One Ringy Dingy

I can still rattle off all the phone numbers I had in my childhood house, but don’t ask me what any of my kids’ numbers are.

In contrast to the ease of today’s cell phone, the landlines of yesteryear presented challenges that are hard to fathom if you didn’t actually live them. For example, people had to remember each other’s phone numbers or keep a directory near the phone to access them. 

We also had to share the phone with others in the home, and talk where the phone was located; today, we have our own phones and can conduct a conversation wherever we are or want to be, even outside.

The phones in my house growing up in the 1960s were located in 3 spots: the kitchen on the 1^st floor, my parents’ bedroom on the 2nd, and 1 in the basement. Two of the phones were “high tech,” with a panel on the bottom that included 2 phone numbers, a hold button, and an intercom which allowed us to talk to each other in the home, usually about who was calling and/or that my dad was ready for his nightly white bread sandwich in bed.

Having a phone on each floor and having 2 different phone numbers was a pretty advanced set-up in those days, as most people had just 1 number in 1 place in the house, in large part because having a 2nd  instrument was a costly add-on. My parents wanted us to have the 2 numbers to accommodate the political people and neighbors who called our home all day and well into the evening. We gave those people LI8-2817; we in the family would call out on LI8-6274. 

For the most part, everyone’s phone call conversations were “public”; most were taken in the kitchen and conducted in front of each other. When my one brother Denis would go into the basement to make or take a call, we all knew that meant he was talking to a girl.

Once I became a teen and started liking boys, I too felt the need for privacy so that I could talk to them or about them with my girlfriends. This became complicated, as my mom was often lurking in the kitchen, the basement gave me the heebie-jeebies and it was just plain old weird hanging out in my parents’ bedroom. On those occasions when I did get the kitchen to myself, my mom could see the panel lit up from another phone location and would call up or down to me to keep the call(s) short because both lines were needed to be free for everyone else.   

Later on when I was in high school, I petitioned my mom to get my own phone – I was hoping for a pretty pink one with buttons – because she was growing more impatient with my conversations. She’d often tell me to focus on my school work and not all the other junk, which meant she was listening, so it was causing quite a bit of stress for the mother-daughter relationship that was already under siege given my age and focus on myself.   

She agreed to get the phone but was slow moving, so I had to keep reminding her. One day she told me she has good news for me, but there was a caveat:  “We will have an extra phone for you to use, and you will be sharing it with Mark” (also my brother). This didn’t thrill me because he was a state legislator with a large base of constituents, which meant they’d often be calling our house. So once again it was a political line; however, he was in Harrisburg for half the week, so at least I’d have the phone to myself then.    

I couldn’t complain because some of my friends had to share just 1 phone with all their siblings and parents, with absolutely no privacy whatsoever.  One girl even had a party-line arrangement so anyone from 2 households could pick up the phone and listen to both family’s conversations.

This phone number that Mark and I used was WA4-7657. My mom had 1 phone installed in the dining room so he could work at the table and a 2nd one in his bedroom, with a very long cord that enabled me to move the phone to my room when he was away, and he'd take it to his room when he was home.  That’s how I often knew he was back home: “my” phone, which I kept on the floor within arm’s reach from my bed when I was lying down, would be gone! 

I got in the habit of talking late at night and hanging up the phone without my getting out of bed.  I loved every part of this lifestyle. 

This system worked out OK, although at one point I stubbed my toe on the phone (on the floor by my bed), resulting in a broken toe that called for a boot and crutches. This was actually a nightmare, given I was a Temple University commuter in a very hot summer session at the time, but all was right with the world when I could lie in bed at night and talk on the phone with whomever I wanted, for as long as I wanted. I would, however, be reprimanded if the call was “long distance,” which incurred an added cost per minute on the phone bill.    

Today’s phones make it so easy to communicate with people: we can have privacy, get immediate results (no more busy signals); we can text with words, pictures, videos, and so much more. The advances are astounding to our generation, with younger folks not knowing otherwise.   

While I appreciate everything that’s possible now, I sometimes long for the simpler days. There was a sense of anticipation about the phone ringing back then, when no one knew who was calling or who the call was for.

The best was when it was for me.