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BLOB - You've all heard the expression that 'no good deed goes unpunished' orperhaps how things you do come back to bite you on the ass later in life.Or, what goes around, comes around. This story today is about a man bythe name of Wally, who was a repair technician in what Illinois Bell usedto call 'Night Plant'. In other words he was one of those guys who worksduring overnight hours, going out to **important, and critical** customerswhose phone service is down, when it **really** matters to the communityor at least the customer. For example, if telephones went down at apolice station or fire station, or a customer with a 24 hour per day businesswith a switchboard had a fire, or whatever, and getting the phones backinto service was very critical. Wally was one of the guys Illinois Bellwould send out. He was allowed to keep his company truck at his houseso that if there was a call from his office at 10 PM, he could go out tothe location and deal with the problem. I do not know if telco still doesthat or not (responding to important customers during the night asneeded) but at least Illinois Bell used to in the 1950-60's era.Wally said that during the April, 1968 riots in Chicago whichdestroyed most of the west side of the city (the occassion for riotingwas the assassination of Martin Luther King; the Democrats and theriot they caused at their convention would not come for a few moremonths until August), he was assigned to work during much of that time.He said he and his partner (during the riot, the company insisted theywork as partners, at least two men on the job) were driving around lookingfor damages to telco equipment on the streets, etc. Two white guys ina telco van driving around on the west side; wouldn't that bedangerous? Nah, he said, the rioters didn't hassle the utilityworkers; they knew the electric guys and the phone guys were just outthere to do work, not to pick fights; they didn't bother us. Anyway,my experience was if you go out looking for trouble, you'll alwaysfind it; if you go out as a decent person, and treat people you meetwith respect, they'll nearly always give you respect in turn, eventhough we were nearly all white guys; the ones accused of rioting atthe MLK assassination were nearly all racial minorities.We stopped at this one liquor store on Lake Street. The guy's onlytelephone was a pay station; it had been completely torn off the walland trashed on the sidewalk; the coin box was stolen of course. Mypartner and I took a new phone out of our truck and reinstalledit. Now, many of the guys I worked with; I won't say they were racistat all, but they had the attitude "fu-- the animals! Let it wait untiltomorrow, let the day crew go out and work on it." But I happen toknow that was the only pay phone for several blocks around, and manyof the people who lived in the housing project on that block were toopoor to have their own phone and they relied heavily on that payphone. That's probably the reason the coin box was stolen; it wasconsidered to be one of the better pay phones in the area for the company.That liquor store was also an Illinois State Lottery agent and the guywho ran the store also needed a phone. So we re-installed it and Imade certain it was bolted so well that no one was ever going to trashit again. My partner finished a little last minute work on the phone,and it was around 10 PM, then I called our office to see if they hadany more assignments for us. If not, I would have driven my partnerback to his house and I would have gone home myself.Well, the office said they had gotten a call from the operator atBethany Brethren Hospital, about two miles away. The poor lady wasfrantic because there had been a broken water pipe, some of the basementhad gotten flooded and her switchboard had gone out. So my partnersaid let's go see what we can do for her. We pulled in the parkinglot about twenty minutes later and went in to see her. The lady wasso glad to see us; I thought she was going to kiss the ground we werewalking on. She was 'absolutely
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