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editorial*entertainmentS mbusinessSuada Y, Jmm Ht 1*71How Do You FightTelephone?In desperation after repented J telephone threats, proic/ars «/r*/ uf tein ptcd arson, Mrs. Clark bought a pistol to help protect her family.By MARY KISS Thaw-News Staff WriterWhen the first call came, Mrs. Charles Clark picked up the phone and heard a man's voice on the line.The words, she says, were a little slurred, like “b man talking with his dentures out,”M If y on ckn't shut up about the school bus, ” said the voice, III slit your throat.”Shaken, Mrs. Clark held the phone a moment, then told the caller he was a “liar, a coward, and sick.” He didn't answer, ard she laid the receiver on the table.1 remembered reading in the Times-News that the telephone company could trace calls, so I went to a neighbor’s and called the telephone office. They told me they couldn’t do anything unless I got a court order.Mrs. Clark decided to take their advice. She hadn’t recognized the voice over the phone, but she had an Idea what the caller was talking about,For about a year, Mrs. Patricia Clark had been involved In a series of problems, mostly concerning Hawkins County school buses. She’d transferred her children from liberty Hill to Church Hill because she objected to what she felt was unreliable bus service and didn’t like having the younger ones spend long, unsuperviftcd periods waiting for buses to arrive.At liberty Hill, she also complained that when the bus driver failed to show up, and her children missed school, their absences didn't appear on the!r report cards. She wrote a letter to the Timea-News saying a teacher had told her the absences weren’t reported, because ”11 would affect our A.D.A.” (reducing state funds to the school.)Then, waiting foe the Church Hill school bus to arrive one afternoon, she saw three fast frteght trains speed across one crossing on River Road within a half hour, just at the time the bun was due to arrive. She began circulating a petition to get a signal light Installed. When snags developed, she Insisted the bus be re-routed.She complained school buses in the area were over-crowded, collected names of riders and compiled a list of lift children who were riding In two trips on a single smalt bus, which she said was designed for it, Tht, school super In ten dent told her his figures showed only W.She tried to gei one of her sons admitted to a federal Title 1 education program. Told her family1 'made too much money M she collected a list of affluent dtliena In the community whose chUAen were attending, and mailed It with a complaint to Congressman JimmyWhite the telephone eomfmny tries to trace threatening phone rally the Clark receiver hangs off the hook, tying up a five-party line *u*fHcteri of being the source,Quillen.When the bus schedule conflicted with her children's band practice, she asked that they be allowed to ride another bus. When the request was turned down, she compiled a list of names of children who were riding buses from routes other than their own, and took It to the school officials.Finally, she began driving her five children to school herself, making the 23-mile-round-trip to Church Hill twice a day. To do it* she had to give up her outside housework Jo!:s.Mrs. Clark admits she’s a fighter — some would say an agitator. She rocks the boat, makes waves. She's used to being told to mind her own business.But when the first anonymous phone threat came on March 26 she realized that somewhere along the way she'd made an enemy who wasn't content to ‘'fight fair,”Early In April, the school bus was re-routed away from the dangerous crossing, and Mrs. Clark let her children begin riding it again.Then, on April 12, another phone call: Don T put your Kids on the school bus or well get them, said a man's voice. It was afternoon, and almost time for school to close. Mrs. Clark sped to Church Hill Elementary School, but found that two of her youngsters had already left.“1 had to follow the bus. When I saw it was doing GO miles an hour, 1 called the Highway Patrol, and they saJcj they'd put a man on to check ft. The next day, the patrol car followed the school bus all the way, and of course, there was no speeding.”A note ry public finally signed the necessary papers for the telephone tracer, and United Inter-Mountain agreed to install the device.Next morning, April 13, Mrs. ClArk drove her children to school, drove back home, and found the phone ringing.e heard a woman’s voice, talking fast. “One of your girls Li going to get acid in her face and you won’t be able to do anything about it.1'I don't know whether I hung up the phone or not, she saki later. I got in the car and drove to the high school. Mr, Taylor, the principal, told me nobody was going to bother my daughter, but 1 got her out of class anyway.Then I went to Church Hill Elementary, and asked Mr. Balky to call all of my children to the office. Ho said that before anybody bothered them, they'd have to go over him. He aald somebody was just trying to scareme.She was scared, all right, Mrs, Clark admitted, She gathered up her brood and drove to the Times-News office, where she explained her problems to a reporter. Then, more composed, she went back home to wait.A week w two went by before another call came.This time, Mrs. Clark's small daughter answered the phone, and a woman asked directions to the Clark home. Thinking the caller wanted to buy a trailer the family had for sale, the girl gave the information. Mrs. Clark took over the phone in time to hear two women talking at the other end. One said, “I told you not to call her. They’ve got something on their phone. They can trace calls.”Mrs. Clark left her phone off the hook and went to a neighbor’s to call the telephone office.“I,eave the phone off the hook, the operator said, “and wait for a dial tone. Then put it back on.”Mrs. Clark went home to wait. It was night, and her husband was at his job at Penn Dixie Cement Company, where he works as an electrician. She heard a noise outside the house, and asked who was there.A man’s voice said, “Put that d— phone back on the hook, or I'll Jerk It out of thewall.Mrs. Clark left the phone off, and heard nothing more. Next morning, she found a child's chair under the outside phone box, legs imbedded in the soft dirt. A phone wire had been loosened.That morning, the phone company told her, no, sorry, the bug wasn't on her line any longer. They'd have 1t re-installed,Mrs. Clark, with her husband’s permission, went to the Kingsport police station, got a gun permit, and bought a .32 revolver.Calls kept coming, and the phone company told Pal Clark they’d taken the “catch'em” off her line again, It was needed somewhere else, they said. They promised to install It again.On Saturday night, June 6, says Mrs. Clark, the phone rang at midnight. No one spoke when she answered. She hung up. It rang again at 2 a.m.. at 4, at 8.That day, the phone rang “about 10 times. Each time, Mrs. dark left the receiver off, reported to the telephone company, and waited for the dial tone before replacing the phone on the hook.On Monday, Hawkins County Sheriff Bill Nelms called her, The calls had been traced, he said.They were coming from a five-party line In a nearby neighborhood. Someone In one of the five bouses was doing the dialing, but there was no way of knowing which house that someone was in.The Sheriff and phone company officials offered a solution: “Get yourself an unlisted number.”Mrs. Clark surprised them by refusing. Her children, she said, were busy with band practice and school activities. If she got an unlisted number, their friends couldn't call. Besides, she wanted band instructors, teachers, and other people to be able to reach her in case one of the children became 111 or was In an accident. Nc, she said, absolutely no unlisted number.The phone kept ringing, and Mrs. Clark tried a last-ditch tactic. She knows every member of every household on that five party line. During the day, the nuisance caller dials, she leaves her phone off the hook. This keeps her own private line tied to the five-party line. Nobody in any of the five houses can use the phone.At night she puts the receiver back on. Four of the families on the line include retired and elderly men or women and Mrs. Clark ia afraid to deprive them of the telephone at night, iii case n^y need medical care or other help.In the daytime, wi.m it rings, 1 just take the phone off and leave it, and take my brood to the swimming pool,” she says.Maybe, this way, says Mrs. Clark, the people on the party line will all look at each other and ask who’s been making these calls. And then maybe somebody will do some thing.In the meantime, she adds, she and her oldest daughter are doing daily target practice in their six-acre backyard, They’re getting pretty good, she says, even though they “don't like guns.”On Tuesday, somebody tried to set the Clark’s split-level brick house afire.When Mrs. Clark arrived home about 3 p.m., she found the storm doors locked from the inside at both the front%and back entrances. She was sure she’d left them unlocked. 3ie entered through a basement door, smelled smoke, and hurried upstairs tothe kitchen.One of the units was turned on on hw electric range, and on top was a pile of biasing dishcloths and newspapers.She put out the fire and cleared away the debris. The Haie had left a small dark discolocUon on her coppertone range and burned a small spot on a cabinet beskte the stove. If she hadn’t arrived at the cructal moment, she believes, her house would have burned.‘T Just want everybody to know,” ahe “everything that's happened. My back Is te the wall.”
Newspaper Details
Kingsport Times News
Kingsport, Tennessee, US
Sun, Jun 20, 1971
Page 51
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
TN, USA 29 Mar 2020
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