Historic Hood River
“Hood River Telephone Girls”
Notes
This image is a companion to yesterday’s view of an early Hood River telephone switchboard. This shows Nettie Buck (left) with three of her fellow “telephone girls.” We don’t have a precise date for the image, but the dress and the fact this is a W. D. Rogers image suggest a date early in the 20th century. We discussed yesterday Nettie Buck left the telephone company employ by January 1907. Other articles indicate she was living in Eastern Oregon in 1908, was back in Hood River in 1909 and living in Portland by 1910. I suspect this image was from between 1903 when she arrived in Hood River and 1907 when she left her job at Pacific States Telephone Company.
In 1909 The Hood River Glacier quoted this article describing the life of a “telephone girl.”
She Gets Only 85.00 a week.
The editor of the Vernon, Texas, Call rings up central in the following prosaic tones:
The telephone girl sits still in her chair and listens to voices from everywhere. She hears all the gossip, she hears all the news, and knows who is happy and who has the blues; and know all our sorrows, she knows all our joys, she knows every girl who is chasing the boys; she knows of our troubles, and knows of our strife; and knows every man who talks mean to his wife; she knows every time we are out with “the boys”, she hears the excuse each fellow employs; she knows every woman who has a dark past, she knows every man who is inclined to be “fast”; in fact, there’s a secret beneath each saucy curl of that quiet, demure-looking telephone girl. If the telephone girl told all that she knows it would turn half our friends into bitterest foes; she could sow a small wind that would soon be a gale, enough of us in trouble and land us in jail; she could let go a story which, going in force would cause half our wives to sue for divorce; she could get all our churches mixed up in a fight and turn all our days into sorrowful night; in fact, she could keep the whole town in a stew if she’d tell a tenth part of the thing that she knew. Oh, brother, now doesn’t it make your head whirl when you think what you owe to the telephone girl?
Rico
$85 dollars a week back then sounds like good money 🤔