This Is My Home, Where Microwaves (Sometimes) Roam

 

My parents made sure to instill in their children the feeling of being proud that we are Wyomingites.  This pride stems not from conceit or arrogance, rather from the fact that Wyoming is unique and special in so many ways.  Its landscape, history, people and culture all make being born and raised here an extraordinary experience.
               
After college I lived in a metropolis of eight million people for many years, and when I told others about my home state they registered a wide-eyed sense of awe and curiosity.  Many showed downright admiration. 
                
They always had lots of questions.  ‘What’s it like growing up there?’ usually was the first thing out of their mouths.  I would tell them I grew up in a very small town in northwest Wyoming (Basin) that has about 1,100 people and is about an hour from Yellowstone National Park.  Many times I would grab a pen and reach for a cocktail napkin, a convenient, made-to-match visual aid of Wyoming’s boundaries on which I would sketch our many scenic points of interest.  How many other states are lucky enough to have such a handy drawing canvass?
               
I developed many ways to describe how tiny and insular my hometown is.  I would tell them that it is so small there is no stoplight; in drivers’ education class we had to drive seven miles to Greybull to practice on its two stoplights.  That it is so small residents ask the clerk to open their boxes at the post office if they have forgotten their keys.  That we never locked our homes or cars when I was growing up.  And that integrity was universal and accountability essential to one’s good standing in the community.
                           
Sometimes the uniqueness of a place can be captured with a single example.  The relatively slow advancement of high tech communications in Wyoming fits the cowboy bill.  Because of our sparse population and wide-open spaces, it is fair to say our state was probably not on the cutting edge compared to more populated areas.  Cell towers, for example, were once as scarce as Democrats.

 

When cell telephones first came to the Big Horn Basin, many thought it was a perfect fit.  After all, using a cell phone in a small town basically is the same as using a walk-talkie if you are calling locally. Unfortunately, if a call was placed to an out-of-town destination, we joined the rest of the nation in the oft-repeated phrase ‘Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?’  Even today when driving through, say, the Wind River Canyon, you might as well turn your phone off.  The spectacular handiwork of our state's landscape prevents cell phone “coverage.”

 

Which brings me to my elderly mother, who was a Basin resident her entire life.  Before she passed away two years ago she did not have an answering machine, let alone a cell phone or computer.  She and most of her contemporaries fondly remembered the days when a call could be placed using only four digits.

For many years, her children told her that she didn’t have to speak so loudly over a landline telephone.  Her retort was that she was taught to speak audibly and clearly as a matter of upbringing.  Speak to be understood and do not mumble, she often reminded us.  Frankly, I think she spoke loudly because in the early days of Ma Bell telephones the audio quality was as muddled as cell phones often are today.
            
She also was taught to speak loudly because when she was young many of her parents’ older friends were losing their hearing.  It was during the time before hearing aids and after tin ear trumpets were used.

So when my mother called one day – on her friend’s cell phone – and I could not hear her, I was astonished to hear myself say, “It’s okay, Mom.  You can talk loudly after all.”  To which she gamely whispered with her dry Wyoming wit, “Can you hear me now?”