In the early 1950's I worked in the courthouse as secretary to School Superintendent Charles Morris. I sat at the front desk, receiving all telephone calls and visitors, among many other duties. At the time, there were but two office employees, the Finance Officer, my friend Ernestine and myself. Among the other constitutionally elected county officials also located in the courthouse was the Tax Assessor Glen Gibson, well known as a prankster.
The telephone system in Milton left much to be desired with regular static and misdirected calls. It was back when you talked to the telephone operator.
One morning the phone system was particularly troublesome when I tried to reach Tallahassee for the superintendent, first, not connecting due to static, then misdirection.
Shortly after several attempts to make the call, my desk phone rang. A female voice, as if it were the operator, instructed me to cover the phone because the phone company was going "to blow out the lines." That sounded perfectly plausible to me due to all the morning's phone problems.
Naively, I told the superintendent and the finance officer to cover their phones, and I tried to cover mine with onion skin (used for typed copies in the "olden days") fastened with a rubber band, which did not hold satisfactorily. Then I took my sweater from the back of my chair and wrapped the phone securely.
The secondary school director who had a small office upstairs and who used the phone on my desk, came downstairs and into my office, looked at the wrapped phone and asked if he could use the phone. I told him he could not because the phone company was "blowing out the line."
He turned, walked halfway up the stairs, came back into my office and asked: What did you say? I told him again, and he said, "Okay."
Later that morning, Glen Gibson rolled into the office in his wheel chair, sort of snickering when he saw my phone all wrapped. He asked to speak to the superintendent who had another visitor at that time.
Glen waited, and waited, probably until he couldn't stand the suspense any longer, then sprang the joke on us all. How embarrassing.
Later, I learned that even the County Judge Bill Bonifay, with offices also in the courthouse, had been duped by the same joke and had covered his own phone with his overcoat.
Some years later, when I left for other employment, the superintendent's staff gave me a dinner at the old Floridatown Hotel. My parting gift? A toy telephone wrapped in a doll sweater.
That was the state of the phone system in the 1950's in Milton.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Doris Kingry: Phone service is different these days