Word: chicago
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...private plane between Chicago and Milwaukee, a Chicago businessman took a business call from a customer in Buenos Aires, joining thousands of fast-moving businessmen who have had phones installed in autos, boats, even duck blinds...
...must deal with subscribers who blow apart their telephone lines by firing shotguns out the window (148 such cases in Chicago last New Year's Eve), with farmers who harvest the lines with their crops (corn-picking time is a nightmare for repairmen), with homeowners who are jealous of their picture-window view ("They come at me like a bear," says one foreman, "if they don't like where I put a pole"). He must also be ready for the occasional lonely housewife who meets him in a negligee. Rule of thumb: get out, and come back when...
...must learn to expect anything. An old lady in Washington, D.C. asked the repairman to run the new telephone wire through her parakeet's cage so that he "would have something interesting to perch on" (refused). A Chicago woman insisted on having her wall telephone four inches from the floor so that she would be forced to exercise while bending to answer it (granted). One telephone man was called to a Chicago hotel to repair a badly frayed cord, discovered the cause of the trouble as he was leaving: sitting in the bathtub was a pet lion...
...have used the telephone to save the lives of others in answering 12 million emergency calls every year. In 1908 Operator .Sally Rooke stayed at her switchboard to warn the people of Folsom, N.Mex. of a flash flood until she herself was swept to death by the waters. A Chicago couple who reached a phone just before being overcome by leaking gas gave the operator who summoned help an oft-voiced tribute: "We wish to thank you for saving our lives...
...investing in fixed situations and "just letting them happen." By betting on the fixes of others, Rothstein also kept his hands technically clean-he was never convicted of breaking the law. In the case of the 1919 World Series, Rothstein has often been accused of having fixed the Chicago White Sox players' defeat. He denied it, but he probably prompted the fix and certainly won $350,000 by betting...