I’m fair to middlin’ sure Independence Day has virtually nothing to do with telephones. If you have your mouth set for a patriotic, or maybe not so patriotic, essay about independence, liberty, and the American way you are going to be disappointed. Try not to hold it against me. I don’t mean to be bad.

I have always been fascinated with telephones. The concept of picking up a piece of plastic, punching a few buttons, and then be visiting with someone in another part of the world flat boggles my dinosaur brain. It’s nothing short of magic.

When I was a yonker, which is an archaic western word meaning young’un, making a phone call was quite different than it is today. We were well passed the crank phone days but in rural America, operator assistance was necessary to place a call. We didn’t have to dial any numbers. Picking up the phone alerted the operator. She, and it always was a she, would come on the line to ask the number of whom you were calling. Generally you didn’t have to give her a number, only a name. Everyone knew everyone. I’d tell her I wanted to speak to Daddy. She knew who Daddy was and where he happened to be at that moment.

Long distance calls required time and patience. After giving the operator the name and the number, you hung up the phone and waited while the call was being routed across the country. Once the operator at the callee’s locale got them on the line, the call was routed back across country. Back in those days, an operator announcing “long distance calling” brought people on the run.

When I rented my first apartment, which was after I got out of the service, I had a phone put in every room, including the bathroom. That gave me four phones. I didn’t know anyone to call at the time but, by damn, I was ready to talk should the occasion arise. When the phone rang, I ran the few steps it took to grab the phone. For a while, it was usually either a wrong number or a phone solicitor.

Back in the day, you couldn’t own a phone. You had to lease one from the phone company. They were the only phone company in town and they damn well acted like it. You paid extra for every extension line you had too and they were know to watch the meter to catch “phone pirates.”

During the early ‘70s, after an extended period of unemployment, I went to work as a debt collector – a telephone debt collector. After a few months working the phones, my fascination with the phone waned just a bit. It was still magical, but having a phone stuck to your left ear for eight plus hours a day put a bit of a patina on the shine. I wasn’t so eager to talk on the phone during the evening. Yet, in those days before caller ID and answering machines, when it rang - I ran. You never know. It could be important. It never was, but it could have been.

I bought an answering machine in the mid ‘80s after my boss called me on Memorial Day to tell me to repossess a car for his church’s credit union. For some reason, they felt it had to be done on a holiday and he felt his down time was more valuable than mine. I didn’t agree. I was already working 90 hours a week. My disagreement didn’t stop me from going after the car. He trumped my answering machine by grafting a damned pager onto my life. I finally trumped the pager by going into business for myself. That meant I suddenly acquired a whole lot of bosses.

I quit giving my home phone number to clients when one of them called at 0400 one morning to tell me they had spotted a car we were looking for at some bar. Try being polite at that hour when you haven’t made the transition from drunk to hung-over. In case you’re wondering, I didn’t get up and go hunting.

Phones are still magic to me. My mind reels at the complexity of the system. I have, however, realized the phone is there for my convenience. If I don’t answer, it may mean I’m away or it may mean I didn’t feel like talking to a particular someone at that moment. It is virtually impossible for something so catastrophic to happen that it demands my personal and immediate attention.

Someone is in the hospital dying? Okay. I’m not a doctor. If they’re that close to death, I can assure you they will be dead by the time I get there. Someone died? I can’t bring them back to life. They’ll still be dead when I get around to calling back. Someone needs blood? Call Red Cross. I don’t do blood.

So give me a call. I might answer. Kat will definitely answer. She runs when the phone rings. She is a lot friendlier to talk to, so just call her.

I’m nearly at 900 words. The way they’re arranged isn’t funny or particularly interesting. There isn’t a moral. There isn’t a message. There surely isn’t anything about red, white, and blue. It is what it is and it ain’t a thang, that’s for sure.

It’s the 4th of July. Happy Birthday, America.

Life is sweet – sometimes because I plain and simple don’t give a rat’s ass.