Jul 10, 2007 By James Pletcher 4 min read

I couldn’t phone home.

Like the fictional character from another galaxy, I, too, was having trouble getting through to our little house in town via the telephone. We had been having some problems with the telephone over the past several months. First, we had a lot of intermittent static on the line, making it difficult to converse. It seemed to get worse after a heavy rain and cleared up during bright, sunny weather. I assumed it was a problem with one of the telephone sets in the house because if I jiggled the phone cord, it seemed to relieve the noise. It didn’t work all the time, just some of the time.

The next problem to erupt was more recent – no dial tone. I’d lift the receiver from its cradle ready to make a call and there’d be nothing – no sound, dead as a doornail.

The first time it happened I called the telephone company on my wife’s cell phone. I spoke to a nice (computerized) lady with a very pleasant demeanor who asked questions, to which I replied yes or no. I finally scheduled a service call.

Shortly afterwards, on a whim, I dialed our home number on the cell phone and it rang. That seemed to correct the problem so I called the phone company and canceled the service call.

The phone continued to die, however, but I revived it by calling our number from the cell phone.

I still thought the problem was in one of our telephone sets. Our cordless phone had been acting up, so I guessed it might be the culprit.

I tried different things to overcome the trouble because I didn’t want to have to contact the phone company. If the difficulty wasn’t on the outside line, I would have to pay for any inside repairs and that could get very, very expensive.

But then the phone really died. There was nothing I could do to resurrect the dial tone.

Now, when I was a teenager, not having a working telephone in the house was about as bad as learning your steady girlfriend was two-timing you with the captain of the football team.

Perspective changes with age. Since we have a cell phone, I wasn’t overly concerned with rushing to get the home phone back on line. And, the telephone company offers instructions on how to do your own line test. At the time, rain flooded down so it was several days before I could perform the task.

All I had to do was open the phone box on the outside of the house, unplug the line and plug in a good telephone. If I had a dial tone, the repair needed to be done inside. If there was no dial tone, the repair would be on the outside.

Sure enough, the outside line seemed to be the culprit. That was good news since it meant the phone company was responsible and I wouldn’t have to pay for the repair. It also meant that my telephone sets were likely in proper working order.

I called the nice computer-generated voice again and scheduled a service call. Fortunately, the repairperson could come the very next day. A very capable woman responded to my call. Not only did she get us a dial tone but she also discovered and repaired the problem with the static.

We are noiselessly and clearly communicating again with the outside world.

I’m old enough to remember when things were much different in the telephone industry.

Cell phones didn’t exist, you could get a telephone in any color you wanted as long as it was black and if you needed a repair the phone company would have someone at your house the same day. It was also one of the less expensive utilities you had.

But then the government decided the phone company had too great a monopoly and did something about it.

The result: higher prices, do-it-yourself repairs and a variety of equipment and services that would confuse Einstein.

Things just keep getting better, don’t they?

Have a good day.

James Pletcher Jr. is Herald-Standard business editor. He can be reached at 724-439-7571 or by e-mail at jpletcher@heraldstandard.com.