LEFT BEHIND

            Rural America is slowly losing its options.  The phone companies no longer want to maintain hard infrastructure; they've gradually abandoned them over the last 10 years expecting wireless to take over everything.

             In our house and most places on our farm, my cell phone doesn't work.  Every time we get a lot of rain, the land lines malfunction.   Once it dries out, they usually begin to work, but not always. 

             We have several homes on the farm for the various families, apprentices, and staff.  One of them has not had a functioning land line (Verizon) for months.  Finally we were able to punch through the robots and get a repair date:  December, 2021.  Folks, you can't make this stuff up.  We pay the bill every month for 50 years and now they tell us we can expect a repair in December, 2021.

             Why not just say "Forget it.  We're leaving you behind."

             So the land line doesn't work.  We don't have cell service.  What if we need to call 911?  Too bad. 

             Well, at least we have internet service--NOT.  Money is not the problem; we don't mind buying dependable service and we've tried numerous options and currently use the best option we can find.  But it's still spotty.  Cloud cover, some wind, change in the weather and sometimes for no reason at all we're suddenly out of service.  And even when we have it it's slow.  That means we can't run credit cards in the farm store.

             So imagine trying to run a business, to handle phone calls, orders, and communication when your wifi is out, your landline phone is out, and you get no cell service.  Just go ahead and work from home in that situation.  My handy dandy Verizon Jetpack that's my lifeline when I'm traveling doesn't work where there's no cell service, so that's not an option.

             Two days ago I had two podcasts on Zoom scheduled.  Because the internet was down, I couldn't get the link or the phone number to call if I had trouble.  Wendy, our PR guru, had left the farm after being unable to answer phone calls and handle customer sales.   I called her at her house in town and asked her to get on the Zoom link and give me the emergency phone number of the host.  Even to place the call to Wendy, I had to go up to the Methodist Church a mile away on higher terrain.  She got me going and I did the podcast via phone in the picnic pavilion at the Methodist church.

             For the second one, I was in the same pickle but it couldn't be done on the phone; it was a Zoom, which required the internet.  At the church, my Jetpack still wouldn't work even though the cell phone worked.  So Wendy called another neighbor who is on a higher hill and I went up there with the Jetpack, got on Zoom, and did the podcast with the Jetpack from their back yard.

             So we've canceled three phone numbers in the last two days; they are not being replaced.  We've hounded the wifi supplier.  They say they're working on it.

             Welcome to rural America.  The "public utilities" like Verizon don't care a lick about taking care of their infrastructure.  Apparently nobody wants to upgrade cell service.  I don't know what all the answers are, but as I see our country pouring money to government workers who haven't lost their jobs or pensions, retirees who are still getting steady government paychecks, and other wasteful things, I can't help but wonder if rural America is being dismissed as unnecessary in the national conscience.

             The pandemic pushing home sheltering magnifies this disparity for students, rural businesses, and even access to 911.  If we could just put a racial twist on this, we might garner some traction.  Bummer; it's just country folks of various ethnicities trying to interact with the culture.  This might be the biggest social justice issue of our day.  Not whining; just shining a light on an elephant in the room.

             Any country folks out there with similar stories?