The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

I was even willing to lie about my age and “borrow” a dress and hat from Mother’s dressing room in the face of such potential magnificence. I had it all worked out when suddenly the obvious flashed on me: Half the town knew me by name and the other half by sight. What kind of idiot was I? I thanked the Lord for showing me the stupidity of my ridiculous and dangerous proposition in time. But still . . .

On the big day, a dozen of our tall and not-so-tall young ladies presented themselves in their soberest hats, clutching letters of reference in their cleanest white gloves. They lined up along the raised wooden boardwalk in front of the newspaper office and stood for hours, some of them straining on tiptoe. When they went inside, they were made to stand with their backs to the wall and have the distance between their fingertips measured. It turned out that they needed someone with long arms who could plug in connections the length of the switching board. At the end of the day, they announced that Miss Honoria Goates from Staples would be our new Telephone Operator. There was considerable grumbling about this. She was tall, yes, and maybe she had long arms, but there were plenty of fine young ladies in Fentress, were there not? It was the Fentress Telephone Company, was it not? Why hire a foreigner from Staples, four miles away? Would she take the room and board or drive herself daily, and if so, how would she manage in bad weather? And on and on.

Honoria Goates and her tin trunk arrived two days later and were placed in a tiny room the size of a closet containing the switching board and a cot so that she could answer the phone at any hour of the day and night. Her meals were to be brought to her from Elsie Bell’s Rooming House down the street. Such extravagance was unprecedented.

In any event, it turned out not to matter that Honoria was from Staples or that she had long arms. What the Company didn’t know about her (but the rest of us did) was that her uncle, Homer Ray Goates, had been struck by lightning while plowing and had been found in the field, charred and smoking lightly, by Honoria herself. Mr. Goates lived, but lost most of his hearing and had to tote a huge ear trumpet about with him from then on. He also became prone to sudden fits of hilarious laughter over nothing, which, while disconcerting, nevertheless made him entertaining company.

Poor Honoria had lived in mortal fear of electricity ever since. And who in her shoes would not? So, when faced with having to plug her first line into the board, with the supervisor at her shoulder to teach her, she shrieked and fled the building, no doubt expecting to be fried like her uncle by some satanic spark leaping through the wires. She stumbled across the bridge, not even stopping for her things, and ran all the way home to Staples in teary disgrace. Her father sent for her trunk the following day.

Maggie Medlin, Backy Medlin’s great-niece, was hired to take her place. Maggie was shorter than Honoria but sturdier of disposition. Her abhorrent younger sister, Dovie, basked in Maggie’s reflected glory and took to beginning every sentence with, “Well, my-sister-the-Operator says. . . .”

We all hated her for it.

Finally, the Bell Company men made it out to Fentress, and the great day came for the opening of the telephone line. The company’s representative arrived on the train from Austin. There wasn’t room to hold the ceremony inside the newspaper office itself, so we gathered on the street outside. The Odd Fellows’ Brass Band played a short selection, the Moose Band played at length, and the International Woodmen of the World, the band with the fewest members, went on forever. The mayor and the Company man made long, boring speeches about this great day. Mayor Axelrod cut a wide red ribbon with fake oversized cardboard scissors to officially open the Telephone Company in Fentress. Cheers went up, hands were shaken, and free lemonade and lager were passed around. Sam Houston tried to cadge a beer and was properly rebuffed.

And then, at noon on the dot, it happened. A shrill jangling noise rang out in the breathless expectant air. The crowd gasped and ooohed. On the line was our state senator in Austin calling to congratulate our town as we hurtled toward the twentieth century. Maggie Medlin connected the line, and our mayor stepped into the closet and yelled at our senator, who yelled back at him from forty-five miles away, giving him that morning’s price for cotton on the Austin Exchange.

Granddaddy murmured to me, “Do you realize what this means, Calpurnia? The days of whale oil and coal dust are over. The old century is dying, even as we watch. Remember this day.”