There is a hill at the north end of my cousin’s ranch where, if you stand on the cattle guard and hold your phone up toward the water tower, you can sometimes get a single bar. The family calls it the office. When my cousin needs to send an email, he drives up there in the evening, parks facing west and waits for the message to go through. Sometimes it does.
I’ve spent a good many evenings on that hill, and I’ve come to think of it as one of the last honest places in Texas. Down in the cities, everybody is connected to everything all the time. Out at my cousin’s, a man is connected to his land, his cattle and his wife, and the internet has to wait its turn like anybody else.
People call this a problem. They want to run cable down every county road and put a tower on every rise. I understand the impulse. But I’ve watched what a fast connection does to a household. It brings the whole world into the kitchen, and most of the world was never invited.
My cousin’s girls do their schoolwork in the parking lot of the library in town, because that’s where the signal is. Their mother drives them in after supper, and they sit in the car with the dome light on and work through it together. I think that’s a beautiful thing. Plenty of families in the suburbs never spend that much time in a car together, and they have more than one car.
Folks bring up business, too. They say a rancher without a good connection can’t keep up with prices the way his competitors do, can’t sell his beef straight to the people who want it, can’t see a doctor over a screen when the nearest clinic is a long way off. That may all be so. But I have always believed a man who sells to strangers through a screen has stopped being a rancher and started being a store. And there’s something to be said for a doctor you have to drive to. You only make the trip when you mean it.
The oldest girl told me she wants to study engineering. She’ll have to go somewhere with better signal to do it, and I’d be surprised if she ever came back. That’s how it goes. The land keeps the ones who don’t need much and lets the others go. I’ll be voting for my party’s man for the Senate this fall to keep the hill the way it is. I’m told the other fellow would like a tower on it and cable down the county road, and I’d hate to see the office close.
I’ll admit I sent this column from my house in town, where the connection is so quick I never think about it. I think about my cousin’s hill a great deal. It is good for him. I would just as soon not need it myself.
D. M.