This column appears precisely 50 years after my arrival in Colorado behind the steering wheel of a U-Haul truck towing a spanking new Toyota Land Cruiser. Parking for the night at a Motel 6 along West 6th Avenue, I had just three days to rent an apartment, unload our somewhat meager belongings and unpack boxes before my children, ages one and two, would fly into the Queen City of the Plains with their mother. We were abandoning Washington, D.C., where I had been working for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company (C&P), in favor of Denver and Mountain Bell. Long before Tim Wirth and the 1983 divestiture of AT&T into seven “baby Bells,” there was a single Bell System monopoly providing dial tone coast to coast.

Returning to C&P from the U. S. Navy the previous year, we determined we didn’t want to raise kids on the East Coast. My father’s family was rooted in New Mexico and I’d grown up next to the nuclear weapons facilities across the western United States, including Idaho, Washington, New Mexico and, yes, Colorado (Rocky Flats). Like Americans who seek to live next to the sea, I felt the mountains calling. Mountain Bell had distributed an offer to other Bell companies seeking installation and repair supervisors with inner-city, urban experience. I drove to Denver in September to interview for a position and learned the job included the obligation to work 10 hours-a-day, six days-a-week for the first year. With overtime, this doubled my salary and I was told to report for work on Monday, Oct. 23.

I accepted the position, driving back to Washington without a stop – a 23-hour trip you’re only dumb enough to attempt while still young. Arriving back in Denver, I discovered a newly opened apartment at Terra Village in Edgewater that would accept a six-month lease. We planned to purchase a home once we gained some familiarity with the city. The metropolitan region was experiencing one of its cyclical housing booms. Asleep at the wheel, Mountain Bell had failed to construct enough infrastructure to accommodate this runaway expansion. More than 40,000 homeowners were waiting for dial tone – the largest portion located in Arvada, where there was insufficient switching-capacity, and a new central office was being constructed on an around-the-clock schedule. Although new homes were pre-wired and telephones installed, the delay for dial tone was expected to last 9 to 12 months!

Mountain Bell had made other mistakes. In a pre-digital age, analog switch centers were engineered to operate at no more than 93% capacity before they “locked up.” This was normally not a problem, since 7% to 10% of available numbers were allowed to lie fallow after they were disconnected. Instead, they were being immediately reassigned. Each afternoon, about 3 p.m., when students returned home from school and jumped on their home phones, the entire system would shut down under the overload. Downtown Denver businesses were employing message delivery services to maintain contact with branch offices. Needless to say, the public was outraged. Businesses were furious and the Public Utilities Commission was swamped with complaints.

At the end of our lease, we purchased a duplex in Wheat Ridge. Since I was required to be on-call, Mountain Bell installed a phone for us. It wasn’t long before angry neighbors were banging on our door demanding to know just how the hell we had secured dial tone? Fortunately, our unit included a small vestibule. I offered to place an extension off our home phone inside the front door so families on the block could use it in the case of an emergency or other pressing communications requirement. We promptly became acquainted with all our neighbors. It wasn’t just foremen working long shifts, so were craft workers. We were all forbidden to take vacation or personal leave despite working a minimum of 60 hours, usually far more, each week. Only Sundays provided a day off. This kind of leave restriction is the cause of the current labor dispute roiling the nation’s freight railroads.

In July of 1973 all “outside plant” supervisors were ordered to report downtown to a hotel ballroom. The purpose of this gathering was unknown. We soon discerned we were to be admonished for the widespread incidence of “backing accidents” in company vehicles. Vice presidents hectored us about enforcing company safety protocols and better supervising our troops. When the meeting was open to comment, I took the microphone and informed our poohbahs, “you need to wake up! These aren’t accidents. They are intentional crashes and we can’t prevent them. You should count yourself lucky they are single-vehicle collisions. My installers have sons and daughters who are getting married or graduating from high school and you refuse to allow them a day off. Most of my installers will earn more than a hundred thousand dollars this year ($500,000 adjusted for inflation today). But you will automatically suspend them for three days if they have an accident. You won’t give me the authority to approve a day off. Let me use my judgment and that’s how you can stop these accidents. My guys don’t need your money. They’re buying new pickups and mountain cabins. A three-day suspension does them a favor. It’s not a penalty!”

Three hundred managers rose in a raucous, standing ovation that shut down the so-called safety meeting. The following day Mountain Bell relaxed its no-time-off policy. Despite the accolades praising my truth telling, it was also the day I realized I was unlikely to ever be promoted to be president of the company. A few years later, I decided to run for the legislature. Subsequently, I’ve enjoyed every day I’ve lived in the happiest state in the union (according to pollsters). During the past half century Colorado has slipped from the youngest average age in the nation to the second-youngest, right behind Hawaii, and dropped from skinniest to eighth skinniest. I still get irritated when those exercising authority over others are so out of touch with reality that they blithely abuse their authority. The good news is that I’m semi-retired and there’s a genuine chance for a great snow season this winter.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.