Don’t Call Residents, They’ll Call You : Hamlet Is Hung Up About Phones

In a place that’s a little like the edge of the world and a lot like the middle of nowhere, nobody ever worries about hang-ups, busy signals or numbers, please.

Nobody has ever had a telephone. It is one of the last places without service, so people couldn’t have one even if they wanted one, which they don’t. But they will be able to soon.

“Every time we’ve had a phone, it always rings when you’re outside, and you just about break your neck to get in and answer it, and then they hang up on you,” said Wayne Jackson, who lives here on the Kitsap Peninsula about 80 miles west of Seattle with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren.

Plenty of Nothing

Others in his family want a phone, but you could say Jackson has expressed the sentiments of the majority in town, if there were a town, which there isn’t.

Actually, what folks seem to want most in Dewatto is plenty of nothing, and that’s just what they’ve got. No crowds, no noise, no pollution. No store, no post office, no electricity except the generator kind. And no phones.

Most of the people who stumble across this swatch of Washington wilderness are either lost or about to be. They wander around for a while, tumble into ditches with surprising regularity and bang on the modest doors of the several dozen residents in search of a phone.

Of course, they’ve never found one. And even after Inland Telephone Co. of Roslyn finishes laying the cable--which could be next month or next year, depending on whom you talk to--a phone could still be a pretty scarce commodity.

Phones ‘Pain in the Neck’

For the last 18 years at Yamaha Park mobile home court, Lester and Chris Phalen have done just fine without one.

“We got away from phones when we left Bremerton,” said Phalen, a retiree. “We had a business there, and phones were a pain in the neck.”

He thinks maybe they’ll install a pay phone outside. They can direct wayward travelers there, and they won’t get stuck with the bill, which could be considerable. Anyplace anybody would want to call is bound to be long distance from here.

“I guess we’ll probably have to keep change,” he said, but at least visitors won’t have to keep driving or be driven the 13 miles to Tehuyeh, which has phones and is one of the places Dewatto residents drop off lost people so they can call for help.

Tree Rustlers

Phalen’s friend, Don Huson, a lifelong Tehuyeh resident, owns a Christmas tree farm. Every December, tree rustlers steal his pines, as many as 100 at a time, and he allows as how a phone might be useful for summoning the sheriff.

He and Phalen agree, however, that although the phone would be faster than the radio they use now, the law wouldn’t necessarily arrive any sooner. It generally takes the sheriff three days, which is to be expected, because the officers hardly ever know where they’re going.

“We sit out there with the trees, night after night,” looking for thieves, he said. “We catch a lot of them. But you can’t get a sheriff out here to arrest them. With a phone, at least you could bend their ear.”

As he talks, Doug Weiss and his crew are laying phone cable farther down the road. Weiss, whose father owns Inland, expects the job to be complete in a month, provided that the weather isn’t too bad, which it always is this time of year.

Not Holding Their Breath

“Some want phones, and some don’t,” he said. “Some thought there’d never be phone service out here.”

Some still don’t. Jackson’s son-in-law, A. J. Foote, who was born and reared in Southern California but doesn’t like crowds, said the first notice said phone service would begin in three months. That was 11 months ago. The last notice said the fall of 1986.

So citizens aren’t holding their breath. However, when it’s available, the Footes will pay the initial $300 construction fee and the $20-a-month charge to get service, because he and his wife need it for work, and what if the kids get sick?

He had better prepare for a few neighborly visits, Phalen predicted.

“Quite a few people aren’t going to get phones,” he said. “They’ll just use somebody else’s.”