Back in the Day - The Telephone

I knew that it was inevitable....I have finally reached that stage of my life where I'm transitioning into my father. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But I can remember my Dad replying to my whining with "Back when I was a kid..." 

So, falling right in line with that linear succession, I've decided to start a series of "Back in the Day" stories about random things of my childhood. Today, I'll describe what it was like to make a phone call during my youth. So, find yourself a seat and please silence your cell phones...

First off, there were no cell phones back in the 70's. At least none that the average working man could afford. We had to rely on the lone landline phone that usually rested next to a La-Z-Boy recliner somewhere in a cluttered living room. Privacy and silence were usually not an option as my parents would be seated nearby watching the latest episode of "Gunsmoke". To get any privacy at all, I would have to stretch the handset cord until it was tight enough for a circus performer to walk across. It was actually quite dangerous as an unsuspecting individual could be clotheslined by the makeshift high-wire. I often wondered how many people needlessly decapitated as a result of this...

I'm not sure if OSHA had any hand in it, but eventually we were introduced to cordless phones. You could walk around the whole house without the nuisance of the phone cord. As you walked further away from the "base", you would pick up increasing static on the line. It was the early predecessor to enter a bad cell area.

Another issue with my early childhood phone was that it had a rotary dial. This required you to put the tip of your index finger into one of the numbered holes of the dial and turning it to the right. If you had a high-digit number like 987-9679, your finger would actually get sore by the time you connected with the person on the other end (Decades later, the sore index finger would give way to the arthritic "smart-phone thumb"). Everyone rejoiced when the push-button phones entered the market place.

As the technology became more affordable it was common for families to have multiple phones in their homes. All the phones were usually on the same landline. So, if you picked up another phone during an active phone call, you could have multiple people on at the same time. It was the early version of a conference call. One the downsides was that someone could easily eavesdrop on your conversation without you knowing it.

Caller ID wasn't around back in the 70's. So, when the phone rang, you had no idea who was calling. It could be the "Publisher's Clearing House" calling to tell you you had won a million bucks. Or it could be the school principal calling to tell your parents about your latest disciplinary issue. Interesting enough, the telemarketing craze wasn't as prevalent back then. But prank calling was quite common. We used to get into mischief by calling random people and laying out lines such as this:

"Hello sir, this is Joe from the ABC Refrigeration. We're conducting a free courtesy check-up on your appliances. Is your refrigerator running right now?

Of course, when they answered "Yes", we would respond with "Well, you'd better catch it before it gets out of the house!"

It was stupid but as young adolescents, we thought it was hilarious. My good friend, Mark, was a natural in this field. He could really lay it on! I would be on the floor laughing so hard that it actually hurt! He was so convincing, he could sell screen doors to a submarine company. (Although, he wasn't directly involved and it wasn't technically a prank call, Mark introduced us to the epic "Francis J. Haynes vs. The Phone Company" interchange. It ranks up there as one of the most iconic telephonic battles of all time. It's every bit as entertaining as the "911 Deer" call.)

The only affordable "mobile phones' back then came in the form of a phone booth. For a quarter, you could make a make a phone call to anyone within the same area code (back in the day, "301" was the default area code for the Baltimore area. It eventually transitioned to "410"). The benefit of the phone booth was that it would diminish the street noise so you could actually hear the person on the other end of the line. The downside of the booth was that it could be gross. They often wreaked of urine and there was no telling what kind of bio-particles you'd see clinging to the plexiglass walls. You would have been advised to carry a can of Lysol if you were a regular user of these phones.

Another common problem with the public phones is that the handset was often missing. People would randomly rip the handset off, leaving a few stray wires in it's place. You would sometimes witness someone taking out their frustration by beating the handset against the metal phone housing. It was kind of funny and frightening at the same time. 

We used to rely on a big, bulky phone book back in the day too. I'm not kidding, this book was probably about four or five inches thick and it contained almost every name and phone number in the whole Baltimore area. It's not like today where you can Google a name and get an instant response. With the physical phone book, you had to thumb through countless pages to find a number. It could actually be educational for youngsters because the names were in alphabetical order. Although the phone books have been pretty-much obsolete for at least a couple decades, the book was still being delivered to my house until a couple of years ago. I would literally retrieve it from my front door step and walk it over and deposit it into the recycling bin. 

Today, the landline has become almost obsolete. Smartphones have transitioned into an extra appendage that, amongst many other things, also make phone calls. Young people today will never know the challenges that we faced back in the day. As a nostalgic reminder, I still have a fully-functioning rotary-dial phone hanging on my garage wall. 

With all of this being said, there were some good points of those old school phones. First off, you couldn't carry them around with you, so you never had to worry about losing them. And, aside from maybe a few phone numbers, they didn't store any personal information. And most importantly, people were not addicted to them.

kw