5 Feb 2019 - More Fog, Trip Planning and Telephone Museum!!!

5 Feb 2019

Telephone Museum

Woke up to even more fog today.  The forecast is for a drop in temperature and the fog going away.  We will see.

We hung around the RV this morning and continued our trip planning and then around noon we headed up to the base post office and mailed boxes to each of the three families of our grand kids.  The sun was actually starting to peek through the clouds and the fog was clearing rapidly, so we decided to drive up Ocean Drive and see what there is to see. 

A small park on Ocean Drive with a view of the Corpus Christi skyline

One of the unique homes along the drive

We were going to turn into a Whataburger for a quick lunch, but I remembered seeing a telephone museum mentioned as we looked for things to see and do in the area.  I did not have GPS coordinates, but my recollection was close as we were just two blocks from it.

I've been involved in telephones since I was in junior high school, teaching myself electronics and building my plans to serve in the military.  The local Northwestern Bell telephone company had taken a bunch of old telephones out of service and attempted to render them inoperative, disposing of them at the local junk yard.  Me and my buddy Ken found them, hauled them home and got most of them working.  I dabbled in telephones while on active duty even though my job was radio maintenance.  When I joined the Air National Guard and went to work for them full time, telephone maintenance was one of my jobs, so I was deeply involved in all aspects of it.  I attended many in-resident schools and really enjoyed that aspect of my employment.  So, once a telephone guy, always a telephone guy, and always an interest in telephones.  Telephone museum, heck yeah!!!!

So, we cruised around the block once and did not see anything but a multi-story AT&T building.  We decided to park, feed the meter and investigate further.  The AT&T building was actually their central office, not a public administration office and rightfully so it was locked up tight.  It so happened a couple of employees were returning from lunch and asked if we needed assistance.  I mentioned the museum and they seemed surprised I had heard of it.  The museum is not open to the public on a daily basis, but apparently only by special request.  We explained our cross-country travels and my communications background with years of telephone maintenance and the lady bent over backwards to make sure we saw the museum.  Actually both employees made it happen - outstanding AT&T Corpus!

It took some doing but they found the keys to the museum area which is on the fifth floor.  We signed in and headed up the elevator.  Apparently much of the building is vacant.  The days of room after room of equipment and cross-connects are gone.  In fact we saw one warehouse-sized room on the fifth floor near the museum that was totally empty.  Down the hallway we headed .

So the doors opened, the lights came on and WOW, HOLY MACKEREL we hit the jackpot!  A plethora of telephone memorabilia like you can't imagine.  Here goes:

The telephone room - phones from years ago all the way up to today. 

Beautifully preserved wooden crank phones

More wooden crank phones

Rotary dial phones - 500 and 2500 sets!

Some Touch Tone phones and keys system phones, a princess and a trimline phone

awesome candlestick phones, some brass and some more wooden crank phones.

An old wooden phone booth

and MORE phones!

a brass SW Bell phone booth

Insulators from telephone poles

1886 original pay phone!

 We then headed down another hallway into a switchboard room.  Telephone operators sat at these consoles and used patch cords to connect calls 

A more modern electronic operators console

The maintenance room:

Strowger Step by Step switch.  They were very loud.

Tools of the trade.  I have used many of these!

A stepper maintenance workbench

Beautiful selection of old "butt sets", or telephone lineman's test sets.  

 Test equipment room.  Many of these test sets and measurement equipment I used during my career.

They had an old 1924 Ford Model T telephone repairman's truck in the room.  Now keep in mind this is on the fifth floor!!  They had to disassemble it to get it up here!   It came from Laredo TX.

Beautifully restored telephone truck.

Our two tour guides - one hiding behind the truck!

I am so thankful we sought out this museum and the great folks from AT&T Corpus Christi allowed us to see inside!  It really made my day!

After the museum we stopped by that Whataburger we had passed earlier, for a quick lunch.  The first Whataburger was just blocks from this location, 8 Aug 1950.  After you order your food you can eat inside on the main level, inside upstairs or outside on a balcony with a view of the bay, hence the name!!

Doreen and Harmon Dobson, the founder of Whataburger

View from the second floor balcony at Whataburger

Great day!  Nice to get out for a while.  Not sure what tomorrow has in store yet, but our days at Corpus Christi are coming to a close quickly.  We depart here Saturday.