Henrietta Hay's Column

What goes around comes around.

Once upon a time you could go to your wall telephone, pick up the receiver, grind the crank a few times and say, "Mabel, go find Pete and tell him lunch is ready. Try the grocery store, or maybe the barber shop." Pete goes home for lunch.

Today I pick up my receiver, say "Terry," and the nineties version of Mabel dials Terry's phone. Look ma, no hands. Mabel does not chase her down in case she happens to be in the grocery store or the beauty shop but some combination of phone wires and computers and little green men who run around in there and punch numbers makes her phone ring when I simply pick up the receiver and say her name. Ah, this modern world.

This modern telephone world has come about since 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell was working on a device to help his deaf wife understand words. One day he spilled acid on him and without thinking, picked up the gadget and yelled, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." We can only assume that Mr. Watson, on the other end of the wire, rushed in when he heard his master's voice. Some years later, in 1915, the same two men had a similar conversation as they made the first intercontinental telephone call. But this time Mr. Watson was in San Francisco and said, "It would take me a week to get there now!"

Herbert J. Hackenburg, Jr. in his book Muttering Machines to Laser Beams tells the story of Mountain Bell, of the jump from "Mabel" to a modern phone system. Before direct dialing we had switchboards. And sitting at the switchboards we had women. They worked through wars and floods and fires and other physical and personal catastrophes. There are lots of them still around and they all have wonderful stories to tell. As a modern feminist I look at the policies and conditions and rules under which they worked in the early days with horror. But they did the job with distinction. Hackenburg says that, "Chances are that if the general public had a human image of the telephone company, it looked like an operator. 'Central,' 'Call Girls,' 'Hello Girls,' and 'Voice with a Smile" are some of the more polite things operators have been called through the years."

Perhaps the most famous and certainly funniest switchboard operator of all is Lily Tomlin's wonderful creation, Ernestine. Ernestine says in her pursed mouth fashion, "One ringy dingy. Two ringy dingy. Are you the party to whom I am speaking?" I wish I were. She may not fit the stereotype, but she will be remembered. I have often wondered whether the bigwigs in the telephone industry love or loathe Ernestine.

Having grown up some time after the birth of the telephone, I never knew "Mabel" but I have known a lot of "Centrals." Since we had no "O" button, We called "Central," who told us what we needed to know. One of my early memories is of the many voices of "Central," always pleasant, saying, "Number please." If I wanted to call my dad at the lumberyard, a live body connected to one of those pleasant voices would put a plug in the 426 holes, and a matching plug in the 201 holes and the connection was made.

The first switchboard I remember actually seeing was, of all places for an eastern sloper, in Collbran, My parents were attending a meeting and I was left in the care of the only person in town who was awake and not attending the meeting, the telephone operator. She and I sat in her house, which included the switchboard, and she showed me how it all worked.

Today the whole world is tied together by telecommunication, and new advances are being made daily. We have faxes and intercom systems and E-mail and cellular phones. The information superhighway is here and I am still trying to get my car started. Who knows where we are going?

But even today's telephone system is full of contradictions. You can get through to London or Shanghai or Baltimore faster than you can get the person you want to talk to in the County Court House. Maybe we'll have to bring "Mabel" back.

What goes around comes around.