A Matter of Communication

The girls are upset that they don't have a telephone at the hotel. They can't communicate with their friends and are social outcasts. Kate says it would cost $800 for the telephone company to install two miles of line just to get to the hotel. The girls have to get their calls at Drucker's Store and it's starting to disrupt his business. Then Floyd and Charley have to go back and forth between the store and the hotel with the messages. Sam refuses to take any more calls for them. Uncle Joe decides to start his own telephone company. He plans on using the barbed wire fencing surrounding all the local farms as the primary communication lines. A bunch of the local men come to the hotel to play poker. Instead, Joe gives them a sales pitch about his phone company. Joe plans to tap illegally into the Hooterville Telephone Company's line, but Sam doesn't let him. Joe comes up with a really complicated alternative. It's not long before the whole plan falls apart.