There are many people in the United States - and many people who read Mullings - whose address does not end in Washington, DC; or Alexandria, Virginia; or Bethesda, Maryland.

There are people, for instance, whose address ends with Wichita Falls, Texas where, as it happens, is where the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices and I spent Labor Day weekend with long-time friends Shirley Craft and Kenn Hill.

Getting There

Here's how you get to Wichita Falls, Texas: You get on a plane at Washington-Reagan airport at 6:00 pm for a flight which was supposed to have left at 5:55 pm. You taxi out to the runway. You are informed that Air Traffic Control has put a hold on all departures because - this is what we were told - because a line of thundershowers extending from central New York down through Pennsylvania was forcing all Eastbound air traffic to take a more southerly route meaning the skies were too crowded over the Washington, DC Terminal Control Area for any more airplanes.

Yeah. And the dog ate my flight plan.

Anyway just before you finally go wheels up at about 8:00 pm for that 5:55 scheduled departure, the last think you do is call the cell-phone of your traveling companion (who is on an different flight on a different airline because of left-over tickets from other, not dissimilar, travel adventures) and leave a voice mail explaining that your plane is about to take off and rather than arriving at the scheduled time, it would get in to Dallas at about 9:45 Central time so, if she wants, she should get the rental car and drive on up to Wichita Falls and you will follow whenever you get in.

When you get to Dallas you turn your cell phone back on to get the expected message and, seeing none, you dial your traveling companion's cell phone and are greeted with "Where are you?"

You first instinct might well be to say you are in Terminal E having a long-necked beer out of the bottle and you'll be back out at the curb to be picked up when you're darned good and ready and not one second before, but you click back into consciousnesses and say you just landed and proceed to make the necessary arrangements to meet up with each other.

It turns out that the MDofS&P went to the car rental counter, got the car I had rented as a member of their super-duper-gold-platinum-green-go-right-to-your-vehicle-do-not-pass-go club and, upon presenting HER license to the person at the exit booth informed the security guard that we are, indeed, married and she was picking up this car.

I suspect the security guard thought about suggesting that wasn't exactly the way they did things, but upon seeing the beginnings of THE LOOK decided he didn't particularly care whether she was driving back to the terminal to pick me up, or driving to Tijuana to get a quickie divorce; it wasn't, upon sober reflection, his car.

She meets you at curb outside your gate and then, then you drive for two-and-a-half hours.

That's how you get to Wichita Falls, Texas.

Texas Cell Phone Adventures

In getting our orders for the day, Shirley instructed Kenn to take her cell phone to a specific cell phone store and get her a new one.

"What's wrong with it?" I asked.

"The display keeps going blank. I have to turn it off and turn it back on, sometimes two or three times," Shirley said.

As a veteran user of Nokia cell phones - some of whose displays kept going blank, I am not unfamiliar with this condition.

"Whack it on the palm of your hand," I suggested.

Kenn, who was holding the phone on which had been installed a bright red facing but which had no display said, "What?"

"Smack the top of it on the open palm of your hand."

He smacked it and, of course, the display came back on. Cheers from all in attendance. Confetti flew. Balloons dropped. Marching Bands struck up. Women held up their babies for a view of The Man Who Could Fix Cell Phones.

I was forced to play the role of modest hero. I am also not unfamiliar with this condition.

Nevertheless, Shirley didn't want a cell phone she had to smack on the palm of her hand - this is, I think, a woman thing. A man would LOVE to have such a phone if only to demonstrate to his friends he knew how to fix it, that he could bend a piece of high-tech equipment to his will, that he held dominion over a broken cell phone - and continued giving Kenn his instructions as to what kind of phone we were to get and where we were to go to get it.

The women-folk (nobody really says women-folk any more but I wanted to give this a certain, I don't know, regional flavor) were off to do women-folk things so Kenn and I took off in search of the cell phone store.

"I don't know why we have to go to this particular store," Kenn complained when we were safely out of the hearing of the women. "But I'm sure there is some good reason."

I nodded in understanding having, maybe not more than once or twice, thought I was outwitting the MDofS&P by either purchasing something which was JUST AS GOOD as the brand, size, and color of the item I was supposed to pick up, or purchasing the EXACT item I was supposed to pick up but at a different store.

This type of activity, in every case, did not have a happy ending. So, I nodded in understanding.

As we arrived at the cell phone store I grabbed my cell phone as well as Shirley's and we went into the store.

This was the 21st century equivalent of a 19th century Wichita Falls general store complete with the man behind the counter - Mike - who was fully tattooed and had last shaved, maybe, the previous Tuesday, and his side kick (name unknown) sitting on a chair just inside the doorway of the back room where he could look to his right and see everything going on.

Instead of bolts of gingham hanging on the shelves, there were brightly colored cell phone covers.

Instead of rows of leather six-gun holsters, there were rows of leather cell phone holders.

No spittoon, though.

Kenn walked up to the counter and said, "My wife's cell phone is broken and she needs a new one."

Whereupon I, innocently and silently, handed Mike Shirley's cell phone.

Which Mike took it to mean that I was Kenn's wife and - literally - jumped back six inches.

The guy in the doorway straightened up as well and stared out at us.

Kenn and I started laughing and I was about to say to Mike, "But you're a very good looking man yourself," but I decided that this was not the proper time for the Borscht Belt to meet the Gun Belt.

Once Mike and the guy in the back realized what we were laughing at, they laughed, too.

I did not use the famous Seinfeld line, "Not that there's anything wrong with it," because I wasn't exactly certain whether Mike thought there was anything wrong with it or not.

Nevertheless, we entered into a very manly discussion of the Dallas Cowboys chances vis-à-vis the rest of the NFL East especially in light of the miseries the Washington Redskins offensive line had been suffering in the pre-season.

Satisfied we had re-established an appropriate testosterone level in the store, Kenn explained the problem. Mike picked a box off the shelf and informed Kenn that a new phone would be $79, but he might be able to get a rebate from AT&T if his wife (a quick, unintentional, almost subliminal glance at me) would re-up her service for a year. Forty bucks off, Mike said.

Kenn informed Mike that Shirley needed to increase her minutes per month anyway, so they would go ahead and do that.

Mike called AT&T and found that Shirley did not qualify for the rebate because of some quirk in her original contract dealing with the flight path over Washington-Reagan airport being too crowded with flights coming from the West, or something.

Kenn indicated he would pay the $79, but didn't get into the matter of what might happen to him if he went home and told Shirley he didn't buy her a new phone because she didn't qualify for the $40 rebate.

Now, let me make this clear: Kenn served not one, but two, tours as a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam, so he is not exactly a man who cowers in the face of danger.

He is, however, married.

Mike said to give him the phone and proceeded to take it apart. He explained that there is a foam rubber pad which sometimes get mashed down and, blah, blah, blah … I faded out as I looked over all the goodies, one of which was that deal you see advertised on TV which, for $19.99 allows you to get full cellular service even in if you're riding in an elevator.

There it was. Hanging from the shelf. Staring back at me. Saying, "Buy me. I'll allow you to talk to people in elevators. Buy me. You'll never be out of touch again. Buy me. Buy me."

Here's a secret. I had already bought one. From the television. For $19.99.

When it showed up I was like the kid in The Christmas Story when his Orphan Annie Decoder Ring showed up in the mail box.

I couldn't rip open the packaging fast enough. I skimmed through the translated-from-Japanese instructions, and pasted the antenna on at the suggested point.

I 'fessed up to Mike and Kenn that I had purchased this item as the result of the TV advertising.

"Does it work?" Kenn asked.

"No. Of course not."

Mike offered that he didn't understand why anyone thought putting an antenna underneath a thick metal battery would be of any use.

I said I had purchased it as an experiment so I could report to the readers of the "Truth-in-Advertising" column I wrote three days a week. On the internet. Pretty popular. Consumer advice. Mostly.

"Otherwise, heh heh heh, why WOULD anyone pay $19.99 for one of these things?"

Kenn asked to see the device but I said I couldn't show him because the battery was taped to the phone housing otherwise the battery keeps sliding off.

Mike said he would take a look at my phone as soon as he finished with Shirley's.

I took the tape off, which allowed the battery to slide off all by itself, exposing the $19.99 battery.

"Maybe it only works in elevators if you have one cell phone WITH the extra antenna and one cell phone without it," I said to Mike.

He gave me that quick glance again that indicated he was thinking that even if I wasn't gay, I MIGHT be from New York.

He pull a business card from the tray on the counter to his right and doubled it over. He placed that next to the back of the phone (just below the $19.99 antenna), slid the battery over the card and back into place and shoved it home.

"That's a factory fix," Mike said. "A guy from Nokia told me how to do that."

Kenn upgraded Shirley's service, we gather up our various phones, and left.

"I just want to understand something," I said. Mike could have sold you a $79.00 phone, could have talked me into buying a new phone the battery catches which worked properly, and probably talked us into about five other gadgets. He didn't charge us a dime for fixing our phones."

"Welcome to life in a small town," Kenn said.