Working in a Box
Monday. The women arrived through the single door, walking into the bright but not particularly cheery room with ten boxes for them to sit in. Actually, not really boxes – but first impressions do count when it’s a room where you sit for 40 hours a week to earn minimum wage which in the 1960’s amounted to $50 per week.
Children find wonderful that box they get to play with when a new washing machine is delivered and the box left behind. But, for the workers in this room, it wasn’t wonderful. Each worker sat in a brown plywood rectangular box-like space about 3 X 4 feet. It was really like half a box with no lid and nothing behind but the ugly, light tan-colored wall. When seated, each worker could easily touch the sides of their box space, but couldn’t see their neighbors beyond.
Each sat in the phone room in their assigned box – five on one side, five on the other - facing opposite women through somewhat cloudy Plexiglas. Each operator wore a headset with microphone. Not a cozy, reassuring space. Confining – nothing like those places that children create to stretch their imaginations. Sitting in a cheap stenographer’s chair in these limited spaces didn’t spur creativity or thinking beyond or outside.
The 3 foot by 2 foot plywood shelf in front of each woman was dignified with the title “desk.” A small drawer underneath was available for purses, pencils, and paper forms. A brown metal device on each desk had ten switches below twinkle-light sized bulbs that lit up when customers called. This gadget for rotating phone calls was about as high-tech as things got in the 1960s in offices. Computers took up whole rooms and copy for newspapers was set by linotype operators.
There were no real windows in the room, or pictures. Vaguely moist smelling air blew constantly from a vent and pushed around the Avon cologne smells of a couple of the women. Half the women were always cold and the other half hot so thermostat wars often erupted.
At the right end of the room, a large piece of one-way glass hung, doubling as a mirror from the women’s side. Right next to the glass was the Manager’s office door. That door was always closed. The Manager had a second door so he could enter and leave without gracing the phone room. He never seemed to want to brave running their gauntlet except to come in about once a week to cheer the girls on. Above his door was a large, more-or-less accurate clock. There were no pictures or personal items in their room other than what the women could fit on their tiny desks next to the clipboards they used to write phoned in ads.
“Good Mornin’. Austin American Statesman,” voices with varying degrees of enthusiasm and energy repeated the same litany through their microphones.
“This is Miss Classified. Would you like to place an ad today?”
“How many days would you like to place your ad?" each would ask. “Are you familiar with our rates?”
On slow days, the women pushed their microphones down and gabbed across the Plexiglas in louder Texas-twanged voices. They swapped stories of family crises and bad men, talked about religion and politics, and bemoaned the misbehavior of local UT students and the emerging hippie beatnik troublemakers. Penny kept her opinions about students to herself. She said nothing.
Tuesday. That morning it wasn’t busy. No possibility of breaking her ad record today, so Penny didn’t put herself out to grab every call before the others could get to them. Talk in the room turned to NASA and the race to the moon.
“I believe if God had meant for man to be walkin’ on the moon, he’d a put him there. Sure shouldn’t be going against the ways things are supposed to be,” indignantly commented Iris.
“It’s a fake anyway, made for TV,” Hazel spoke up. Nobody’s walkin’ on the moon.”
Penny took a deep breath, but not to get ready to speak. She held her face still and neutral so the women who could see her through the Plexiglas wouldn’t notice her discomfort with the talk. She said nothing.
Wednesday. While the phones were quiet that morning, ladylike and proper Doris recounted her adventures of the night before. As the phone room lead typist, she was the informally appointed supervisor and had the right to hold forth with authority. Not only because she probably made $60 a week, but also because she talked about husband, family outings, and plans for retirement – dreams to some of the others in the room. Unlike half of the phone room ladies, she had a secure future and stature.
“We went downtown yesterday evening to celebrate our anniversary for dinner at the Austin Hotel. It’s getting’ real bad down there, even in the middle of the week. There was a bunch of them hippies outside that Amarillo something-or-other-place and they looked disgusting.”
“If their parents only knew” interjected Shelia, six-times married, and mother of four.
But, Doris wasn’t through and appeared miffed at having her story interrupted.
“Couldn’t even tell the boys from the girls with all that long hair – and, the clothes. Embroidered ribbons tacked down the sides of their jeans, reds and oranges and blues everywhere except for those wearing black leather. They really looked a sight.”
Penny grabbed the next call coming in and looked conscientiously down at her clipboard. She said nothing.
Wednesday night. Janis and next-door neighbor Tary showed up around 9. Penny’s husband Ron had just finished studying -- his nightly habit that kept him busy through Penny fixing supper and dealing with laundry, their three-year old, and what ever house cleaning and organizing she absolutely had to do.
Charlie, who lived temporarily on their couch, had just shown up as had Fred from their little basement room and bath that he sublet for $20 a month. In some ways, it was a little community, living in a tree-covered, green neighborhood of small, somewhat dilapidated older houses. Their friends had little money too, but they all shared nicely and really didn’t much care. Musicians, artists, cavers, folk and blues singers, bikers, political activists, beer-drinkers, pot smokers, and wives working to support student husbands – all shared a common threat – folks over 30 trying to change them.
Sometimes Penny thought that she was somehow missing out on evolving with her friends while she answered, “Miss Classified” at the Austin American Statesman. It seemed they were having a lot more fun and getting where they were going faster than she was.
Penny knew that between classes they often sat in the Chuck Wagon and told stores of past trips and future adventures to come. Intellectual stimulation, maybe, but it was the camaraderie that she feared she was missing.
Wives supporting their husbands’ schooling had a deal - when husbands graduated, the wife could go to school. But, Penny was becoming skeptical – suspecting some of the husbands were not apt to ever become one with the establishment – musicians, writers, and artists often didn’t make a wage sufficient for a family to make it. And, then, there were two kinds of wives – the ones who didn’t mind working in a box – and, the ones that did. Before hooking up with Ron, Penny was independent and comfortable talking to everyone. She’d never considered being a girl an obstacle. Her mother had been a liberated, career woman – when would she?
“Hey man,” said Janis. “Like, let’s go down to Armadillo City Hall tonight – I’ve got a gig and need backup. Like, grab your axe. Powell’s got his Hohner Marine band blues harp and the rest of his harmonicas. Charlie’s got some weed, Tary has a car. Let’s go.”
“Okay, but only until midnight. Do you want to see if the neighbor will take care of the baby, honey?” asked Ron.
Penny shook her head. “No, too tired, too late”. Then, she said nothing more.
Thursday. Here she was again in her box. Because of the 4-day special, business really picked up Thursday mornings. A Friday through Monday ad cost the same as a 2-day weekend one.
On busy Thursday, the room air was continuously stirred by the many voices – words clearly understandable not murmurings, even though each woman wore a headset and small microphone. Sometimes every one of the ten operators spoke in unison. The typists edited and clicked rhythmically at each end of the room.
“Good Mornin’. Austin American Statesman,” voices repeated maybe fifty times each on Thursday.
How many ads could she take in one day? She grabbed lines as they lit up – no time to edit – get the text right the first time – pick up the next call. Beat the others in their boxes. Efficient, polite, fast, and accurate.
Penny’s record was 72 ads in one day. She could have beat it, but some of the more nervous menopausal ladies were intimidated by long-distance ad orders and the cost of calling from someplace else. Often more complicated, longer, and sometimes trying to deceive the potential customer.
So, Penny was the designated handler of extended long distance calls. And then, some less literate box inhabitants needed help with words and spelling. Sometimes Penny filled in as typist and editor when Doris got behind. Penny didn’t tell anyone about her competition and record number of ads in a day.
Friday. This Friday before Thanksgiving week, Penny arrived at work on time – but not eager. It was not apt to be as busy as Fridays sometimes were. She didn’t expect to set a new record today. Advertisers were preparing to relax rather than work during the next holiday weekend. The calls were ads for hunting leases in the Texas hill country instead of rooms for rent or available jobs. Texans seemed inordinately interested in hunting and guns – particularly when a holiday was coming.
At noon, Penny hurried back to the Austin American Statesman after eating her bag lunch in the nearby city park to avoid the newspaper’s basement lunchroom. It was warm outside – a Texas November day before the first blue norther had blown in.
Penny was comfortable eating alone and reading her book. Last week she read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road for the third time; now she was into Ken Kesey. She had met Neal Cassidy and other Merry Pranksters traveling through last summer at the Austin’s annual celebration of Eeyore’s birthday. There they all were dancing, eating, and drinking when the Pranksters arrived in their bus, right here in Austin.
“The days of change are comin’. The world is spinnin’ faster,” Penny mused. It sounded like the beginning of a song she should write – but, then she let it go. “The phone room doesn’t turn and that’s where I’m stuck.” She said nothing out loud.
Penny walked back into the Austin American Statesman, five minutes before her lunch period ended. She shivered when she walked in, but didn’t know why - something had happened although it wasn’t clear how she knew. No one rushed by as sometimes happened when reporters pushed upstairs to the newsroom or circulation folks grabbed bundles.
Looking around, she saw a few people just standing there. No phones rang in the Circulation Department of the big room nor could you hear the high energy advertising salesmen pushing a pitch into their headsets.
“Kennedy has been shot.” She wasn’t sure afterwards who said it.
Standing in the phone room door, she just stood - unable or unwilling to push herself into her box. Some were crying, others calling family.
“In Dallas? He’s supposed to be here soon.”
“How is he?”
“It’s those communists. those hippies. those foreigners.”
Penny looked around the room, no lights blinked, no phones rang there, or would ring much for the rest of the day. The PA system in the large area outside the phone room door was on - and then,
“From Dallas Texas,” the flash apparently official, “President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago." Cronkite's mouth must have tightened and his jaw clenched and trembled violently. For five long seconds, he could not speak. "Vice President Lyndon Johnson has left the hospital, presumably to take the oath of office and become the 36th President of the
Then, someone changed to another station, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the
And then Harry Reasoner said, “People will remember today as a day to date things in their lives from... they will say where were you when you first heard the word of President Kennedy's assassination."
Penny grabbed her things from her box shelf and left to head for home and her family, her friends – to pick up her daughter at her day care center and hold her tight. When she left the Austin American Statesman, she said nothing.
Sunday. Ron stayed home still hypnotized by the continuous reporting on TV, but Penny needed to break away – to be around people not watching television, not paralyzed. She went to a service – but, not at the Unitarian Church where they often went, but rather the Quaker Meeting down the street.
She went and sat on one of the benches in the circle. The silence brushed her gently as everyone there meditated to invest peace in the meeting. Only two elders felt called to break the silence during the hour, saying a few words, then back into the silence. Of course, she said nothing.
When Penny walked into their little house, Ron got up and hugged her at the door. And he told her, “It hasn’t ended. Ruby just shot Oswald coming out of the jail.” Too much for the world to take. There was nothing to say, and she said nothing.
That was on Sunday, November 24. The funeral with the prancing riderless horse, the cortege, and John-John’s salute was on Monday. She returned to the Austin American Statesman for two days, then it was time for Thanksgiving, a quiet one this year. Afterwards, things seemed to settle back into a routine – work, pick up the baby, fix supper, fairly early bedtime during the week, gatherings on the weekend. The gatherings were growing however - circles of friends, children, and dogs overlapped and expanded and weekends were nothing like weekdays in her box. She still said nothing – yet.
On December 1, Penny arrived at work at the usual time. She put her things down in her personal box in the phone room and did something she’d not done before at the Austin American Statesman. She knocked, then walked into the Manager’s office. She had something to say.
“I have decided to quit,” she said. She had plenty more to say, but – that was enough.
That evening, Penny could hardly wait until Ron got home from his classes at the University of Texas. She’d picked up their daughter from Child Craft Day School a bit early. It was about time for Ron to get there – he walked the mile from the campus every day. Penny began cooking pot pies – a favorite as well as a family joke. Finally he was there and finally she had something unusual she had to say.
“Guess what I did today!”
“What,” smiling tentatively. She was unpredictable since the assassination - and the growing gatherings and demonstrations.
“I quit the Austin American Statesman. I’m going back to college.”
And, to Ron’s eternal credit, earning him the permanent position of husband, father, and lover for the rest of their lives together, he smiled. He said nothing.
And, Penny knew they would be okay and she would never be without words when she needed to say them.
Postlude from an article:
For those of us who were alive at the time, the death of President Kennedy in Dallas on Friday, November 22, 1963, seemed to change nearly everything: the University, the State, the Nation, the world, and the course of history. We lost our individual and collective innocence and gained furrowed brows. Yet, through the days of change that followed the President's death, we acquired, at the core of our beings, an abiding appreciation for things that never change: the trees always come back to green.