50 Years of Dislike – It all started when …

...I was a kid and had a job working Nights.

I was driving around Woodstock this week and had one of those “ah-ha” moments. My stepson and I were talking about over-night jobs like a cashier or stocker at Jewel, and he asked who would want to work at night. I told him a lot of people like working at night.

“Ohhh, now I know when cops first started to dislike me.” The ol’ lightbulb came on.

My first job in police work. Not too glamorous, as I look back on it. I was a night callbox operator in a district station of the St. Louis Police Department. I worked from 11:00PM until 7:00AM. What a job for a kid, eh? I didn’t want to sleep during the day and wanted to date in the evening, and I needed to be awake at work. Right?

Many readers will not have a clue what a police callbox was, so let me explain. Those were the days before the elaborate two-way radios that police now have and definitely before cell phones. You know? Back in the Stone Age?

Officers did not patrol in squad cars, which were reserved for only certain patrol officers, sergeants and other supervisory officers. Officers were foot-patrol officers. They walked their beats. If they came across a crime, they called it in by going to a telephone or to the police callbox on the corner, where there was a dedicated telephone line direct to the district station. All they had to do was lift the telephone receiver, and there I was.

It was also used for dispatching calls. If I needed to contact a beat officer, I could ring his callbox and a red light on top of the callbox would light, signaling the officer to go to the phone and call in.

So, what does all this have to do with “dislike”?

One of my duties was keeping track of the foot-patrol officers. I was required to maintain a log and talk to each officer every hour. When an officer and I talked, I was to enter the time of the conversation on the log.

There was a reason for this. If the officer didn’t call in, then I was to call him; i.e., ring his callbox and turn on the light to signal him. If he didn’t respond within a certain period of time, I was to notify his sergeant, who would set out to find him.

The reason for this was the officer’s safety. If he were hurt or “down”, we had to find him.

Well, a fair number of the foot-patrol officers would find things to do overnight that did not involve walking the streets of their assigned beats, especially when it was cold.

Some lived on the beat and wanted to go home for a few hours and take a nap. Or go to someone else’s home and take a nap. Or maybe visit a girlfriend and “take a nap.” You know how that goes. At any rate, they would tell me over the phone that they’d be “out of touch” for three-four hours and ask me to just mark them on the log as if they had called.

Would I do that? No way. It wasn’t right, and that’s the main reason I refused. But there was a more important reason. What if they got hurt after requesting this “favor” and later were found face-down in an alley or in a hospital. How would I ever explain that the officer had called in every hour, just like my log showed?

So each time, every time, I refused. I told them that one thing, for sure, was not going to happen. I was not going to mark them “in” unless they called.

I guess other night callbox operators granted these favors without question or had done it for years, so they weren’t too happy with me. The job only lasted about six months before I tired of working nights. Some people like working nights; I didn’t - at least, at that time.

Later, I did. When I was a reserve sheriff’s deputy in Colorado, I enjoyed working nights because that’s when the action was. Flying down the road with lights and siren, there is nothing like it!