My Inner Yosemite Sam

Be prepared, this is going to be one of those long winded posts…I would suggest a cup of steaming herbal tea and a comfy chair so you can put your feet up!

Rural living has a lot of advantages, but sometimes it is tough when the city or amenities found in the city are a ways away. Sometimes my inner Yosemite Sam spews forth with not-quite-obsentities like rassen, frassen, sassen, low-life, skunk belly, sap sucker, just like on the old cartoon series when dealing with those trips to busy areas.

Such is the case with Mike’s phone. It just happens to also be the farm phone, our business phone, our main life line to all things regarding our commerce. It was New Year’s Eve and we had not planned on having any events, or debated going out for a party. I had made it tucked safely in bed somewhere around 8pm with Mike staying up for a while longer. It was habit that had him checking his phone just before toddling off to bed and realized the phone was dead. He did not think that it had a low on battery when he looked at the screen earlier in the evening, but he could not get the phone to turn on. Believing it was some kind of end-of-year quirk, he plugged the unit into its power cord and called it a night.

When I got up at the early, early morning hours of January 1st, Mike groggily asked me to call his phone in an effort to wake it up out of its unusual sleep mode. I tried, but the call went directly to voice mail, and his phone did not wake up. Mike slept in while I puttered around until breakfast time, the phone which was still plugged into the charging station, where it was silently resting on the counter and temporarily ignored. After breakfast for us we did the morning chores and an hour of bundling firewood before making it back into the house for a break.

That was when Mike checked and realized that the phone didn’t act dead as in low battery. It acted dead, dead. Like not having a bit of life at all, he couldn’t get any screen to come up no matter how many buttons he pushed or held down, and he tried several sequences of buttons for several hours. It dawned on us that we were now more than halfway into a holiday and there would be no way we could find a dealer that was open, get the phone fixed and be back home in time for evening chores. Our phone issue would have to wait until the next day to make a run into the nearest dealer that would be at a minimum at least an hour drive from the farm.  Well, that is just a rotten, rassen, frassen, sassen, crappy-do of a bother my Yosemite Sam tantrum thrower remarked under my breath.

The first day of the new year was shot all to heck and we only got the basic chores done besides messing around with the broken phone. But we persevered through the problem and vowed to get things fixed January 2.

Morning of January 2 came with a cool, fog shrouded drizzle. We got the morning chores completed, changed into some dry clothes and headed to town. Now this is where my readers need a little context to understand the situation…Mike has not had the opportunity to visit a phone store before, it had always been up to me to go get replacements or fixes when needed so that required this to be a two-person job that took us away from our farm tasks that were scheduled.

We get to the store and it looked like most of Washington County was either having their own phone issues, were upgrading to new systems or trying to figure out how their Christmas presents actually worked. We were asked the problem by the greeter who took the phone out of the case, opened the back to remove the battery waited a few moments to reassemble the unit and tried to turn it on, still dead. Our name and malady was plugged  into their data system to wait until our virtual number came up.

Phone stores are not like the DMV where there are banks of chairs available while you spend valuable time contemplating the universe. At the phone store, the precious few chairs, or odd round upholstered couches that take up a lot of room without giving up much sitting space, dominate the showroom area. Apparently it is expected that one move freely around the beautiful accessory displays to choose do-dads and gee-gaws to accompany the eventual purchase or repair.

Mike has never been good at waiting as his legs do not let him stand around in one place, he either has to pace or sit, those options along with him being a fairly large person wearing his farm clothes (at least he wasn’t wearing his barn boots on this trip) and his loud voice got him a seat on the goofy couch while he waited somewhat impatiently and while I ogled the gee-gaw displays. Our number finally came up and our name was called, we approached the small desk like area and the salesperson again asked the problem even though the greeter had tapped all the info in when we were near the door. The phone was again taken out of the case, the back taken off and the battery removed. After all was reassembled, the phone miraculously woke up! We were thrilled, the salesperson stated that the protective case had a worn button that caused the phone to malfunction. The phone was alive and we were ready to get out of town.

Since I happened to be the one driving, Mike was able to check his device while on the road and decided to do so when we were about half-way home. The phone was dead again. He plugged it into the charger and hoped that was all it needed. When we got home, we tried all the little tricks that the salesperson did but could not get the phone back up and running. And now it was time to do the evening chores.

We made quick work of the chores that evening and didn’t lollygag about at all before heading back into town for the second time that day. Walking into the phone store brought clarity to the notion that anyone who worked their day job was now at the phone store waiting to be helped by a salesperson, there were more people there than when we had on the first trip to town! We had a repeat from earlier in the day with the greeter, a nice relaxing sit-down, and finally getting called to talk to a salesperson. However, this time we had our brother-in-law meet us at the store since he is much more tech savvy than both of us put together. The salesperson said that it might be a battery issue and that because the phone is more than two years old, they no longer had that battery in stock. But he did have good news for us, there was a battery store right across the street and we could just go over to replace the bad battery.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with the 185th area of Hillsboro/Beaverton conglomeration this will sound complex, it is because this area has blossomed with an unprecedented growth cycle over the last twenty years. Across the street that the salesperson alluded to is a walk across turning lanes both to the west and to the east, and busy north and south highway lanes three lanes wide. The battery store was not just across the street, it was catty-corner across the street. So by trying a quick walk across the street since it was so close, it became  more like a mad dash for your your life when the cross-walk light allowed us passage. And it was now dark, still foggy with light wind and rain coming down, the three of us wondered how anyone not able-bodied could have traversed the dangerous intersection. Blankety-blank, dirty rotten no good, rassen, frassen, slow to allow and quick to turn off permission to walk, crossing lights, Yosemite Sam was screaming inside my head as traffic zoomed by on all sides of us.

Inside the battery store, the salesperson asked what was wrong with the phone and again we  again explained its deadness, this time adding details about the first trip into the phone store, the drive home and the second trip into the phone store with the advice to cross the very dangerous 185th intersection and we had our BIL with us to make sure we were not getting ripped off. This salesperson took the back off the phone and pulled the battery exactly like had been done hundreds of times over the past three days. But this time he set the battery down on the counter and spun it in circles several times, flipping it over and spinning it again. He announced that the battery did have a bulge, not a big one, but enough of a bulge to determine that the phone was indeed in need of a new power source. We purchased a new battery and the salesperson reassembled the phone and it immediately powered up! Eureka,  we thought, finally someone who fixed the phone. Mike even called my phone from his and it rang, I texted him and it went through, the phone was back to working. All three of us, Mike, me and brother-in-law braved the dangerous cattywampus corner again, with Yosemite screaming the whole way.

Safely across, we decided it was indeed time to eat a quick bite after all our hard work to celebrate that we were still alive along with Mike’s revived phone. We ordered dinner and Mike pulled his phone out of his pocket and was in the midst of regaling us with his happiness over a fixed device, when he started in with real cursing. It was dead again. Brother-in-law grabbed the phone and did the dismantling and reassembling trick several times before all three of us declared the sucker was indeed dead again. We had to hustle through dinner to make it back to the phone store before they closed where we finally ended up purchasing a new model.

Nearly three rassen, frassen, sassen days and two durned skunk minded, belly grumper trips to town and now Mike can finally say that he has a working phone. I’m determined to put my inner Yosemite Sam on a vacation for a while, I’ve had enough of going to town for now.

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