Sing Me A Story> Can You Help Me Place This Call?

Kids, there used to be these things called payphones. Pay phones would be stationed in various areas by the local phone company and if someone was out and needed to reach someone, because cell phones didn’t exist yet, you could put in your coin and make the call home for a ride, or to see if a friend left their house yet, or whatever you needed at the time. If you didn’t have the phone number, probably because someone stole the phone book they kept inside if they had one at all, you could dial the operator and get the number or get help making the call.

It’s this outdated communication method that Jim Croce was thinking of with when he put out “Operator “That’s Not The Way It Feels”, off his 1972 debut album You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, his second single after the title track. I was listening to this while driving with my dad the other day (as I write this) and I noticed there was a story attached to it. So of course I looked it up.

Per usual in this series, we’ll start with a lyric video, to put focus on the words, as he tells the story from the perspective of a man trying to get a call to the woman who broke up with him for his best friend. As with many songs, this was inspired by an actual event Croce witnessed while in the military and elsewhere. This is not a happy song, but it’s not a dark song.

According to SongFacts, Croce was inspired by his time in the Army and what he saw one day while hanging out in the PX (that’s the “Post Exchange”, basically the store/post office on base) at the pay phone.

Ingrid Croce, who was married to Jim from 1966 until his death in 1973, told Songfacts the story of this song: “‘Operator’ is one of my favorite songs. I think it’s a pretty interesting song in the way in which it was composed. It’s probably like a lot of songs of Jim’s, but it’s one that I think a lot of people relate to in a whole bunch of different ways.

Jim and I had gotten married in 1966, and we had been waiting for him to go in the service. He was a National Guard, which he had joined with the hope that he would not be sent over, and he would be able to continue his education and his music career. So he signed up for the National Guard, and just as soon as we decided to get married – in August of 1966, the week before our little wedding – he got a letter that said that he would be leaving within two weeks for his National Guard duty down in South or North Carolina, so he was leaving with a very heavy heart.

At least they got married before he left, though apparently he’s not very good with authority and here he is going into the Army National Guard. Then again, while he was down there he found that might not be so lucky.

But anyway, he was standing there in the rain at a payphone. And he was listening to these stories of all these guys, the ‘Dear John’ stories, that were standing in line waiting their turn in the rain with these green rain jackets over their heads – I can just picture it, all of them in line waiting for their 3-minute phone call. Most of them were getting on the phone and they were okay, but some of them were getting these ‘Dear John’ letters, or phone calls. I think that was the most important aspect of the song, because it was just so desperate. You know, ‘I only have a dime’ and ‘You can keep the dime’ because money was very scarce and very precious, and I think if you look at the words to the song there are so many aspects of our generation that are in it.

‘Operator, could you help me place this call?’ I’m picturing Jim out in the rain and this long line of guys where they’re really trying to reach somebody. It was hard to get through, so you always had the operator do it for you.”

I saw somewhere else quoting an interview by Jim himself, noting that he saw a similar scenario at bars he was playing at, leading to this song. While it’s not clear where the caller in the song is at the time, the story is about him calling his ex, who ran to LA with his former friend, or at least trying to, wondering if he should at the end and opting not to, while showing us and the kind operator how badly the break-up affected him. Unless he’s just making a joke about “keeping the dime” from his home number, there is a reasons he’s using a pay phone instead, though it’s not really explained. Still, you get the point as you follow his slow acceptance that the relationship is over.

Apparently as a phone operator, you had a different connection to the song, as the one helping place these calls. I wonder how many of them put up with a caller referencing the song either to be funny or on accident? Kind of like the 1980s and poor Jenny.

Having the last name Croce made things interesting for Ingrid when she needed the services of an operator. She told Songfacts: “You can imagine how many operators over the years have said to me, ‘Are you any relation?’ You don’t get in touch with operators very much any more, but in the olden days when you’d call up and you’d say, ‘Can you help me?’ ‘Oh, what’s the name?’ I said, ‘Well, my name is Croce.’ ‘Like in Jim? Oh, we just love that ‘Operator.’ Hey Sadie, this is Ingrid Croce – you know, Jim Croce’s widow. And oh, we just love that song so much. He wrote it for us, we know he did…” I mean, from every aspect the song is truly Americana. And I think it really hits all generations, but certainly that one.”

Songfacts also notes that his son, AJ, was also a singer-songwriter, who avoided his dad’s songs to get ahead on his own. When he finally added those songs, “Operator” was a hit with audiences so he added them in. Jim Croce passed away soon after this song, in 1973, of a plane crash.

For Jim Croce, the touring life meant mostly one small collage campus after another. When he was killed at age 30 on September 20, 1973 in Natchitoches, Louisiana, he was doing what he had done many times before – taking off at night in a light plane from a small airstrip. The plane snagged in a treetop at the end of the dim runway outside Natchitoches, and sent 30-year-old Jim and five others to their deaths. Maury Muehleisen, Jim’s lead guitarist and constant companion, also died in the crash. The tree Jim Croce’s plane crashed into after leaving a gig at Northwestern College is gone, but Highway 1 takes you right to the end of the runway where the tragic incident occurred. Address: Natchitoches Regional Airport, Hwy 1, Natchitoches, LA.

Ingrid Croce would become a businesswoman thanks to vocal cord damaging ending her own musical career, while AJ would suffer an ear infection that left him mostly blind. Now he manages his father’s music library and performs some songs. A lot of tragedy (Croce also lost her parents, her father even dying when Jim was drafted), but they found a way to overcome and continue on. You have to admire that.