Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown, NY

Soon after joining Southern Bell in 1964, my boss called me in to announce that I had been selected for a three month training program run by the Bell System at a deluxe resort hotel in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The hotel was leased by Bell during the off season and it became an advanced data communications training facility with rooms overlooking scenic Lake Otesaga, meals in the gourmet dining room, and a color television in the lobby. Don’t laugh; Saturday Night at the Movies on the only  color TV in the hotel had the lobby jammed on Saturday evenings.

Our training routine was pretty demanding in terms of homework but there was still time to see
the town and the beautiful surrounding Adirondack Mountains. Cooperstown was a small burg
with maybe two traffic lights. When one of the guys called the local theater one evening to find out when the movie began, he was asked, “When can you be here?” For all that, it still boasted
several museums, not the least of which is the nationally known Baseball Hall of Fame. Of
course, Cooperstown is supposed to have been the place where baseball was invented.

After being there only a couple of weeks in December, it snowed and the ground was covered until I left Cooperstown three months later. I awoke one morning to look out over the lake and
overnight, small fishing shacks had sprung up on the ice. That was a new one for me.

It was drawn and quartered by the Department of Justice in 1984, but until then the Bell System
was the world’s largest corporation and wielded power beyond just telephones. On our bus trip
back to catch planes at Kennedy airport, we were running late and Ma Bell arranged somehow for a police escort through the City, sirens, flashing lights and all. But as we looked out the windows we were being passed by taxi cabs on both sides. So much for fear of the police in New York in 1964.

When I got back to Louisville I was greeted by a notice from the draft board. The Vietnam war was really heating up and I was classified 1A. That was before the lottery system was invented and meant that I was at the front of the line for being drafted into the Army.