Chapter 38
I expect it wasn’t the kind of coin operated phone we’re accustomed to today but just think—that forerunner of today’s most vital gossip machine is almost a hundred years old.
Fascinating isn’t it!!! And we all thought we’d invented gossiping over the phone just this generation!
I heard one time that there were three ways to get something across the universe faster than the speed of light or sound. They were the telegraph, telephone, and tell-a-woman.
Now-a-days telephone and tell-a-woman are just fairly well inseparable and somehow, they’ve managed to more or less put the telegraph our in the cold.
Remember the old phones back before 1-plus dialing and direct calling? The operator said, “number please”!! And she knew EVERYONES voice who lived or had lived within a hundred-mile radius in the last century.
And gossip! She not only knew about Sally Jane and Martha Jo’s argument.
She knew why they’d argued, when they’d argued, and who said what about the whole affair.
She knew that Sallie Jane’s husband was sneaking out with Martha Jo’s sister-in-law’s maid and that Martha Jo’s husband was seen down at Mabel’s Bar and Grill lettin’ Sally Jane’s aunt’s cousin sashay right up next to him!
Then pesto! One day at 12:00 noon the direct dialing system was born and “number please” was gone with the wind like Scarlett O’Hara’s way of life.
It used to bother me thinking about all those slightly nasal, whiny “number pleases” livin’ on bread and water while they waited on another job to fall out of the sky on their laps. But not anymore!!
No siree! There’s another “tele” that’s making big waves with the fairer side of the world—television! And what’s the most important thing on the boob tube. You guessed it—SOAP OPERAS.
Just WHO do you think comes up with all that super-dooper-ridiculous junk on those shows?! Do you ever see maybe just a slight resemblance to another incident years ago—one that REALLY did happen?
Yup! That’s what happened to those operators.
They’re all layin’ back on mink covered lounges sippin’ cool drinks from expensive crystal while they talk into diamond studded microphones, recording another story— “oh, yes, and about that time is when Sally Jane’s husband walks through the door with Martha Jo’s sister-in-law’s maid…