Things have certainly changed...the crank phone shown here is the one I grew up with, back on the farm. It actually belonged to my grandparents, who owned the farm before my parents bought it when I was about 8 years old. In those days, the phones were all on a "party" system... eight homes on the same telephone line. Individual 'rings' (two longs, two shorts, one long/one short, etc) determined who the call was intended for... however, that was irrelevant to the neighborhood ladies who listened in on every call... no matter whose 'ring' had rung. My own mom never missed an opportunity to know what was going on in someone else's business... I think that phone was the forerunner of the TV soap opera.
That might very well explain my own aversion to telephones today. As a teenager, knowing that any 'private' call would be shared by at least 4 or 5 neighbors made one hesitant to make or receive calls. To make a call, you had to twirl the little crank on the right hand side of the phone... one lo-o-o-o-ng crank would get you the operator in town & she would then put you in touch with the telephonee of your choice.
The little gadget on the left is, of course, today's cell phone. What a marvel of technology! It affords us the luxury(?) of never again being out of touch with friends and family... or even the telemarketers who can now plague us even when we are not at home! My cell phone is fairly simple... I don't text... in fact I am lucky to hear it in time to answer before it goes to voice mail; then I have to get the manual to figure out how to hear the message.
But, my latest technological goody is a teeny gadget which can hold about 1500 songs (as if I ever even heard of that many songs) and play them to me in my ear, or in the truck, or on the new boombox which can go from room to room or outside on the patio. It's pretty easy to 'load'... I just had to "rip" and "sync" and there were a bunch of our CDs (a marvel in themselves), now residing in that 2 inch x 3 inch piece of technology... it boggles the mind!
Sometimes I wonder what my parents would think... I recall that about 1985, I was telling my Dad about using an ATM (new technology at that time). He heard me out and then said, "I was sort of hoping I would miss the computer age". I'm glad I didn't miss the computer age, although keeping up with it all can sometimes make one weary. I think I have to take a nap now.
While we did not have a phone like that one in the city, we did have "The Party Line". My memory is listening in and having someone start hollering, "Who is that" I was sure they were going to get me so I hung up immediatley. Of course I could never recall what they were saying because I was scared out of my wits! The phone numbers were a series of letters and numbers,
ReplyDeleteJA5-1157...wonder why they changed that.