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(CUE SOUND: “Twilight Zone” theme.)

The Source

(CUE FOG:…rising up from what appears to be a bowl of burgoo.) (CUE ROD SERLING: “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call "Arenzville.”) (FADE TO BLACK..UP ON TITLE) It’s an eerie sight…something right out of Stephen King. Early morning, rush hour in most parts of the world, but in Arenzville something spooky…something very strange is happening. Two main roads enter the town…the Jacksonville route to the south and the road to Beardstown to the north, and beginning in the early morning then continuing throughout the day, cars and trucks pull over to the side of the road instead of entering the village. They just sit there. Unmoving. It’s as if someone had erected, “Danger! Plague!” signs on the outskirts of our soup-soaked little town. It’s not the Second Coming…no one has been Left Behind because the drivers can be seen sitting behind the steering wheel. If an unsuspecting visitor would see this specter of vehicles refusing to enter the town, he’d screech his car to a halt and high tail it back to the nearest FIMA office. However, I’m afraid that we’d flunk the Serling test and never make it as an episode of the Twilight Zone since the cause of this abnormal behavior is much too mundane to make the television cut. Arenzville has no cell phone service. Blame it on the glaciers. The Wisconsin glacier petered out somewhere near Peoria and changeD the course of the river, but its big brother, the Illinoian, came a few eons earlier and carved out the Illinois River Valley in such a way to keep Arenzville tucked neatly in to an elbow of the fertile farmland. We stayed tucked until the American Indians moved in to build a mill on the creek. The Indians moved on when the Lutherans got too thick, and no one…the glaciers, the Indians, nor the Lutherans have been able to get decent cell phone reception. The town has been promised a repeater tower “really soon.” Both “really” and “soon” being really relative terms, we sit here in a dark hole. I think the first promise of phone service was made shortly after Lincoln’s assassination and you’d think it’d kill the phone companies to fulfill their assurances. Nearly everyone in town has a cell phone and almost no one can use it. Students come to my house and can receive text messages but no phone service. I’ve heard the rumor that some people can actually make and receive calls on theIR cells and I think it’s because they know God personally. As a result, we keep Frontier Phone company in business by paying the highest phone bills this side of China, and if you’re on the phone as you drive into town you must pull over to the side of the road to finish the call, thus causing what looks like a used car lot on each side of town during the busy road hours. Okay, I’ll admit that I’m somewhat of a poophead. I hate cell phones. I hate my own cell phone and I punish it by keeping it permanently in my car, usually with a dead battery. Nothing tickles me more than to be chatting with a teenager on the front porch when his cell phone begins to jangle the change in his pocket. He retrieves the little monster, pokes the “speak” button and….nothing. Blessed, silent nothing. He forced to …..Gasp!...continue speaking with a live, present, human being. If this continues long enough he may actually learn to enjoy a brand of humanity that’s not strained through a touch screen. Halleluiah! There are many good reasons for living in my little town…I know nearly everyone, it takes forever to take an evening stroll around because I get to stop and talk to people on every block, the streets are only Burgoo-blocked once a year, the churches are generally well-attended, the coffee’s still cheap, and if someone walks onto your front porch while you’re on vacation, two sets of neighbors will be there in an instant to see what the intruder might be up to. But most blessed of all, we are dead…phone dead, that is. (CUE SOUND…”Twilight Zone” theme. CUE FOG…bowl of Burgoo comes into focus.) (CUE SERLING: “The little town that the phone service forgot…a memory, a dream, situated somewhere in that dimension between one tower and another…that place we call…The Twilight Zone.)