TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Carl Moore:
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For those who do not know, Liberty, KS
> is a _tiny_ little 'wide spot' in the road southeast of Independence,
> population about a hundred souls, a Methodist Church, the obligatory
> road house and a gasoline station. Dobson Cellular One also has its
> antennas there. 620-924 _does_ ring in there but only as DID-type
> lines for some of the cell phones based out of there.
telcodata.us reports the 620-924 exchange as being assigned to the
"Tri-County Telephone Association," whatever that may be, and lists the
switch as a Nortel DMS-10 RSLE.
> I think 620-485 picks up the rest of Liberty.
That it does. The TOTAH telephone company. Another Nortel DMS-10.
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Tri-County Telephone Association was
formerly the 'Tri-County Telephone Cooperative Society'; it is a group
of citizens in southeast Kansas who, back at the start of the last
century started rural telephone service in this area, or actually a
bit east of us covering the area between Pittsburg, KS and somewhere
east of Cherryvale, KS, when Southwestern Bell could not be bothered
with them. Once they got set up with 'modern' equipment in the 1930's
and Rural Electrification Administration bailed them out of debt,
Southwestern Bell started looking at the area with -- as Jimmy Carter
would have said -- lust in their heart. Comes the 1950's and they got
totally out of their debt to REA, and the farmer's wives got to be too
old to run the switchboard, and the farmer's daughters moved away to
the big city, Bell's lust got even stronger; all kinds of scummy
tricks were played on them; but to their credit, Tri-County stared
right back at Southwestern Bell and gave them an old fashioned Archie
Bunker-style Bronx cheer, and went with other _independents_ such as
Totah and GTE instead. That's pretty much where it stands even today.
Since Divestiture, I think they have gotten on somewhat friendlier
terms with Bell. PAT]
Isaiah Beard (sacredpoet@sacredpoet.com)