and our country well.

Thank you for sharing his story here. It is quite remarkable and sad what has transpired since then. I don’t understand why in one decade they were sued as being a monopoly, then decades later after being nearly decimated, they returned and became a monopoly again. It all seems like a waste. I’d love to believe that someday years in the future, fiber optics will replace the old cables, yet it seems impossible today that such a big company would ever invest the money again.

When he went back outside the sent him back to climbing school. He went right back up the pole but with a different style than what the instructor was used too LOL. He worked evenings in 4-A so I got to spend a lot of time there when I was a kid. It was two stories of relays just for that one office.

He taught me trouble shooting, reading schematics, and I was the only kid in school who built his own transistor radios LOL. The put the two stories of mechanical switching into a computer that would fit in the average living room.

Dad passed a couple years ago but I remember a lot of what he taught me. Even up till he retired I'd go out on call outs at night if it was a bad part of town. He stayed craft level his entire time because that's where the money was. He made more than his boss and likely the second step boss just by taking call outs.

I can drive down the road now and I see things that 25 years ago would have not been allowed. Cable Pedestals wide open laying over, wires exposed, aerial cables laying on the ground, etc. That was what full crews took care of.

If the split had not happened most places would now likely have fiber optic service at least up to the SLICK. It was the Big Bell that also brought us ESS. My local C.O. was among the first to go ESS in the nation. But then again old Bell had issues.

We had the old paper wrap rural aerial wire but a ESS central office. Every time it rained the lines sounded like Rice Crispies and a bad amplifier.

One night I was flying home from the ship and sometimes I flew in via Norfolk to Atlanta then Knoxville. A plane crashed in Atlanta and the phone started ringing non stop. I mean it ringed even with the handset off the cradle. Dad had enough. He pulled it off the wall, took it outside and took a sledge hammer to it and put the pieces in a box. Next evening he put in on his bosses desk. That didn't get anything done so he went to the state PSC and filed a complaint against the company. It was a risky thing to do back then for him although he had more than enough years for retirement. That finally got a cable buried from the central office to our area about 8 miles away. IIRC the spilt had been ordered but had not occurred yet.