Tony Ryan - TELE-Tales

Tony Ryans TELE-Tales

A.J. Ryan

7x10, Inserts: NO, Version #2

Copyright 2002, 2003 A.J. Ryan.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

The author may be contacted care of:

Lu Zhen Hui, #3 Turks Cove, Trinity Bay

NF Canada A0B 3P0

Note for Librarians: A cataloguing record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada at www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html

ISBN 1-4120-1452-2

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Contents

While it is relatively easy to make any person appear ignorant, it is impossible to feign intelligence.

The last few years had been a mixture of starvation and as little socializing as could be done on twenty-five dollars a week. I had never been much in need of study so despite spending two months in hospital, I finished my last year of college with certificates and congratulations sitting behind so many expectations I had no time for dreams.

Before graduation, I had received funding for a project to test feasibility of a region-wide repair business. Opportunities for Youth would pay for labor and expenses, while customers paid for parts at cost. This meant income without anxiety, a summer-long recovery from the process of postsecondary education.

I hired three classmates, Paul Doucette, Joe Howell, and Myron Hinchey to staff a shop in my mothers basement. Our routine mainly consisted of waiting for our meager but eager clientele to show up, passing slack time discussing goals, personal theories, and the advantages of involvement in legitimate professions.

Joe was under pressure to pay a stiff fine for driving a Ford Falcon through a store window in Grand Falls, inadvertently wiping out the mens section. He had been part of a five-man road trip just before graduation and after the bar on the first night, decided he was most sober before proving you do not need a drivers license to have an accident.

Myron wanted to be our public relations man but the capacity to soothe and entice is talent beyond a man who was showing symptoms of a mental illness his family was cursed with for generations. He was starting to lose touch but we were optimistically hoping it was due to the myriad recreational drugs he was using, thereby curable.

Joe and Myron grew up together so Joe could warn us IT was going to happen soon. Myron remained stable throughout the summer scaring away only a few of the less hardy customers, older and younger women mostly. I had passed through college with Myron as a bench mate finding him a little odd and sometimes senseless but never suspected Muscle-Hincheys genetically altered fate meant him to collapse into some more mindless condition, minus his playfully cranky nature.

There was a plus; he never realized this was happening.

Paul, like Joe, had been a roommate from my Gander years. Forever coming across as levelheaded and determined to succeed, his contempt for leadership started occasional conflicts but none terminal to our acquaintance. When Paul landed projects, he stayed at them and although he lacked speed when doing repairs, he never took a break until finished. His outstanding handiwork could make hopeless assignments look so appealing it felt a crime to chuck them.

My workshop idea excited me until it became clear ninety percent of our customers wanted us to work on coffeepots, hair dryers, toasters, stoves, curlers, all considered beneath my specialty...Telecom. I found it preferable to avoid all invention delivering anything but information, entertainment, or transport. I also fell to despise contact with the technology bereft as an ungrateful pushy lot always demanding work done quickly or done in some senseless time-consuming fashion, and I felt most would feel more secure if paying for our work. Pleasing them at any point in my life was improbable at best.

The money and diversion ended in September. While Myron and Joe went off to Toronto, Paul and I stayed behind for a week at the Turks Cove headquarters of the Trinity-South Free Electronics Workshop. During this buffer time, I spent some time recreating my childhood by hiking the austere and almighty seashore of Trinity Bay trying to reduce the number of possibilities to one. I loved the place and remembered this as my spot when it was wise to be unavailable elsewhere.

However, in the new light it was just a beach.

I had no problem with abandoned plans of repair shop proprietorship. Actually, the numbers were appealing, if I ran it alone, but I remain satisfied with the opportunity to try at someone elses expense. Contemplation during those post-project days always supplied the same instruction...disconnect. I decided to store everything from the past neatly away, leaving childhoods indignities hanging from the rocks.

Being from a place unqualified for even village status, I believe green is the right word to describe me at the start of my first year of college. A few situations taken care of by my knack of catching on quickly made it harder for me to get lost in nonsense that sometimes comes up. In the past, what people expected of me I delivered. I felt silence was my greatest asset but observation and experience helped me develop negation in defense of my self-respect and I found myself able to do or say whatever I thought necessary. The art of communicating was suddenly more important than any knowledge of communications.

After passing into the ninety percentile on a rigorous succession of exams, I was suddenly working with Canadian-National/Canadian-Pacific Tel as a Central Office Installer. The tests demanded the best from all applicants and made it impossible for someone to use another persons high school scores or imaginary accomplishment to get in the door. You got over ninety in the general aptitude tests; you got in. Field specific tests determined where you could go by allowing you to continue writing until falling below that magical mark. I had continued for six hours until they had no more tests to give. There was no guarantee you would get a job right away at the level your tests indicated you suitable for but it was encouraging to know such information lay in some folder just waiting.

After a three-week course in Central Office Installation, I started the mandatory travel to small communities overlooked by Newfoundland Telephone as unworthy of consideration by another profit-insistent acquisition of the Bell Canada monopoly. Newfoundland has many tiny settlements and since locally the dawn of the electric era was recent, people now looked for telecom service beyond a community or even area telegraph office. CNCP took up the slack by offering much-needed service at a tremendous loss of money.

Immersion immediately gave me a taste of life as an installer only to find it disagreeable. The thought of travel made life interesting but a real life involving any of what I enjoyed was impossible. I hinted I would stay in Gander to work on large Toll-Center projects but quickly learned the value of seniority. I hoped to stay there and practice with the group I was playing guitar in but this was not to be and was probably for the best.