Page 49 - Gary's Book - Final Copy 7.9.2017_Active

the clock since he had the city and county contract. I was on call for any necessary
service calls from the police or fire department. This gave me lots of hours, and
since I was paid by the hour, that meant a lot of money. During my down time, I
could study. I also did some moonlighting at a local Clarke Station; that was when

gasoline was 19 cents a gallon. I worked these two jobs during evenings and on
weekends from June 1960 until May 1962.

Then I worked the summer of 1962 at Union Electric, the major power provider of
the St. Louis area. This job jump-started my career before graduating from
Washington University. My friend, who was also majoring in accounting, and I
had to take a battery of tests and join the Teamsters Union before we were hired.
Our job title was assistant accountant. The pay was almost twice what minimum

wage was.

We were given clipboards with a bar graph identifying utility pole heights that
were 25, 30, 35, 40 - up to 70 feet. We were assigned to be a team - two guys to a
new Plymouth company car. Then, following street and property maps (there was
no GPS back then), we went all over the state of Missouri viewing the poles,

guesstimating length (height), and marking our graphs with a check mark in a box.
We went down streets, on dirt roads, through the woods, into creek beds, and in
and through nudist camps. [Chuckle, chuckle!] We usually did the nudist camps on
Friday afternoons when most members were there swimming or playing volleyball
or tennis. The nudists were very friendly and asked us to join, but we had to have a
companion of the opposite sex with us. We could not be there alone. I recall that
one time when we rang the bell at the gate, the nude guy who opened it introduced

us to his nude wife. I was flustered to the point that I said, “Nice seeing you,”
which was a Freudian slip, for sure, but it got a laugh. (And I’m still laughing.)

The reason for all the pole counting was to attempt to verify whether Union
Electric or Southwestern Bell Telephone Company owned the poles. It was a
standard practice that as a subdivision or area was built with new homes, the utility

company would initially put in the poles for the builders to have power. Then, as
the houses were sold, the telephone company would bring in their service. Rather
than duplicating the number of poles, they would tack the phone lines on the poles
and place a Bell metal symbol on the pole and pay an annual fee for usage. The
problem was who would be required to repair or replace the poles if a storm took

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