Forty years ago my late first father in law helped me launch my law office.
For the next twenty years I was forced to spend thousands of dollars a year to have my office phone numbers listed in all the phone books.
I had a routine. If a salesman from any phone book company called, my assistants knew to have them speak directly to me.
I’d ask —-
Are you formerly Ma Bell?
If I dial zero, will I get your company’s operator?
In other words, are you the real phone company or a phone book company?.
And no matter which one they were I’d buy an advertisement. More for the real phone book, but I wanted a paid advertisement in all of them, you know?
There is a young man who bought my office and paid me and my wife a good fair price.
He owns those three phone numbers now.
And he owns the Google Maps address.
My wife is sick and she set all those free electronic phone book advertisements up about twenty some years ago. I can’t even turn on her office computer, and the young man who bought my office gave it to his wife.
They all lead you to the young man, who’s taken my place.
He must be happy. Tidying up my last probate estate last Wednesday he ran over to me and hugged me, and asked how my wife was.
He had over half the cases on the docket, and was in a hurry to drive to another county.
Retirement is sort of like dying except you can hear your elegy and drive by your office any time you like.
Here’s to you, Mama, who taught me the Bridge Builder when I was a little boy—
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
——
Someday all my advertisements my wife set up will all go dark.
Let artificial intelligence take it’s time pulling them offline.
For the next twenty years I was forced to spend thousands of dollars a year to have my office phone numbers listed in all the phone books.
I had a routine. If a salesman from any phone book company called, my assistants knew to have them speak directly to me.
I’d ask —-
Are you formerly Ma Bell?
If I dial zero, will I get your company’s operator?
In other words, are you the real phone company or a phone book company?.
And no matter which one they were I’d buy an advertisement. More for the real phone book, but I wanted a paid advertisement in all of them, you know?
There is a young man who bought my office and paid me and my wife a good fair price.
He owns those three phone numbers now.
And he owns the Google Maps address.
My wife is sick and she set all those free electronic phone book advertisements up about twenty some years ago. I can’t even turn on her office computer, and the young man who bought my office gave it to his wife.
They all lead you to the young man, who’s taken my place.
He must be happy. Tidying up my last probate estate last Wednesday he ran over to me and hugged me, and asked how my wife was.
He had over half the cases on the docket, and was in a hurry to drive to another county.
Retirement is sort of like dying except you can hear your elegy and drive by your office any time you like.
Here’s to you, Mama, who taught me the Bridge Builder when I was a little boy—
The Bridge Builder
BY WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLEAn old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
——
Someday all my advertisements my wife set up will all go dark.
Let artificial intelligence take it’s time pulling them offline.
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