"Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!" Those were reputedly the first words spoken by Alexander Graham Bell into what he called the telephone. That was in 1867 - a good 85 years before I first used the phone which looked like the one pictured here.
Our phone hung on the south wall of the kitchen to the left of the window. It was a hot place to stand and talk during the winter months when the old wood burning stove was in the kitchen. One had to stand behind the stove to reach the phone.
Our phone number was 12F21. I don't know what the F stood for. The 12 meant we were on party line twelve out of the Corning telephone office. The 21 meant our "ring" was two longs and a short. If we wanted to call someone on our party line we just rang their number - if their number was 12F13, we rang one long and three shorts. It was possible, even then, to misdial - a long might sound like a short and vice-versa. Or a neighbor might hear it that way and answer even though the call wasn't meant for them. You talked to them anyway.
If you wanted to talk to someone on another line or in town, you cranked the phone in one continuous motion - maybe two or three times around - until the operator answered, "Number please?" You told her the number and she placed the call for you. Grandma Lynam's number in town was 117. Grandma Ridnour's was 71 on 7 through Guss. That meant calling her was long distance and even if you got through, you couldn't hear very well. Guss's lines were maintained by the subscribers and not everyone kept up their lines as well as Grandpa did.
It seems like there was a way to call everyone on your line if you needed help, but I don't remember that for certain. But it was certain that everyone on the line knew when someone else got a call because they could hear the ring, too. If it was late at night or early in the morning, others on the line would listen in to see what the call was about, suspecting bad news because of the time of day. The same thing sometimes happened during the day if a neighbor was nosy and just wanted to know what was going on.
I never liked talking on the phone. I don't know why. Even when I was in high school if I needed to talk to a girlfriend, I called, discussed what I called for and said goodbye. There was one girl who would call me and talk for an hour. Mom would be motioning me to get off the phone and I would try, but she would just keep talking.
Over the years I have tried to figure out why I don't like to talk on the phone. It must go back to something which happened early in my childhood, but what? Maybe I'll remember some day.
When I worked at the light plant (Municipal Utilities) in the mid 1960's, we answered the phone for a fire call so we could blow the whistle to alert the volunteer firemen. I'll never forget the day I answered the fire call and it was Mom on the other end calling for a fire truck. She sounded so scared. She had always had such a fear of fires. I blew the whistle but it was a while before I found out the tractor had caught on fire when Dad was refilling it. Mom was afraid the gasoline barrel was going to blow up, but it didn't. Thank goodness.
I've forgotten most of the phone numbers I have had in all the different places I've lived. The last ones on the farm were 322-3088 for Mom and 322-4425 for us. I know in time I will forget what our's was, but I'll always remember Mom's number.
I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would think of today's cell phones? And texting? And taking and sending pictures? Did he have any idea what his invention might lead to?
No comments:
Post a Comment