When we wuz Cable Cops....

     I ran across this B&W piece from all the way back in 1986 when I was not necessary for the big yellow machine in Peoria, Illinois and fed the family as a cable cop in Phoenix, Arizona.  I had been in Az. for a very short time and took a job with Demented Cable.  With no knowledge of the layout of the town, I was given a large book of maps and a 40 a day disconnect route.  Surprisingly enough, there was no real rhyme or reason to the layout of the cable system as there had been several mergers of cable companies and when you disconnected someone there was a fair chance that their line was on the next street over.  Go figure.  If you were there to do an install everyone loved you, except the rich folks on the hill that just knew you were pond scum and expected all sorts of extra work done on the free, but if you had a disconnect route you were public enemy number one.

     I remember one unhappy gentleman threatening to shoot my partner and me if we disconnected his cable.  Tom and I pulled into the alley and put the ladder on the large toolbox on the back of the bed of the Ranger pickup truck we were using.  I climbed the ladder and fumbled at disconnecting the fitting on the telephone pole.  Tom was holding the ladder steady and we were both looking and listening for the inevitable gunshot that was coming our way.  About that time, as luck would have it, I dropped a seven sixteenths wrench from the top of the ladder and it hit the metal toolbox right next to poor old Tom sounding like a shot and I'm sure he needed a change of shorts.  To his credit the customer did say that maybe his disconnect notice had been lost in the mail as he had also missed that month's issue of Soldier Of Fortune.  Rut Roh!

     So... this 1986 B&W piece was done for the amusement of the poor souls that got chased by dogs, got cursed at, threatened, and made sure to check out every apartment complex's swimming pool.  I figured that after all these years it deserved to finally be properly colored, so here for the first time is also the modern colored version.

Robert L. Crosswhite