The kitchen wall phone at camp rang late in deer season on a wailing wind, bone-chilling night. I have learned from unpleasant experience that any call after 9 p.m. when I’m up in the woods alone is rarely good news. The ringing was a bit of a surprise since we supposedly had the landline turned off for the winter, except for the ability to make 911 call-outs. What this really means is we’ll still get a bill from the Cowflop Phone & Farm Fresh Duck Eggs Company, but it will be lower than in-season rates, supposedly.
The 911 feature is somewhat compromised realizing the emergency response time will probably be an hour, at least, in good weather. The rescue squad showing up during snow, sleet and ice season between October through April is a crap shoot, time wise. Also, the lakeside shack is near the end of a dirt and gravel road. Potholes a bonus. Snowplowing? Only if you pay a local to do it. I did, once in 23 years, when even my 4×4 truck couldn’t handle a wall of snow.
The phone call was from our son in Georgia telling me my Christmas present of a favorite brand of pipe tobacco was in the mail. I said a polite “thank you” and refrained from informing him that Christmas was nearly a month previous, but somewhat relieved that it was not a call announcing a death in the family. I got the news of my nephew’s untimely death and the passing of an old Marine Corps pal from the camp wall phone. Thus, it rings and I involuntarily shudder. “What fresh hell is this?”
After my son’s benign call, I immediately placed one to my wife at home in New Jersey inquiring gruffly why the phone was still on. She patiently told me – aka “Crank Face” – to calm down, and reported that she indeed did call the CP&FFDE Company to request a turnoff at least a month ago. Okay, call the nitwits again I suggested – now in my velvet “I surrender” tone of voice.
The camp phone is somewhat essential during deer season since I’m up there by myself, now without my old pal “Charlie the Brittany.” Cell phone reception is spotty unless I drive up to the cemetery (scenario appropriate) on a hilltop a mile away. This is assuming I haven’t fallen and “can’t get up.” My wife is a phone conglomerate empire director level retiree. She loathes the phone company. After nearly 30 years of service, the “company” was ready to throw her under the bus, pension wise. Fortunately she dodged, somewhat, that bullet and loves her sleek and snazzy cell phone, just not the intergalactic greed head company.
But I shun phones the way anybody who has spent time in the military standing in a long chow line hates waiting for a table at a restaurant…or waiting of any kind. A good part of my life was spent answering phones and reluctantly making calls. They were the life blood and only connection to the outside world when I was a newspaper reporter, long before computers, the AI scourge, the Internet and Google. Call “customer service?” You’re probably dealing with a robot, pal.
Back in the day, the phone book was our Bible; the Reverse Directory a miracle of its time. And there were real living persons on the other end of the line. But the cell phone has replaced the two-way radios and CB radio units every surfcaster had in his truck to find out the exact spot – after letting some air out of the tires of course – where to find a bonanza blitz of feeding blues or stripers. Yes, I had a dashboard CB set (“radio check” here) and a cooler and rod rack mounted on the F-150’s front bumper…also kaput, as is my ability to effectively sling a long surf rod.
I had a couple of old pals, one still standing, who acted like teenagers when it came to social media and their zippity-do-da, “smart” phones, 47 apps, bells and whistles. They would not even take a bet that they could possibly function even one-day without those crutch connection gizmos. To wit: Who in God’s name makes cell phone calls back to their pretend businessmen’s offices in Traffic Circle, NJ on a “Fishing with the Guys” vacation, while standing in front of Dan Bailey’s Fly shop in Livingston, Montana? Head out to the Yellowstone River and try to fool some trout? “Not right now, gotta make two more calls.” Shoot me now.
Those two somewhat lovable bozos continued to yap on their cell phones, and remembering that distressing scene always reminds me of the words of a favorite Adirondack guide, who for the longest time (he had a boat-to-shore radio for emergencies) would not allow clients to bring cell phones on his boat, commenting, with much derision, that: “Those things skip across the water almost as good as a flat rock.”
Amen.
