“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.”
“Well, I’m glad they got it before somebody was hurt,” Dick Gibson said.
“Sure,” the man said. “This didn’t happen yesterday or last week.”
“No? From the way you were talking I thought it was a recent experience.”
“No. This was three years ago. I’m retired eight years and this was five years after I retired. It’s been three years since this happened.”
“I see.” He was anxious to take the next call. Perhaps Behr-Bleibtreau was trying to get through.
“There’s order,” the old man said.
“I’m sorry?”
“There’s order. There’s procedure. There’s records on everything. There’s system.”
“I suppose there is.”
“You bet your life. When I was in Anniston that time I asked my son-in-law to take me through the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant. He showed me how everything worked. I asked a lot of questions. I couldn’t take it all in just that one time, so I went back. I had to go back two or three times. I found out all about it. There’s system, there’s order. I’m in a gas station anywhere in the country and I look at the bottom of the soda bottle and I see where it came from and I know how it got there. I know what happens to that bottle when they take it back. I look for certain tell-tale signs and I know approximately how many more times they’ll be able to use it. I know what happens to the glass when they throw it away.
“Then there’s cans. I know about them too. It’s what I do now. I find out about things. If I don’t understand something I get somebody to explain it to me till I do. I don’t rest till my curiosity is satisfied. I know how a letter gets from this place to that, just what the zip code does, who handles it. There’s organization, there’s process, procedure. There’s steps — like that check list I made up for the men in my plant. There’s a system and intersecting lines and connections. There’s meaning. My son-in-law gave me a shirt for Father’s Day. I put it on yesterday for the first time. You know what I found in the pocket?”
“What?”
“A slip of paper. ‘Inspected by Number 83.’ The shirt’s a Welford, 65 percent polyester, 35 percent cotton. It’s union-made in Chicago. I read the tags on it, the instructions they give you for washing. How can some shirt outfit you never heard of have eighty-three inspectors? And I’m taking eighty-three as an inside figure, mind you; probably the numbers go higher. I’m going to find out. I’ll find out what that number actually represents. I wrote Eighty-Three today. If I don’t get an answer I’ll write Eighty-Two. I’ll find out. I’ll see how it works, how it’s all connected. Everything’s connected. There’s order, there’s process, there’s meaning, there’s system. It ain’t always clear, but just stick with it and you’ll see. Then you’ll be amazed you never saw it. It’ll be as plain as the nose on your face. If it was a snake it would bite you.”