| By Dianne Weaver 2008
The power went off at the house, more problems with the line
on Pine
Creek Road. I called the 800 number in the phone book to report the
outage, a
somewhat common occurrence in the Village of Hur at the time. I got the AEP's
"Customer
Solution Center" and a recording "Punch 1 if you want...2 if you
want"...well, you know
the drill.
I did, after which I got the "Your call is important to us" message.
Then there was the
musical treat of Beatles tunes being played by an orchestra,
punctuated with a few
more "Your call is important to us" messages.
The "Customer Solution Center" asked me to punch in my phone number,
which I did.
A recorded voice said the "Solution Center" could not validate my home
phone
number, sorta like "You have performed an illegal operation." Funny
the phone company never has a problem validating it, when the bill is
due. I hung
up and went
through the whole thing one more time, dozing off to the muzak. I was
told again
"Your call is important to us."
After a long wait ("Stay on the line and a service representative will
assist you.")
Eureka! An honest to God, human person came on the line. The nice lady
asked,
"Where are you located"? I explained I lived in Calhoun County WV, the
county seat is
Grantsville and my mailing address is Mt. Zion 26151. There was a
pause. "What
address is your house?" she inquired. I explained I lived on Pine
Creek Road, but I
have a Mount Zion mailing address. There was a pause.
"Could you give me your phone number please?" I gave her my phone
number. Again,
that didn't seem to help matters. "So, you are on Pine Creek Road. I'm
checking." A
few moments later she said "Ma'am, there is a Pine Creek Road near
Omar,
WV." I replied,
"That's nice! Do they have power?" Again, I gave the pertinent
information, phone
number, road, address, county and state, she put me on hold. I thought
she may come
back on the line and ask for our sons immunization records, or perhaps
my mother's maiden name, but she only told me that
she was still checking.
Well, I finally got the drift and told the nice lady I was going to
hang up. She asked
why. I kindly told her I was going to fill my oil lamps, perk a pot of
coffee on the stove, like in the olden days and crank up the old
Victrola.
I inquired and
she told me the
friendly solution/service center was located in Columbus, Ohio. I
fought the urge to
tell her there is a Columbus in Georgia, Nebraska, Montana, Texas
and...but that
would have only lead to my asking, "Do they have power?"
God knows,
she would
have put me on hold while she checked.
In fairness, the local power company folks did get the power back on
quickly.
Apparently, one of our good neighbors had already been through the
drill!
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