I've been doing a lot of thinking about this camaraderie business. In spite of the nagging memories of many exchanges on the 'Barn that were more like cat fights in bars, I know what some of you mean.
When I was a kid, my hometown had a "Number Please" phone system. There was no dial on the phone; you just picked up the receiver and the operator said, "Number please." We would give her the number we wanted to call, like 917-J.
Sometimes we didn't know the number so we just told her we wanted to talk to Billy Powell over on the heights. She probably new Esther Powell ... and the phone number without even looking it up. It wasn't a real small town, maybe 20,000 people.
Sometimes you'd be calling a girlfriend. My sister-in-law was a telephone operator and always recognized me on the phone. She'd tease me a lot.
It was hard to cheat on your wife or girlfriend in my hometown because the operators knew everything that was going on. They were also some of the most popular young women and were never short of guys asking them out.
There were also "party lines." Not a heck of a bunch of privacy there.
Lots of camaraderie.
A couple of weeks ago, I was returning from visiting my son and his family out in Montana. As I was boarding the plane in Bozeman, a woman sat down beside me. She was frantically trying to place a cellphone call to her son's hotel to leave him a message. His hotel was in the Czech Republic outside of Prague. She had the hotel's number but not the Czech country "area" code for international calls.
I took my cell phone and called my wife who was at her desk at work back home in Jacksonville. She is the exec assistant to the CEO of a local hospital system; the CEO happened to be on vacation in Rome, she had a list of European country codes on her desk and in 5 seconds we had it.
My seat partner placed the call in time before instructions to discontinue cellphone use was made. We spent the next two hours talking ... camaraderie ... she was an English professor from a small college. NOT my sister-in-law, Marlene, like in the old days, but technology made the link.
And Marlene did not connect me and my son this morning as he drove to work. There was no "Number Please." My son and I had a nice chat ... camaraderie, I guess.
Anyhow, IF there IS something wrong with the camaraderie (don't think there really is), I bet it isn't the communication system ... seems to be going pretty well in this thread anyhow.
