“Caller ID is not even a thing anymore,” smirks my 30-something year-old neighbor just before he goes running after a wayward delivery truck. I’m left bewildered and, though there may be no connection (pun intended), his random statement reminds me that I’m still the proud owner of a landline. A landline that died on Friday.

Every once in a while I pick up the receiver to check if it’s back. There’s a screeching sound. The scream of a landline headed toward extinction? I can’t bear it. My husband calls the phone company and they tell him they’ll be out in about two weeks…or so.

“Unacceptable!” I say, “Give me the phone…Uh, your cell phone.”

Sometimes I picture myself being tracked down by the FBI for a forbidden movement; the last of the landlines. In the cover of night, dressed all in black, I elude the law by living off the land, building fires, trapping game and foraging for food. In the movie version, Scarlett Johansson will play me. Steven Spielberg will direct, but I digress.

I call the phone company, trick all the prompts, and in less than a minute get an actual person on the line. Despite the huge moan exuded by the rep when he discovers I’m calling about a copper wire a/k/a landline, my carefully crafted words are rewarded with a promise of a technician that day.

Around 1pm, the phone suddenly rings. I pick it up. It’s working! For the rest of the day, I catch up on a bunch of very important calls. During the most crucial one—reminiscing with a dear friend about some of the rock bands we’ve seen together—New York Dolls, Kinks, Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, Queen, Genesis, T-Rex, Aerosmith—the line goes dead. I’m crushed, but not destroyed. I look out the window. There’s a Verizon truck in my driveway and it’s 6pm! How can this be? I run outside.

“What’s going on?” I ask the tech whose fingers are diddling in my phone box. “I was on the line speaking with someone and you disconnected us.”

“I know,” he says with the authority of a pompous king adding, “There’s nothing wrong with your phone.”

“I know!” I counter like the queen I’d like to be, “The phone’s been working since one o’clock! I thought it was fixed at some central station. Why are you even here?”

“Well, the problem was never here,” he informs waving a hand in a yonder direction, “It must’ve been in the switch-house somewhere up on the hill. That’s always going bad and no one ever goes there anymore. I would give you my card in case anything goes wrong again, but I come all the way from Scranton so forget it. You’ll just have to go through the main number.” Needless to say, I want his card, but my phone is ringing and I must run.

It’s my dear friend calling back. We’ve been re-connected landline to landline. The signal’s clear; no dropouts; no cell tower needed. In reference to having been disconnected she opens with, “Was it something I said?”—a wisecrack that makes me laugh out loud. Hearing this good friend’s voice without any interference is one of the main reasons I will become a fugitive before ever giving up my landline.

I may be behind-the-times with a landline, a gravity-fed heating system and stove that lights with a match, but when the electric goes out none of that gets interrupted.

Not to mention (but I will) with a landline, I no longer receive robo-calls. They just don’t care about us. As for caller ID not being a ‘thing’ anymore, I have no idea what that means.

Feel free to enlighten me at callicoonwalkingtours@gmail.com. And if you’re also one of the last of the landlines, I’d love to hear from you, too.