In our last episode of this column, titled, “For whom the bell tolls and why,” we were gathered at the foot of Ashfield’s Town Hall bell tower, staring up, wondering why the bell stopped tolling a few years ago and wishing it would somehow come back.
The entire bell operation has been a 250-year town project, from the original neighborhood rope-pullers of the late 18th century to Ashfield electrician Robert Nye rigging the arm of an old cream separator to hit the bell, powered by the motor of an old washing machine at the push of a button, back in 1925. Over the years the mechanics of it have broken and been repaired, always by the newest generation of local engineering sorts who figured out how to fix it this time.
But a few years ago, and none can cipher out how many, the bell went quiet again and no one has had the time or the general need to climb up to examine what stopped it. The bell drifted off to become a part of Ashfield’s quaint past, until last month when I wrote about it.
I generally get an email or two when I write a column; the bell story brought a herd of responses, both written and hailed. “We need that bell back! Why, I remember as a child …” and the memories flew in from small towns all over New England. People around here grew up with curfew bells and they miss them. How are we supposed to know what to do without bells to guide us? We grown-ups wander around in a timeless stupor without them. And think of the poor children, staying out playing games on the town common all night long with no curfew bell to ring them home!
But meanwhile, I had another, Ma-Bell-related issue to wrangle, even larger in my own life than the curfew bell was.
A few months ago I had to go out of town for a bit. Always looking for ways to save some money (I may not be a New Englander, but I’ve absorbed the economics of ’em), I called the phone company to ask if there might there be a way to cut the cost of that monthly phone/internet bill, since I’d be away. Ashfield still carries no sustainable cellphone service, so landlines are generally the only reliable method of connecting to the world.
The phone company said, “Why sure! We’ll forward your calls to your cellphone while you’re gone, and cut your bill way down.” I thanked them gratefully, left town and later found that their interpretation of “forwarding calls” meant installing a message on my home phone that said, “The number you have reached is no longer in service. The new number is (504) …, thereby implying to everyone who called that I had moved. To a whole new state.
Thanks a lot.
Furthermore, because it was COVID-19-time, the phone company was too worried about their employees to let them answer customers’ complaints by phone, so all issues would have to be handled online, which didn’t work either.
Driving back home last week, realizing I would soon be with no tangible form of communication, I knew I had to figure something out, quickly.
And then I remembered Christopher Gray, grandson of maple syrup-making, Gray’s Sugarhouse-owning, handyman about town, Willie Gray. Willie died in 2010, but his ingenuity and entrepreneurship flowed down to the generations of his offspring in various ways, and it landed in Christopher in the form of his having developed his very own telephone company a few years ago.
So I called Christopher, and within days I had switched from a national company that could not hear me now to a guy who personally answers the phone as soon as I call, a conversation made even more pleasant by the sound of his little children playing in the background while Daddy’s working. With my phone and internet hookup in the hands of Hilltown Networks, not only do I have outstanding service, I personally know every single mouth my payments are going to feed. I like that in a business.
And then I had an even better idea.
I called Chris again.
“Hey! Since you have two complete sets of a brain — a mechanical one as well as a technological one — would you be interested in fixing the curfew bell?”
Christopher loved the challenge, so I called Town Hall overseer Stuart Harris, who rejoiced at the idea. So now, Christopher Gray will be the latest Ashfielder in our long line to climb up there, take the contraption apart and see if he can figure out how to restore bell-ringing history to Ashfield once again.
We’re all sitting here like little frogs, ready to jump up and dance at the first clang.
Nan Parati lives and works in Ashfield, where she found home and community following Hurricane Katrina. She can be reached at NanParati@aol.com.