The Water Valley Telephone Company

In 1961, Cy Martin was a physics-math teacher in Denton High School. After a year of it, he decided that school teaching deserved someone who possessed greater self-sacrificing instincts than he did.

When summer came, he placed a small down payment on a small rural telephone exchange in Water Valley, Texas (22 miles north of San Angelo).

The company was owned by Mrs. Louella Earnest, the 83 year-old widow of its founder Mr. J.N. Earnest At the time of purchase, the company had 74 customers. It closed down between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday and from 10 p.m. till 4 p.m. on Sunday.

His marriage at the time was already shakey, and the move to West Texas quickly put it out of its misery. In this picture, He is seen working the nignt shift as "Operator" of the Water Valley Telephone Company's vintage magneto switchboard in the kitchen of his home/office. Also in the picture is his son David, getting some early "hands-on" experience with a set of walkie-talkie radios in preparation for his future chosen profession of Railroad Conductor.

The Toll Ticket: When a customer informed the Telephone Operator they wanted to make a Long Distance Call, the operator would write on a toll ticket the details such as the calling number, the number and city called and to whom (if it was person-to-person). they would then place the ticket in the "Calculograph". When conversation started, the Operator would pull a "start" lever to began timing the call. When the call was completed, another lever was pulled to end the timing. On a magneto system, the customer was obligated to "ring off" when the call was completed, to inform the operator they had finished talking. Many people would forget. It is suprising how fast you get on to individual customers habits and honesty.

He had these tickets printed to save time for the operators. At the top is name of the town, the Area Code 915 and the assigned prefix. Martin chose "487" since it was available and translated to HUxley7. (for A. Huxley's, author of Brave New World). The Operator would circle "T&C" if the customer wanted to know the Time and Charges at the end of the call. In the TO part of the ticket is a place to circle "San Angelo, Texas" or the abbreviations for several surrounding towns. "BAR" was for Barnhart; "RL" for Robert Lee; "BNT" for Bronte; "CBD" for Carlsbad: "CTL" for Christoval; etc.

All operators in a small exchange quickly learn the voices of their customer and the customers' family. Sometimes a child would call from the local school and say, "Ring Mama, please, Mr. Martin."

"It wasn't long before I knew the voices of each one," Martin said, "I once called in while I was in Fort Worth on business. The call had to go through the San Angelo "Inward Operator" in order to get to Water Valley. I had to tell the Fort Worth Operator the routing of the call as she didn't get many calls to "Ring Down Offices" such as Water Vallery. When the San Angelo Operator came on the line, she heard my voice and said in a confused voice, 'Water Valley, what are you doing in Fort Worth?'. I guess it kind of confused her, we had never met, but she knew my voice since we talked all the time during the transaction of business."

In 1963, Martin met and married the love of his life, Wynema (and her son and three daughters). Their oldest girl, Tawnya Raye, started "pinch hitting" for her mother attending the telephone switchboard . They soon discovered she was a natural born operator who could "pull plugs" with the best of them. The two younger girls, DeeLynn and Laury Kay helped with household chores. The boys, David and Jerry, quickly became good linemen and installers. In 1964, Their youngest girl, Gregory Danell was born.

The customers base had reached 110, and they had already converted the town and all customers within about a two mile radius over to Attended Dial Service, but all Rural Customers were still "Magneto" and had to be "patched" to the Dial Switchboard by the operator.

Several new long rural lines were constructed. One of these was a co-op with three area ranchers who frunished cedar post to support the wire on knob insulators. It was 17 miles long at one point it crossed Ranch Road 2034 at a cut pictured above.

An installer from GTE (Our Long Distance Connecting Company) is shown in the new office, wiring in new Long Distance Trunks. "When we provided our own Switchboard Operator, we needed only two Long Distance Trunks," Martin said, "GTE insisted on installing a total of four trunks when we converted to DDD. These four soon proved to be inadequate, and more had to be added."

Because of the duties attendant to their "New Arrival", the family constructed a new Central Office Building to house Direct Distance Dialing Equipment they purchased to bring the community into the modern world. Although this equipmen was used, it had served the LBJ Ranch at Stonewall, Texas, and had only become inadequate due to size, when Lyndon B. Johnson became our President after the heartbreaking assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The company was eventually purchased by John Smith or San Angelo Communications and later it was acquired by GTE. This picture was taken in 1993, when three of the Martin daughters, Mrs. DeeLynn McLaurin, Mrs. Laury Tanner and Mrs Tawnya Price attended a Water Valley School Reunion. DeeLynn and Laury are standing in front of the Central Office. Their old home is at the left.

"I wished we had kept our sign," says Cy Martin. "It was the one put up at the office of the original owner, Mr. Ernest. He made it from the end of an old cypress horse-watering trough."

Here is the office we built that is presently in service with GTE. We hired a brick mason to lay the walls. We built the roof with used lumber that we salvaged from an out building that was left when the SantaFe railroad abandoned the town's railroad depot. Photos are from family albums.

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