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Sandra Waldrop Doolittle > Railroad Man Telephone Man 4RAILROAD MAN TURNS INTO TELEPHONE MAN 1924 daddy (Harry P. Waldrop) encounters another bend in the road of his life. He is now approaching the big City of Mobile, Alabama. He wasn't quite just off the farm as the old saying goes, but nevertheless Mobile looked strange to him compared to his little home Vinegar Bend, Alabama. Daddy was eighteen years old; he was young and fresh to the City ways of life. Grant you he had visited Mobile many times, visiting relatives and attending Church and youth groups gatherings. The Waldrop and Baxter clan would meet at Dolphin Island or Mobile Bay for families get together. They would eat, swim and go fishing. Being a small town Church going boy, he attended both the Baptist and the Methodist Church. Grandma Minnie saw to it that he and the other children were in Church, every time the doors were open. The Baptist met one week and the Methodist met the other, in two small white frame Churches that sat side by side. You could sit in the windowsill in the Baptist Church and shake hands with the person sitting in the windowsill of the Methodist Church. As a child, I can remember daddy and I walking down a red dusty road and passing by the small Vinegar Bend Baptist and the small Vinegar Bend Methodist Church. In the late 1950s, both the Churches were in good condition and the Church members were still active at both the Baptist and the Methodist Churches. They attended One Church one Sunday and Wednesday the other Church, every other Sunday and Wednesday. While Daddy was trying to explain to me about the two Churches, I was more interested in running around him, in circles and kicking the red dust everywhere. At that young age I could not have cared less about those two Church building. Little did I know, I would be sitting here today, (2006), thinking back on how I had missed out on so much of what daddy was trying to teach me, about his childhood. At my young age then, it just wasn't the time for me to listen, which I have lived to regret today. As we walked down several more roads, with the dry red dust kicking up, because I was skipping, running and jumping over every limb and ditch that I could find. As I look back now, you know daddy wanted to pop me on the head. However, little did daddy know, I was really listening to every word and every story he ever told me, even if at the time they sounded far fetched. As the years went on, I found every story daddy ever told me was 95% correct; the rest of the time he was close. As the stories goes , "He was In the right Church, but the wrong pew." Again, as always I"am getting ahead of myself. Back to Daddy moving on to Mobile, on the Gray Hound Bus. The Bus would carry Daddy, Grandma Minnie and Uncle Monte to outside Whistler and Pritchett Alabama. If they had taken the M &O train, they would have been in downtown Mobile, no where near Aunt Fannie, Grandmaw Minnie sister's house. The bus would have taken them much closer, as in those days cars were fewer and farther between, in the families. Grandma Minnie stayed with her sister until daddy was able to get work and support himself, then she and Uncle Monte moved to Columbia, Mississippi with my Aunt Helen Waldrop Foxworth to live. Grandmaw Minnie and Uncle Monte lived back and forth between Aunt Helen and Aunt Joe Ollie Waldrop Daniels in Yazoo, Mississippi.This is how Grandmaw Minnie lived until she died in 1947. Uncle Monte, when he was old enough was able to leave home. In the mean time Daddy, just turning nineteen years old, knew he couldn't just sit around while his Aunt and Mother worked.
Mama, Myra Richardson Waldrop (1906-1995.) To hear daddy talk, it was love at first sight. But to hear mama talk, her impression of daddy was he was tall slender a very good-looking young man who all the girls were in love with. The young girls were always chasing him through out the Drug Store wanting him to hand make their bowl of ice cream. This didn't set well with mama, so she wrote him off, as she would never date him. By her writing daddy off, this made him more interested in her. He knew she had her own group of young men following her. She never had to wonder if she had a date for Saturday night or not. It turned out that daddy was the one who was standing in line. Mama tried to hold her ground but when daddy turned his charm up, she couldn't resist, she gave in. When their Church groups would go dancing, mama's dancing card would always be filled and no room at the top or bottom for daddy's name. This made daddy even more interested in mama. How could daddy not be interested? Mama was 5'3", cold black hair and the biggest black eyes. There were a couple of beauties in the Richardson's family. Between mama and Aunt Tillie, who was eighteen months younger than mama, they kept someone knocking at the front door all the time. Mama and daddy married in Mobile. By 1926 daddy was working with Southern Bell Telephone &Telegraph Company in Alabama. Daddy started out as a linesman working his way from Mobile to Montgomery Alabama, digging holes for the wooden telephone poles that lined the roads. He and many others traveled from town to town stringing telephone lines from pole to pole. The poles had splinters and the linesmen often had accidents from sliding down by accidents and catching splinters in their arms and legs. At this time jobs all over the United States were in danger, soon after 1929 everyone's lives were changing. The Stock Market was falling and everyone's lives were touched. For a while daddy and the other linesmen were happy just having a job and making enough money to take care of their families. Some of the positions with Southern Bell Telephone Company stayed the same for the men, but others lost what little they had during that year and years to follow. There is an ole saying, "Last man on, First man off. The last man was my daddy along with many others. Daddy was also younger than the other men working at Southern Bell , when the crunch started he didn't have children at the time. My older sister, Juanita, wasn't born yet. However she was born January 2, 1929, which added to his being without a job . Daddy was traveling all over the South and South West trying to find any kind of work that was available and he could send money home to mama and Juanita. Mama and daddy lived through the depression. With all the problems the depression brought to him and everyone else during the those hard times. Daddy alone lost his car, the home he was renting, He jumped on a freight train and travel ,west and South West looking everywhere for a job. Plus he had seven heart attacks, in the years to come. There were times when mama had just enough to eat. By 1932 my sister Norma was born in Mobile which added more stress for daddy of feeding and clothing one more baby. My two older sisters were taught , as they grew older, to leave the meat for daddy. The girls didn't go hungry but they didn't always have what they wanted to eat. But, mama kept their plates full. Mama placed daddy at the head of the house and head of the table. Mama always saw that daddy received the food to give him strength enough to climb the telephone poles and strong enough to run the telephone lines, also crawling under houses no matter if the weather was stormy , red hot or ice cold. Mama ran the house, she paid the bills, bought the groceries, took care of my two older sisters. She laid out daddy's cloths for work every morning. When there was a storm with lighting and thundering all around, the telephone would ring and before daddy could hang up the telephone, mama had his shirt ready for him to slip his arm through. Daddy would go back to the telephone and call a cab in the middle of the night. During the day time daddy would ride the bus to where the Telephone Trucks were waiting. If a storm was predicted during the early hours in the morning or late at night, the Company could have been told and they could have called daddy that bad weather was on it's way.
During the night the telephone men could have taken the trucks home, but, they didn't. They waited for that telephone call they were expecting. Later on when they knew more about the weather daddy and the other telephone men did take their trucks home and parked them in their yards during thunder storms. Daddy could wait and watch the weather and when he received his call from Southern Bell and alert him that a pole had been hit by lighting or a part of town was without telephone service he was ready to go. My older sisters, Juanita and Norma, said they would always remember daddy saying as his feet hit the floor to answer the telephone, Hot Da*og, time and half time. If it was lighting and thundering outside and the telephone rang in the middle of the night daddy knew it was Southern Bell Telephone Company calling him to work. Mama hated to see daddy go out in the storm with the wind blowing and the lighting dancing around in the sky. Mama would sit for hours and pray for him and the others. She knew he would be climbing telephone poles, and the next day crawling under the houses to repair the telephones. When we were scared , mama would read the Bible and pray with us, then soon the night was over and daddy would walk through the door just in time to take a shower and get ready to go back out the door to work. After he took a quick shower, he would walk out to his truck with a cup of coffee in one hand , a hot biscuit in the other, and a newspaper under his arm. Then mama , Juanita, Norma and I would settle down for a nap, knowing daddy was safe. Putting in over time, could be dangerous on a stormy night with lighting bouncing all around the telephone men, who were waiting for a break to repair what they could to keep the telephones working. Mama felt since daddy had to go and work in the storm anyway, she would put the time and half time money in a Bank account for Christmas. "Santa Clause" ,daddy said , "Was paid in full for many years with time and half checks from stormy nights." Santa understood, he himself, had driven through storms getting through to children, even the Children of the telephone men who worked for Southern Bell Telephone Company. For many years I attended Christmas parties hosted by Columbus, Georgia Pioneers. Southern Bell Telephone Company held Christmas parties in their ware house with a large Christmas Trees , refreshments and gifts and also, Santa, himself was there giving out gifts and huge walking dolls for the little girls, such as myself. Every Christmas morning Mr. Tom Meadows would come by bring me a cradle doll and have Christmas breakfast with the family. Most of the telephone men in the nineteen forties and fifties were friends and they would go fishing and hunting together. This is how I met and knew most of the telephone men.(Bettle Johnson, Mr Beard, Mr. George. Hap Broughton, Jimmy Dial and Mr. Buxton.) Later came a Dear friend who worked with Southern Bell Telephone Company Tommy Daniels who was married to one of my Dearest friends Juan Case Daniles who died , quite a while back. Tommy and I often talk about my Daddy , Tommy speaks of my daddy as"The Telephone Man". Tommy joined the Southern Bell Telephone (Now Bell South) the year daddy died. Tommy knew daddy only a short while and has always has something pleasant to say about him when we see each other. We run into Tommy and his wife Pat every now and then around town and funerals, and when ever we do talk and if others are around he always mentions the "Telephone Man". This was a name my daddy carried to his grave. I was downtown many years ago and I saw Tommy behind a counter sitting on the floor working on a telephone. I leaned over the counter and said, "Hey Telephone Man." Tommy never stop working on the telephone , nor did he look up, he just spoke, Mam, there was only one Telephone Man., before he could say more, I touched him on the shoulder and he turned and was surprised it was me. What Tommy said was very special to me then and always will be. Tommy is the last Telephone man I know that still remembers my daddy. Daddy became "The Telephone Man" by referring to himself as the Telephone man when he called a customer on the telephone and let them know he was on the way to their home. Some of the telephone men would call themselves Bell Telephone repairman. But, Daddy would say, mam, " Telephone Man". When a customer would call in they would always ask, for what ever reason they called in for was to speak to the Telephone Man. Everyone started calling daddy "The Telephone Man" and it stuck with him through the years. We have pictures of daddy's grave with the Telephone wreathe and Telephone Man written inside the circle. This would have pleased daddy to be known as the Telephone Man forty - four years after his death. Telephone men like Tommy Daniels have kept his memory alive. Southern Bell Telephone Company played a large part in my family's lives. More about the Telephone Man, soon. Thank you for letting me share my stories with you. Sandra Please visit Jan Doolittle Page on Columbus Georgia On Line, the Mystery Lady, she's my daughter.
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Daddy went downtown to Conception Street, in Mobile, and was given a job as a soda Jerk. Here is where Daddy met mama, Myra Elnora Richardson from Girard, Alabama and Columbus, Georgia. Mama worked at the Cash Register in Albright & Woodward Drug Store. This is where mama and daddy met in the early 1920s.
Daddy, Harry P. Waldrop (Telephone Man 1906-1962)