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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 6, 1963)
g . S.'iHf .'OTTOEEft 6. tf63 MEDKORD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD. OREGON 0 Early Medford Telephone Operator Recalls Some Experiences By EVA HAMILTON Mail Tribune Staff Writer Many are the tales a telephone operator of the early days could tell 11 she would lain. She worked before the word "automation" was coined. She worked in an era when the "wonderful invention" needed a warm heart and sympathetic ear as well as human hands to keep it operating in the manner to whicn patrons so quicmy ne came accustomed. With these statements, Mrs. H. R. Burk of 111 King St., Med ford, agrees. She is the former Edna Eifert, one of Medford s earliest telephone operators- one of the first voices to re spond to "Hello Central." When the exchange was new an'l communications poor, she ofcen had to repeat the conver sation for both participants. Had To Be Trusted "Central," as she was called and she was frequently called, just had to be trusted and she could be. The "hello" girl's lips were sealed then and Edna's are today. "VIP" and "top sec ret" were not in her vocabulary but observance of the Golden Rule was in her charactor. Considering the exodus of fam ilies into this valley from the east when Mrs. Burk was with the telephone company, it is no wild supposition to believe that there were many long distance rails put through the Medford exchange. There were many romances in the making and in the break ing. Many big financial deals were being firmed up in Med ford's "Boom Days." Mrs. Burk could probably write a book with a different angle on south ern Oregon history, just by quot ing those conversations, but any one who thinks she is about to betray that trust is just a dreamer. Will Not Be Told The persons involved may be "no longer of this world" but their conversations on the Bell telephone will not be told. There were several telephone companies i n early Medford, present files of Pacific North west Bell reveal. There was thj old Sunset com pany, probably the first; the Pacific Slates company and the Home Telephone and Telegraph company. It was for Pacific that Edna worked. There were two telephone dir ectories during one period of the early lWXIs with telephone 4 lmmj.M .-.A- r , MWMi iif i b i urn i v i ii ' i ii i Hi imi . a0tim ENJOYS REMINISCENCE Recalling events early in this cen tury in Ada, Ohio, and Medford, Ore., to which she came in 1904, Mrs. H. R. Burk, best known as "Edna," described an era only a few people remember. She was interviewed at her home regard ing her experiences as a telephone operator and a soloist. tral. Narrow escapes from dis aster and dpalh were snmetimes exchanges in Medford and Ash land. The fire department and the police department had num bers with each. If the person re porting a fire or trying to call police failed to get a response from the number in Directory No. 1, the patron was advised to "call central" and ask for the Directory, No. 2, number. In Drug Store When Edna became operator, the switchboard was in the back of Strang's Drug store on Main street. It was Charles Strang, father of Fred Strang of Med ford, who got the exchange es tablished here. It failed to serve more than 15 or IB patrons until he granted free tolls to Jackson ville, then tne county scat. The exchange remained in the drug store until 10, when it was moved to North Central ave., the present location of the Western Thrift store. "Hello, Edna," was the com mon greeeting in those days. The joys, the sorrows of many made possible by the telephone girl. Recalls Hearing Voire Edna recalls a voice whisper ing "I'm so sick." She im mediately knew from whom the call had come and summoned the woman's husband. He ar rived at his home in time to bring her out of a heart attack. He later told the operator he asked his wife why she hadn't called him and she replied "I knew Edna would find you." In town, all calls came through "central". Knowing this, the re porter asked Edna a number of questions regarding Medford events and people, Her repeated answer was "I can't tell you about that." Her husband, a former Salem resident who came to Medford as building superintendent for construction of the Jackson county courthouse annex, thinks It is quite a coincidence that phone operator in the early life of a communication systemShe was Nancy Crabtree, first switch board operator in Cam bridge, Iowa. Some families go through life floating along on the edge of the stream or just treading water in the quiet pools. Others seem destined to swim in the main current all the way. As a result their names become linked with history of a business, of a town or a nation dependent upon the area of their endeavors. They are participants in events that will be remembered; associates of persons, successful and un successful, but known. The Eif ert family was one of these. When Edna was a young girl in Ohio her father was a Demo crat, There are still Democrats in Ohio and there's nothing so memorable about that. But since he was a Democrat when the famous Commoner, Will jam Jennings Bryan, was running tor president and his daughter Edna was invited to sing on the same platform with the "silver tongued orator," it is remem bered. A tour to Niagara Fills in 1901 with the chorus from her college was not a momentous occasion, in itself. But when the chorus arrived to hear that the president of the United States had been shot by an an archist just Vb hours earlier in nearby Buffalo, that, too, was not to he forgotten. President McKmley, a native of Ohio, died a week after the shooting to go down in history as another "assassinated presi dent." Mrs. Burk was a student at Ohio Northern University at Ada on that September day in 1901. -."rf 1 Of,.. A 4 - - - v i" - '1 .'OA; . X 4 DRESSED FOR THE STAGE This picture was taken of Mrs. Burk when she was a young girl prepared to step upon the plat form for one of her many appearances as a soloist. Through song she felt she served her maker best. The university must have been even at the turn of the century, a school which offered a wide program. For, although Mrs. Burk was a music major, she was prepared in the commercial field, too. Coming to Medford, she op erated the telephone company's families were reported to cen-lhis first wife was also a tele 4 it's coming. ..NATURAL GAS will ijpu be ready for it? 4 FREE INSTALLATION! " AUTOMATIC DRYER MOPU 3M1 SPECIAL 0NIY $199 50 INCLUDING NORMAL INS1AIIATION BUDGET TERMS $19 95 DOWN LESS THAN $9 00 A new Hamilton Gas Clothes Dryer lets you defeat the weather with pleasure! In fact. soj:i:y-et. housebound days make tine laundry days when you use an automatic Gas Clothes Di ver. Just try this dryer for 30 days 1 RL E and see if you don't agree. LOOK AT THESE FEATURES KM'l.l SIVK TWIN Alii STHKAM IHIYIMI only Hamilton gives ou two drying air streams. ..one for gen tleness, one for speed. IU SIIi:il llliVINfi -You'll like the smooth, noiseless opeiation of a Hamilton so quiet you'll hardly know it's running. SATIN SMOOTH lHil M-that will not flake, chip, peel or stain. Com pletely safe for our most delicate things. On the Air By ELEANOR WIESE PER MONTH t , Din'l DoEsyJPhim NsW CaLII'OIIMA-I'aCII IC III II. I I 'IKS Co. YOUR PARTNFM IN WrflTFdN PnOOflrfl Phone 772-5281, Medford o 482-21 16, Ashland Detractors of television pro gramming seem to maintain a favorite theme: that program schedules are shaped far too much to the tastes of the mass audience and do not adequately meet the demands of the cul tivated, who hunger for more specialized fare and are being alienated because television does not satisfy this hunger. This is the reason, the critics of television araue. that people in the higher-educated, higher economic groups are "light viewers." And on this assump tion, they build another that the licht viewer confines his set ection to TV's heavier material of culture and information, twisting his dial in frustration, while the heavy viewer satiates himself with light entertain ment, lolling before his set, sub sisting on an uninterrupted diet of situation comedies, westerns and game shows. This cliche is having a tougn time standing up against some recent research statistics. In a report recently presented be fore the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Dr. Thomas E. Coffin, NBC's Director of Research, came up with some different findings. Dr. Coffin examined viewers' nrneram selections not on the basis of viewers' education or income but by amount of viewing. Using the Nielsen In dex of measured hours of view ing, he divided the audience in to five numerically equal groups. He then compared the viewing habits of the extreme groups those that watched least with those that watched most. As you might expect, enter tainment drew the heaviest viewers. Specifically, in the heaviest viewing group, the number who watched one or more of a selected group of entertainment programs was 31 per cent greater than the num ber who watched any of a group of information presentations. But as you might not expect, among the lightest viewers the gap in preference for entertain ment over information was far greater. In this group, 7.1 per cent more watched entertain ment than had watched any of the information programs. Another variation on this theme emerged from another source, the American Research Bureau dairies for one week. In this analysis 62 per rent of the heavv viewers watched "talk'' programs, including news, discussion and educa tion shows, whereas only 21 per cent of the light viewers watched them. In commenting on the1 finds. NBC's Robert Samoff. chair man of the board, suggests one runs a risk in assuming that light viewing is a cultural status symbol or that a schedule over loaded with specialized pro gramming ' will of necessity prompt the light viewer to change his ways Mr. Samoff believes the light viewers are people who have developed a wide range of re sources for filling their leisure hnnrs and nurstiine their intel- C loctual interests. Television is less important in their (oirr.il scheme of things They turn to television, as do most people, chiefly (or entertainment, hut since thev do less viewing thev I are less aware of the scope and diversity of programming avail able to them. Consequently, they are less selective than the habitual viewers in the use of the TV sets. Of course, there are those who will take issue with him in regard to the scope and diver sity of TV programming. But there are many good things on television that the light viewer might easily miss; and that's the purpose of this column to point out some of the programs that sound unusual or better than average. switchboard. She later super vised the telephone operators, was bookkeeper for Warner -Wortman and Gore, one of the city's largest groceries; cashier and bookkeeper for Hutchison and Lumsden General Mercan tile store, operator of the U. S. post office substation on Bartlett street and secretary to the ar penter's Local Union. Ready To Repeat Knowing people in all sections I of Jackson county, she was I rated as the cub reporter's best Iriend. she was always ready to report visitors from the Ap plegate, Brownsboro, Ashland, Gold Hill and Prospect when "towning" was regarded as news in the Local and Personal column. The Eifert family, W. W. Eif ert, who became mayor of Med ford, Mrs. Eifert, their five daughters and one son, came to Medford at the insistence of Charley and Callie Palm, who had arrived earlier. Mrs. Palm was Mr. Eifert's sister. Their stories of the southern Oregon country led the Eiferts to hire a coach on the Southern Pacific and start west. Medford was about the sire of Ada, but Ada was old and Med ford was new and Ada was a college town. The Eiferts soon found, however, that there was a migration into Jackson county of "people interested in the better things of life." Their daughters had been given the "advantages," training in elo cution and music. Edna soon moved into the productions of the Andrews Opera comoanv. church choirs and lodge func tions. She, also, sang at funer als. Refuses To Sing "People who think there Is race prejudice here now should have been here then," she com mented last week. "There was on Negro family in town. The man's wife died. The regular soloist for the undertaking par lor refused to sing at a Negro funeral." The late John Perl, whose fun eral home was then on Bartlett St., came to Edna. "Of course, I II sing," she remembers telling Perl. Later the grateful Negro came to pay her. She refused to take the money but at Christ MORMON CONFERENCE, 10 a.m. Sunday KBES-TV. The 1.13rd semi-annual conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is broadcast from the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. The famed Taber nacle Chorale will sing. MORMON CONFERENCE, 2 p.m. Sunday KBOY-FM. Radio broadcast of the same confer ence, President David O. Mc Kay presiding. JUDY GARLAND. 9 D.m. Sunday KBES-TV. Gooree Maharis, TV adventurer turned singer, and comedian Jack Car ter join Judy. A MAN NAMED MAYS, 10 p.m. Sunday KMED-TV. Willie Mays is up against some stiff competition tonieht Liz Tav- lor. This program reviews the career of one of baseball's superstars who many baseball men have termed the createst all-around player in the history of the game. LIZ IN LONDON, 10 p.m. Sunday KBES-TV. Elizabeth Taylor was born in London and recently has spent some well publicized months there. But to night's show foregoes romance and focuses on historic London as seen through the eyes of a mas was recipient of a "beau' rjcaulitul guide and on scenes tiful grft from him. of her childhood. The first movie theater Edna remembers in Medford was the Old Savoy, at which she sang. It was located on North Front st. The words of songs were flashed on the screen. She also sang at the Page theater on East Main at Bear creek. It was gutted by fire in the 1920s. Glamorous Moment One of her most "glamorous moments", however, was sing ing the role of the Queen in "lo lanthe", which was presented at the fairgrounds by the And rews Opera Company under aus pices of the Greater Medford club. Her costume was shipped from San Francisco for the pro duction. The opposite in costum ing was experienced when she consented to fill in as Katisha in "The Mikado". The singer to be imported for the role failed to appear. Edna had been play ing one of the Three Little Maids in an attractive makeup. She still remembers the comments of the late James Stevens, who got her ready for the part. Another treasured recollection of her singing career takes her back to World War I. She was a member of a chorus invited to sing with Madame Schumann Heink when the famous opera star came to Ashland to raise funds for the American Red Cross. Madame Schumann -Hcink, who had sons in (he American army, the German army and the German navy sang in camps and for Red Cross chapters throughout the United States. Entertainment was through participation in the early 1900s. Recalls Serenades Edna recalls the many occa sions upon which her sister, Jes sie, now Mrs. E. N. Eldridge of Medford; Jessie's former hus band. Bill Barnum, and Leon Hanna, brother of former Cir cuit Judge H. K. Hanna of Jack sonville, used to serenade her and her friends. The Barnums, who owned and operated the Rogue River Valley railroad, had a "Brisco" car, which was the pride of Father W. S. Bar num. His son and daughter-in-law used it as conveyance for their serenading tours with ac cordion and saxophone. For (she can't remember how many) years Edna sang in the Presbyterian church choir, which she also directed. Her mezzo soprano voice is remem bered by many persons who were in the congregation when she, standing on the balcony, led the singing of "God Bless Amer-1 lea" during World War II. I As grand warder of the Order ! of Eastern Star, she attended ' the Grand Chapter meeting in Portland in 1926 and sang "Open the Gates of the Temple." She is past worthy matron of Reames chapter in Medford. A reference to the Eifert fam ily recently appeared in the Mail Tribune "Flight of Time" column. Dated Sept. 5. 1913, it read: "Funeral services for Mayor W. W. Eifert, largest in city's history." . Local Post Office Commended for Job The Medford post office has been commended for its efforts in promoting the sale of U.S. Savings stamps, according to a letter to Acting Postmaster Al Bradford from William H. Neal, national director of the U.S. Savings bonds division. Neal also announced that children buying their first sav ings stamps of the school year will be given a free certificate signed by the seven mercury astronauts which will designate the recipients as "junior astronauts." These certificates are now available at the Medford post office and at the public schools. Savings stamps in 10 cent, 25 cent, 50 cent, $1 and $5 sizes are on sale at the post office at all times and at the schools during stamp day. Sheriff's Deputies Return Man on Charge Sheriff's deputies returned Walton Charles Tillman, 46, from Winnemucca, Nev., Thurs day on charges of uttering and publishing a forged check. He has signed a statement admitting to issuing a falsa check for S155 to an area market. Try and Stop Me By BENNETT CERF- "hunter." "Now you A PROFESSIONAL GUIDE on an African safari exulted to a nervous hunter. "At last! Here are fresh lion tracks!" "That's great," quavered the just see where they're going to and I'll find out where they came from. "I note," rasped the old Judge, "that in addition to stealing- this lady's money, you aJso helped yourself to all of her jewelry." "It's my mother's fault," sobbed the prisoner. "She always reminded me that money alone does not bring happiness." Joe E. Lewis, who likes to bet on long-shots at the race tracks, nicked a par ticular lemon one sultry afternoon. "I won't say that nag ran slowly," reported Joe later, "but this Is the first time I ever saw a jockey take along copies of The Reader's Digest and Cos mopolitan!" The French philosopher Voltaire was told that a certain pro fessor had an answer for everything. "Heavens!" he exclaimed. "Is he as ignorant as all that?" C 1963, by Bennett Cert. Distributed by Sing Features Syndicate 1 SlfXO'S NEW HOURS 6 A.M. to 72 MIDNIGHT Daily OPEN 24 HOURS ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY 1025 South Riverside CRATER FINANCE Cascade Shopping Center White City-826-2721 Let Us Put You On Top of The Wonderful World of Money The "money months" are here again! If you need EXTRA CASH just give us a ring on a the phone and tell us At' how much you need. ONE LOAN ONE convenient monthly payment. Call on us todayl A Hsndy Hundred or More From Crater Flntnee Money From Criter Finance il like Money From Hvmc. CRATER FINANCE 135 P1fltci2:ni4.127l COMING! OCT. 25 OCT. 26 OCT. 27 The International . , . BIG DAYS OF FAMILY ENJOYMENT! k Rummage Sale ic Food Sale it Bazaar fa Art Show & Fun Fair k (Root) Beer Garden k Sidewalk Cafe k Continuous Music k Modeling fa Entertainment FUN for the Youngsters! 8 Rides & Games of skill with prizes . . . burro rides . . . pup pet show. The kid dies will love it! MEDFORD ARMORY Friday, Saturday & Sunday, Oct. 23, 26 I 27 Sponsored by TV Jeieer Scrvlta Uue. Proceeds to be used for community benefit and for the hermit rtf th KeJerojrten for Herd of Heering Children. THE MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE o o o 0 0 IS) 0 o S o
