A Day At The Office..

My niece Sarah recently posted a photo on Facebook of her son Thomas at work with her on a take your child to work day. While take your child to work days are a relatively recent phenomenon, it reminded me of  times when Dad took me to work with him.

We never actually went to the office with Dad on a normal workday. That would not have been appropriate, nor likely very welcome. He sometimes had to work on Saturdays, though, and on those occasions he would often take one of us to work with him. It was always a very big deal to go to work with Dad.

Dad worked in the corporate offices of Banquet Foods on Olive in Downtown St. Louis. We would ride the elevator up to his floor and head to his office. He would plop me down at a desk and let me "help" him. My help somehow always involved an adding machine. Dad would make sure there was a full roll of the paper loaded in the machine and turn me loose! I pushed buttons and hit keys to keep up a steady cadence of entering numbers and performing various addition and subtraction tasks. I can still hear the sound of the adding machine printing out each row of numbers I entered.

Throughout the day I would stretch the tape out from "my" desk to see how far across the room it would reach. By the end of our workday, I had invariably used an entire roll of adding machine tape; which I carefully wound back onto the empty spool so I could take it home to show Mom!.

The office had some other amazing technology, too. Well, amazing for its time! A teletype machine sat against the far wall. People who are not much younger than me have no idea what I'm talking about when I mention a teletype. It really was a fascinating machine.

The teletype looked like a typewriter on steroids! It was the original text messaging device; used to send and receive textual information with another teletype machine anywhere in the country! It was high tech.

The teletype usually sat there silently on a Saturday morning, but every once in a while the bell would ring and the machine would come to life. The machine used a typewheel, so it actually struck the paper once for each character just like a typewriter. It made quite the racket. It would rattle for a while and then go silent once again. Dad would walk over to read the message and, occasionally, even send a message back. It was always a bonus if the bell rang while I was at the office.

Sometimes Dad knew someone was in at one of the plant offices around the state and would fire off a message on the teletype. There would be a short conversation back and forth about nothing really. I suppose it was more for my entertainment so I could watch the conversation unfold before my eyes as the machine rattled off Dad's typed messages and the faraway strangers typed replies.

Banquet Foods had another high tech tool called WATS Lines. WATS stood for Wide Area Telephone Service. Banquet had both INWATS and OUTWATS. INWATS was the original 800 Toll Free service; allowing companies to pay a fee that allowed people to call their "special" number without incurring long distance charges. OUTWATS allowed the customer to make outgoing long distance calls for a flat monthly fee without incurring long distance charges for each minute they were on the phone.

Virtually everyone has free long distance calling today; whether on their cell phone or landline, so the entire idea of WATS lines is probably quite foreign to anyone younger than thirty or forty. It was revolutionary for its day, though. Banquet Foods had both INWATS and OUTWATS. Their contract with AT&T had them paying a flat monthly fee with no per minute charges or limitations. This allowed Dad to put the OUTWATS line to use on several of those Saturday visits to call the Sauermans. I would race in to tell Mom of our important conversations once we got home.

Yes, going to work with Dad was always a memorable experience. There was no computer on which I could sit and play games or watch movies or listen to music. No; for those few hours, I occupied myself with "important business things" with Dad.

I have often wondered through the years if Dad actually took us to work so he could get something done on a Saturday or if it was just his way of spending time with each one of us kids alone. I can't imagine that he ever actually accomplished much; with getting hot chocolate from the machine and calling the Sauermans and sending worthless messages back and forth with the teletype.

No, Dad probably used those Saturday mornings for what future generations would call bonding time; time that  Debbie, Kim, Beth or I had with just Dad.

Times that I would still recall with great joy nearly four decades later.

Times that I still miss.

Times with just Dad.