Ubiquitous phone

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a ... telephone caller? Indeed it soon will be, now that some aircraft are about to install public telephones.

Ordinarily we're in favor of Alexander Graham Bell's invention, except when we're trying to eat a family dinner. But in an airplane? Is no place safe from Ma Bell's successors?

One fellow we know was so up-in-the-air over the voice-box's encroachment that he fled to an unoccupied mountaintop for overnight reflection. While packing food and water, he reminded his wife how primitive his open-air accommodations would be: no electricity, heat, light, or water.

She nodded, then made her sole request: ''Call me when you get there.''