My sixteen-year-old brother took me for a walk when a man came to our farmhouse to install our family’s first telephone. I didn’t know what a phone was but knew how to get in the way and annoy people with floods of questions. That fall, I entered first grade.
I quickly learned that our phone was connected to something called a ‘party line’. That meant there were several families in our neighborhood who shared the use of one line.
When someone on our ‘party line’ received a call, all the phones on the ‘party line’ rang. Each household knew who the call was for, because each household was assigned a different series of long and short rings. We were not supposed to pick up our phone receiver unless the phone rang our assigned rings. Some people liked to pick up to see who was calling the neighbor. They usually stayed silent, but sometimes there were background sounds. Mom called the people who listened in on other people’s calls, “Rubberneckers”.
If a phone conversation lasted a long time, no one else on the party line was able to use the phone until that call ended. When there was an emergency, like a farmer needing to call the veterinarian for a calving cow or his barn was on fire, the farmer would break into the conversation by saying, “Please get off the phone. I have an emergency!”
Telephones evolved quickly. By the time I graduated from high school, all telephone lines were private. The new phones at that time came in many colors other than black. Instead of cranking the phone, we just used one finger to spin a dial to enter seven digits. Our calls were clear as a bell. Everyone had landline phones back then, so there were phone books in every home. These books gave the name, address and telephone number of everyone living in your community and were so handy!
Communication by these landlines took a major hit when newer, smaller telephones no longer needed telephone lines to operate. These new, overly clever phones use radio waves to bounce signals off cell towers to transmit voices and texts. Cell phones can do more than make calls, they can also be used as flashlights, calculators, cameras, computers, radios and more. We call them smart phones. A small percent of the population, often the generation who remember party-lines, don’t feel smart enough to own one.
Unlike landline phones, cell phone numbers are not available to the public. This makes communicating outside your circle of friends difficult. If you want to call someone who has a cell phone, you must exchange numbers with them beforehand. Getting someone’s cell phone number from a friend doesn’t always work, either. The caller’s number shows up on the cell phone screen and if the person being called doesn’t recognize the number, they won’t answer.
Cell phone reception isn’t always clear, and they are well known to suddenly, inexplicably, drop the connection between parties. There are certain areas where, even though they are close to cell phone towers, the cell phone can’t give or receive signals. My home is in one of those reception-less areas.
Because of reception problems, I’ve kept my old-fashioned landline. Unfortunately, the monthly bill for this service has doubled in the past ten years. I recently received a letter from my landline phone company, which said that despite the increased cost, they can no longer afford to continue supporting their ‘copper-based land lines.’
I pictured myself no longer having a working telephone. What if I had an emergency? The rest of the letter assured me that I could still get phone service from them through fiber-optic cables. That made me feel better…until I called the telephone company. The company representative informed me that having a fiber optic telephone at my residence was not possible at this time. I felt like a door had been slammed shut in my face.
I was recently told that I could get telephone services through my Internet provider, so I made a call to them. They said, “Yes, we have VoIP (voy’p). Someone will come to your house tomorrow to set you up.”
I dislike dumb-sounding product names. Does anyone remember a long time ago, there was a product called, “Psssst!” It was a spray can of powder for greasy scalps: an emergency, short-notice clean-up product. I picture someone rushing into a drugstore and asking the people behind the counter, “Do you have, Psssst?” The workers look at each other, alarmed. One says, “Did he just hiss at us like a cat?”
My sister recently asked me if I had fixed my telephone problem. After I told her, “Yes, I have VoIP.” I thought to myself, “That sounds like I have some sort of strange disease.”
She didn’t understand. I spelled it for her. Then I explained that VoIP stood for ‘voice over internet protocol.’ I don’t know if she finally understood, or if she just gave up. I felt like the customer in the drug store looking for a can of ‘Psssst!”
