The battle used to begin about the time we sat down to eat our supper. But now it seems to start earlier, sometimes in the early afternoons.

It's worse on weekends.

That's because they know we're home and they have been lying in wait.

I'm talking about telephone solicitors.

There are droves of them, and they seem to come in waves.

For awhile it was window replacement salesmen who wanted us to replace our old and inefficient windows with double-paned glass to the tune of $10,000 or so.

For awhile it was the charitable efforts of law enforcement officers who were aiding the unfortunate young with projects of various sorts. Then there were magazines that offered us great deals on subscriptions.

Lately it has been mortgage lenders who want to lend us money on or for our houses, even those paid off years ago.

"Rates have never been lower," they manage to gasp before I hang up on them.

The calls come around suppertime because they know it is a good bet we are home then. The same is true of weekends, particularly Saturday mornings.

But there is really no other rhyme or reason to them. The calls can come at any time. We had one a couple of nights ago at 9 p.m.

The most aggravating, of course, are the calls that aren't calls. You pick up the telephone and say hello and no one answers. I've heard various explanations for this, the most logical being that this call is made in advance to be sure you're home. A second soliciting call comes later. Sometimes the caller starts his or her spiel after a brief pause, but more often than not there is simply no one there.

The other sure sign that it's a solicitation call is the caller's ability to mispronounce my name. It is not an easy name to pronounce correctly and so when I hear one of several variations I know it is a telephone solicitor.

This allows me a certain amount of time in which to snarl a denial and hang up. I know this is impolite and hostile, but I find I am particularly put off by those solicitors who say gaily, "And how are you tonight, Mr. Heintizy?" To which I reply something like, "I was fine until you called."

I know that the caller isn't really responsible for the jolly approach, that they are just trying to eke out a meager living in some bucket shop somewhere. But somehow it just grates on my soul to have my privacy invaded by a stranger trying to sell me something I don't want at a time when I don't want to talk.

I've often wondered what the percentage of returns is for the effort expended. It can't be very great, but there must be some profit—otherwise they wouldn't bother.

And I know repeats are necessary. This week, for instance, I got four calls from a roofing company even though I told each caller vehemently I was not interested in a new roof. Apparently you have to not only be persistent to be a solicitor, but also pretty thick-skinned.

But the worst multiple offender used to be a telephone company that shall remain nameless. (Why should I give them a free plug in the paper?)

I'm told—although I don't know it for sure—that their callers were required to try each number seven times before giving up. It seemed more like 70.

I know there are ways to get around the barrage of calls. None of them, however, are easy. The easiest is to install an answering machine and let it screen the calls. This discourages a lot of callers. They hang up without another word when they hear your "Sorry you couldn't reach us ... " It discourages some, but not all. There are still some who blather on with their message in spite of your not being there. Later, you have to hear at least some of the message before you erase it from your machine.

And supposedly you can call and tell the callers—provided you can ever find out where they are—to stop it. But that takes more trouble than it is worth.

So there really is no simple solution to telephone solicitations. Like spam in your email account, like junk mail, like billboards and commercials on television and radio, it just seems to be a part of the American way.

But somehow it also seems particularly American to value one's privacy. I've always thought that since I am paying for the use of the telephone, I ought to have some control over what it's used for—although I must admit that when my children were teenagers that wasn't much.

The control we exert over the telephone these days is to hang up—and I do. But, alas, I have on occasion hung up on friends who I thought were solicitors, an act not likely to keep them friends for long. So now I am more judicious. I alternate by letting the machine answer and just hanging up when they mispronounce my name.

That makes it about an equal contest. But I'd rather not have to defend my home at all.