The Rotary Club
My small-but-ultra-cool bunch of "blog commenters" left some good comments on the last two phone-a-licious blog entries, and they certainly inspire more dialogue. I decided, though, instead of writing huge essays on the comment page, we'll take this new discussion—most notably about rotary phones—onto its own new blog entry. I think it's warranted, and that will make this the first time, I think, that we've had three related topics right in a row on Heart and Mind.It's funny that both Paul and Angela commented on how their grandmothers had rotary phones that they were getting charged for, because I'm pretty sure my grandmother had the same thing going on. We actually lived in her house (she wasn't living there anymore) from 1994 through 1996 and I vaguely remember paying that phone bill and seeing the charges for the ol' phone-company-rented phone. Indeed, it was a practice that was the standard in the old days.
Whether I'm remembering accurately or not, one thing is for sure: my parents—in the house that I grew up in—had rotary-service-only for longer than just about anyone else who wasn't in the "over 70/grandmother" generation. For you see, it's easy to forget that touch-tone service was, in fact, once something you had to pay for. It didn't just come standard on your phone line. We still didn't have touch-tone service when I moved out of the house. I recall that I was visiting home between my junior and senior year of college—so that puts us into the summer of 1992—and I was attempting to register for a summer college class* via some automated phone registration set-up, which required touch-tone. I had to actually go to my aunt's house to make the call because things at my folks' household were not up to speed.
(*As an aside, by the way, I needed this particular class to graduate on time. I was normally one of those people who made it a strict point to do NO SCHOOL DURING THE SUMMERS, EVER. But I needed this class. And, I got closed out of it and spent an extra semester at college.)
To get back to the story, 1992 may seem like a long time ago, especially to some of the "young 'un" blog readers who probably think those were the dark ages and that we still dialed the operator to make a call then, but the fact is, touch-tone service was living large as the standard even back then, seemingly everywhere except at our grandmothers' houses...and my parents' house.
A few years back—probably in the mid 1980s—we had graduated most of the phones in our house to "push button" phones, because that's when they got cheap (you could get a Radio Shack phone for 10 or 15 bucks and phones were no longer these clunky, heavy, real-bell-having contaptions that required leasing from the phone company for affordability). So, we went from having basically 3 rotary phones (one on each floor, including the basement) to having those same 3, but we also added these little push-buttons ones in many of the other rooms about the place. Eventually, those took over the main phones, too. HOWEVER, though they were push-button, they were not touch-tone.
For those who see this as a seeming paradox, you'll have to remember that in addition to "tone," phones used to (maybe still do?) have an option for "pulse." So you'd "dial" (actually push) the phone and it would make the "click click click" sound of a rotary phone. If your number was 111-1111, it would dial in about 10 seconds. If your number was 999-9999, you could go and put a pot of coffee on while you were waiting for it to connect. And, for the record, using the "tone" feature when you didn't pay for the touch tone service did a whole lot of nothing. Sure, you could play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on the telephone by keying 6-5-4-5-6-6-6, but if you were looking to connect somewhere, it was a lost cause.
I don't know how much touch-tone service was when it was new, but in the era that I'm discussing, it was cheap. I used to say to my father, "Why don't you just get it? It only costs, like, 2 dollars a month."
"Because not getting it doesn't cost anything," he'd say.
And then I'd counter, "Yeah, but you just go 'bing bing bing' on the phone and you're already connected. You don't have to wait for it to dial."
I should have seen it coming, but his response was, "That's OK. I'm not in a hurry and don't mind waiting."
I could sort of respect his thinking, but it is also funny how sometimes we resist technological improvements.
I suppose, though, it's the same reason why I don't get caller ID now, which I'd really like: principle. Every cellphone in the world gives you caller ID, call waiting, and voice mail—the same shit that the crappy local phone company would like to charge me extra to have, and it's a lot more than 2 bucks. "F**k you, *******!" (I don't want to give them any publicity by saying their name.)
In short, the touch-tone service did not enter my parents' house until it became just a standard, free thing and not an "a la carte extra."
In college, though, I did put my money where my mouth was and paid the two bucks for myself.
My folks still have one of those three rotary phones I spoke of: the one in the basement is still hooked up, since basically no one hangs out and makes phone calls in the cellar. Rather, it's there just in case you are down there and the phone rings.
And, not surprisingly, you know that I just had to take in the experience again and, therefore, in the relatively recent past, I did go down there for the purpose of making a phone call and using the dial. And, let me tell you this: it sucked!. I know the comments about rotary phones coming back are at least a little tongue-in-cheek, but can I tell you? It hurt my fingers and it was awkward and took too long.
Have you ever noticed that on old sitcoms, they always dialed numbers like 113-2132? Mr. Drummond would be calling up the Gooch's dad or something and it was always a number like that. No one had time to wait around for those 8s and 9s to swing back.
And Yllek mentioned the cordless phones of the day. Oh, those were awful. They'd work for about a week, and then they were terrible!
What I find most amazing, though, is how quickly all this technology—with cell phones and all—not only changes, but how stuff in the relatively recent past seems so quaint and archaic. Yllek and (possibly) Toni may not be able to relate, but for me and the rest of my old-school blog followers, you've got to understand that this whole idea of not having cell phones—and just having to deal with the fact that you couldn't call someone if you were running late or if you ran into an emergency—is not only something we remember, but we remember it from, basically, adulthood. It's not like something that we have vague recollections of from when we were in kindergarden (like the bicentennial is for me or something) or from hearing stories our parents told us about when we were little. This was when we were already in our twenties.
When I was in college, for example, at one point I lived with four other guys, and we naturally ponied up for call waiting, because we reasoned that five, single, sort-of-hip young people sharing a phone would be getting lots of calls. These days, a story like that reminds me of stories of when my grandfather brought home the family's first TV in the 1950s and all the neighbors would come by and admire it. It seems unbelievable that people even lived like that. But they did,and we did, too, and it wasn't so long ago with regard to the phones. These days every high school brat carries his or her own mobile phone and gets calls from friends like it's no big deal. And yet in college, we were doing the archaic practice of sharing a line. And, somehow, we did just fine, although it boggles the mind to this we did.
posted by Steve @ 10:39 AM
8 Comments:
Hey! I actually didn't own a cell phone until my second or third year of college, and even then it had almost no minutes on it, and was in case of a car emergency, since at the time I was driving an old Volvo that had a tendancy to just not want to start. My parents didn't want me to get stranded somewhere, so they gave it to me, even though at the time I didn't really think I needed one.
Now, of course, I can't live without my cell phone, espeically since I decided not to go with a land-line at all. My cell phone is my only connection to the world, even if I do get a crappy signal in my apartment. Ah how times have changed.
And for the record, I do remember rotary phones too. My grandparents had one, although not one of the phone company variety. I think it was one of the novelty ones you could get once they became a bit cheaper.
That cordless was crap. Nifty, but crap. I don't even know why would would of had it becasue we didn't exactly have any money. We used that cordless phone as a window prop once it died! We didn't have AC either LOL.
I didn't get a cell phone until it became cheaper to have two cells phones on family plan, than it was for me to call home or my parents call me. As Warrensburg isn't long distance from Kansas City, and it's not a Local call either. But it's long distance from Warrensburg to Kansas City.... just wtf
I would love to go to college when cell phones weren't everywhere. Oh to be in class without someone's phone going off with some obnoxious ring tone. And in effort not to draw attention to themselves, they let it ring and ring, which only pissses the professor off putting them in a bad mood for the rest of lecture. One word to describe the mood: eeeeep!
My esitmating professor informed us the first day of class that if your cell went off in class, he would be the one to answer it. And,he had no qualms about embarassing people either. Thankyfully Toni and Dee never called like they said they would try, on the few times that my phone wasn't turned off.
Drat! Dee, we missed a great opportunity there.
I was lucky I guess. Cell phones were still in the "emergencies only" stage when I was in school, so those who did have them either didn't carry them to class, or never had them turned on. I can imagine it would be both distracting and irritating to be in the middle of a lecture and have one go off though. Especially since you are paying to be there, and want to get your money's worth from those classes!
Yeah, the trend definitely went:
1. Beepers - originally only for doctors and drug dealers.
2."Car phones" (big, block-like things that you plugged into your car), which were really only popular among executives and rich types.
3. Beepers becoming mainstream. (In the early days of the beeper popularization, people would see someone with a beeper and joke, "What? Are you dealing drugs?" But eventually they became so popular that no one thought twice.
4. Cell phones that people would say "are for emergencies" only, but they were really only for people who felt they were at risk to needed them; like females traveling alone. (Not to be sexist, of course, but there is that general belief that a woman is more likely to be preyed upon in a vulnerable situation.)
5. At least one cell phone for most families; there was that stage where people said stuff like, "Well my wife has one, and I borrow it if I need it, but I don't need my own." This also overlapped with the, "I have one but I never turn it on" era.
6. And then finally, like it is today, where everyone's got one and most people use it regularly enough.
My wife got one in the mid 90s in the "4" phase because she was doing traveling, but she'd make maybe a call a month; and she only got 30 minutes on her plan. I didn't get my own until, oh, probably about 2002; and I spent a good couple of years with it in the "I only turn it on once a month" phase.
These days, though, I'm #6 all the way.
College, though, is what I always think about when I think about how different things would have been had it been a cell phone, email, IM environment. I went to school 8 hours away from where I grew up, so lots of people I knew were very far away—both with those being back home and those who also went off to other schools. It seems so quaint and old fashioned that we used to write snail mail letters that took AT BEST a week to get a response (if they mailed a return letter the same day they received your letter). But we did. And it seems weird that we'd go month at a time without talking to our close friends because we couldn't be spending money on long distance calls. But we did. That seems so strange to me, because I don't seem like I attended school quite THAT long ago that you would think the world could change so much. But it has. Wild.
It's funny tho with the advent of IM, and there's atleast one computer in almost every dorm room here, life still revolves around the little 3 x 3 inch box with your room number on it by the front desk.
It's funny tho with the advent of IM, and there's atleast one computer in almost every dorm room here, life still revolves around the little 3 x 3 inch box with your room number on it by the front desk.
So true! We all talk almost constantly between cell phones and instant messenger programs, and yet there is nothing so thrilling as recieving a piece of actual mail (bills don't count). Mail still has the power to make you smile, knowing someone took a few extra minutes out of their day to send you something.
[[[[ it's funny tho with the advent of IM, and there's atleast one computer in almost every dorm room here, life still revolves around the little 3 x 3 inch box with your room number on it by the front desk. ]]]]
What do they mail you??? For the time I lived in a dorm, I can relate to the sense that checking your mailbox was very exciting—or disappointing if you checked and nothing was there. But the big thrill--what we were looking fior when we checked with eager anticipation--was that we got letters from our friends. People don't still send letters, do they?
They do still send letters! I worked at front desk for two years and there were quite a few that came through every day.
But the most like anticpated item to find in your mailbox is a little yellow card, about the size of a buisness card, that means you have a box or other package that won't fit in your mailbox.
Unless of course it's from a campus office that wants students to sign for their letters.
There's nothing worse than getting a yellow card, getting all excited because you have a package that you didn't know about. You can't wait to get over to the front desk or for it to open so you can see what you got. Only for it to be a letter from the library informing you of you 75 cent fine.
Not to mentiont hat using the package cards and logs doesn't exactly help as proof of pick up. The description we put into the log book was "white envelope." Yeap, real helpful.
Post a Comment
<< Home