France 50 Years Ago - How Yank Persistence, Fig Newtons and 100FF Under The Table Finally Got Me A Phone When There Were No Phones To Get
(c) Jeffrey Robinson 2024
Digging through an old file just now, I stumbled across a receipt I hadn’t seen in five decades. It was from the French PTT (Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones) – the then state owned monopoly for all things post office, telegraphs and telephones) dated exactly 50 years ago when I had quite naively thought I could easily get a telephone in France.
Today, there are a zillion places all over France that will sell you a phone, with which you can make calls three minutes later. But in those days, in 1974, life in the land of Camembert, baguettes and Miou-Miou was very different.
After my four years in the Air Force, doing my military service in a part of the country where the snows came in early September and I was still wiping it off my windshield in May, I convinced myself that I was owed good weather. So I grabbed my typewriter and offed to the south of France, where I didn’t know anyone, didn’t speak French and didn’t have any money. I was going to earn my living as a freelance writer, or starve.
Talk about burning the boats.
It struck me then, and still kind of does, that this wasn’t as foolhardy a whim for a young man in search of himself, as it was a romantic quest. What I didn’t yet know was that there’s nothing terribly romantic about being often-hungry.
I settled into a small village on the Riviera, not far from Nice, where after a few years, I was publishing articles and short stories for, sometimes, as much as $50 a shot. My rent was $100 a month, so a story a week more than covered sunshine and onion soup. But when one magazine suddenly paid me $500 for an article, I decided I was now a big enough deal that I needed a telephone.
If only Alexander Graham Bell had known what it would be like in France 102 years after he invented the thing, he might have stuck to smoke signals.
When I first arrived in France in 1971, telephones cost $400 and the waiting list to get one was 36 months. I had the time but I didn't have the money. Anyway, no one I knew then had a phone, so who was I going to call? Then that big check came in and the price of phones was down to $300. So I walked to the village post office and proudly announced, "I’m here to apply for a telephone."
The woman behind the counter handed me a form to fill out. It cost nothing, I filled it out and handed it back.
Four months went by.
I returned to the village post office and asked about my phone. A different woman behind the counter smiled and handed me another form.
“But I’ve already done that.”
She pointed, “Please fill it out again.”
Nothing happened for several more months.
When I went back to the village post office for the third time to ask now about my two request forms, a man behind the counter – never saw him before - directed me to another office in nearby Nice.
There, the woman behind that counter was sympathetic and said she would send an inspector to see me right away.
Two months later, a pleasant enough man arrived, looked everywhere in my house, then began climbing poles nearby, tapping on boxes and writing down lots of things. He left, promising to be in touch. Another two months later, I received a copy of his report. "There are no free lines in your neighborhood."
I mentioned the situation to a fellow in the village with whom I played tennis, who responded, "Pas de problem.” No problem. “I know someone who works for the post office. I will get you a phone."
A couple of weeks later, my tennis partner's friend came to see me, inspected the house, climbed poles, tapped boxes and wrote things down. A month passed before he also decided, “There are no free lines in your neighborhood.”
I changed tennis partners.
My new tennis partner said he knew the same PTT employee as my former tennis partner, but could do me one better because he knew that PTT employee’s boss. I said I would appreciate anything he might be able to do and promised to let him beat me 6-0 for a whole year.
He said, “Pas de problem.”
Something told me that expression was not what I wanted to hear. And I was right. Five months passed. My phone did not arrive, although the price of phones was getting cheaper. Unfortunately, at the same time – supply and demand being what it is – as the price went down, the demand for them went up. Now the waiting list stretched all the way back to America.
I pressed that tennis partner on several occasions and finally met that first tennis partner's friend's PTT boss. A nice enough fellow who had once been to New York, he wanted to know if knew any movie stars. I said I did but refused to tell him who until I got my phone.
He said, “Pas de problem,” and quickly changed that to, "Oh, by the way, there are no free lines in your neighborhood.”
Not only did I switch tennis partners again, but I never told that fellow I could have arranged for an autographed picture of The Fonz.
When I related my on-going phone saga to tennis partner number three, he assured me, "Of course I can get you a phone. Pas de problem."
No. Stop. Don’t say that. It obviously is a problem.
Except this time, nine days later, a trio of phone installers came to my front door.
"Where do you want it?"
I couldn't believe it. “But I thought there were no lines."
“There aren't,” the chief installer said. "Where do you want the phones?"
“Are we talking about phones that will work? If there are no free lines... I want my phones to ring."
He promised they would. He said he was going to attach a small magic box to an inside wall and, after that, he would hook up everything outside so that this magic box would divide one of my neighbor's lines in half. “This system splits one line into high frequency and the other line into low frequency.”
I dared, “Will I be high frequency or low frequency?”
"Which ever you want.”
I decided, “High frequency, please,” then had to know, “If you can divide every line in the country into high frequency and low frequency, does that mean there could be twice as many phones in France as there are now?"
He nodded. “Of course.”
“So... how come... I mean... if you can double the lines just like that, how come there's still a very long wait to get a phone?"
He shrugged, “You’ll have to ask at the PTT.”
“And how come no one else told me about such a thing?"
He answered, "I only put the phones in. I don't even play tennis. Now, where do you want them?"
Without any further hesitation, I answered, “One upstairs and one downstairs."
"Can't be done," he shook his head. "Non. Interdit.” Prohibited. “Défendu.” Which means, interdit. “Monsieur, you don't have the right to have phones strung in parallel."
“Parallel? What does that mean?"
"It means that we have to add an interrupter." He showed me a toggle switch which he said he was required to install between the two phones. That meant only one of the two extensions could work at a time. In other words, if you leave the switch one way and the phone rings upstairs while you're downstairs, you can't hear it. Or, you lower the switch to the bottom position and it rings downstairs while you're upstairs, you still can't hear it.
“I need it to ring in both places."
“Impossible." It’s the same word in English but in French, with the accent on the first syllable instead of the second, it sounds less terminal.
The two men with him, who until this point hadn’t said a word, couldn’t stop agreeing with him. “Interdit. Défendu. Impossible.”
Just then it started to rain.
"Nope, you've got to have an interrupter," the boss man insisted. “But that's not the problem now. It's raining. We cannot install a phone in the rain. Au revoir.”
The rain eventually stopped but I didn't see them again for twelve days.
In the meantime, I called tennis partner number three and told him the story of the interrupter.
"It's like that for a reason," he explained. "If it rings in both places, then anyone can listen in."
I reminded him, "I live alone. Who's to listen in?"
"It’s for your own security."
"I've given myself a top-secret clearance."
"Nothing I can do."
So I made another visit to my village post office. Sitting behind the same desk I had seen before was a lady I’d never seen before. She spent an hour trying to convince me that without the interrupter, anyone at all in my house could listen in to my phone calls.
She refused to understand the words, “I don’t care," even though I said it in French. “Je m’en fous.”
Finally, and probably only because it was getting close to lunch time and the post office in those days closed for lunch - the secret of dealing with the French is to create enough chaos that they think they’re going to miss a meal - she conceded, “Okay, okay, I’ll ask the installers to put the phones in with jacks.”
Jacks? That sounded better than an interrupter. But when the installers returned, and I told them about the customer service lady, they said no one told them anything about jacks, and left to get in touch with her."
Three days after that, they came back to explain that they didn't know the lady at customer service, and installing an interrupter was the only way it could be done... no jacks... no exceptions.
Except, after two hours of begging, cajoling, serving up an entire box of my American imported Fig Newtons and finally handing over my last 100 francs, they installed the magic box. I was high frequency and my neighbor – a nice old lady who pretended to be a painter - was low frequency. They put one phone upstairs with a jack, and the other phone downstairs with a jack, and conveniently forget the interrupter.
As soon as they were gone, and I could see that both extensions worked, the first call I made was to my latest tennis partner to say thanks for his help.
However, instead of being happy for me, he complained, “How did you get phones without an interrupter. If you can have it that way, why can’t I?”
I suggested it was the Fig Newtons.
He said he never wanted to play tennis with me again.
Two minutes after I hung up with him, my phone rang. Of course I answered it, not having any idea who knew my number, especially seeing as how the phone installers had forgotten to tell me what my number was. (It would take another trip to the village post office to find out.) The voice on the other end asked for my neighbor, and wondered if she’d ever done a water color of the Port of Cannes. I explained that I was high frequency and my neighbor was low frequency. The caller didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
Neither did anyone else who called looking for my neighbor.
Naturally, I was tempted to ask the phone company to remedy the situation, but I was too afraid they'd remedy it by putting in an interrupter.
In any case, a few evenings later, the phone rang for my low frequency neighbor, and the caller turned out to be her 22 year old granddaughter. I assured her that grandma’s water colors of the Port of Cannes were right up there with Picasso. She told me she always wanted to learn how to play tennis.
What can I say to Monsieur Alexander Graham Bell but... merci.
*****
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*****
Great story. I had a similar one in 2000 in the UK. I had moved into a small village in East Sussex in a former estate gardener's cottage. The owner was an LSE professor who only had an old landline (think Dial M for Murder weapon). I called British Telecom for three new lines (computer, fax, and separate landline). After two weeks an entire crew (5 people) and their truck (with bucket to access telephone lines on pole) carefully navigated their way down our small hedge lined country road. Four hours and several pots of tea and a box or two of biscuits later the job was done.
The bonus was both our neighbours knocked on our door to "Meet the Americans" who needed such extravagant phone services. A bottle of scotch and a plate of scones later they left with the new knowledge that we were Canadians with extravagant needs.