Speed Bump by Dave Coverly for June 08, 2011

And … I hate to say it, but they weren’t smart.

Not quite gmartin, we had to listen for a dial tone and then dial. Cordless phones still do. What corded phones didn’t have back then, was redial and Caller ID. But they didn’t use electricity so they still worked in a power outage…

Ah the old landline…gone but not forgotten.

Still prefer them, they don’t need recharge.

Is this the party to whom I am speaking?

Actually, they did use electricity — just not ours. The phone switching stations take power from the local grid not only to run themselves (and all the old-style telephones they serviced) but also to charge batteries so they can keep running if the power goes out. I was working for the local power co-op when there was a bad storm with widespread, longterm outages, and one concern was the batteries in the phone stations would run out before everything was back online.

I remember phones with no dials, You would pick up the receiver and the operator would ask “Number please.”And the number was 4 digits.

And no speed dial, either.

Rockngolfer… and they were party lines(more than one household on one line)

I remember party lines from when I was a kid. We used to listen to other people’s conversations and giggle! The way you knew the call was for you was the number of rings. We kids picked up the phone no matter how many rings and listened anyway, as I am sure other people on the party line did as well.

Why is everybody talking in past tense? I have a smartphone but I still need a land line, for keeping down my cell minutes and for my DSL service. And there are isolated rural or mountainous communities that still have party lines.

I worked for the phone company for 32 years. In that time, long distance went from over a dollar a minute, with a 3 minute minimum, to 5 cents with a minute minimum, and even free with some plans. With cell phones now, there is no long distance, except international, and that’s cheap. We had a power failure one time where our backup generator failed, and we had to shut down the office to save the batteries. Fun times. :)

And the truth will out! Oh the shame of it all!