Remember when … phone calls were routed by local operators who knew your name?
By PENNY FLETCHER
Frances Hereford of Ruskin does — and I do too.
Hereford moved to Tampa and then to Ruskin when she was still in grade school after her dad went to work for Tampa Electric Company in its early days.
At that time, Ruskin Elementary School was in its current spot, although much smaller, but took only students in grades one through eight. Hereford, and the rest of South County’s students, were bussed to Wimauma for high school.
“That was the only high school around,” Hereford said. “I went there after we moved for ninth and 10th grades, and then they opened the first East Bay High School. I was in the first graduating class there.”
The original EBHS was where Eisenhower Middle School now stands. County records show it was built in 1957. The current high school on Big Bend Road was built later, in 1971.
“My uncle also moved here. He worked for my dad,” Hereford added.
Her parents, Art Pettigrew and Frances (who was known as Patty) and her uncle each bought an older house with an acre-and-a-half on what is now First Street SW, which leads south off U.S. 41 to the Ruskin Cemetery. This cemetery is located high on the banks of the Little Manatee River.
“There weren’t any new houses to buy back then,” Hereford said. “People were spread widely apart. First Street was a shell road and I remember the ruts were very deep when we drove on it,” she said. “There were just a few houses then.”
“Later we moved out to 24th Street SE where it was just about all wooded. George Roland’s house was the only one out there; he was a fisherman. There wasn’t any electricity in the area, but Tampa Electric installed it in our house because my mother was the local switchboard operator.”
Hereford, her sister Lois and brother Arthur, grew up in the house that transferred telephone calls from one home to another.
It was easy for me to picture her mom on a stool in front of a series of cords that connected callers, because when I was in grade school we also had a local operator. Her name was Mrs. Speck in Deal, N.J., the suburb of Asbury Park where I grew up. I remember our first number was Deal 7.
I’d pick up the phone and a few seconds – or a couple of minutes later, Mrs. Speck would pick up and say, “Hi Penny, what can I do for you today?” or something like that. Back then, local operators knew everybody by name for whom they handled calls.
Our phone was a thin metal pipe-like device that stood straight up and connected to a round bottom. We spoke into a mouthpiece mounted on the pipe and lifted a speaker to our ear that held a separate piece.
By the time I was in high school, the telephone had changed quite a bit, and the speaker and mouthpiece were all in one piece that stayed atop an instrument that held a rotary dial when not in use. (I know some of the “histories of telephones” found online say the “pipe-like” phone was popular from the late 1880s to the 1920s, but many places still had them in the 1950s.)
“My dad helped get the land donated for the Ruskin Recreation Center and also helped design the East Bay High School football field,” Hereford said. “It was very modern for the time, with lighting and all.”
Hereford worked at the local phosphate plant for a total of 40 years, ending her career there as human relations manager.
“It was U.S. Phosphoric when I first went to work there, and then became Cities Service Company, then Gardinier Inc., then Cargill and now Mosaic,” she explained. The plant produces fertilizer that is shipped world wide.
But 40 years of work wasn’t enough for Hereford. When she retired at Mosaic, she opened Southern Grace Gifts and Home Accessories on U.S. 41 in Ruskin.
“It closed in 2011 because of the economy,” she said. “There used to be a lot more traffic through there before people started using 19th Avenue. It was such a vibrant community. I think it can come back. Some things, like the Firehouse Cultural Center, are drawing people.”
Hereford took the job of facilities coordinator at the cultural center after closing Southern Grace.
“Some of us just never quit,” she said. “You quit, you get old.”
Having passed 70 myself, I, and many workers and volunteers from the South County area, agree with Hereford.
Some of us just won’t say no to life.