Stanley Elkin - The Dick Gibson Show

“Well, sir, I was at that point in my journey where I didn’t know would it be better to turn back to Aliosto or press on to Clendennon. I drive an old Hudson which the feller I got it from turned back the odometer, and it ain’t worked proper since. It don’t register at all except every ten thousand miles the first two numbers over on the left change, so was no way to tell how far I already come. That’s all woods and dirt road between Aliosto and Clendennon. You don’t pick up County double ‘S’ to Anniston till the other side of Clendennon, so one mile don’t look no different than another. Speedometer’s bust, too, so I couldn’t tell how fast I’d been coming, and I don’t wear no watch so I didn’t know how long neither. Anyway, I decided to continue along to Clendennon. Which it turned out come up a good deal faster than I thought it would.

“There’s a general store in Clendennon, and I went inside and asked the feller could I use his pay telephone. I called the phone company business office down to Anniston and told them what I seen. The girl there put me through to the service department, and I told them again.

“‘Well,’ says the feller in the service department, ‘we didn’t get no reports of any interruption in service. Whereabouts this happen?’

“‘On the road between Aliosto and Clendennon.’

“‘No,’ he says, ‘in which state, Alabama or Georgia?’

“‘Why, there ain’t no state line marker on that road,’ I told him. I didn’t see one.’

“So he asks me where I’m calling from and I tell him Clendennon, and he says Clendennon’s pretty close to the Georgia line and that if that tree was down on those wires in Georgia no Alabama truck could go out there and fix it.

“‘Well, man,’ I said, ‘ somebody better. Them lines ain’t gonna hold up that tree much longer. Some kid could get hurt.’ This was summertime. There’s fishing all along back in them woods in the lakes. I’d already passed some boys on bicycles. So he says, well, could I do this much for him then — could I go back and get the shield numbers on the two poles holding up the wires that tree was flung across, and call him back.

“‘What shields are those?’ I asked.

“‘Why, the shields,’ he says. ‘The little tin plates that are on every telephone and power pole. They’re fixed about five and a half foot up the west side of the pole.’

“You know I never noticed them? I’m seventy-one years old and been around telephone poles all my life and I never did see that they had any tin plates on them. Well, I thought all this was his business and not mine and I told him so, but he tells me he just ain’t got no trucks available at this time. I probably would have dropped the whole thing, but I couldn’t stop thinking ‘bout them kids that could get hurt. My son-in-law didn’t know I was coming, he didn’t expect me, and it didn’t make no difference what time I finally got there, so I decided I’d go back.

“Well, that’s what I did, and a good thing too, because now those lines were no higher than a man’s belt, and when I looked up I could see that where they was attached at they was under more strain than ever. They could have bust loose from their connections right while I was standing there. Well. I looked for the plates the feller told me about and there they was, on the west side just like he said, and five and a half foot up, too. You ever see one?”

“No.”

“Well, they’re just like — what do you call it — insignia on a train conductor’s hat, and they’re tin, and they got these letters and numbers stamped on them, raised up like the figures on a license plate. Some kind of code. I wrote down the numbers and went back to Clendennon and called the fella again and give him the information.

“‘That’s Georgia,’ he says. ‘That’s a Georgia pole. You’ll have to call them.’”

“What a lot of red tape,” Dick Gibson said.

“No, no, that ain’t the point. Hang on a minute. You see, just like you, I thought it was all one company, but it isn’t. Georgia is Southern Bell, and that part of Alabama where I was is Talladega County Telephone Company.”

“Well, you went to a lot of trouble.”

“Wait. I called the phone company in Marietta, Georgia. That’s where they come out from to service Aliosto where I live, so I called them. This time I didn’t tell my story to the girl who answered the phone but asked to be put right through to the service department. I had the numbers of the shields right in front of me, and as soon as the man got on the line I told him, ‘Sir, I’m a stranger who while driving along the back road between Aliosto, Georgia, and Clendennon, Alabama, this morning happened to notice a tree pressing down on the lines between poles LF 644 and LF 643. When I first noticed the tree it was lying on the lines at about five and a half foot. When I went back, I would estimate about an hour and a half later, it had sunk to about three foot off the ground. That’s about one foot, three inches each hour. That tree is straining desperately at them wires, and I fear for the children in the area if the lines should snap. In fact, they may already have snapped.’ You know what he told me?”

“What?”

“That if the lines did snap, all that would happen is that the phone service in the area would be interrupted, and that they couldn’t have snapped or I wouldn’t be talking to him right now. He said there was no danger from exposed telephone cable, but that I’d better call the electric company because if there were power lines there — see, I thought power lines had something to do with phones, but it turns out they’re two different things — and they broke down, then there could be trouble. I asked him for the number of the electric company, and he said I’d have to get it from Information.”

“What a lot of—”

“Wait. I got the number of the electric company from Information and I asked for the service department. I told my story. Do you know what they told me in the service department?”

“What?”

“That I wanted the maintenance department.”

“I’ll be,” Dick said.

“No. Don’t you see? What’s the service department at the phone company is the maintenance department at the electric company.”

“Did you finally get the right department?”

“Sure I did. Once I knew what to ask for, sure I did.”

“Did you have any more trouble?”

The old man laughed. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I can see you just don’t understand. I called the maintenance department. See, I thought I knew what was coming. That they’d want to know was there any power lines between them two poles in addition to the telephone cables. That they’d have to tell me what to look for and I’d have to go back again. Well, they asked me if I got the shield numbers and I told them I did and they said let’s have them, and I gave them to them and they said well, sir, thank you very much, we’ll look into it right away.”

“You certainly had yourself a morning,” Dick said.

“I said to this fella, ‘How do you know whether there’s power lines as well as phone cable along in there?’

“‘Why, sure there are,’ he said. ‘The F in the code tells us that.’”

“They took care of it, then?”

“I drove back from visiting my son-in-law the next day. The tree was gone. Not a sign of it. The lines was all taut as good fencing. For my own satisfaction I stopped the car to check the poles. I’d stopped at LF 663, so I counted the poles and finally come down to LF 644 and 643 and everything was clean as a whistle. That’s a terrific system. It’s better than an address. Course it is an address; that’s what those shields actually are.”