Wednesday, October 16, 2013
TPC and FSM
So after that stupid Bob Dylan concert and a summer session at Berkeley (where I crashed for a few days at the home of some musicians I knew, one from San Diego), I returned to the more familiar environs of the Pomona Valley to work and save money to go to school. Beginning in October of 1964 (and I had just returned from Berkeley and even had to have my parents sign a slip saying it was ok for me to work there because I wasn't old enough to work a regular job legally), against my father's advice, I took on a full-time position as a long distance telephone operator at the National Phone Company in Pomona (which was almost next door to the much larger General Telephone Company that serviced nearly every telephone in the greater Pomona Valley). The National Phone Company was allowed to exist and maintain some connectivity to a small pool of paying clients in order to stave off complaints of Mother Bell's well known monopolistic tendencies.
So I was a long distance operator in October of 1964. But I had seen close up the beginnings of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley ...
Because "Get Smart" was popular on television, and given my first name, I was actually assigned "99" as my operator's number. Well, I said to myself, somebody in this bureaucracy has a sense of humor.
Today October 16 is National Boss's Day so that's why I made the posts about telescopes, gas stations, musicians, encyclopedia sales, and phone companies. With a brief interlude on disco music, but I did manage to work in a mention of the National Forest Service, if you remember, and even the tram driver if you think about earned money and worked for POP while shuttling tourists and beatniks up and down the Venice Boardwalk.
¶ 10/16/2013 11:58:00 AM
So after that stupid Bob Dylan concert and a summer session at Berkeley (where I crashed for a few days at the home of some musicians I knew, one from San Diego), I returned to the more familiar environs of the Pomona Valley to work and save money to go to school. Beginning in October of 1964 (and I had just returned from Berkeley and even had to have my parents sign a slip saying it was ok for me to work there because I wasn't old enough to work a regular job legally), against my father's advice, I took on a full-time position as a long distance telephone operator at the National Phone Company in Pomona (which was almost next door to the much larger General Telephone Company that serviced nearly every telephone in the greater Pomona Valley). The National Phone Company was allowed to exist and maintain some connectivity to a small pool of paying clients in order to stave off complaints of Mother Bell's well known monopolistic tendencies.
So I was a long distance operator in October of 1964. But I had seen close up the beginnings of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley ...
Because "Get Smart" was popular on television, and given my first name, I was actually assigned "99" as my operator's number. Well, I said to myself, somebody in this bureaucracy has a sense of humor.
Today October 16 is National Boss's Day so that's why I made the posts about telescopes, gas stations, musicians, encyclopedia sales, and phone companies. With a brief interlude on disco music, but I did manage to work in a mention of the National Forest Service, if you remember, and even the tram driver if you think about earned money and worked for POP while shuttling tourists and beatniks up and down the Venice Boardwalk.
¶ 10/16/2013 11:58:00 AM
