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In the mid-1980s I started working as a long distance operator for the local telephone company.  I was surprised to learn that this was not a small company, but, the third largest telephone company in the United States.  While the two largest companies competed heavily to provide service for customers in major metropolitan areas, this company snapped up the customers they didn’t want.  The customers in small towns and rural areas.  Number three was busy providing phone service in farmers’ barns, and would even install a phone on a pole in a cornfield if the farmer was willing to pay for the service.  Number three was the giant that number one and two never noticed.

Late in the 1980’s I was offered a position in the Outside Plant Engineering/Construction Department.  I stayed there for ten years and it was, without a doubt, my most interesting job.  There were certainly some interesting characters that worked in the field.

Sometime in the early 1990’s a position became available for a service supervisor in Northern Missouri.  This position was open to all qualified employees nationwide. Finally, the position was filled by someone from Texas. I worked in an office in Central Missouri so I did not work with this employee on a daily basis.  That, however, was not the case for my boss.  He was the Engineering/Construction Manager for all of western Missouri. 

“Oh, no” Al, my boss, said.  “Not Tex!”

“Do you know him?” I asked.

“I know everybody,” he said.  “I’ve worked in every state and unless they started after I left, I know them.”

“So, what’s wrong with Tex?” one of the engineers asked.

“You’ll find out!” Al said.

It was winter when Tex assumed his new job.  The months passed and I didn’t hear to much about Tex.  I met him once when he came to attend a meeting in our building.  He seemed okay and to be friendly and polite.  I didn’t think to much more about Tex.

“That god-dammed Tex,” Al stormed out of his office one spring day. One thing about Al, he knew every expletive in the English language and I think he invented a few of them.  “He’s dumber than the rock he crawled out from under.”  Al ranted in the break room with the engineers.