I was ten years old before we had a phone in the house. My grandparents lived around the corner, and they had a phone, They had had phone service since the 1930's, but my parents decided a phone was a luxury, and didn't have one. That winter, my father went out of state to a a beekeepers convention in Little Rock Arkansas. Around the time he was to fly home, we had a massive snow storm. My mother trudged through knee deep snow to my the old farmhouse to use the phone. The house was cold because my grandparents were sensibly in Florida that January. Eventually everything worked out, he flew into Detroit, took a taxi to an Uncle's house, and we picked him up a day or so later, barely making our way through the snow. My mother decreed that a phone was no longer a luxury.
At first it was a party line. Two short rings was a call for us. One long ring was the Bader family, two long rings was the older couple across the street at the corner. When you picked up the phone, you had to check for a dial tone. Often you would pick up and one of the neighbors would be talking on the line, you had to wait for them to finish the call before you could make your call. Sometimes you just listened to hear the neighborhood gossip. A few years later everyone was converted to a private line.
And they were all rotary dial phones.
When I was in high school my parents bought a house in Florida, near the space center, a home I would live in for a couple of years after high school, and that they would retire to and live out the rest of their lives, they both died in that house. They had phones installed, and for the first time, they were touchpad dialing, not rotary. I had a phone in my bedroom for the first time.
I bought my first cell or mobile phone in 1996. I had moved to Kentucky, and was commuting 82 miles in each direction everyday to and from law school. The phone was huge by today's standards, and I was paying $30 a month, for 30 minutes a month of calls in a limited geographic area. If I went over the number of minutes additional minutes were about 50-cents each, calls outside the calling area were about the same cost.
I bought my first semi-smart phone when we were getting ready for a trip to England. I wanted a phone that would work across systems. The best option was a Blackberry. The salesman lied to me, he said in a week they wouldn't be able to pry it out of my hand, it only took about two days for me to feel that way. A couple of years after I moved to DC, I bought my first glass faced smartphone. 15 years later, I have had four of five of them. I use it daily, but seldom, very seldom for phone calls. They are great email devices, but really lousy phones unless you plug in a headset.
Last year, my phone broke just after we boarded the cruise ship for a month long adventure. I posted my daily selfie while having lunch on the ship, and the next time I pulled out my phone it was dead. I went a month without a phone, and guess what, I survived. My maternal grandmother, lived without a phone for the last 30 years of her life. I never talked with her over the phone, I was 4 or 5 years old when they sold the farm - and they never had a phone after that.
I wonder how many people under the age of 50 could figure out how to dial a call on the phone above?
I remember landlines and rotary phones. Who thought we'd be carrying phones in our pockets one day?
ReplyDeleteIt is an amazing technological leap.
DeleteI recently saw a video clip of young people trying to use a dial phone, and they really did not understand how it worked. The horror, now with hindsight as we didn't know any better, was having to redial if the number was busy.
ReplyDeleteYou've reminded me of our party line, that when we picked up the phone and put it to our ear to make a call, we would say 'using', to check if anyone was using the line. Well, my parents did. I used to listen in at times. Our call ring was short, long, long.
Never mind dials, we had to turn a handle to get to the phone exchange. From the farm we get the Hill End phone exchange, who would transfer us to the Moe phone exchange, that would transfer us to a Melbourne phone exchange who would then connect us to my grandma's phone.
My first mobile phone was also around 1996, and digital. There were already quite a lot of analogue mobile phones around, that had quite a different phone number arrangement. The analogue were three groups of three digits, whereas digital were four, three and three. I still have the same phone number, thirty years later.
I have only ever had one mobile number
DeleteI’ve watched a number of videos of kids trying to use rotary phones. Always entertaining.
ReplyDeleteOn the ship last spring they played a version of Deal or No Deal, and the emcee didn't know that you had to pick the receiver to dial the prop desk phone.
DeleteSomething so many of us just assume. My sister-in-law had a wall in the laundry room of the house they built in 1989. About 10 years ago, her granddaughter was hanging out while she did the laundry and asked what the thing on the wall was. When her grandmother told her, she then had to show her. My great-niece thought it was the most bizarre thing she had ever seen.
DeleteI left a wall phone in kitchen in the house in Lexington when we sold it 7 years ago.
DeleteI still remember the phone number of the first house we lived in after moving to California: PA5-3478. For some reason the first two numbers were letters based on the area in which you lived. We lived near a very large park so the number was, technically, Parkview5-3478.
ReplyDeleteI have had just two cellphones in my life--I am not much for phones--but the smartphone I do enjoy for internet and emails and some texting.
I make very few phone calls, but I check email often.
DeleteWe were on a party line when I was a kid too. But we also still had real operators (all female, of course) who you told the number to and who then connected you. Our town did not get rotary dials until the early 1970s.
ReplyDeleteThe town operator office closed in the 1960's and was converted to a hair salon, my grandmother had her hair washed and set there once a week while I was growing up - a flashback memory I hadn't thought of that in decades. I would go into town with her and explore the dime store while she had her hair done.
DeletePhones are one utility I've seen grow and advance in my life time. When I was a little, we had a party line and operator assisted phone (no dial at all). My first mobile phone was also sometime in the 90's, probably around 1995 or 1996. It was a big fat thing and you had to be standing in the right spot in order to make a call. They've come a long, long way in 40 years.
ReplyDeleteIn 2008 when I was invited for an interview in DC, I had to go park between the two big pine trees to make the call - I was in south central Kentucky teaching Medicare rules to benefits counselors.
DeleteI'm amazed at the detail of your memories about your phone history. Since I got new hearing aids two years ago, I have a Bluetooth app that has my calls connect to my cell phone and makes conversations much clearer. I still have landline phones in my home too.
ReplyDeleteWe have a landline.
DeleteI heard a young fellow on BBC Radio 4 yesterday. He said that he had never been in one of our famous red phone boxes - let alone made a call from one of them. But once they were such a part of our lives here in Great Britain. Now they are disappearing. Never to be seen again.
ReplyDeleteThere is one painted lime green in front of a bar in San Antonio. I don't think I ever made a call from one.
Delete