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December 14, 2004
No Phone? No Surprise
I'm not sure why this is so surprising. (Link via Fark)
Alexander Graham Bell's invention of 1876 never reached Mink, a onetime trappers' paradise in the Kisatchie National Forest in west-central Louisiana, although neighbors just down the road on Highways 117 and 118 were wired for telephones in the 1970s.
The telephone also never reached the hundred families of Shaw and Black Hawk, hunting and camping communities across the state along the Mississippi River, some of the few and untabulated places around the country lacking telephone lines. Yes, the telephone is not everywhere. In fact, televisions are more common in American homes today.
Doesn't surprise me at all. There wasn't a phone at my parents' house until I was a teenager, around 1974 or so. It wasn't because we couldn't afford it. The local phone company refused to run a line about 2 miles from the nearest hookup just to service the 6 or so families that lived on our ridge. Refused that is until some of us did what these folks did, collared a state rep during an election year & gave him an earful.
We got our phone line alright....and all 6 families were on the same party line. That was interesting for the 2 or 3 years that lasted. Then they split it into 2 party lines, which was a little better, but not much. I don't think my parents got a private line until well after I was grown & gone.
It wasn't as bad as you might think. See, that was during my wild teen-age years, when I was supposed to call home if I was going to miss my curfew. So if I hypothetically say, got so messed up I forgot to call, I had a perfect excuse.
"Daddy, honest, I tried to call for over an hour but I couldn't get through. Aunt Edith must've left the phone off the hook again."
Not that I ever did that. Much.
*ahem*
Posted by Rita at December 14, 2004 04:07 PM
Comments
Musta played hob with your dialup Net connection - or did you all have cable modems?
Posted by: triticale at December 14, 2004 09:40 PM
The only cable we had was the one running from the back of the tv to the antenna outside....and when the antenna pole would get water in it from a rainstorm, it would shock the crap out of you when you touched it for some reason. We got a grand total of 2 channels, NBC & CBS.
I was a severely deprived child. I had to *gasp* read for entertainment.
Posted by: rita at December 15, 2004 07:03 AM