Columnist Susan Snyder: Not ready to cell our souls

Monday, Feb. 10, 2003 | 8:17 a.m.

To hear the politicians up in Carson City last week, you might have believed we are all in peril if we cannot use cell phones in moving cars.

Good golly, what would one do in an emergency, the pundits pondered.

One would walk -- just as one does when one has a cell phone and a wrecked car outside Nevada's immediate metropolitan areas.

And if one is stranded on the Walker Paiute Indian Reservation north of Hawthorne, one can expect to walk about a mile to the nearest pay phone.

I was heading north on U.S. 95 toward Yerington early Tuesday, but I didn't make it to Yerington.

And I am hoping the chunk of firewood that fell off some guy's pickup and into my path was the one log he needed later to get his fire going. Swerving around a small log at 70 mph puts a car on two wheels faster than you can say "Dukes of Hazzard."

So, "KABAM!" I ran over the thing, and the car quit. No problemo. I had a cell phone and AAA.

"Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?" I shouted.

"Barely," a crackly voice said at the other end.

"Here's the deal," I said. "My phone battery will last about 30 seconds. My car is wrecked. I'm on U.S. 95 on the the Walker Paiute Indian Reservation about two miles south of the trading post ..."

Blip.

About a mile into my walk, a nicely dressed middle-age couple offered a lift. Forget what Mother says about taking rides from strangers. It was 30 degrees out there.

The connection at the trading post pay phone wasn't much better, and it was obvious the AAA dispatcher didn't have a full grasp of the situation.

"There's no cross street?" she asked.

"No, there is one paved road. It runs north and south, and I am standing next to it," I told her.

"Is there an address on the front of the building?" she asked.

"No, but it's the only building that says 'Trading Post,' " I said.

"Do you know where you want it towed?" she asked.

Amazing. I am in the middle of the desert on a phone connection so lousy the desert could be in Saudi Arabia, and she wants the name of a mechanic in a city 450 miles from where I live.

"Ford dealership. Carson City," I said, figuring they probably had one.

"Capital Ford then?" she asked.

"Sure," I said.

About 40 minutes later I met Les, the Yerington tow truck driver who was my companion for the next three hours. It was his day off, but the other driver was at the dentist in Fernley.

Les had been out until about midnight with three guys from Las Vegas who mired their rented SUV on a cow trail in the mountains west of Hawthorne.

"One of them walked 10 miles to phone. They had no food and no coats," Les said.

He chuckled. At that moment, the unlucky trio were sitting in a Yerington hotel room stewing over the $415 towing bill. They thought the rental agency should pay.

Les chuckled again. The world's experts on Darwinism drive tow trucks. They probably make a fortune on people who depend on four-wheel-drive and cell phones.

Ban them or keep them, but don't depend on them. Your best way out of a jam is still two able feet and a little luck.