From: malQassRimiMlation@gmail.com   
      
   On Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 02:40:15AM +0000, Moderator wrote:   
   > A 90-year-old California man grabbed national attention last week   
   > after placing two ads in The Wall Street Journal calling out AT&T for   
   > providing shoddy internet service.   
      
   As I read this message, it occurred to me that I have a similar story   
   to tell. When I was very young, my family moved from Boston to Dedham,   
   Massachusetts. It took a few days, but we got a phone put in, that had   
   a real person who asked "number please?" when I picked it up and asked   
   if she was a real person.   
      
   I found out, years later, that there was a story behind that phone - a   
   "300" set, black, and on a side table in our living room, of course -   
   that reminds me about how little some things change with time. You   
   see, the day before they put the phone in, my dad had talked to a man   
   who came to our front door at night, and talked about Emerson circle,   
   which was the place my mom send me to get distilled water for her   
   clothes iron, at a pharmacy named after the traffic circle named after   
   someone named "Emerson."   
      
   My father wasn't one to let the truth get in the way of a good story,   
   and I remember some rather thinly stretched pieces of Bologna that he   
   fed us over the years - but there were a few occasions when I was   
   given incontrovertible evidence that some of even his most thinly   
   stretched slices of Bologna did, in fact, have meat in them.   
      
   The man at the door that night, I later learned, was an outside plant   
   supervisor, telling my father that there were two crews stretching   
   cable up to us from Emerson Circle, and asking if 7 PM would be close   
   enough to "on time" for his pleasure. My dad thanked him and said it   
   was.   
      
   It turned out that he had gone to the phone company to order a phone   
   line installed in our brand-new house, and the CSR had told him that   
   he might be able to get an eight-party line in six months, and a   
   private line in a couple of years. My dad asked if he could use her   
   phone, and he called my grandfather, a state representative and   
   chairman of the oversight committee for the Public Utilities   
   Commission, and told him that his daughter couldn't call him because   
   there weren't enough wires to connect her new home.   
      
   Bill   
      
   --   
   Bill Horne   
   (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)