From Bent Twigs in Jefferson County, by the inestimable late County Historian, Jean Patterson Bible. Transcribed by the incomparable Doris Kinser Fountain.
34 Years at the Switchboard
(pp. 150-154)
"Pet, honey, see if you can find Jack somewhere. I want him to bring home some stuff for me, and he didn't tell me what store he was going to before he left."
"Pet, I've got a call in for Hazel, and I've got to leave the house for a while. I'm afraid she'll call while I'm gone and I want to tell her I'll be up there tomorrow if she's going to be home. Just give the message to her for me, will you, and put it on my long distance calls."
"Miss Pet, look out your window and see if you see Hal on the street. If you do, tell him to bring a loaf of bread when he comes."
"Pet, I'm trying to get a man named Davis in Chattanooga about a house to rent, and I don't know his address or even his first name. Reckon you could find him for me?"
All these and thousands of similar requests were an old story to Miss Pet Swann, retired telephone operator at Dandridge, Tennessee, who spent thirty-four years at the switchboard before her retirement in 1947. That was before a dial system was installed in the county and all calls except those on a party line had to go through a local "central."
Familiarly known as "Miss Pet," or just plain "Pet" to hundreds of people in the county, she probably served as unofficial announcer of more births, deaths, fires, and other good and bad news than any other person or organizations. Being a native of the county, she knew a great deal more about the people to begin with than almost anybody else, who their relatives were and where they lived.
When a long distance call would come in, if she couldn't get her party at the place named by the caller, she would try everywhere she thought he might be, at the home of parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, or neighbors.
When she first started out in 1913, the telephone office was a privately owned business, the People's Telephone Company. A party line cost fifty cents a month, a private one a dollar, a call to Morristown cost a dime, and one to Knoxville, thirty miles away, fifeen cents. Without a day's previous experience she went into the office and started out at the switchboard of ninety numbers with the owner, Mr. Charlie Owens, at her side to show her how to operate it.
The work wasn't too hard and she soon caught on. She worked for eighteen dollars a month for five years, from 6:00 PM until 7:00 AM. Another worked the day shift and they took time about working on Sundays. The night work wasn't so bad as she could keep a little cot in the office to take naps on when the board wasn't busy. People didn't use the phone much at night unless there was an emergency and she got in a good deal of sleep off and on. She was a light sleeper and one or two rings would always awaken her. She slept a while in the mornings after going home, then got up for the day to do her housework and care for an invalid mother.
One of her greatest troubles was in making connections on the party lines where several people would be on the same line and could call each other merely by ringing the required number of rings without even ringing central. Housewives would call each other early in the mornings to chat about the price of eggs and chickens, how their gardens were doing, their new quilt patterns, or just to pass the time of day and would talk a long time. When she wanted to ring somebody on their line, she would have to wait until the conversations were finished. Occasionally in an emergency she had to ask them to hang up so she could use the line.
The first switchboard was located on the second floor of a small brick building (once the old Hickman Tavern office [now the Dandridge City Hall]) opposite the Shepard's Inn down the street from the main section of the town. On one occasion when she was sitting in front of the switchboard, she happened to look and saw a light flashing on it from one end to the other. It was coming through the window. She didn't scare easily and watched closely. Then she realized that the light was coming from a flashlight being shined through one of the windows of the Shepard's Inn across the street. She knew it was a prowler looking for money which one of the boarders generally carried with him. She promptly put in a call to the Inn, aroused the proprietor who got up to investigate. The alarmed prowler got away and never came back again.
Miss Pet thought the money he was looking for was probably that taken by the local theater, which at that time amounted to about thirty-five dollars a night. The theater owner, who lived at the Inn, always took it with him to his room at night.
After that scare, the movie proprietor came to Miss Pet and said, "Miss Pet, you know I always take the money with me at night and I'm afraid somebody will steal it. If anything happens to me, I want you to know where it is. Nobody else knows. I always put it right in the top of the stove, in a little place under the stove eye. If anything does happen, you know where it is. Go get it."
She promised she would. But the theater owner was still worried about her safety. The next day he went to the local hardware store and got an enormous butcher knife and had it sharpened to razor keenness. He brought it to her, saying, "Miss Pet, I know you're too nervous to handle a gun. I've brought you this knife and if any burglar comes around to bother you, use it and don't be easy with it. The first strike you make, cut every gut in him out."
She took the knife but never had to use it. Didn't she ever want a gun? "No, honey, I'd be too nervous to use it. There was never much danger except one or two times that I remember and then I couldn't have done anything with a gun." One of these times was after the exchange had been moved to the upstairs of an office building opposite the court house in the middle of town. The sheriff had been on the trail of some bootleggers, one of whom had a long criminal record, and had finally cornered them about midnight on the street in front of the court house. She heard shots being fired just beneath her window and knew what was going on. So when one shot came in through the window, which was in the line of fire, she went over and crouched behind the switchboard until she heard the retreating bootleggers, hotly pursued by the sheriff, go on down the street.
Fortunately for her no calls came at that moment. Just afterward, however, they started pouring in. As the city had no fire alarm at the time, the signal for a fire that had broken out was a shot. When people heard the shots, they thought a fire had broken out somewhere, and everybody wanted to know where it was. She reassured the excited callers, and said it was only the sheriff shooting it out with the bootleggers.
Speaking of fires, for years there was no fire department or equipment, and not even a city water system in Dandridge. The only way of fighting fires was the old faithful bucket brigade and fire extinguishers. When the people heard a shot, that was generally the signal for everybody to grab buckets and extinguishers. Miss Pet always got the message first so they could prepare for the worst. If they didn't answer immediately, she left the plug in and called other places nearby in order not to waste time. One time a grocery store in the center of town caught fire in the middle of the night. Miss Pet was probably the only person in town awake. She was looking out the window and saw the flames. She immediately put in calls for the owners of the stores and buildings nearby and to everybody she thought would come and help. It was tacitly agreed that anyone who couldn't help or wasn't affected by the fire should not bother the switchboard by calling just out of curiosity to see where the fire was. The fire had made good headway by the time she saw it and would soon have reached the other buildings had it not been for her promptness in calling for help.
At that time, however, the town did have a city water system and one heavy fire hose and fire hydrants in the way of equipment. Finally she roused enough men to come down and get to work with the hose. With the aid of that and all the fire extinguishers in town, the blaze was finally put out. Everybody agreed that if Miss Pet had lost her head or hadn't acted so promptly, the whole town would have gone up in smoke.
She did have her embarrassing moments. One of them was when she was just starting out and hadn't learned all the names of people on the board. A man called one day and said, "Get me the Jeters'."
She misunderstood him and thought he said, "Jesus." She thought he was crazy or kidding her and asked Mr. Owens, who was still helping her what to do. He said, "Oh, that's just Jeter. Ring two rings on 26."
Another time the same man rang up. He said, "Give me Paw." She thought he said "Paul" and wondered why the same man always sounded as he were calling Biblical names. She asked him this time, "What did you say?"
He told her, "Oh, just ring two rings on 26. That'll get him."
For quite a while it was hard getting used to that sort of thing. People would ask her to ring without even telling her the last name of the party. Finally she got used to their voices and didn't have to ask the last name. When somebody called and asked for John, if the call came from his home, she knew who John was, and where he worked.
Another thing she had to get used to was that so often people would give her a detailed explanation of their business and why they needed to call. But one of the cardinal rules of the telephone company at that time was courtesy to callers, and it was often hard to interrupt a long explanation and get the number.
Miss Pat never left her post. One of the most exciting moments came one Sunday when she looked out her window and saw the roof of her own home on fire. The district manager happened to be in the office at the time and she grabbed a fire extinguisher, thrust it in his hand and said, "Go down there and put it out." When he protested, "No, go on Miss Pet, I know you want to go. I'll stay here for you."
She answered, "No, you can do better than I can. Go ahead and I'll get help here on the phone."
They did put he fire out as it was only a small one, and it was a tribute to Miss Pet's sense of humor that one man said to her, "Miss Pet, I certainly hated to think of that good dinner you had setting on the table getting ruined and spoiled by the fire."
On one occasion when she was working in a town nearby, the telephone exchange was across the street from the largest hotel in town. In the middle of the night, some boys who were with a visiting ball team staying at the hotel on the second floor called and said that a fire had broken out on that floor and to call the manager on the first floor. She did but before she had completed the call, she looked out the window and saw the boys jumping out the second floor window. The fire was soon put out and the boys weren't hurt much, but she thought they were in more danger from jumping out than from the fire.
Miss Pet was a charter member of a club called the Pioneers. One of the membership requirements was that operators could only belong after they had been in the telephone service more than twenty-one years. The members would have dinners, socials, and get-togethers and have a wonderful time reminiscing.
Once when she was entertaining them at her home, she didn't have enough chairs so she had asked the local undertaker if she could borrow his funeral chairs for the occasion. He told her he would be glad for her to have them and stopped the town constable to inquire where Miss Pet lived. The constable instantly greed to go with him to show him. When they go to her house, the constable went rushing in. When he saw her standing there, he drew back and stammered, "But Miss Pet, I thought you were dead and they were bringing the ambulance for you." Miss Pet laughed and told him what the chairs were for.
However, she was no pushover at any time. Although unfailingly courteous on ordinary occasions, she couldn't abide impudence. ON one such occasion a young fellow had started to see his date in Knoxville. He was late and a little drunk. Before he got to Dandridge, he had to cross the bridge across the French Broad River. He missed the bridge and ran right into the river. Rescued and no worse for the experience except for the wetting and being cold, he rang for long distance. Miss Pet answered with the unusual polite "Number please?"
"Where in the hell's the Governor? I want to talk to him."
She replied tartly, "I guess he's in bed. If he isn't, he ought to be at this time of night." This apparently didn't sink in, and he continued in the same vein.
"Well, I want to talk to him. I want to make a complaint about the bridge not being marked. If it had been marked, I'd never have missed it."
She'd had enough so she replied even more sharply, "If you can't see as big a thing as a bridge, you surely can't see anything as small as a signboard. Now who do you really want to talk to?"
"Aw, Miss Pet, I'm late for my date and I'd better call her in Knoxville. Will you get her for me?" With this change in tone, she did locate the girl and put in the call, privately wondering if the girl wouldn't be happier if he hadn't called at all.
She always kept her Bible on the switchboard, and once when the district supervisor came by and noticed it, he asked, "Whose Bible is that?" She told him it was hers, that she always kept one wherever she worked. He said, "Well, I've visited switchboards from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Mississippi River. I've seen novels, magazines, pop bottles, umbrellas, makeup boxes, and everything else on them, but this is the first time I've seen a Bible."
Miss Pet was also persistent. Once when the company was trying to get new subscribers for the telephone, she walked almost two miles and waded a creek to get one, along with the deposit. At that time, the subscriber had to pay a dollar in advance to get his telephone installed. She got her dollar and another new telephone was added to the growing number in Dandridge.
Twenty-nine of her thirty-four years were spent in the service of Southern Bell, which after a few years took over the Dandridge switchboard. Some of her time was spent in doing relief work on other boards in different communities, especially during the terrific flu epidemic in 1918. Always she went where she was called, but when possible preferred to stay in Dandridge to take care of her mother.
What did Southern Bell say about her? Mr. E. F. Garrett, then the general manager for Southern Bell in this section, answered with enthusiasm.
"Pet Swann? There isn't anything you could say about her work that wouldn't be good. She was one of the most conscientious operators, her record for collections was excellent, and I can't recall a time when she was absent on account of sickness. Not only that but when somebody else was sick, she would always come and help until they got well. I can truthfully say that she was one of our most outstanding employees."
Recognition of her long period of service was shown in a dinner given in her honor on her retirement by the Southern Bell Telephone Company in a Knoxville hotel. Over 250 guests were present, including officials of the company and many of her Dandridge friends. She was presented a diamond pin by the district traffic manager of Knoxville, a check by the Knoxville exchange, and a set of Lenox china by the Dandridge subscribers.
What did she think of the unions and strikes which have plagued this section for several years. "I can't say. I have too many good friends on both sides. I guess both of them have made mistakes."
That was actually Miss Pet's philosophy. She always lived that way, off and on her job, minding her own business insofar as possible. On her retirement, she was happy in her own home, surrounded by countless souvenirs of her many years of service, did her own work, enjoying a well-earned leisure and visiting with her friends.
(Photo in article entitled, "Miss Pet Swann at her switchboard in Dandridge in the early 1900's.)
This article was published in the Southern Observer in November, 1955, and reprinted in the Standard Banner several years later. It is a true story. I first met Miss Pet when I came to Dandridge in 1936. She was still with the telephone company and was also acting as part-time hostess at the Shepard Inn, where I met her. Not too long before her death, we sat in her living room --- as I listened to her reminiscences, I marveled at her remarkable memory of her years of service. Although she has been dead for years now, the "memory lingers on." (Signed) Jean Bible.
