“It’s the American Way”

A couple weeks ago, I got a dinner-time telemarketer call from Frontier Communications.
Frontier Communications is what became of mighty Rochester Telephone, at one time the local telephone utility.
For years Rochester Telephone was our local phone company, as it was for the entire Rochester area. But competition arose from cellphone companies, and other phone services not needing the landline system.
Rochester Telephone sold to Global Crossing, and that tanked; their CEOs absconding with retiree pension funds (sort of).
Portfolios of Global Crossing stock, purchased by Global Crossing employees for retirement, dropped to nothing, while the CEOs fled with golden parachutes.
The assets of Global Crossing were bought by Frontier Communications, which I think is based in Florida.
So now our landline service is administered by an outside supplier not tied to Rochester.
Of course, telephone service has changed vastly since the days of Ernestine, and the rotary phone.
(I remember my mother calling the operator in Haddonfield to make a phonecall.
And party-lines. Ours in Erlton was the Whites. Calling Gil White was a dance — see if it works this time.
And “Uh-ohhhh...... Can’t use the phone now. Mrs. White is talking to her mother.”)
On the one hand you have the cellphone companies, and on the other hand you have the local cable company trying to supply telephone service.
Telephone wars. —And every day a giant Frontier service-truck is up the street servicing the junction-box.
I’ve been tempted to dump the landline — I use the cellphone most of the time — but I had a mother-in-law in Floridy who staunchly refused to call our cellphones.
Although she has since — like there’s any discernible difference.
Local landline service was also a mess out here in the country.
Many towns had their own tiny phone companies independent of Rochester Telephone.
So a telephone call from here in West Bloomfield to nearby Canandaigua was long-distance. Um, that’s 15 miles, everyone.
“Don’t call Canandaigua with the landline. Use the cellphone.”
The import of the telemarketer call was a complete package of telephone service on equal footing with their competitors.
Like calling Canandaigua without it being long-distance.
A slew of features I’ll never use are included — except we already have voicemail, and use the cellphone for long-distance.
All that for only $29.95 per month. Our average monthly landline bill was about $32 — and that was the most basic service, suggested by ‘Pyooter-Guru at the mighty Mezz: only metered calls.
“This package costs less than your current phone-bill,” she trumpeted. “It’s the American Way, Mr. Hughes!” (Cue Star-Spangled-Banner with fireworks.)
Um, the American Way is to save two bucks on my phone-bill? On features I won’t use; on a system I hardly use?
“But you need Caller-ID, Mr. Hughes. That way you could send your brother to voicemail, and let him fulminate there.”
Um, my phone-bill last month was 48 smackaroos — although that was mainly charges to hook up the $29.95 package.

We lived in Erlton (“EARL-tin”), NJ, north of Haddonfield; both suburbs of Philadelphia, although across the river in south Jersey. “Haddonfield” went all the way back to before the Revolutionary War. “Erlton” was founded in the ‘30s.

We live in the rural town of “West Bloomfield,” in Western New York.

The “‘Pyooter-Guru” was the techy at the “mighty Mezz,” the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over two years ago. Best job I ever had.

RE: “That way you could send your brother to voicemail, and let him fulminate there........” —My “brother” is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. He calls me on my cellphone and blusters noisily on my voicemail.