Thanks, Alexander Graham Bell

The absence of a telephone didn’t bother our family, at least as I recall. We were a letter-writing group, especially during World War II with two brothers in the military awaiting news from home.

People walked not for the exercise but to their place of employment, shopping, visiting their friends, library, post office, school, church, you name it, we arrived by foot power. The sidewalks were constantly used and well maintained. Cars were visible but actually not many on the streets. Wartime gasoline rationing made a real difference.

Early one Sunday morning, Mama found a good reason to have a telephone installed. Out of the dark on this summer morning came awful growls, mechanical that is, right in our yard extremely close to our house.

Mama woke me and said to get dressed so we could use Rothrock’s telephone. She forbid me to turn on a light. Somehow I managed to get fully dressed. Rothrocks were not our closest neighbor; they simply lived in the safest direction!

Waking up our friends took a while, but they were most understanding. Mama telephoned the town cop, who appeared at the scene in short time. When daylight arrived, a strange car sat close to our house with our fence tangled underneath.

The inebriated young man couldn’t proceed any farther, that wire was tough. Actually that could have been a godsend preventing the driver from being involved in a worse accident.

That week our fence was repaired and a brand new black telephone was installed in our home; the same phone in the same place 37 years later.

When Mama told about this episode, we all ended up laughing as she said the lights at the Rothrock house showed that Mama’s shoes were on the wrong feet.

Mama used the telephone more as the years went by. She had earned the reputation as one who on getting a wrong number would strike up a meaningful conversation. I once was present when this happened. She looked on those times, not as intrusions, but opportunities to converse with a new friend.

Helen DePuydt is a regular contributor to the Courier and a member of a homesteading family in the Saco area. All of her stories are true.