by C. Henry Adams
[ DRAFT ] Link: http://tinyurl.com/8tqzocg
Do you remember when you were a kid growing up in the Neighborhood? Not really, huh? I can hear someone saying right about now, “Wait a minute, yes I do recall being a kid growing up in the neighborhood.”
Well, whether your past experiences were good or bad in that particular community, at least a number of us can call it our childhood home.
Speaking of childhood homes, not too far from the home where I grew up from a little boy to a grown ole man, an incident occurred recently that could endanger many people lives.
This crisis was just a series of events witness in that particular community in just one years time.
Yes, I'm going to get to the point and tell this story, but before I do, I would like to define some things for clarification and hopefully historical significance one day.
Number 1, growing up in Atlanta, Georgia where this community is located, it was ALWAYS known to be apart of the NORTHWEST region of the City. Why do I say this? Correct me Scholars if I'm wrong, but when we describe our street location, “NW” is on the tail end of street sign or our US Snail Mailing address.
Number 2, my childhood neighborhood was and is apart of the Historical Collier Heights Community only separated by the development of Interstate 20 first in the late 1950's and early 1960's; then enclosed by Interstate 285 in the 1970's & 80's.
But, who cares huh? Well, many descendants of that area and myself care.
Now straight to the point; Linkwood Road connects Collier Drive to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. It is a heavily walked pedestrian street with no sidewalk which is badly needed and a heavily daytime driven route from Collier Drive to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
The neighborhoods surrounding this area consist mostly of African American People who were Upper Middle-Class, Middle-Class and Lower Income living people.
Since the 1960's thru the 2000's the demographics, average income of the people, racial background and even the crime rate has changed. Nevertheless, a number of Citizens remain in the area who help preserve a unique way of life to which the pursuit of the American Dream has not faded away.
On Friday Morning around 4:00 am EST, according to neighbors; individuals were seen near the corner of Linkwood Road and Burton Road on the telephone poles removing wire.
This telephone wire or in more technical terms - “Trunk Line”, according to AT&T Technicians working later on those lines; contain about 2000 customers from residents to businesses – phone service. So, when neighbors in the area of Linkwood, Hedgewood, Tribble Lane, Hermer Circle and Kevin Court tried to call out or were looking to receive calls inward, they heard nothing. Not even the crackling hum of a disconnected phone, because of the failure to pay a bill.
When they called “AT&T”, they were told that a Service Technician will come out that afternoon. When the Service Technician did not show up, they were told by AT&T that it would either be Monday or Tuesday before their phone service would be restored.
Wait-A-Minute Now! Monday or Tuesday of NEXT WEEK and its FRIDAY. Are you kidding US!? No, AT&T wasn't kidding and later return my call, whereas, stating there was a major outage.
Furthermore, the Representative of AT&T that I spoke with could not give us a location of the outage when asked.
Nevertheless, after responding to the fact that no phone service was available to my family in case of an emergency, I tried to spring to action.
In the community of my childhood memories, I established a communications plan or small communication systems with other kids of my youth who now were adults living out of the city and in some cases out of the State of Georgia.
Furthermore, Twitter and Facebook has played a major roll in effectively getting the word out to not only them (Former Kids of my Youth), but Family, Colleagues, Classmates, Government Officials, as well as, companies who “Really” appreciate our business; not to mention Small Business Owners in the area like myself.
But, you know- its kinda sad when you call television station's newsrooms all excited to ask if they could confirm the outage with AT&T and get no response on the scene.
Possibly Two Thousand People without phone, possibly a number of elderly people in their homes who don't own a cell phone or have one of those personal emergency devices to alert authorities that now does not work, WOW!
I might catch some flack from the previous statement I made, but after all if the news
crews do show up, I can update this blog with no problem.
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