Sunday Search for Inspiration

It's always tempting to start out telling cockroach stories. Every telephone company repair tech has them--stories, that is--if they ever worked in the residential side of the business. You got your tool belt on and you knock on the door and when it swings open, you say, hi, I'm here to fix your phone line.  And they let you inside and you check the line and maybe you have to work on the inside wiring, or the jacks, or the telephone set itself. Of course, this was back before the customers supplied their own telephones.

But, cockroaches don't care who owns the phones. They like to crawl inside dark, enclosed places, and they love company. If a household has a cockroach problem, then there will be cockroaches inside the phones--almost every time--or inside the little box-like phone jacks that we used to put on baseboards. Any little hiding place. For us telco repair people, it was a routine job hazard, just as wasps were when we opened up telephone terminals that were mounted on telephone poles in backyards and alleys.

I never thought about it before, but maybe you would be surprised at this. Maybe not. Telephone lines, and most of the related equipment, were not that complicated. I think we were paid--pretty well--in part for our willingness to subject ourselves to the rigors of outdoor work in a Midwest climate, as well as this whole insect thing. When I was a land surveyor, it was snakes and poison ivy. It's always somethin'.