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Did the local electric utility decide it wasn't worth running 120V power to your home either? I don't know of any reason that running fiber is any more expensive than running power lines (if anything, being able to piggyback the fiber on existing poles should make it cheaper).

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They likely did. Electricity was pretty much nonexistent in rural areas until the 1930s when the Rural Electrification Administration provided loans to cooperatives to bring electric utility service to areas too sparsely populated to justify the costs for a traditional utility.

Yup, nailed it. Electricity didn't come to my area until the late 1940s; as far as I can tell, my house wasn't actually wired until the mid-60s.

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