Last Thursday morning, I had breakfast with a friend at the grill on Exchange Street. A fine way to begin the day, breakfast with a friend. And a fine place, though there are those who would argue that for breakfast you’ve got to be at the Deluxe Diner, or at Howe’s store, or Dick’s, or Ellises’…

Nice people like Frank and Bonnie Bulger – regular volunteers at the information center – patronize the grill. Frank had just gotten back from walking a Muskie Building resident to the bank to cash her check and then back to make sure she didn’t slip on the slick sidewalk.

His kindness reminded me that this is a fine place to live.

I was in a fine mood then by the time I got home, despite the blowing snow, a mere hint of what was to come. My husband missed a call while he was out with the dog so I returned to find a message blinking away on the kitchen phone.

The message was from our phone company. Seems our monthly bill had been returned to the company and would we please call this 800 number and provide the correct mailing address.

Uh oh.

When the Rumford Center post office closed about two years ago, we rented a box at the Hanover post office. Gretchen, who commutes from Poland, and one of the Worcesters made us feel welcome there. And for about two years we’ve gotten our bills there. Light, phone, property taxes and quite a few other bills, too, arrived in our Hanover mail box. No problem.

Until last fall when, for no apparent reason neither light nor phone bill appeared on schedule. Some tedious calls made over a week’s time seemed to fix the problem, and for many months the phone bill turned up in our Hanover mail box.

Until last week.

Wasting no time, I dialed the 800 number. That horrible artificial voice came on:

Are you calling from 207- (our number)? “Yes,” I responded loudly.

Please choose from one of the following: no menu item fit my problem so I said, More Options. One of them was “representative.” “Representative,” I cried. But that got me back to the main menu. Second time out in More Options though did get me connected with a representative.

“This is Miss Smith” – not her real name, but then her real name is probably not her real name if you know what I mean – “let me just verify the number you’re calling about.”

Superior kind of tone. “And you are?”

“Mrs. Macgregor,” was my frosty reply.

Please read me the last digits after your phone number on your statement.”

“I can’t. I don’t have a statement.”

Miss Smith was exasperated. “I cannot discuss your account without verifying it. Tell me how much you paid last month.”

“Oh, I think maybe $68.”

“Wrong. Go look it up.”

“OK.” Shuffle, dig, scan. “$70.”

Miss Smith was triumphant. Two dollars more than my guesstimate!

“Now may I tell you why I’ve called?”

Silence gives consent.

“I got a message asking me to call and give you our correct mailing address. The message said our monthly statement had been returned. Something in your system keeps kicking back to our old address.”

“That is the decision of the U.S. Postal. Service,” Miss Smith said. Meaning, not OUR fault, I think.

“Well, I said, I could check with the post office if you could send me the bill that was returned – “

“Impossible,” Miss Smith said. “I don’t have it. No one has it.”

” … or even a print-out of what you’re seeing on your screen.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” said Miss Smith.

“Oh,” I replied. And hung up.

Then the snow came on in earnest and it soothed me. Miss Smith is probably stuck in some industrial-sized, anonymous place along with dozens and dozens of others, rank upon rank of them all looking much alike with their ear phones and computer screens, dealing with the likes of me day after day. While I’m here in the River Valley, a beautiful snowstorm outside, a warm fire in. The certainty that, as Ray Barker is away, George Barker will be along at the right time to plow in the morning. Poor Miss Smith. It doesn’t work that way for her.

Linda Farr Macgregor lives with her husband Jim in Rumford. She is a freelance writer and author of “Rumford Stories.”