Feb 10, 2023 4 min read

I live on Mt. Crumpit, a windy peak high above a couple of bustling suburbs. Drive down the mountain to one side and I’m in Bridgeville. Drive down the other side and I’m in that land of chain stores and restaurants known as Robinson.

No matter which way I’m headed, the drive is tricky, a series of sharp twists and curves as the road meanders around the hills. It’s pretty rural up here, with a green valley stretching across the space between my back patio and the Pittsburgh skyline. For all its beauty, the setting can be a real pain.

Those hills and that valley are making phone conversations frustrating. There are bare spots in cell service.

Bluetooth technology lets me answer a call without taking my hands off the wheel or my eyes off the road. Hello, I’ll say, and then three words into the conversation there’s silence. It’s as if just moving through the first curve in the road lands me in some different dimension where they don’t like you to talk on the phone.

My friend lives a mile away down in Whoville, and she has the same problems with her phone. She and I live in such proximity these days, and in such a technical dead zone, that if I want to talk to her I’d be better off walking to her house and doing it in person.

Maybe the cellphone companies are aware of this and are trying to fix it. Last month I got text messages saying that cell service “might be interrupted” as crews work in the area. To which I said, to nobody in particular because I can’t reach anybody by phone, “How would we even notice the difference?”

I’ve learned not to initiate phone calls anywhere between my driveway and a half-mile into Interstate 79 north or south. Once back in civilization, I can be fairly confident I can complete a phone conversation, and that includes going through the tunnels. Somehow, the phone companies have figured out a way to keep the signal alive through the Fort Pitt and Squirrel Hill Tunnels. They just can’t manage Mt. Crumpit.

It can turn me into a Grinch, excuse that reference, but it was hanging there. When I walk Smoothie down the block to the dog yard, I picture the Grinch and his little dog, Max, both of them grouchy and windblown. We’re so far up here in the clouds it’s always windy, and it snows here before it snows anywhere else but Minnesota. I’ll be talking to my parents (when I can get a signal) and they’ll say it’s nice and calm and sunny where they are, and I’ll hear my wind chimes banging away outside my door up here. I think I might live in a more northern planting zone than the rest of my ZIP code.

Sometimes when I’m feeling grumpy about the phone service, I remember the first portable phone I used. In the early ’90s, when I was working in TV news, the station bought one cellphone. It was the size of a boombox and had a long shoulder strap. All the reporters had to share it, and to get it for a day of work felt like a gift. It saved trips to phone booths.

We’ve come so far, and yet, up here on Mt. Crumpit things can sometimes feel like it’s 1990 again. Even 1890. Such is life among the pretty hills and valleys.

So, if you call me and I hang up, it wasn’t my fault. The grinchy phone signal did it.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.