I have one of Geoff's grandmother's purses. It's large enough for a tube of lipstick, a flat compact (had to make sure you didn't have a shiny nose) and a handkerchief. Abby saw it the other day and asked where the cell phone went. I explained to her that there were no cell phones way back then. She was shocked and wanted to know how you called people. So I told her all about the history of phones - my history of phones - starting fifty years ago.
When I was very young the big choice was whether or not your black dial phone was mounted on the wall or if it was one that was on a cord and was moveable from surface to surface. You had no other decisions to make. Then somewhere along the line, maybe in the mid-60's you could have touch-tone if you wanted it instead of just a dial. If you had touch tone you had to pay extra every month and your phone rental (more on that later) was more expensive. But touch-tone phones were a status symbol - as well as being easier on long nails than the dial. I remember our first touch tone phone and how amazed I was at the speed at which you could place a call.
About the same time you also had the choice of black or a colored phone. If I remember correctly the phones came in black, white and beige. Soon after that there was also powder blue, turqoise and pink. Eventually there was harvest gold and avacado to match the kitchen appliances. The rental on the colored phones was also more expensive than on the black ones. The dream of every young girl was to have a pink or powder blue princess phone. It was smaller than the regular table top phone. After a while the princess phones morphed into trim-line phones with the dial/keypad on the receiver itself. Who could believe how comfortable they were in your hand?
In the mid-70's phone stores popped up in malls. They were run by AT&T. You could go in there and pick out your phone. There were a variety of styles and colors. The one thing you couldn't do though was buy your phone. Back then it was actually illegal to own a phone. The phone company owned your phone and you had to lease it. The fancier your phone was the more you had to pay for it - every single month. I had a friend whose father, an electrician, knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew how to get phones. My friend had a phone in every room in her house - but none of them rang because her father had removed the ringers. The everpresent phone company was able to "hear" phones ringing in your house. If they heard more phones than you were leasing from them they knew that you had illegal phones and you'd get in trouble (I assume fines and confiscation).
The break-up of AT&T brought something we had all only dreamed of - We could own our own phones. I remember when that announcement was made. We were told that we'd be given the option of buying the phones that we had been leasing. It was going to be a lot cheaper than going out and buying a new phone (this is when phones were still relatively expensive). At the time I had a powder blue trim-line phone. I had been thinking about redoing my room but wasn't sure exactly what I would be doing. So a few weeks before I had to tell the phone company if I was going to buy my phone, return it or continue leasing it I went to the Phone Store and traded it in for a beautiful beige trim-line. Then I told them that I was going to buy my phone. So I got a new phone for the price of a used one. Do you know what? That phone was used in my house until we went digital a few years ago. That means that that phone was about thirty years old -- and was still working. How many more modern phones last that long?
3 comments:
We had the harvest gold kitchen wall phone and the harvest gold table top version in my parents' room for YEARS! I think my mom and dad finally got rid of the rotary dial harvest gold phone in their bedroom about 10 years ago! My mom had the extra long 40 ft cord that got wicked stretched out and had to be hung over the top of the wall phone!
I remember the phone store, too. I loved going there!
I STILL have my powder blue trim line. I miss the satisfaction of the good, solid clang of a hang up when someone pisses me off. It doesn't give me as much satisfaction to push the button no matter how much venow I hit it with!
Mel...our cord always got all stretched out too. I used to stretch the kitchen phone as far as I could into the basement do I had privacy. My dad would get so pissed when I brought it back up and the cord was all stretched to hell!
Good post MZ!!!
My mom had the same white wall phone for years. It started to get a buzz noise when you used it and it still took my mom forever to replace it. I know it had to be close to 25 years old, too. We also had the super long cord that got stretched to death and my mom was always yelling at us about it. I used to stretch it into my brother's room and close the door on it for privacy :o) I think I just threw away my slate blue princess phone that I had from high school!
Speaking of old appliances, Bob still uses his alarm clock from high school. It has cigarette burns in the top of it from when he used to smoke in college (He quit the day his Dad died).
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