My name is Ron McConnell. I'm 57 years old, and as of 3:30 Friday afternoon I am retired from the telephone company after 35 years. I started in June of 1962 as a lineman, climbed poles for thirteen years, and spent the rest of my career as a cable splicer, the last ten of them splicing fiber, which is a lot like threading a needle with a hair while wearing work gloves. I worked out of the same garage in west-central Missouri for all but two of those years. My wife Willie and I live in Henry County, twenty minutes from Truman Lake.

Last fall the company offered an early-retirement package to people with my years, and I took it. My son Cedric, who does computers for a company in Kansas City, came down in September and showed me how to make this page, and I've been counting down on it ever since, mostly to irritate the fellows at the garage. The countdown started on Monday, September 30, 1996, at 270 days. It's over.

Monday, June 2 - 20 working days left. Monday safety meeting. The supervisor, Rich, read my name off the retirement list and everybody clapped like I'd won something, which I suppose I have.

Wednesday, June 4 - On a dare from the young fellows, strapped on my old climbing hooks and went up a pole behind the garage, for the first time in 22 years. Got up and got down. Did not look graceful doing either. John took a picture, so I'll have proof once his film comes back.

Friday, June 6 - Storms all afternoon. Spent the day in a splice trailer on a county road with rain drumming on the roof, which is one of the things I'll miss, believe it or not.

Tuesday, June 10 - Started turning my jobs over to David, who's taking my spot. He's good. He's better at the fiber than I was at his age, but then at his age there wasn't any fiber.

Thursday, June 12 - Called out at 2 a.m. A backhoe dug through a cable on a farm road east of town and took out service to about four hundred customers. David and I had it spliced and back up by 9. My last call-out. I've lost count of how many of those there were. Hundreds. Willie has never once complained about the phone ringing at night, and she deserves a medal.

Tuesday, June 17 - Drove up to Kansas City for the benefits paperwork. Signed my name about forty times. Willie came along, since half of all this is hers, and asked better questions than I did.

Monday, June 23 - Last week. Five working days. The fellows at the garage have started calling me "Mister" McConnell, which they think is funny.

Thursday, June 26 - Cleaned out my locker. Found a lunch box I lost in 1979. Turned in my tools, my keys and my ID card.

Friday, June 27 - LAST DAY. Coffee and doughnuts at the garage at 7, a cake at noon with a picture of a fish on it, and a handshake from every man and woman in the building. Ellen in dispatch got on the radio at the end of the day and gave me a sign-off in front of everybody, and I'm not ashamed to say I had to pull the truck over for a minute. Parked it for the last time at 3:30. Somebody had written "GONE FISHIN'" in the dust on the tailgate.

Willie and Cedric and the fellows from the garage threw a retirement party for me last night at the VFW hall, and about seventy people came, including a good number of retirees I hadn't seen in years and Bob, the lineman who trained me in 1962. Bob is 60 and still climbs a ladder every day at his farm. He told the story about my first week, when I dropped a full set of tools off the top of a pole onto the hood of the foreman's car. I've heard that story at every party for 35 years, and I expect to keep hearing it.

The gag gifts:

• A rocking chair with a seat belt bolted on, "so you don't fall out of it from boredom."
• A coffee can of night crawlers with a bow on it.
• A "honey-do" list from Willie, three pages, typed. She says it is not a joke.
• An alarm clock with the bells taken out.
• A pager with the battery removed and a note: "Nobody's calling you anymore."

The real gift: John, who's handy, took the climbing hooks I wore on June 4 and mounted them on a walnut board with a little brass plate that has my name and "1962-1997" on it. They're hanging on the wall in the den now, right over the recliner. Thirteen years I climbed in those, and they're retired the same weekend I am. Seems right.

Thank you to everybody who came, and to Willie and Cedric for keeping it a secret, or trying to. I knew about it since Tuesday. I acted surprised. I think I did a pretty good job.

A lot of the younger fellows have asked me how I knew I could afford to go. Here's what we did and why. I'm a cable splicer, not a banker, and your situation is not mine, so take this for what it's worth and talk to a fee-only financial planner before you sign anything. "Fee-only" means you pay them by the hour or by the job, not by commission, so they aren't selling you anything. Ours cost us a few hundred dollars and was worth every penny.

In May I bought a used 17-foot bass boat from a fellow down at the lake. It needed a new trolling motor and the seats recovered, and I've done both. It doesn't have a name yet. Willie says if I name it after her, she'll sink it.

The plan for this summer is simple: up before the sun, which my body is used to anyway, on the water by 6, home by noon before the heat, a nap, and then whatever's on the honey-do list. Cedric is coming down for the Fourth with his family, and my granddaughter wants to catch "a big one." We'll see.

First bass-boat report coming in July!

Well-wishers since October 1996:

Drop me a line: [email protected]
Last updated Sunday, June 29, 1997