I live out in the sticks. This is by no means a complaint. This is merely an observation of the truest kind.

I’m not saying that I live so far back in the holler that you’d have to walk a cow path the last quarter mile to get to my house. In fact, I got me an asphalt paved driveway a couple years ago. If you walked to my house the last quarter mile you wouldn’t even get mud on your shoes.

Even so, I do live deep in the woods of West Central Georgia just above the flood plain of Palmetto Creek. No street lights. No pizza delivery. No curbside service.

I am at the end of the line, literally, when there’s a power outage. I’ve got Georgia Power all around me, but somehow the local EMC squeezed one line of poles down my road and set the last one at my driveway.

“We’re working our way down the line as fast as we can sir,” the dispatcher tells me. Which means that I’ll be the dead last one to get my lights back on.

I call that living in the sticks.

Now, I’ve got flush toilets, running water, and several other modern conveniences. I wouldn’t want you to worry that I’m saving up corn cobs for the outhouse. No sir.

I’ve got a comfortable home. Nice carpet. Real hardwood floors. Ceiling fans. Central air and heat. A good fireplace, and a good bed to sleep in.

Just because I live in the sticks doesn’t mean that I’m not keeping up with the times.

Except for one thing.

You know what I don’t have out here? I don’t have a dependable internet service. I couldn’t even trade for one if I had all the tea in China.

And I’ll tell you something. This day and time, operating at a snail’s pace while the rest of the world is riding the internet highway like greased lighting is a might bit frustrating for a writer.

About three weeks ago I lost my connection to the site that hosts my Georgia Bred blog.  For three weeks I’ve been borrowing somebody else’s internet just to post my stories.

I’ve driven the 70 miles to Marion’s house to post a story. I’ve been up to the library in town. The last story, I posted from my neighbor’s living room.

And boy, don’t get me started on tech support. In the last four days I’ve wasted half my life on the phone with those guys and gals. And I’m being nice.

I have one service provider available to me out here in the sticks. I probably shouldn’t name them. I could get sued. But they’re the ones you see who claim to have “the original network” set up by Alexander Graham Bell.

Personally, I think they might still be using his original equipment.

I hear there’s a new service for my area in the works. I even signed up on the waiting list.

And their name is so perfectly enchanting. If you’re a long-time southerner, you’ll appreciate the irony in what I’m about to tell you.

They call this new service Kudzu. I’m not making this up. I have reasonable friends who are actually using it.

“Great coverage,” they tell me.

With a name like that, I guess so. But I can’t tap into it. Not here. Or into anything else for that matter.

My mobile provider has an internet service, but not in my area. I’m too far out of town to even dream about fiber optics. I’ve never even had cable TV out here.

Before you mention it, I’ve seen that daisy chain of satellites flying by overhead. I could go there. But I haven’t been willing to come off my wallet to invest in a piece of the space program just yet.

So, I’m stuck in the sticks with an internet that won’t allow me to do the one thing I enjoy most, connecting with you.

I made a little headway today. I finally got a tech guy I know out of Columbus to do a remote support session on my laptop.

This blows me away. He’s 30 miles down the road but he’s on my laptop which is sitting on the coffee table in my living room. The cursor is moving and he’s doing his thing.

Three hours later he tells me that the issue is definitely with the guys running “the original network.” And, of course, two days ago those same guys told me it wasn’t their issue.

I’m just letting you know this in case we completely lose connection and Georgia Bred disappears from the face of the earth. My tech guy and the big boys are about to take this matter out behind the wood shed.

And if you live in the sticks like I do, you know what that means.