"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Canuck57" wrote in
news:rZ6lk.156502$gc5.9111@pd7urf2no:

When I go to northern Ontario fishing, I always go down to I94 or #2
across the top. Cheaper accommodations and fuel with better roads.
Adds about 160 miles but I more than make it up in time.



I graduated from high school in 1964. That day we left for a
circumnavigation of the Great Lakes my dad had been dreaming of for a
decade in his 1960 Rambler station wagon towing a '62 Shasta 13' travel
trailer, our home on wheels. Western Ontario on the Queen's Highway was
just beautiful until the trailer hitch weld broke in the truly middle of
nowhere. We coaxed it behind us by moving all our stuff to the rear of
it to take the weight off the hitch springing up and down on the front
crossbar until we found a phone booth alongside the road I will never
forget. There was nothing there....just a modern aluminum and glass
phone booth.....until you went inside.

Inside that phone booth, bolted to the aluminum was an old manually
cranked Bell System telephone right out of the 1920's. It had a big
earphone on a cotton covered brown cord and the carbon mic stuck out the
front of the box with a crank handle on the side to signal the operator.
My parents were apprehensive but I persisted as it looked well kept and
workable. A single wire ran up the outside of it to a single telephone
wire that went West, the direction we had been heading.

I listened to the receiver after giving the crank about 4 good turns. A
click, then the nicest Canadian telephone operator in the country came
on the line to ask what number. I told her I wasn't sure and that we
were from upstate NY and our trailer hitch was broken. "What number is
on the front of the phone?", she asked me. I read it off. "Let me make
a phone call. Just keep the earphone to your ear. I'll be right
back." There was a click of her disconnect and I waited about 5 or 6
minutes....no music on hold in Western Ontario's wilderness...

She came back and said, "You folks just stay right there. My husband is
on his way in the truck to take you into town. Bill (somebody) is
headed to the Chevy dealership and will get his welding machine all
ready before you get there to fix it." ROLLS ROYCE never provided this
level of service to its customers. A nice man in an old Chevy truck
rolled up to the trailer we had already unhitched from the car and
blocked the tires. My dad followed him into town and Mom and I stayed
with the trailer.

About an hour or so later, the old pay phone started ringing, so I ran
across the road and answered it. "Son, your dad and Harold got the
hitch all fixed with Bill's welding and they're on the way back to you
by now. They'll be there in a few minutes.", she told me to reassure us
help was on the way.

This was on a Sunday morning in 1964. We found out later she had called
the church where Bill and his family had just started in to hear the
service. Bill told my dad he'd rather go to the shop and weld that
hitch than listen to their pastor drone on and on about something he'd
heard a hundred times before.

Dad and I hitched the trailer to the car before Mom hauled our saviour
inside for some homemade campstove cookies and a hot cup of campstove
coffee she had perked for them. By that time, it was, of course, much
later than we had intended and Harold, our saviour, said he didn't want
us driving on that road in the dark because it was Moose mating season
and some real monsters we'd already seen would be on the road in the
dark. So, he went over to the phone and rang his operator. They didn't
have a place to put our trailer up for the night with power, but there
was an outside outlet, toilet with showers at the fire station in town.
So, she called the fire chief to make arrangements for us to stay behind
the firehouse for the night so we could start fresh the next morning.

Noone stayed at the firehouse, but they left the back door open for us
and refused to take any donation to the firehouse's fund. Bill, our
welder, also refused to take a dime, Canadian or US, for dragging him
out of church. The welding he did was fantastic as it was on the car
after a few more thousand miles of towing our little trailer many years
later when the old Rambler was a NY road salt rusted out hulk.

I was 18 at the time and not very observant as most teens are, so I
can't tell you even what the name of the little town in Western Ontario
was....but I can see the whole place in my mind's eye as I'm typing this
old farts reminiscence of the finest Canadians we ever met, helping
complete strangers broken down in their town.....on a Sunday morning.

I wonder if that phone box is still just sitting there.....miles from
nowhere.....


Excellent story.

Eisboch