If anyone has been trying to get hold of us…we apologize profusely*.  The good news is that the phone company has finally conceded that there might in fact be multiple problems, and that they are under contract for the inside as well…

I don’t think they were expecting hundreds of feet of copper wire, however.  The phone line is very solid wiring, put in place by Alexander Bell’s assistant, Frederick Shand Goucher, who was a relative by marriage.  (if not by Bell himself)  It isn’t the first telephone line in town (that belonged to the textile mills down in the valley) but it is certainly one of the first lines.  It has some quirks, one of which being that you really can’t disconnect it entirely; the big bells are literally hard-wired to the copper line.  Which explains why they ring when a lightning strike hits the line somewhere on the hill.

So far, the interior problem is an errant staple in the basement.  I bet the exterior problem is somewhere down the hill in the switchgear, again…

*Yes, I have a cell phone, it is five years old, I don’t use it, I don’t know what its number is; I carry it only when travelling, because you try finding a pay phone to call a tow truck in this day and age!