Throwback Thursday: What are some of your telephone memories? #TBT

[#1]

It's Thursday!

Man oh man! Who remembers the long phone cords, either to the phone itself or to the handset? Or the "phone table" that had an uncomfortable seat and a little side desk with a drawer for the phone book, of course :=)

Soooo, what are some of your telephone memories?

Let’s make it a great Thursday!

KGM

[Vronik]

I was especially excited to have a red phone, like the one Batman had for emergencies.

[Jimmy Seddon]

The first phone I ever used was a rotary phone:

I also remember when we upgraded to a push button phone that included a screen that would provide you with the phone number that was calling (the first round of call display) and that felt VERY hi-tech!

[Alex G]

I used to play with the cord while talking when I was little. 

[Joanna Weber]

Two words: rotary dial.

[Sandeep Das]

I remember carrying those mini notebooks consisting of thousands of handwritten names/ phone numbers in it, And I always used to struggle to open the correct page for the number I was looking for :(  

[Hind Kadiri From Jaanga]

A very old memory, I remember when I was young, I used to rush to those old public phones, and call my parents if anything happened, the phone call was just for two minutes before the line cut out. It was such a funny moment knowing that anyone passing by could hear our little conversation XD

Thank you for this sweet discussion @Kristján Geir Mathiesen !

[Dan Breyen]

A few things for this one...

-One cord for the one phone on the main floor.  You needed to make sure it was long enough so you could practically move around the whole floor and still talk.

-My grandma had a party line, and so did her sister.  What's a party line?  Well, it was a phone line that was shared between several houses.  Each house had a different pattern for the ringer, but if you picked up the line, it was possible that another house was talking on the line.  One neighbor decided they needed to listen in on other people's conversations.  To get around that, my grandma would talk to her sister in German. 

- our house built in the 60s had two phone jacks.  One on the main floor and another in the basement.  When it came time to add more phone lines, we were snaking phone line from the basement all through the house, up through bathroom closets in order to get more phone jacks wired in the house.

[Barbara Szczesniak]

I remember that there was a combination you could dial and hang up, causing your own phone to ring. Whenever we couldn't get my older brother's attention to come down from his room, we did this and told him his girlfriend was on the phone.

On my first job, I would occasionally go around to my colleagues' cubicles and turn their handset upside down. It would still press the buttons down, but it looked like a moose. I was only 21, and they all seemed so stuffy. 😊

[Holly Scott]

They were always getting messed up, never could stay a perfect spiral. They always got the horse saddle looking parts that I'd always try to fix.

[Holly Scott]

I saw @Jimmy Seddon mention the rotary phone, zeros were the worst. And if I messed up the phone number and had to start again I would be do disheartened.

[John Funk]

Oh yes - I remember pretty much all of these. Definitely the first phone I used was a rotary phone. And the long cord was never long enough. We had 3 phones in our house - one in the hallway, one in my parents' room, and one in the den/family room where the TV was. 

[Sam Nadarajan]

Back in the day we were too cheap to get caller ID, so we would tell people that wanted to talk to us to call, leave a voicemail, then call again before we picked up. Surprisingly people did, but it was definitely irritating, especially for us as kids.

Also, while I found the below irritating, it was fun working out the twist haha.

[Holly Scott]

@Sam Nadarajan those cord kinks always got to me!

[LoRi]

My first phone was around the time of art phones like hamburger, cat, or trains shapes. But I wanted one that stood tall on its own switch so to answer you just lift the whole phone. The speaker was in the dial pad and it had a sleek shape like an amorphous chair (similar to cordless phones now, except that it was corded and needed no charge base) with a heavy base I would find out later when I dissected the phone that it was just a piece of glued heavy metal inside. But that cord was like 20 feet. As a teen talking on the phone for hours was helpful to go from room to room on a tether. ha!

[Holly Scott]

I had a Garfield phone that would open his eyes when lifting the receiver. I was obsessed with it.

[Laurie Sciutti]

Being tethered to the wall!  It sucked.

[Josh Shepherd]

You know, it makes me sad that my kids will never experience a phone attached to a cord, attached to a wall, attached to a line.

On that note, I also had a party line growing up and a semi-private (2 neighbours sharing) and we needed to listen for our ring - one long, 2 short so it was our call. If both houses picked up the phone at the same time, you could hear each other over the dial tone... wait... do kids know about dial tones? :)

Great memories! 

[Teodora _Old Street Solutions_Tempo_]

Oh gosh, except for the moments you try to desperately connect to 'the internet' and the phone rings?! :D

I know I am old when I remember dialing random numbers on our rotary phone... and someone answers. It scared the life out of me every time because I was sure there was no way to match a real phone number. 

[Jamie Edmondson]

I remember being amazed watching War Games and seeing the handset of the phone being placed on the modem so he could dial up other computers using the tones. That was the 80s and long before the Internet as we know it today.

[pam_hite_wbd_com]

My mom still lives in the home where I grew up.  No more PARTY LINE, but still the same phone number!!!  She has also upgraded from a rotary to a push button phone.  Favorite memory is that phone number - I know if I dial it, my mom will still pick up :)

[Brant Schroeder]

@Kristján Geir Mathiesen Party lines.  I remember having to wait for others to get off of the phone so you could make a call.  

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

I grew up in a town with party lines, we shared our phone with 4 other houses for most of the 1970s. It was very exciting to get our own line right around 1978.

I also recall my first car phone, which pretty much looked like this.  As far as I know, it's still in my mother's garage.

[Humashankar VJ]

Great topic for TBT - Would like to recall the landline phone which would pick up a strange noise whenever a train passed by our house, causing a frustrating disruption to our conversations. But now, as I look back, that interference has become a harmonious memory.

[Ram Kumar Aravindakshan _Adaptavist_]

I can't forget how the phone lines would frequently drop if there were a heavy lighting strike since it doesn't have any earthing. 

Also miss the old phone booths:-

They are frequently victimised by people trying to make a quick buck by taking the coins from them.

[Vronik]

I loved Garfield's phone 💛