My Life as a Hobby: Telephones – What the Cell?

By Joe Hobby

Decision, decisions. We have been seriously considering taking the land line out of our home. That’s because about the only incoming calls we get are from some guy reminding us that it’s our last chance to get an extended car warranty. It will also mean giving up the phone number we have had since the Eisenhower administration.

Of course, taking out a land line is something that would have never been discussed 30 years ago. Back then, the thought that a house phone could be replaced by a device that’s portable, wireless, and is owned by everyone north of 9 years old was unthinkable. Nowadays it’s not even uncommon.

My granddaughter can’t imagine that there was a time when a household only had one phone. And when I told her that it had a receiver that was tethered to it’s main body with a cord, she looked at me like I’m speaking Latin. Golly, how did we even survive with a phone like that? I suppose I grew up in the Dark Ages.

Some of you can remember when the phone company finally made an extra long cord available. Every teenager in America wanted to make that day a national holiday. With the extended cord, teens could take the phone in another room, close the door, and get away from meddling parents – unless you were well off and had a second phone. Then you had to be careful about what you said. Of course in a few days, the line would be such a tangled mess that you were forced to stand on a chair, and hold one end of the cord so it could unwind.

Now everyone asks Siri to make their phone calls. But not long ago, we had to physically dial someone’s number. Yes, I said dial. There was no such thing as push buttons. It was rotary, baby! That actually had some advantages. When I began dating, the rotary phone helped me when I needed to work up the nerve to ask a girl out. After using the phone book to get her phone number, I would struggle over making the call. About a half dozen times, I would start dialing and then hang up. Finally, I would get to the last digit of her phone number – almost. By holding my index finger in the number hole, I stopped the call from going thru until I got the last bit of courage up. Only then would I let go and complete the call. Of course, sometimes I got the dreaded busy signal, which meant I had to repeat the whole process again. Teen angst. I wonder how many girls realize we went thru all that just to ask them out?

Rotary phones also made call-in contests to radio stations very competitive. Once my dialing finger worked it’s magic and I was the 10th caller on our local top 40 station. I think I won 6 – 45 RPM single records. Of course I didn’t have a record player (not a stereo), so I traded them to a buddy for comic books. Ah, the simple pre-teen life that is lost on this generation.

When I was a kid, I actually made a phone call to get the correct time and the temperature. Imagine my surprise when I learned there’s still a number you can call for that. How do I know? I Googled it on my iPhone of course.

Once I knew this service was still available, curiosity got the better of me and I made the call. But before I got the time, I had