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Telephones
It is amazing, over the years, how telephones
have transformed from the picture that you see above to the ones
that you know today.
I remember our telephone, when I was a
girl, much like the one shown above hanging on our front hall
wall. It wasn't quite as large and it had a dial on it but it
had the adjustable mouthpiece and the long earpiece. I even remember
the number! Isn't it strange, after well over sixty years, that
I should remember my first telephone number - Lloydbrook1290.
That reminds me of an old song............... Pennsylvania6-5000,
played by the big bands, like Glenn Miller and his orchestra.
Phones were not used for long periods of
time in those days; you said your message in about a minute or
two and hung up. This could have been because many people had
"party lines". 'Party' meaning that your phone was linked
with another, sometimes two, and one was considered a 'bad party'
if, when you picked up the phone, they were always talking on
it. You also didn't want them to hear your converstations. I think
ours was a private line - no party, so we didn't have to worry
about that; it was just unmannerly to stay on the phone too long;
uncomfortable, too - you stood to talk on the telephone!
At the farm, the phone looked exactly like
the one in the picture except, on the right side, it had a crank
or handle that you turned to reach the "operator" at
the local phone office switchboard. You told her who you wanted
to call and she would connect you. In the country, they were all
party phones and much gossip was started because some listened
in to parts of conversations over the wires.
Think of the privacy that we have today!
There is caller-identification and I think, even in the smallest
of towns, party lines have been done away with. Back in the olden
days, we would never have been able to imagine cell phones; answering
machines; mobile phones; call waiting; conference calls, and good
heavens - modems for the internet!
Children did not use the telephone much,
in the days when I grew up, except if it was a special call from
a grandparent, aunt or uncle - at least in our house. If you wanted
to talk to your 'friends', you went to see them or spoke to them
in the schoolyard. You might ask what we did back then. We were
kept busy! You don't miss what you don't have. ~Joan Adams Burchell~
(copyright)
