Broken Wires

Greg Patton who lived on the banks of the Mississippi outside of Alma, Wisconsin, kept in close contact with his elderly mother quite regularly for several years. He’d call to check on her at least once a day. She, in turn, often called him "just to chat." Since their homes were only three miles apart, Greg would often go over there to do things for her.

Mrs. Patton enjoyed good health for most of her elderly years. Toward the end, she suffered from heart trouble and eventually died of it.

Her death took place in June during the early 1920s. Mrs. Patton called to talk to Greg. He couldn’t help but notice that his mother sounded a bit strange that day. For one thing, she was not a demonstrative sort of person, yet that day she told Greg of how much she loved him. She said other things that Greg thought were out of character for his mother.

Greg mulled this over for a few minutes and then decided to go over to her house to see if she was okay. As he pulled out of his lane, he was surprised to find a crew at his gate working on a large tree that had fallen onto the telephone line, completely cutting the wires. There had been a storm during the night, but he had used the phone just a few minutes earlier so he knew that the tree had to have fallen in the past few minutes. He thought that the crew certainly had gotten there quickly. Greg spoke of that to the crew foreman.

"You guys sure do work fast."

"Why, what do you mean? We’ve been on this mess for almost four hours now. We got here early this morning. We ought to have this all………………….."

"But, wait a minute," Greg interrupted. "You couldn’t have. These lines sure haven’t been down for four hours. I was using my telephone not fifteen minutes ago."

The foreman looked at Greg for a minute.

"If you live up this lane here, you sure did not use your phone this morning at all. The wires are all broken. You can see that for yourself."

Greg wasn’t of a mind to argue about it. He knew that he had used his phone just minutes ago, and that’s all that counted. He was at a loss to figure out how he could, with those wires broken. All he knew was that he did.

The foreman watched Greg as he climbed into his car and left.

Greg soon forgot the issue as he pulled into his mother’s driveway. When he entered the house, he knew that there was something wrong.

Greg found his mother in bed; dead.

The doctor established that Mrs. Patton had died of a heart attack and that she had probably died about twelve hours prior to Greg finding her.