Number please...

In our last post we discussed the new complication to dialing phone numbers here in GroveAtopia.  The modern age has forced us to have to use an area code no matter where we are calling, whether it be across the street or across the country.

Now we will turn our attention to the opposite.  While GroveAtopia has many devices from the modern era - cell phones, cordless phones, answering machines, DSL and a new WiFi service - to name a few, we also still have things from the olden days.   One of those things is a good old fashioned answering service.

The Cottage Grove Answering Service has been around for 30 years, but the switchboard is from the 1930s.  Yep, to answer calls, Kitty Slack, who is the sole operator and on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, uses is an old fashioned switchboard  - the kind where you pull the plug out of one mysterious hole, and put it into another.  Miraculously the call is answered.

Why on earth would anyone still use such a service?  Well it turns out in this day and age, people are getting tired of leaving impersonal messages and talking to machines.  So if you use Kitty's answering service, your customers or patients or whoever calls you will, no matter what time of day or night, no matter what day of the week, always talk to a real person.  Kitty.

Some of Kitty's customers have been with her from the very beginning.  Others joined later.  Still later she added to her service.  She is GroveAtopia's only FedEx drop off point.  She also collects payments for people's phone bills, water bills, electric bills, cell phone bills and insurance bills.  And she sells some of her crafts in the store.  And she has a pretty garden in her parking strip out front.

Kitty never leaves the place.  She even sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor near the switchboard so she is always available to answer a  call.  But really she doesn't need to leave, because at one time or another, if you live in GroveAtopia, you will find yourself visiting Kitty for one reason or another.  And when you do, you'll know you've just visited a place from the past.  But it won't seem that way.  It will seem just as natural as can be.

Next time you are here, be sure stop by.  If you listen very closely you'll hear the fairies.  They gather each day to watch over the place because they, like us are charmed by it.  I think they even help her late at night when she may not feel like answering the phone.  I think they it answer for her.  After all, who would know?