hehe hehe... hell... Seein' how yer out there where "neighbors" are defined by bein' the people you can get to within an hour on a fast horse... it's sorta' a miracle you have phone lines... :-)
Okay, I know this is really gonna be hard to believe, but when I bought my place out here outside Valley Mills near The Ranch, the phone lines were run for several miles along with the barbed wire on the cattle fences. They only got the last of that replaced within the last 10 years. At that time only 4 people could be on the phone "outside town" at a time. There were 24 houses in "town."
This was the state of phone lines when I got my first internet connection. I had to call long distance to Waco for dial-up. With only 4 people being able to call out of town at a time though, it was often difficult to get a line to even use that dial-up.
Also kinda splains why there are so many of us HAM operators out around here.