WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON WITH OUR PHONES?

We encourage you to contact us via email- (green.hope.farm@valley.net) if that is at all possible because our local phone company is in a bit of a tailspin. Many of you report getting a "no longer in service" and "line disconnected" message when you call us, when in fact, there are three or four of us here ready to answer your calls.

What is going on? The short version of the story is that our very small local phone company was bought by a midwestern phone company who then sold portions of our phone lines to some sort of retirement fund. This group knows nothing about phone line maintenance and since their intention was money making, they have been slow to make repairs or upgrades to their portions of the line. One of our neighbors is spearheading a campaign to put pressure on the company to fix the problems but for now, email works better because we do seem to get this without too much of a delay, whereas actual phone calls are more hit and miss.

The longer version of this story tells you much more about this dear little town we live in.

Meriden was literally the last town in this country to have a ring down phone system. Up until well into the 1970's, to call in to Meriden you had to call the White River Junction, VT operator and ask for a ring down to Meriden. This would take you to the front pallor of Hazel Chellis whose family owned the Meriden Telephone Co. or what we all called ChellBell. Hazel would connect the call to your line with a certain ring just for your phone.

When we arrived in town in 1979, Meriden had just gone to a dial system. Only three numbers were necessary to call anyone in town. The man who ran the company also fixed any phone problem, and David was a gem. His long time assistant Audrey knew everything about the system as well. Sometimes a fix was as simple as walking with one of them into the room where the phone system lived to watch David or Audrey twiddle for a moment. If the problem was on the line, David was out at once with his cherry picker to make the repair. He cheerfully clamored through many a basement crawl space to check everything from the actual phone jack to the telephone pole out on the street.

When the system changed and we had to dial all seven digits, it was a bit of a shock as was the sale of the company to a place in the midwest. No more Audrey and while David still works for the company, his expertise means he is in much demand at other places owned by this company.

We don't actually have cell phone coverage at the farm due to the surrounding mountains and the low population density, and lately, as you have noticed, the land line has not been much better. Emails get to us eventually so we have been encouraging you all to email when you can. We will keep you posted on our journey to the 21st century and phone service that works. Right now, a petition signed by all of us is about to be sent to the company in the midwest. A recent ice storm which knocked down many phone lines has no doubt made things even worse. We keep our fingers crossed that line upgrades are in our future!