A $9 phone did what the Internet could never do -- let me work during a power outage.Around 8:30 p.m. Sunday the lights went out as the remnants of Hurricane Ikebarreled through western Pennsylvania, where I live. So we switched on flashlights, lit candles, and waited for the power company to get the juice flowing.

On Monday morning, the power was still out, and word was it might stay out until Thursday. As a closet Luddite, I usually appreciate nature's reminders of the fragility of our techno-industrial society, especially the hype-mongering Internet.

But as a writer on deadline, I had to restrain myself from cursing in front of the kids (who were rejoicing because school was closed). I had content to produce, information to manage, and editors circling with steely knives. Couldn't nature have waited until I filed my story?

I telecommute, so no electricity meant no Internet, which meant no e-mail, no IMs, no VoIP, no Web. And because my laptop battery was only half charged, I had about an hour of PC time before my ThinkPad would go dark. Ike might as well have chopped off my hands.

Then I remembered the telephone. We recently got a landline after years of only using cell phones (whose batteries were also close to dead), and we had a cheapo $9 touch tone hanging on the wall in the kitchen.

Voila! Dial tone. I had a couple of important interviews scheduled for Monday, so the day wasn't to be a total wash.

POTS (plain old telephone service) lines are like suspenders -- quaint and hardly in use. But when your belt breaks, they're handy to have around.