The good news in Hinsdale last week: teenagers did not tie up the telephone lines. The bad news: there were no lines.
Since a Mother's Day fire destroyed a major Illinois Bell switching station west of Chicago, 35,000 people have learned how inconvenient and nearly unmanageable modern life can be without phones. Fax machines went down. Credit-card verification systems blinked out. Automatic cash machines popped up electronic apologies: OUT OF SERVICE. Houses were not sold, dental appointments not made, pizza not ordered.
This communications Stone Age disconnected more than Hinsdale. More than half a million other suburban residents could not make...
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