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We have been without TV, phone and internet service for the past couple of weeks. The cable company blames it on Hurricane Michael. I pointed out when I borrowed a phone and called to complain that we DID have these services for the first month after the storm. They were polite, seemed sympathetic to our plight but you couldn’t dynamite them away from their “catastrophic weather” excuse.
It must be tough being a major category hurricane. There are new insurance rules, costs and requirements, stricter building codes and more government planning oversight today…..all still being blamed on Hurricane Andrew…which blew ashore in the last century for goodness sakes!
The TV hasn’t been a big loss…except for missing the SEC championship game. But the DVD player works, and I’ve got the complete “Rawhide” series and the Burt Lancaster movie, “Valdez Is Coming”.
No phone has actually been a bit of a blessing. I haven’t been asked to give a talk or explain to Judy from Time-Life why I’m not interested in Rock and Roll’s Golden Hits from the 1950’s. She doesn’t remember one song from the whole packet—and I can’t get them to stop bouncing around in my head.
Up to date information is another matter. We’ve grown accustomed to instant news via the various internet feeds. MSN, Facebook, instant messages, etc., keep us in the loop as to births, deaths, ball scores, shoot outs, Mexican border crossings, Thanksgiving Day parades, congressional boondoggling and the most up to date pictures of Traci Gaddis’s grandchildren.
This cable loss reminds me of the old days when the morning newspaper was everyone’s window to the world. It wasn’t instant. It was always one day behind but it was the best we had growing up in the decade that Judy from Time-Life has only read about in history books.
My first ever “remembrance” of a newspaper was courtesy of the Commercial Appeal out of Memphis. Mom laid the front section on the kitchen table as she prepared breakfast. In the largest boldest print you could imagine, the headlines declared “Eisenhower!” It was the first Wednesday after the first Monday in November, 1952. I would have been five years old. And I couldn’t have actually read the story underneath if I had been a mind to, which I wasn’t.