People who came of age in the past twenty years or so don’t remember much about “The Bell System“. But for old fogies like me, Bell Telephone (aka “Ma Bell”, the nick-name given to AT&T and the local affiliates that ran most of the telephone phone system in the United States up thru 1984) was once a way of life. It was how you made a call. The bell logo (which was a tribute to the telephone’s founder, Alexander Graham Bell) was almost everywhere you looked; on phone books (remember those?), on phone booths (ditto), on your phone bill, on maintenance trucks, advertisements, utility buildings . . .

But the world has changed, and the Bell System is an idea whose time has long passed. There are all kinds of different companies out there today offering a menu of different phone services. But the old Bell organization should not be forgotten, as it was well run; in the first half of the Twentieth Century it allowed the telephone to become a critical component of American life, for both business and social purposes. Bell / AT&T did its job and did it well.

And interestingly enough, you don’t have to walk very far today in most any town before you can see evidence of the old Bell organization. You simply need to know where to look. And that is to look down. There are still thousands and thousands of manhole covers in the streets bearing the Bell logo (ah, “manhole cover” — another antiquated, politically incorrect phrase!). Given how long cast-iron covers last, it could be many decades before the last symbol of the old Bell infrastructure is put to scrap. I took a little walk around my own neighborhood, and hardly had to venture more than two blocks to find several old Bell covers. So I snapped a few pix, in tribute to the enduring legacy of the old AT&T / Bell organization. Enjoy!