“Phone Girls Give Numbers by Guess, Thieves Take All they Want”

“An engine at the power plant faltered, stuttered, well, anyway something happened to it about 10:15 o’clock last night and the lights went out. Not just a few lights, but all of them!

Then things began to happen.

The police blotter for the evening shows the darkness evidently did not bother the light fingered gentry for they managed to get away with a bicycle from the Citizen building belonging to Lawrence Jacobson, another from the Southern Pacific belonging to Ralph Hart, and a third from the Lyric theater belonging to Joe Yrigayen.

Two coats and a pleated skirt were taken from the home of Lilliam and Myrtle Marlowe, South Third Avenue, and the front seat cushion of a Ford belonging to the City Engineer’s department, driven by George T. Grove is listed as missing.

The “hello girls” of the Tucson exchange, as much in the dark as anyone else, passed out numbers by guess with the result of making conversations by telephone a rather haphazard affair for the darkened period, and a local dance hall enjoyed a prolonged moonlight dance until the engines resumed operation.

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Arizona Historical Society

Tucson’s telephone exchange in 1940

Newspaper offices temporarily suspended operation, as did pool rooms, candy stores and smoke shops, while in restaurants, knives and forks were held poised, useless, for fear of personal injury.

Then the lights came on, the engine was itself again.”