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On Saturday morning, Leroy needs to stay focused on chores. Raking leaves, making his bed, and playing piano, doesn’t his perfect sister have a character flaw to work on?
Judge Hooker enters to discuss Gildy’s job situation. A letter from Humpstone, of the bolt and screw factory owner, asks that Gildy not commit himself until he can phone him. Is the end of his job worries? The house is as busy as a beehive as that important phone call is expected. Gildy packs his bags, but how long will he be gone? The only phone calls deal with complaints about the service at the water department. Confound it! Doesn’t anybody know Gildy isn’t commissioner any more?
Leaving Birdie to screen the flood of calls, Gildy tries to get action from the phone company. In frustration, he rips the phone cord out of the wall. Uh-oh. How is he going to get that important call? Leila is a friend to Humpstone, but she’s busy on her phone at the moment. Peavey has a phone, but Gildersleeve may be a little large to fit in the booth. He tries to get the operator to route his long distance call to Peavey’s instead, if she can. Will his home line be fixed? Will that phone call be connected to him?
In epilog, Gildersleeve gives a word of honor for Navy Day, and the work that sailors are doing in the War effort. He pitches the need for nurses to join the WAVES.
Note: Besides being a world where all phones had cords that left the caller tethered to a wall, the phones and all wiring belonged to the local telephone company. That’s why Marjorie was so shocked at the damage to the phone and wires being ripped out. Her uncle damaged property that didn’t belong to them.
PS: Early phone systems were set up so local communities were fairly autonomous. People could freely dial calls on their own local phone system. Operators in the central office could manually patch calls by using a switchboard, and cables. The operators were required to use their switchboards and outside connecting lines to connect long distance calls. It would have been no problem for the operator to patch in an outside number to any of the local numbers in her network. And the outside call would definitely be noticed as different from the local calls.
