Mr. Dees Goes to Town

UTILITIES

Of some 6,500 independent telephone companies that operate about 20% of the U.S.'s 22,600,000 telephones, the Mt. Vernon Telephone Co., of Rockcastle County, Ky., is certainly not the best. Most of its null subscribers suffer old-fashioned wall crank phones. Once a break in the line was not repaired for three months. Some lines are down because poles have rotted away and have not been replaced. On a $6,372 gross last year, the company lost $39.58, It prints no directory; subscribers merely give the crank a whirl and say: "Gimme John Boone," etc.

Roused at last to action, some inhabitants of Rockcastle County recently filed a complaint with the Kentucky Public Service Commission, demanding adequate service. That was the first time the commissioners had been aware that there was a Mt. Vernon Telephone Co. It had blithely ignored a 1934 State statute requiring the filing of a yearly operating statement.

Last week a commission accountant and an engineer busily tried to make something out of the telephone company's books. Meanwhile, they had encountered a very rugged character named James Franklin ("Frank") Dees, proprietor of the firm. Aged 60, weighing 200 pounds, his muscular physique topped off by iron-grey hair, an engaging grin and keen brown eyes, Phoneman Frank Dees fought back with a counter-complaint. He asked for permission to raise his rates, discontinue the exchange at nearby Livingston, force subscribers to pay their phone bills. Snapped he: "The kind of service they're gettin' is the kind they're payin' for."

An obstinate, teetotaling Baptist, veteran of the Spanish-American War, Frank Dees, who bought the telephone company in 1913, is also in business in real estate, restaurants, and has a Shell oil distributorship. A rich man, for his county, he is worth close to $100,000.

At the hearing of his and his subscribers' complaints, Dees was his own attorney, his sole witness. Asked to explain his last year's salary from the phone company, he said: "I figured it was worth $100 a month to myself for having to put up with these complainers." Expounding his company's connections, he offered: "My company is in cahoots with the Southern Bell. . . . They get the money and I get the cahoots." Of a subscriber who claimed he had been trying to get a telephone installed for three years, the phoneman asked: "Do you still want it?" Subscriber: "I do." Dees: "I'll be around tomorrow and put it in." When the repair man went around, the man didn't want it.

Accused of not making improvements, he growled: "What improvements there are around here were made either by J. F. Dees or the WPA."

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