[EternalVigilance]

We didn’t know anything else but party lines when I was a kid.

And yes, Ma Bell owned the phones and all of the equipment.

Seems so strange now.

[Hebrews 11:6]

I don't expect cell-phones would exist now if the phone monopoly hadn't been broken. Except, of course, for Dick Tracy's "2-Way Wrist Radio →".

[Hebrews 11:6]

True and revealing story about Ma Bell. About 1978 I had Bell install a couple of extension phones at our business. When the installers left, one extension didn’t work, so I called 611—repair. They said to call the installers back, so I tried, but they insisted it was a repair call. I tried repair one last time, with the same run-around. So I called the supervisor, got nowhere, and started going up the chain of command, without success. Finally, on about my fifth transfer, I reached the President of Bell for the eleven western states, in person, described the bizarre responses of his staff, and promised him my next call would be to Bell corporate in New York, collect. Of course, he didn’t want his boss to think he couldn’t handle one puny customer, so I had SIX repairmen at my business within thirty minutes.