I’m nit sure what the boundaries were at the time, but whiteout walking today I came across this song on Willie’s Roadhouse (Sirius)… 1965m I’d only worked for WeCo a couple years… Definitely caught my…ear!
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Was there such a thing as “Southern Bell” in those pre-RBOC days? Maybe in one state? Here in Michigan we had Michigan Bell---->Ameritech---->SBC----->AT&T
Steve
I wasn’t sure, I had investments in BellSouth as I consolidated the various spinoffs, and so, from out here in the Pacific Bell area it wasn’t all that clear, so I looked a little more and found this gem:
ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company was once the Bell Operating Company serving the states of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina prior to the breakup of AT&T. The company was originally known as the Atlanta Telephonic Exchange, having been created to service citizens of Atlanta in 1879, before it was renamed in 1882.
Southern Bell also operated in Charleston and other parts of West Virginia, from 1883 until 1917, when the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia took over operations there.
Southern Bell originally served nine Southern states. On December 20, 1967, the western portion of the Southern Bell territory (Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee) was split off as South Central Bell Telephone Company.
Southern Bell, originally incorporated in New York, was reincorporated in Georgia in 1983 as SBT&T Co. The original Southern Bell was then merged into SBT&T Co., at which point that company was renamed Southern Bell. Since BellSouth, the new owner of Southern Bell and South Central Bell upon the divestiture of AT&T, was based in Georgia, it was more practical to have Southern Bell incorporated in the same state. Southern Bell was renamed BellSouth Telecommunications until It was merged into AT&T in 2006.
Southern Bell was headquartered in (what is now) the AT&T Midtown Center building in Atlanta, Georgia. Most Atlanta operations have now been relocated to AT&T Headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. Downtown Atlanta’s telephone exchange is located in the Art Deco AT&T Communications Building.
Bell life was so complicated over the years, it took me a while to consolidate all the bits and pieces, splits, mergers, I did track a lot of it at one time, , eventually gave up, merged all into AT&T shares, but still also hold some Verizon shares as well… Lucent, well, that was another story…
I was mostly surprised to hear the reference in that song, and the Video wasn’t too bad either! 
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Bell life was so complicated over the years, it took me a while to consolidate all the bits and pieces, splits, mergers,
I have seen ads for a computer program that can take a pre-divestiture cost bases, and crank out cost basises for all the resulting parts.
Lucent, well, that was another story…
My aunt finally sold her Alcatel, shortly before the merger with Nokia. Was not paying a divi. My uncle had not kept any cost basis info for all the T he acquired from the 50s through the early 80s. The Alcatel position had shrunk to fiddling small change, so little cap gain to pay with the default cost basis of zero. If she had had cost basis info, it probably would have taken years to work off the capital loss at $3,000/year.
Frontier went BK, so that solves one cost basis problem as that stock went to zero.
My aunt called up one day, wondering about a name on documents she was receiving. It was another name change U S West---->Qwest---->Century---->Lumen.
Steve
I had held a few shares of LU that became NOK through it all, but selling off the last of it opened the door to those years of $3K losses… Guessing at the cost basis was abut what we had to do with some shares, the complexities of going back through payroll deductions on a weekly check, couple with monthly buys, as well as all the variable purchase prices made it impossible… Pick a number, let anyone try to prove it wrong, seems to be working, a guesstimate…
I had old MS Excel workbooks, detailing buys, splits, mergers with the dates, but again, not all the dates, I’m sure, and now the current Office 365 Excel refuses to open the earlier files… Some I was able to open in Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet, but all the linkages were gone… So, guesstimates… I still retain all, or at least all I know of, the paperwork sent to me over the years, a file drawer of the various accounts I found after retiring… ESOPs and all, but I doubt they’ll ever be needed, In fact my EJ agent told me at one point to just dump/shred them all, but being me, a collector, I just put them back in the file cabinet…
Now AAPL, I did find the initial purchase dates, from back in the early '90s, so cost basis there would be solid…
All those name changes… a piece of Frontier popped up a while back, someday will have to merge it into something or other…
In fact my EJ agent told me at one point to just dump/shred them all, but being me, a collector, I just put them back in the file cabinet…
Going through my uncle’s stuff, with my aunt, after he died, I found hand written forms from when he checked material out of the tool room in the Michigan Bell office in Kalamazoo, in the late 40s, but cost info on the stock? Nope.
Steve
Yep, a lot of guys ignored stocks, even those in ESOPs or others gifted much less matching, so likely tossed any mailings out of habit…
I mistakenly, in our Lucent times, saw how much work we had, how I was working long hours, weekends, couldn’t believe we could blow it, so had maxed out contributions, DW worked, so it was not a burden, and as it climbed I did pause, had my finger on the button to move off to safer funds, but at the last moment cancelled that order… Big mistake… I held over 10K shares of LU at one point, same as my 2nd level manager, we both rode 'em down to cab fare… Memorable…
…had my finger on the button to move off to safer funds, but at the last moment cancelled that order…
I had been a bit nervous about LU, but saw Rich McGinn on CNBC, and he talked a great story. I had my human broker on the phone, trading something else around 3:30 one afternoon, with CNBC running on the TV in the room. I noticed a lot of LU crossing the tape, but, it could be foreknowledge either way, so I didn’t sell. Moments after 4:00, LU issued it’s first warning. The stock crashed the next day, but bounced a few days later, so I sold the IRA position. I was also in their DRIP. That took longer to cash out of.
Steve
Me: Couldda, Wouldda, Shouldda, but Didn’t…
I recall that moment often… I had, at that moment, $386K, if I am remembering correctly, ready to move off the table, online, on our Employee Investments site and cancelled it… And was so tangled up in projects, newbies on the job as well as several transferred in that may as well had been newbies, pressures to get the switches up, a big CLEC project, that I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have… Lots of hindsights…
Our District level had the sense to bail out up top, which really ticked of my Area manager, but legally, I’m sure he dare not tip anyone off anyway, but… At one tome there had been more than double what I was going to move, but…
Anyway my AAPL has done much better, on paper at least, well dividends, too…
Survived… In spite of myself…