The Price of Progress

It is a bright crisp morning, so sunny that the warmth of the sun makes up nicely for the unseasonable chill. I would like to be outside walking in this but I can't. It is Monday and I am at work.  Time was when Mondays were my scheduled day off. Now I have Mondays free only when it observes a holiday.

I am in Microfilm again, making a pretense of reading my assigned drawers. I am sulking, doing this perfunctorily. I try to concentrate but am too busy wishing I was elsewhere on this lovely day to make much headway. I am so sick of the Chicago City Directories. Why these microfilms, anyway? Why not Life or Look or Seventeen, whose content would at least be more interesting as I check for accuracy and quality.

An elderly customer strides in and parks himself at a reader diagonally opposite mine. He has just turned on the machine when suddenly he thinks of something. "Crap," he says irritably, and jumps up. He strides to the front of the room disappearing momentarily behind posts and signage. Then he returns, takes his seat, and resumes loading the film roll onto the machine. He does not notice me watching him, engrossed in his task. His thick hair and full beard are much more salt than pepper and his face is lined. But he is trim and brown and purposeful and his hands look strong.

Reel 25 - 1915 Alphabetical Only is problematic. It is difficult to know for sure if he correct roll is in the box labeled Feb. 1915; June 1915; Oct. 1915 because the quality is poor--not the tape itself but the microfilmed pages on it. They are so faded as to be nearly impossible to see, forget about read. Even using the zoom and the--what's it called? The wheel thingee you turn this way and that for sharpness and clarity?--even fiddling with the controls doesn't help. There should be handwritten text on the START panel identifying the rolls's beginning content but that too has faded out to streaks of ghostly, skeletal markings. I make a note of this on my lined pad.

I keep scrolling and scanning the film. Eventually a sequence card displays the Feb. 1915 Alphabetical information; a little further along there is another for June 1915. I presume if I keep scrolling I will encounter another for Oct. 1915. This part of the film is much easier on the eyes as the page quality has significantly (I hesitate to say "dramatically") improved. I would like to say that if this day were mine to do with as I please I'd be in Washington Park right now taking some air and getting some much needed exercise. I'd like to say that but honestly maybe not. Maybe I'd do what I often do when I don't have to work, sit in my easy chair watching Boomer television. The Mod Squad, I happily note, has made a return to ME-TV's summer programming. That's almost the only change, other than the weekly addition of Sunday afternoon's The Love Boat and The Rockford Files.

Maybe I'd be reading. I read a lot but I should read more than I do. I don't lack for literature; lately I've checked out enough library books to warrant their own shelf in the bookcase above my bed. If I were home now probably I would be reading. But then again maybe not. There's what you say you will do with your time given a chance and what you actually wind up doing. I came to work depressed, thinking about all this.

I come now to a panel on the microfilm that is striking in its clarity and old-time formatting. It is a cover page and inside its bordering, large Times New Roman lettering says TELEPHONE DIRECTORY. Underneath this is a circle inside a circle. A narrow band of of capitalized wording in a different font says CHICAGO TELEPHONE COMPANY and AMERICAN TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH CO. In the inner circle there is a picture of a bell shaded in black with the words LOCAL AND LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE stenciled on it. Underneath the black bell appear the words BELL SYSTEM. Outside the graphic, in larger lettering, it says CHICAGO AND ADJOINING COUNTIES and (in smaller font) June, 1915.

The next page shows an artist's depiction of a couple in old-fashioned clothing. If this was 1978 or 1989 or even 1995 I would describe their outerwear as "turn of the century" but not now. They are standing together in a lush setting under a palm tree. The woman has her hands in the pockets of her jacket and her expression is vaguely wistful. The man standing next to her has not time for wistfulness. His back is to her and he is looking through binoculars at several steamships in the distance navigating a strait. The picture is captioned "The Price of Progress" and there is something here in the accompanying text about the Panama Canal being "the most marvelous achievement of the age." I haven't time to read more. I am due, I think, at Newspapers and General Periodicals.